Tell me that I'll figure it out...

[moralabsolutism]

[Catch-all for Shade's characters! Specific starters in the comments. If you want anything with either Cooper or Rorschach, PM me or let me know at Light_shade!]

Comments

[emotioneater]

"Oh, you let the dog go. Do you want a gold star?" Cooper sits back down on the couch, putting his feet up so that Joss is forced down to the other end. Yes, he is a mature adult vampire, why do you ask?

He does look seriously as he mulls over what they've learned. "Well, if it was me, I'd want the punishment t'fit the crime. You killed someone who couldn't fight back, so she put you into the same state of bein' helpless and vulnerable for a few days. It could have been a helluva lot worse if Nancy 'n then Cesare hadn't found you."

[dredefulchilde]

"I'm aware of that," Joscelin sighs, wrinkling his nose at suddenly having smelly Irish feet shoved in his face. He scoots further away from Cooper. "How can I not be? Frankly I'm surprised only one person died while I was loose on the city. I had significantly less control the first time around, when I was actually turned." He'd killed more than thirty people then. "I am grateful to both Nancy and Cesare for the assistance they provided." And he means that sincerely. It could have gone so much worse.

[emotioneater]

Cooper's serious mood continues as he thinks back to waking up in a crypt back in 1798. His eyes are far away as he remembers waking up, the rope marks from his hanging still around his neck. "You 'n me both. Never a picnic when you're newly turned." Cooper hadn't even had a sire to help him through it. Scared and confused, the young teenager had been every inch the monster all the legends and myths made vampires out to be. Those early years were all a blur of blood and death.

He looks down the couch to Joss in surprise. "I think that's the first time I've ever heard you say you were grateful t'anyone."

[dredefulchilde]

Joscelin's also far away. He'd woken in a mass grave, three bodies on top of him. He had died with his eyes open, not so delirious from pain and fever to not understand what was happening to him. He remembered taking his last breath in the dreamy way one remembers falling asleep. And then he was awake again. And hungry.

He looks up at Cooper. "I don't see why you're so surprised," he shrugs. "I haven't lived this long by not giving credit where credit's due."

[emotioneater]

Cooper comes back to the present moment, tearing himself away from two-hundred year old memories. He'd come a long ways from that moment, a young, frightened vampire whose first meal had been a gravedigger in the graveyard. Older if not precisely wiser.

"You're usually, I dunno, so sardonic. I rarely hear anythin' genuine like that from you."

[dredefulchilde]

"I would have died." He isn't looking at Cooper anymore. He is usually far more sardonic and selfish than this, but Cooper is another vampire, and a physically young one at that; they have a lot more in common than not. "Someone would have figured out what I was, handed me off to a hunter, and I would have ended up dead. Or I would have taken off my daylight ring and walked outside on a sunny day. Maybe that's even what the witch was counting on; I don't know. I do know that without your...woman and Cesare Borgia I would have died. I rather enjoy continuing to exist."

[emotioneater]

Cooper can hear the pause in Joss' words when he mentions Nancy. He can think of several substitutes that he was probably thinking, none of them flattering. Still, he's not going to solve anything by picking a fight. They'd already tried that in the entryway. "Well, you got the luck of somebody on your side." This could have turned out with Cooper reading Joscelin's obituary in the London Lambast Daily.

"So are you gonna retaliate against that witch?" He can't very well stop him, but they both know how JC's been wanting the Nest to play nice with everyone else.