Chapter Text
The manilla folder trembles the slightest bit in Guy’s hands. It's been nearly a year since he's seen that striking face in the light of day. Far more ensnaring in dream and person than the hazy black and white photo allows. The eyes are the same though, deep pools of ink, dark and ablaze with that impassioned sort of hatred Guy last remembers paired with the scent of burning flesh; scalding straight through the back of his neck in a bleak, dank basement.
“Why me?”
“Because you're the only agent who’s met with him and made it out alive,” Helen says, still too casual about such topics for Guy's liking. “Besides, this time he's been properly muzzled and imprisoned behind glass so thick he wouldn't be able to use his powers on you regardless of how badly he desires to... We just need him to talk.”
“Right, because that went so well the first time…”
“It did,” Helen agrees, to his lament, with a slow spreading grin. “We learned more about Jasper’s intentions in those two days than over the course of the last few years.” She steps forward, flips a page of the file in Guy’s hold until Doris is looking up at them next, a matching shade of grey. “My dear sister has the information we both need, Guy. She can lead us straight to your mother, you know she can, we just need to figure out where she's gotten off to.” That grin turns into a snide smirk that leaves Guy feeling as if he's on the outside of some highly confidential joke. “I no longer know her patterns and no one really knows a vampire like another vampire. I, myself, am not exactly in good standing with any at the moment so…”
“Oh, and I am?”
“You're still here,” Helen reminds, with an assured cock of a perfect brow. “That's as good a lead as we've ever had.”
Guy is shipped off to Amsterdam the very next day, an overnight flight that doesn’t allow him much rest though he’s not sure he’d come to find any regardless of the travel arrangements. He hasn’t needed his klonopin in a while. Hasn't even thought about it in months, really. Something about this mission, though, reminds him of the bitter taste crumbling on his tongue. Sets his breathing off rhythm and aches deep like a weeping hole in his chest. A burn of adrenaline that builds and builds and builds, yet refuses to crest.
It is still making itself at home when he scans his badge at the lobby door.
“No going near the glass, do not touch the glass, no taking anything he offers you, and everything you say to one another will be recorded, so keep it classy, right?” The House lead that checks him in is middle aged, suave in voice. Tan, slicked back hair that thins at the crown of his head. Chilton, his golden badge reads, and he carries himself with that same sort of thou-art-beneath-me exasperation that all senior Talamasca agents seem to develop over time. A quick assessment up and down Guy’s full height further sours his critical expression. Not that it’ll matter anyway, agent Chilton thinks, attention returning to his computer screen as he types. Not an ounce of brain behind those pretty eyes. “How’d you get yourself roped into this kinda thing anyway? A bit green aren’t we?”
Guy takes a moment to quiet his mind. His thinning patience. A short, centering meditation he has come to depend on in place of sharp wit and medication. A tool tenderly developed to keep him both similarly safe and sane.
“No sir, I’ve been a part of the London reclamation for nearly a year now,” Guy says, surer in his own strength and capability than he would have been only months ago. “Not my first time being thrown into this particular wolf's den, either.”
The laugh he receives from across the desk degrades only further, nearer to bone.
“Oh we know, believe me… Wee little mouse,” Chilton coos. “Torture didn’t work so they’re sending in an offering I see. He is going to eat you alive. Lucky him.” A wink paired with a yellow toothed sneer and Guy is led down long, winding corridors of rot.
The jingle of Chilton’s many keys. The turn of heavy tumblers in a thick sliding door. Another gate of iron. Then a third cell block hatch. Guy is waved on and locked inside the darkness of a stretching hall with resounding gusto, as if found just as guilty as the rest of the inhabitants. The closing clang of metal echoes loud from the tight walls. Damp earth and long standing water.
“He’s at the end,” Chilton points through wide bars of iron. “Knock here when you’re done and one of the orderlies will let you out. Good luck, Anatoley,” as disingenuous as it is incorrect.
“Anatole.”
“Whatever.”
Footsteps retreat back up the stairs and Guy is left alone to the shadows.
Three cells line the left stone wall, molded and stained dark with moisture and age. The air is heavy with humidity and the lingering smell of embedded waste. As a whole, the daunting space almost mirrors the horror show he’d been harshly acquainted with in the London Mother House. It begs the question as to why each of Talamasca’s central bases seem to come fully stocked with a medieval era prison option. Not exactly the type of save-the-world branding they’re taught to sell themselves on. But Guy is so deep beneath ground level already that the charade slips steadily from the stiff line of his shoulders like an ill fitting coat.
The first two cells Guy passes are normal enough. Standard prison bars, small cots, basic facilities, a single, dim orange light overhead each. The doors of both are opened, tight spaces empty of occupants, though scant evidence of life remains behind. Pieces of art on the walls, a rumpled, thinning blanket on one of the beds, foul words carved into even harsher stone.
The final cell shines like a beacon in the distance. Stark white LEDs burn down too bright from the ceiling. A thick, clear sheet of polycarbonate glass takes the place of bars, barricading the front. A steel chair sits like a lone specter, center hall, in watch of the well enforced show.
Guy is suddenly not quite ready to.
He stills mid step before he can make it even half way down the hall. Crossing again into this particular spiteful line of wrath was an inevitability sooner or later, though admittedly he never imagined being the one to do the dissecting. His heart belts out a quick, choking rhythm in the rear of his throat in a way he’s not so used to anymore.
Jasper’s previous attempts at freedom are well documented. Enough for hours spent on the sleepless flight pouring over files. Gruesome photos of previous agents who’ve attempted to gain information or profile him; some robbed of limbs, of recognizable appearances, and more still, of their lives. Protocol had been changed since then, of course. Safety measures put into place that ensured the vampire would never again see the outside of those sterile cell walls. A bag of blood a day, if agent Chilton saw fit, delivered via a sliding metal tray drawer so no contact was ever necessary. Repaved walls and reinforced furniture. Improved iron restraints, complete with the ability to shock as needed at the push of a button. Jasper had spent the better part of a year truly turning himself into one of Talamasca's biggest assets. A training prod, of sorts, to show just exactly the sort of unhallowed consequences the job could lead to when tragically unprepared.
It leads Guy, however, those last handful of steps to stand tall before the glass of Jasper’s cell. A steadying draw of air and files clutched to chest like a feeble plate of flaxen armor. He is safe. He can do this. Those that came before him and his very own ruthless training would be his means to an end.
Jasper stands rigid against the rear wall of his cell. Dead center and still as death. He looks the same, but he doesn't. The white lights cast deep shadows beneath lethal curves of bone. Sunken eyes burn straight back at him over the black bar of an iron spit guard.
Guy has never felt more ill prepared for anything.
Ever.
Upon closer inspection, though he does not move, a sickly shade of red veins up deep in the hollows beneath each of Jasper’s eyes, across the bridge of his bruised nose, down into the curves of cut cheeks just above where his jaw is caged from ear to ear. The damage screams of repeated abuse and Guy wonders how long the iron has been left to burn against his skin… If they ever even take it off anymore.
It brings back dizzying flashes of descending fangs. The chilled hiss of breath against his throat. A cold slab of concrete against his spine. That immovable force holding him there as if the entire garage had come tumbling down, down; a tomb of his own making.
The rich scent of freshly turned dirt. Bursts of flame, bright and blinding…
“Hello, Jasper,” Guy says, and the steadiness of his voice is a testament to his showmanship. Nothing more. “You’re looking well.”
A slight in essence, but a buried truth Guy has long since known about himself, right from their first locking glance through paned glass. Not nearly as thick, but just as transparent. Jasper wears even incarceration well, a deep blue jumpsuit that widens his chest, pulled in tighter at the center, and it really draws out the killer contempt in cobalt eyes. The top two buttons are popped open, as is apparently always necessary, to show the blood stained collar of a once white tee beneath. Jewelry removed and barefoot against the dirty floor, though Guy can imagine with ease the ways in which Jasper could weaponize even a pristine pair of wingtips.
“Guy.” It comes almost like a question, grated from a parched throat. Still unblinking as if doing so would bring on a disagreeable answer. “Un-fucking-believable.”
The intercom system they’ve strung from cell to hall distorts his voice, carried through the air with an almost machine-like quality in a way that robs of its familiar richness and that honey scotch passion he paints on. It's almost disappointing, as far as reunions go. The immediate crass, though, is every bit the vampire Guy thought he once knew.
“I was sent here to ask you some questions. I’m told you still don’t play nice with others but I would appreciate it if we could keep it civil this time.” Guy gestures to the empty chair at his right, tan metal bleached pale in the glow from above. “Can I sit?”
No response. No motion. Nothing.
Guy lowers himself slow into its chilling embrace. Fidgets idly with a corner of the papers piled neatly in his lap. A rattling anxiety washes over him that he knows Jasper won't need vampire abilities to read, as if the months of his own behavioral analysis and interrogation studies never really stuck.
The soft hum of electricity grows louder in the silence, static crackling like raw nerves in his ears.
“Is it okay if I ask you a few things about what's happened over the last few months?” Guy tries again, to the same result.
Nothing but studious steel eyes and a barren sense of emptiness about the hall.
“I'm sure you have some questions for me too… or at very least, some things you'd like to say.”
That one gets a reaction. The smallest burst of air. A bull blowing off steam. But it's something. A frayed string to tug on. A life raft tossed in a turbulent sea.
“I’m still looking for my mother, Jasper. Nothing's changed, but this time I may have a lead. On both her and the Seven Five Two.” It earns him the flash of blue eyes, lifting an inch higher toward the light. “How about this? I help you, you help me. Same as before. Quid pro quo.”
Guy imagines Jasper is trying to get into head with the way his gaze pierces glass. If looks could kill, and all that. A snarl so severe it reads straight through metal. There's a slight pressure there in his temples, a cold point of contact against skin, but the barrier and his own practiced self containment seem to be holding strong.
“What did Chilton say to you on your way in?” Jasper finally asks, after so long in wait it nearly makes Guy flinch.
It strikes him blind for a moment, a forgotten line of thinking he’d left far behind at the door. Blinking quick, he regains traction. Tries to remember anything other than this very moment.
“Um, he uh… He made it clear that he thought this was a dumb idea. Then pronounced my name wrong… Why?”
“Anatole,” Jasper returns, his borrowed surname slithered out slow and more vulgar than he’s ever heard it, even enunciated correctly with a cradled sort of care. “Greek. The first burning rays of sunlight across a bleak horizon,” he chastises. “How fitting, huh? Seems the Talamasca knew the very core of who you are before you yourself even could.” Jasper straightens away from the wall while Guy decides how to feel. As if the bedrock beneath his feet shifts with the insignificant movement. Jasper takes a single, measured step that centers him in the small cell. “I'm guessing ‘Guy’ was your birth mother's doing? Bland and meritless of any real effort. A troubling lack of creativity in your family tree...”
Jasper’s claws are dulled and jagged where they curl and release at his sides, cracked here and there as if he’s forcefully attempted to dig himself free from rock and soil. Guy pulls a gold pen from his breast pocket and wonders wherein all that fruitless activity Jasper’s found the time to pout. Their ease of back and forth returns with an enlivening enthusiasm and he knows well how to play this particular game. Has navigated Jasper's scorn before and it is truly where he shines.
“Mom was a big fan of movies,” Guy says. “How about yours? What was your last name, Jasper? You know, before…” and the all this is delivered with the broad sweep of a damning hand. “Romania right? Let me guess, Țepeș? Dracul?” he lays thick on the vowels. “Impaler?”
It earns him a deep hum of consideration.
“I assume she raised you in squalor the first quarter of your life,” Jasper continues his tight lidded prodding, unswayed, a curt forward lean at the waist like the force of gravity. “A dusty Detroit trailer park and piling credit card debt. Mama so held up covering you in those good boy Christian values and second hand clothes," his eyes go rogue for a heartbeat of time, "those cheap, awful shoes, that she didn't even have the energy to name you properly. It explains why you're still out here playing fetch. I bet Talamasca is just having a fucking field day with you.”
“Ok so no last name,” Guy concludes, fractured but professional, noting down the burns, the nails, the distinct lack of amenities in Jasper's cell compared to the others. No art. No means of music. He doesn't even have a sink. Guy can't imagine why… but every bit of it is usable. “These damn lights hurt my eyes,” he squints in a show of solidarity, though it really does help his frying blues. “They must be hell for you, huh? What else have they been doing to help you settle in better here? Apart from the obvious.”
Jasper’s head tips to the side, quizzical. As if finally knocked somewhere equally off kilter.
“I’ve been in hell for over a century, boy. This is nothing new.”
A direct answer, though it reeks of the usual embellishment. Guy digs in his heels, wipes a sweaty palm along his jeans. Asks the question that’s been simmering rancid in his gut for nearly a year now…
“No really Jasper, how are you fairing?” Guy presses the tip of pen to paper. Taps a few times against the glossed tab of his file. Stares openly back up through the glass. “Interesting isn't it? Being on the other side of a shallow grave? A century is a really long time. How many Talamasca agents do you think you’ve zombified and slaughtered across that span?” The query receives no answer outright, as expected, so with his captive audience’s impressive show of indignance, Guy assists. “We’ve confirmed at least fourteen deaths but you and I both know that number’s a bit generous in your favor. Took some artistic liberties with the most recent few too, didn't you. Are we boring you, Jasper?”
An arch of a silvering brow.
“We…” Jasper echoes. “Wow, listen to you, a few months down on your knees for Helen and already a fully vetted member of the lobotomy league. Go team.”
“I’m just here to do whatever I can to help,” Guy counters hard, because that jab lands. Festers. Right at the heart of that deep rooted fear of abandonment and not ever truly belonging anywhere. A burning slice through soft underbelly. “No matter the fucking team. I gave you the same effort I gave her and what did it get me?”
“I could have lied to you like they do. Underestimated your ratlike abilities to a purely negligent degree...” Jasper head tips again, almost smug, as he makes a show of pondering. “Or would you rather I had burnt you alive?”
And there it fucking is.
“That wasn’t me,” Guy reminds quick, sharp. Still haunted by vivid nightmares of betrayed eyes and billowing flames night after night after night. “I only gave you your shovel back after. But that actually brings us full circle around to why I came back… Doris. The vampire who saved my life. I haven’t seen her since the night you tracked down her family and had them all slaughtered… So I wonder if you might know where she’s run off to?"
It earns Guy a look like he’s the one being petulant. Jasper leans a shoulder against stone.
“Smart girl,” he deigns a moment later, dry but unmistakably genuine. “If I knew the answer to that question, she’d be number eighteen. Allegedly.”
“Mm,” is all Guy can manage, somewhat distracted by a quick note in a margin, because this exact moment has played out in his mind for months. Over and over again with various outcomes. In truth, Jasper was right that morning so long ago now, tucked away, still too similarly, in the embrace of a London basement. Real power isn't in blood, or fangs, or any of his other vast variety of intimidation tactics. It's in information. And it is a rare thing, in the presence of a seasoned vampire, to have a firm hold of the upper hand. “You won’t want to do that.”
Another shift closer and Jasper turns to loom more squarely before him. Guy tilts his chin up to meet his eye, pen falling still. There's curiosity growing there above the sharp relief of shadowed iron. Never a good sign.
“Oh I really think I will.”
“She has more information about the Seven-Five-Two than she led me to believe, Jasper,” Guy discloses, using the last bit of practiced passivity he can find in the grand shadow Jasper casts. “If you help me find her, I can help you too.”
Another snort of air from flared nostrils. Every bit a beast in a cage.
“Quid pro quo, huh, little lawyer boy?” A poor caricature of his own voice, dripping with static and ridicule. And Guy may confess to occasionally being a bleeding heart optimist, but he does not sound like that. “Bullshit.”
“Ok,” Guy says, rising to stand. And he feels the slightest bit braver at squaring his shoulders. Matching Jasper's height. Enough is enough. “To correct your assessment, I’m a realist, and I have spent the last ten months trying to put myself back together. To find my own place in all this shit instead of swimming back and forth, back and forth, with no fucking shore in sight. The same damn thing I've been trying to do since I was abandoned at nine years old in a roach infested Detroit apartment. Or shoved into a fucking dirt hole.” Teeth bared and fuming, Guy leans forward till heated steam fogs his view. Pokes a finger against glass and almost, almost wishes it weren't there as his own walls come crashing bitterly down. “But you listen to me you sadistic asshole, my mother is and has always been a good woman. She did everything she could to raise me right and helped me try to understand the constant fucking screaming in my head before either of us even knew what the hell was happening to me. And if you ever…” grit out with a burst of seething flame, “ever try to smear her name again, this prison will be the least of your worries, I promise you that. One goddamn phone call is all it would take.”
Guy is near enough to watch the slow grin spread beneath the gaps of a metal mouth guard, wider and wider with every word. His own anger is a storm reflecting back in his eyes, flaring up painfully beneath his ribs. A long creeping rot that he fears may one day hollow him out completely if ignored any longer and left to grow. An almost blissful relief as a part of it is finally set free. And he watches on helpless as, inches away and beyond saving, Jasper only feeds from it; tight jawed and hungry where he stares right into the eye of the hurricane. Attention flickering over the plains of Guy's face and neck as if he can't decide which to focus on. His half inch longer curls. The jut of his jaw. A bobbing Adam's apple as he swallows down searing air.
“Let me see her file.”
Guy is shaken from a similar stupor. An almost dependable pattern of whiplash that he's sure one day will snap his neck.
“What?”
“I am starved, drugged, and yearn for death on a pretty regular basis,” Jasper sighs with an almost bored show of suffering, but he’s coming to life before Guy's very eyes… “Doris. Let me see her file.”
Jasper crosses the cell to the sliding deposit drawer, just as clinical and reinforced as the rest of his containment. He shoves it out toward Guy with an echoing bellow of metal. Stills, waits, watches expectantly.
Guy drops the folder in with a swift step back as soon as it's free of his hold. A small transaction amongst the great design, but as his breath settles in his chest, it is oddly reminiscent of a manilla file sliding across a breakfast table. The scent of fried bacon and plump, ripe fruit. A fragile offer of collaboration, though wrestled forth with unshakable resilience and biting threats. As is becoming pattern. Nuanced yet equally evolving…
Jasper is still thumbing through stapled pages of history when the sound of footsteps echo down from the mouth of the hall. The grinding slide of a cell block door. Guy looks to Jasper for any hint of an answer but the vampire’s attention is already stolen from his studies, eyes frozen sidelong toward the spiraling stairs.
Two beings descend into view. Vampires, Guy deduces, by the vibrance of their irises and the smothering shade of their auras, held captive long past expiration. Their mouths are muzzled in the same contraption Jasper sports, but otherwise there is a painfully apparent lack of protection.
Two males. Different in height and race, though similarly paled in pallor and gaunt in bone. Starved, Jasper had said and the reminder has Guy pressing back flat against chilled glass as they make their way up the hall. He can sense Jasper move somewhere behind him, a silent shadow painting a long line across the floor, but he dares not take his eyes away from the newly approaching threats.
Guy’s badge reflects out like a spotlight beneath the lights of Jasper’s cell and he can pinpoint the moment the pair spot it, him, somewhere in between the ticks of his rising heartrate. The closest pair of cold, dead eyes lock with his and go a primal black…
This one’s off limits.
Where Guy expects a clawed slit of the throat, the crack of his spine against rock, he receives Jasper’s real voice behind his eyes instead. Faint, but syrupy thick and coated in that domineering control he wears as well as anything else. It is a black velvet kind of luxury in his ears and Guy is rendered even more stricken where he stands after not being victim to it for so very, very long.
He knows it is not meant for him. Has no idea how he’s hearing it either way. But what’s left of his paperwork is gripped to wrinkle in a white knuckled hold against his chest, caught between certain death and his own personal reaper.
Hard to stake claims from a throne of glass, the closest newcomer counters, a tick up of the eyes and hiss of guarded teeth.
And yet? It comes from directly behind Guy this time, as if whispered down into untamed curls. There will be other playthings. This one’s not yet served his purpose.
I don’t care. He’s one of them, spat with another gnash of teeth. And I'm hungry.
I wouldn't.
And Guy can feel thick waves of anger radiating straight through six inches of bulletproof glass, warm pulses rolling out against his back. Sees the blur as the leading vampire rushes him anyway, despite the warning. An instinctive raise of Guy’s arms to block his face. The hard slap of flesh hitting rock as the spit guard hums alive with an electric current, dropping the attacking vampire to the floor in a writhing heap. The other plants himself quick against the opposite wall, hands held high at either side of his head in immediate surrender.
Mayhem unfolds a moment later, guards rushing in and doors being slammed. A choking spray of fog that blinds Guy’s eyes and burns his throat. Metal grinding and boots striking ground.
It takes a long time for Guy to fully uncurl from the bent over knot of self preservation he's tied himself into. Cornered between a pillar and polycarbonate. Heart hammering and hands trembling.
When he cracks an eye open, Jasper is right there. A point of calm in the chaos. Crouched at his side, forehead to glass, blue eyes burning as if he suffers the tear gas too.
All we ever want is to go home, right? Jasper’s mind hums and it comes through warm and clear. Grounding. A faint pinch in his brow. You should too...
It's almost consoling. It's another warning.
Guy collects his effects from the floor, rises carefully onto wobbling legs, and does not make the same mistake.