TEXT - backdated to the evening of 6/30 (cw: sibling death)

[fingersandteeth]

You would think that knowing for sure would make things better but it doesn't really.

It doesn't matter that she's got some good wraith friends or that Old Man Tsukiyomi's original is summoning her shade on the regular or that she doesn't blame me or that she knows now that goddamn piece of shit Fetch wasn't me.

She should be twenty-six twenty-seven something like that goddamn fairy time bullshit the point is that she's never going to be that old she's always going to be twenty-five right now twenty-five and dead.

You would have thought it would be good to see her over the weekend and it was but she's gone now and it's her birthday and everything hurts.

No matter how much I smoke Lydia it still hurts.

Fuck.

[Turns out you don't need an ion storm for what you thought were private messages getting sent to the network if you're intoxicated enough.]

Comments

[stopinthenameofawe]

[......Melissa is not going to ask about the 'Handsome Cats'.]

I don't think trying not to have gotten kidnapped would have necessarily done you any good. Just because things might have been different if you hadn't doesn't make it your fault.

[fingersandteeth]

I'd like to think I'd be able to tell when my sister was being mind controlled, [Steven replies waspishly.] She could tell when I'd been replaced, even if she didn't know what was happening.

And I know for a goddamn fact that Frog Comics on the boardwalk still sells Destroy All Vampires, because I stopped there a couple months ago when I was visiting my parents for Christmas. I could have improvised something.

[stopinthenameofawe]

Alright, fine.

[Geeze, Steven. See what she gets for trying to comforting for once.

...Though now she has a concern]

A comic?

[fingersandteeth]

Sorry, [he says, awkwardly.] It's a bit of a tender subject.

And, uh, yeah. The comic book shop on the boardwalk had been selling them since before my parents moved to Santa Carla in '94 and they still had them every time I stopped there, which was generally every Thanksgiving and Christmas—Dia I spent back in San Diego because Mom's family was there.

They were, well, about hunting down and destroying vampires. I bought a couple over the years. Mostly I guess because they weren't under the comics code? [He shrugs.] Anyway, I could have improvised. Based on the shit I read, I mean.

[Hey, it's probably the drugs and alcohol speaking, but it looks like he trusts you in this moment enough to swear in front of you.]

[stopinthenameofawe]

[.......melissa is pretty sure if he'd tried to follow the advice in there he would have died. she figures at this point there's no use telling him that. She'll take another shot instead.]

Well, either way, there's not much that can be done about it from here.

[fingersandteeth]

No. There isn't.

[He'll knock back another shot himself.]

So... you had your own run-in too, then.

[stopinthenameofawe]

You could say that.

[Melissa pauses, eyeing the vodka bottle and deciding against it. She's never been a lightweight, but it's been years since she's actually been able to drink proper alcohol.]

Saw one murder the fuck out of a guy outside a building I was working at. Couldn't get it out of my head, only want to make it fuck me up less was to try and do something about it.

[Which almost certainly wound up fucking her up more in the long wrong.]

[fingersandteeth]

[If she's pausing for now, he'll pause too. He doesn't want to be completely sozzled when the others get here anyway.]

... so you became a vampire hunter, [he guesses. He just looks at her then, for a long moment that stretches into two or three more before he says,] Right. Cool.

[stopinthenameofawe]

Pretty much.

[There's more to it than that- but she's not entirely sure she wants to share all of it.] Mostly our local section, who were all assholes to their core to the point of keeping slaves. [.....the slaves were werewolves so normally she didn't actually care but he doesn't need to know that.] Bastards actually tried to get us to help quash an uprising and when we refused, that's when I got kidnapped and turned.

[fingersandteeth]

Jesus, [he swears.] Melissa, I'm so sorry.

[And he does think he actually means it. That it's not just words. Maybe it's only because of finding out what happened to Charley, but he does have some level of investment in Melissa specifically in this moment.

And she is from his world. That would matter here.]

[stopinthenameofawe]

...Thanks.

[Melissa sighs, raking a hand through her hand.] ...I'm not gonna pretend I totally understand what happened with you, but I at least get what kind of position your sister wound up in and why that's fucking with you. It's shit you guys had to go through all that.

[that's about as close to a 'sorry' that melissa can really get to.]

[fingersandteeth]

[He gets that's what she means and is a little touched anyway.]

Yeah. And it's shit that that happened to you too.

[He sighs and shakes his head.]

God. Fuck vampires.

[stopinthenameofawe]

Yeah.

[Melissa takes the vodka bottle and pours herself another shot, filling one for Steven as well.]

Fuck vampires.

[fingersandteeth]

[He knocks it back.]

They suck. [HAH!]