fandomtownies | Devil's Nest, Friday Evening

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Devil's Nest, Friday Evening

It had been a very quiet week in Fandom. Allie would be the first to admit, she was looking forward to people getting back on island. Since she didn't make it to Turkey herself, tonight she had a book on the history of the Ottoman Empire. At least she could read about some of what she was missing.

The DJ was working through the collected works of ABBA. The music was suprisingly catchy.

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...

True, she couldn't drink here, but there were other places that she could, and would. Éponine had other reasons to favor the Devil's Nest -- sorry to say, Allie, that tonight at least the company was secondary to some symbolic association that came with her more morose mood swings.

Regardless, the prospect of company was there and anyhow she was already slightly tipsy when she arrived and flung herself down onto a stool.

"How quiet it is here this week," she exclaimed. "I don't mind quiet sometimes, I don't really like it when everyone is loud and it's crowded and people keep jostling me, but it's so dreadfully empty and silent here now. Almost as if --"

She stopped, swore softly under her breath.

"They are all coming back, aren't they?"

She should try wandering the island in the cold, dark hours of the night when all the sane people were home tucked in their beds. It got lonely.

"They are," Allie assured her. "It's a thing with the school. They take them off on trips. But they always come back."

Oh, Éponine was aware of that; she did quite a bit of ~~walking alone at night when everybody else is sleeping~~ nocturnal wandering herself. It was just strange when the daylight hours were almost as lonely.

"Oh. Well. That's all right then, I suppose," she said vaguely. "How nice for them. Will they be gone very much longer?"

"No, classes start up again on Monday." Someone might have memorized the school schedule in a tiny bout envy at one point. "So I figure they'll have to be back at some point over the weekend and everything can get back to normal."

Speaking of envy, there was a hint of that in Éponine's eyes at the mention of classes, too.

"Normal. No, I don't think I'll mind if things do go back to that, this time," she mused. "As I'm not entirely certain what exactly normal is in this place. Do you know, there are funny-colored deer in the woods? So many of them, too, and they like to come and stare at me, and I'm sure I'm not imagining that."

In case anyone was wondering whether she rambled to herself in the preserve.

"No, you're not imagining that," Allie replied with a small laugh. "I've seen them as well. And that's the least of the strange things that happen around her. You should have been here before Christmas."

Éponine fixed one of her overly-intent, curious stares on Allie, trying to ignore a vague memory of a gold louis in a wooden shoe one Christmas Eve years ago. "Before Christmas, hmm? Why, what happened then?"

Sadly the first memory that sprang to Allie's mind was the creepy little elf doll that kept appearing the one day. Some traumas will never be forgotten. "It seemed like strange things happened every day for an entire month. One day this plant they called mistletoe kept appearing over head. It kept trying to get me to kiss people. Another day, instead of water, all the faucets ran with wine. Then one day all the regular lights turned into Christmas lights strings. It was all harmless. Just disturbing sometimes." Which pretty much summed up Allie's life in Fandom so far.

Éponine was silent (surprisingly) for several long moments before she let out a raucous, just-a-touch-too-loud laugh. "Well, how do you like that! It's as if the island was bound and determined to make you be festive, only I think I'd have decided not to after a while just out of spite."

"There were people that tried that. It was amusing to watch. Especially the day the fruitcakes wanted to be eaten." Which had been a very frustrating day for Allie because they wouldn't understand that it wasn't that she didn't want to eat them, but that she couldn't eat them.

"I mostly just tried to go along. Even if I didn't understand why a lot of the thing happened. Like the bears with the soda." Pop culture got lost in a post apocalyptic world.

"I am not," Éponine decided, "even going to pretend I understand what that's all about, since I'm not even sure what most of that has to do with Christmas at all."

Yay, mutual bewilderment at Christmas in a contemporary world.

". . . I wouldn't have minded those fruitcakes at all, though." Because hi, free food.

That was going to get her an understanding nod. Allie had had similar thoughts at the time. "Stick around long enough, I'm sure there'll be something else following us about soon enough."

"Oh, no doubt." Éponine paused to bob her head in time with the music -- except about half a beat off -- for a moment or two.

Then, abruptly, she asked, "Do you suppose it'll be funny, whatever it is?"

Wrinkling her nose, Allie tried to remember all of the weird things that had happened since she'd come to Fandom. "There's a good chance. But then there's also a good chance it'll be something weird. Like the time a lot of the older people on island woke up looking and thinking that they were teenagers. Or the time everyone got really, really dramatic for some reason."

If that ever happened again, she really hoped someone would stake the emo vampire and put her out of her misery.

God help everyone ever if Soap Opera Weekend got hold of Éponine.

Who was a bit more perturbed by this than she let on, choosing instead to shrug and say offhandedly, "None of that sounds so dreadful."

Comparatively, it really wasn't, but . . .

"Compared to starving or running away from rabids? No. Not dreadful. But," Allie said. "I really could have lived without the memories of spending a weekend lurking in shadows telling everyone I met that they didn't know what it was like to be a vampire." And yes, that last bit was said with all the dramatic angst Allie could muster.

"That ever happens again? Kill me."

As someone who spent a lot of time lurking in shadows herself, Éponine would say it was overrated.

"Is it even possible to do that?" she wondered, because you never knew when these facts could be useful.

"It is, if you know what you're doing." There was no hesitation in her answer. It was knowledge Allie felt people should know. She wasn't a threat. But if Sarren, or Jackal or any other vampire from her world ever made it across the causeway, people should know how to protect themselves.

"The books say that staking a vampire in the heart is enough to kill it. That's not true for my type. There are other vampires on the island, from other worlds. It might be different for them." And that really was something she should probably ask Eric about one day. "It'll only incapacitate me, send me into a type of hibernation, for years possibly, until my body can heal itself. To really kill me? You'd have to take my head or cause massive trauma. Like an explosion under my seat or something."

Clear out or I'll blow up the whole place, Éponine remembered hearing; she thought of volleys of musket fire at the barricade and, almost imperceptibly, flinched.

"Pardieu," she said, hiding the reaction behind a disbelieving tone. "In that case I think you're quite safe from me. Where in the hell would I ever manage to find a way to do that?"

"I doubt you'd have to be the one. There are more then enough people on island that would be capable of it." Which was a strangely reassuring thought in a way.

Allie had picked up on the flinch and wondered about it. "Can I ask what happened to you? Before you got here?"

"There was an uprising," Éponine said in a flat, expressionless tone, though it took on a cynical aspect when she went on. "Rich students who thought they could overthrow the government by fighting in the streets."

She laughed, humorlessly. "Hell of a lot of good it did them, or anyone else."

"They were killed." It wasn't a question. Allie had seen how quickly the Pets put down anyone in the Fringe that tried to change the system. She couldn't imagine it being any different anywhere else.

"Would it have ended any other way?" The way Éponine said it, it wasn't really a question. "Anyone who survived, they executed."

Except her, and she still wasn't sure why she'd been the one to get that lucky.

"Probably not. But if they wanted things to change, to be better, and were willing to take the risk..." She understood about wanting things to be better.

...

How the hell did it get to be March already?

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Devil's Nest, Friday Evening

The Bar (3/1)

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The Dance Floor & Lounge

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