fandomtownies | Caritas, Sunday

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Caritas, Sunday

The weirdness had, yet again, skipped Jake.

He was honestly at the point where his relief at being skipped over by these things actually looped around full circle until he was worried that this meant Fandom had something big planned for him, eventually.

It's a good thing he worked in a bar, because Jake's method of dealing with this sort of sense of foreboding was to drink. Heavily.

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"I haven't spoken with him yet," Karla said, shaking her head. "He seems so...almost jovial, maybe? Less broody? It's less a change than in either Momoko or Warren, and yet seems more shocking almost."

Raven pressed her hand to her chest. "He has some device that allows him to control the fire," she said. "I imagine that has much to do with it. It is almost unsettling."

"A Jono that doesn't consider himself a monster," Karla murmured. "I'm going to have to talk to him before the evening is over. Just so see."

She glanced at Raven. "How're you taking it? Him? Everything?"

Oh, sure, Karla, ask the hard questions.

"Better than I was?" she said quietly, staring down at the floor. "I have been trying to do a lot of thinking about myself and what I am, and how I can make myself better."

Karla reached for Raven's hand again and squeezed it, offering wordless support. "How's that going?" she asked. "Reached any conclusions?"

Raven hesitated; she wasn't sure quite how to explain. "I think I...I want too much," she said. "I have become too selfish, when I should be selfless. I need to let go of the wanting. It is the surest pathway into darkness for me. It is how the vampire that was Professor Maximus was able to so easily defeat me."

Karla didn't look entirely convinced. "But becoming some kind of pure idol of selflessness isn't healthy," she objected. "It's not...not sustainable. Not for any person."

"I know," Raven said, nodding in agreement. "It is human to want, and I am half-human, after all. I could not live in constant denial; I have already proven to myself that is not healthy. But Professor Maximus made my weaknesses all too clear to me, and that is what I must overcome."

"Do I want to know what he did?" Karla asked. "Or was it pretty much a repeat of what happened last time?"

Raven's eyes grew haunted. "It was very much the same," she said quietly. "I should have been stronger. He should not have been able to subdue me so easily, not after all I have learned since the last time I encountered him. But he knew exactly what to do to get past my defenses." Her tone was scornful, though it was directed at herself.

"He made me beg him to turn me into a vampire. I did not want to die, but he had bitten me and taken too much of my blood and I was too weak to heal myself. Instead I chose to become an abomination. I endangered everyone I care about because of my fear and selfishness."

"You weren't the only one who was turned," Karla pointed out. "And you seemed less a danger than some of the others."

Raven, for example, hadn't actually killed anyone.

"You weren't the only one to get taken down, either. I let Ender get to me. Figuratively and literally." Her hand rose to her neck, to the fine tracery of scars. "Talk about getting past the defenses."

"No, I did not fully turn," Raven said, nodding. "The demon that I am did not wish to give way to the vampire I was supposed to become. I had never been thankful for what I am until then. It was uncomfortable and distressing" -- which was an understatement -- "and I do not know how long I could have kept up the battle inside me. But I kept myself under control, and I count that a triumph. I do not like that I had to drink blood to do it, though. And...I did kill again. I know you will not disapprove but I killed Professor Maximus there, after he had turned me. I am ashamed by how much I enjoyed it."

She frowned at Karla's scars, wishing she'd been herself so that Karla would have let her come close enough to heal them. Not an auspicious moment as her healer, that. "That place was our worst nightmares come to life," she said. Powered by someone who knew many of them all too well. "It will haunt me for some time, but I will not let it handicap me."

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Caritas, Sunday

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