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“You got the goods?”
Vesper nods, lifting the box in her hands with a smile.
“Cool,” Zaeth says, nodding back.
He offers her a hand to climb up in front of him on Ghorse’s saddle, and she takes it without hesitation. He mutters something like ‘Let’s ditch this place,’ as the undead hose takes off, which just means ‘Let’s invade someone’s property for a couple minutes till we get caught,’ but the first line sounds cooler, so Vesper doesn’t correct him.
They ride quickly, but quietly, coming to a stop at the very edges of the Golden Bounty Farms, in that space where they are technically inside the property but also technically not. Vesper wonders if it’s enough for them to avoid getting shot on sight, but since neither Zaeth nor Ghorse seem too worried, she lets herself relax slightly.
She knows why Darkness Man disapproves of her friendship with Zaeth — first because he cares about her and worries for her well-being, but also because most of Zaeth’s hangout ideas can be, for lack of a better word, a little ill-advised.
It usually goes like this — Zaeth will decide on a whim to do something reckless and dangerous and absolutely not necessary at all just for the hell of it, asking Vesper to come along to bail him out when he inevitably gets hurt. He will teach her a cool line or two — or three, when he’s feeling particularly inspired — and will encourage her to get more in touch with her rebellious side, which always sends a thrill into her usually well-behaved heart.
Vesper loves being a superhero more than anything, but it’s fun sometimes to be a little bad and just a little bit stupid. She also enjoys finally having a cool friend more or less her age, who takes her around town to have cool adventures, and thinks she can be cool too.
Zaeth takes the box from her hands so she can jump down from the saddle, adjusting slightly the heavy duffel bag slung across his shoulders. He climbs down after her, pats Ghorse affectionately on the back, then moves just a few feet away before setting both the box and the duffel bag on the grass. He opens the box and whistles, “Is that forty eight exactly?”
“Yep!”
“How did you manage to get them all so quickly?”
“Um… I asked LaVonte for money, went to the hardware store and bought them?”
Zaeth takes a white fluorescent lightbulb in his hands and nods approvingly, “You’re a genius.” He motions for her to get closer, hands her the item in question, then moves to open the duffel bag.
“What’s the plan for today, again?” Vesper asks, watching the scene with both confusion and curiosity. Zaeth smirks.
“Today, I’m teaching you my favorite sport,” he pulls a golf club from the bag, tests its weight for a moment and stands back, pointing a thumb behind him. “I’ll stand a couple of feet further inside the property, and when I give you the signal, you throw these towards me so I can smash them. The first to get cut by a glass shard loses.”
Vesper starts to nod, only to then frown. She asks, “That’s a sport?”
“Of course it is,” Zaeth scowls — well, pouts, actually. “It’s basically baseball.”
“That’s true!” She says and gets in position for them to start.
They fall into an easy rhythm, Vesper throwing lightbulbs at Zaeth for the other vampire to smash them to smithereens, then doing her best to dodge the rain of glass shards that follows. It goes on for a couple minutes until around the twelfth lightbulb mark, when Zaeth swings too wide and ends up taking a full lightbulb to the face, which explodes on impact.
“Oh no, are you okay?” Vesper tries to rush to check on him, but the older vampire puts up a hand to stop her. He simply rakes a hand over his face to get rid of the excess glass, and tries to nonchalantly stand up as though there aren't a myriad of small cuts along his exposed skin.
“Point to you,” Zaeth says, voice a little tight. “Your turn as the batter now.”
They switch places and Vesper readies herself with a golf club in hand. She shatters the first lightbulb so easily it’s almost a little disappointing.
“What’s up with you avoiding Darkness Man?” Zaeth pipes up suddenly and — okay, now she almost got a lightbulb to the face. Nice going, Vesper.
It’s not that she is avoiding Darkness Man — fine, okay, she is absolutely avoiding Darkness Man, and if even Zaeth managed to catch on to it, she’s sure the other superhero is also aware of the fact.
The thing is, even if Vesper is slowly accepting that things had happened the way they did back at the Henry Doorly Zoo, and she does realize now she’s more monster than actual superhero, that doesn’t mean she’s ready to confront her best friend with it yet. She needs to — well, she needs to do a lot of things to make up for the blood on her hands. But at the very least, she knows she needs more time.
Vesper stares at Zaeth, trying to gather what he wanted to get out of his question. It doesn’t seem like that was a ploy to make her miss a swing, though. He is going for aloof again, which usually means he’s trying not to show that he cares. It’s a funny way to demonstrate he’s worried about her.
“Is it because you frenzied?” He asks anyway, and the next lightbulb does a wide arc before getting crushed by Vesper’s golf club. “All of us killed like, so many people. Why feel guilty now?”
“Because that guy didn’t even do anything.”
Another wide arc. Another rain of glass shards. Zaeth scoffs, “I’ve killed people who didn’t do anything. Actually, all of them didn’t do shit but piss me off. What’s the big deal?”
“I had a code and I broke it,” Vesper swings again, hits the target. She pauses slightly, “I’m… I should’ve done more to uphold it.”
“But you were in frenzy. It wasn’t your fault,” Zaeth continues, then yelps, almost getting hit with a shard to the eye. It cuts into his cheek instead, but he just pulls it out and goes back to throwing lightbulbs at Vesper like nothing happened, watching her expectantly, visibly wanting to understand.
What Zaeth probably doesn’t know is that Mitch had, quite literally, saved Vesper’s life upon meeting her. The details from the first few months after she was bit were foggy, unclear as if it all had happened behind a dirty glass pane. The one thing she could remember was feeling more lost than she’d ever thought possible. Then, Darkness Man found her, alone and scared, and though at that point she was nothing more than a petty thief, he offered her a chance to start over. New name, new identity, new sense of purpose in an otherwise meaningless existence, something to literally fight for.
But more than that, Mitch offered her a sincere friendship. A shoulder to cry on, a hand to lift her up when she fell down — kinship with someone the world regarded as a monster, when she knew for a fact he was anything but. The most ungrateful thing Vesper could’ve done was going against the one person that trusted her earnestly. So, yeah — she is having a bit of trouble facing him right now.
A minute goes by, then two. Zaeth pipes up again, “You know what I do when I piss other people off?”
“What?”
“Nothing,” he says, like it’s so obvious. “I just let it pass.”
Vesper shouldn’t be surprised, all things considered. As much as she likes Zaeth, the other vampire really has a talent for making people angry, and probably has more enemies than anyone else in their coterie despite not even being one of the oldest members. If anything, Vesper knows she definitely doesn’t want to be like him in that aspect and— oh, wait.
“I think that actually weirdly helped me,” she finds herself saying with something of a wince. “I’ll talk to Darkness Man. I can’t avoid him forever.” She smashes another lightbulb, then stands back. “Thanks, Zaeth.”
“Of course,” he says, “I know I’m wise as shit. Also, we ran out of lightbulbs.”
The both of them stand back, admiring the wide coat of glass shining against the moonlight in the grass between them. Zaeth nods at her, looking decidedly proud. “Guess you win this time. Seems like the student is surpassing the master,” he says, only to then completely out of nowhere get hit on the shoulder with a sniper bullet. “Fuck!”
“You two again!” They hear Boyd Douglas calling out behind them. “Get the fuck out of my property!”
“We’re technically not even on the goddamn property!” Zaeth yells back, but Vesper is already grabbing their things and pulling him on top of Ghorse with her. They take off with another bullet grazing just past them and the older vampire laughing maniacally through the night air, whooping and cheering as they leave the Douglas’ estate behind them. Vesper smiles and lets Zaeth have his fun before the adrenaline runs out and the pain of his injuries catch up to him.
Vesper is swiping through different nature channels, looking for something to watch, while LaVonte reads the newspaper next to her on the couch and HJ tends to a small set of plants on the windowsill. She distantly hears footsteps going down the stairs.
“Oooh, looking good, Madelaine!” HJ whistles as the girl in question descends into their living room, and Vesper turns just to see he was absolutely right.
Even though Madelaine always looks effortlessly beautiful, tonight it’s clear she’s decided to be extra done up. She’s wearing her signature red sunglasses combined with a red and black brocade corset with no shirt underneath, tiny black shorts over dark stockings, black heels, heavy makeup, and a beautiful red leather jacket thrown over the look that Vesper had never seen her with before. Her traitorous dead heart dares to skip a beat.
“Someone looks happy tonight,” LaVonte remarks.
“Finally found some good divertissement,” Madelaine smirks, showing her fangs, “I’ve organized a lesbian orgy with the girls from the PSU art department.”
Vesper chokes on air, very much caught off guard.
“Good for you,” HJ says meanwhile, then sighs wistfully, “Man, how I miss the orgies back in San Francisco. We gotta get Elysium set yesterday.”
“Tell me about it,” she rolls her eyes. “I’m not getting my hopes up that it’ll be up to par or anything, but at this point I truly do not care.” She stops, as though noticing Vesper was there for the first time. She sends the younger girl a knowing look like she knows exactly what she’s doing to her, puts a hand on her hip and nods towards the door, asking, “You wanna come? I’m leaving in five.”
There are so many layers to unpack there, and Vesper isn’t prepared to deal with any of them.
She manages something like, “Uh… no, thanks?”
“Your loss,” the other girl shrugs easily, then blows a kiss towards three of them and turns around with a quick, “Adieu, suckers.”
The front door closes with a thud. Vesper feels the sound echoing too long inside her head. She catches LaVonte smiling, “I’m happy to see Madelaine back in good spirits. I think Purpee might’ve been a harder blow to her than the rest of us.”
"God bless a lesbian orgy,” HJ nods solemnly. Then, he turns to Vesper, tilting his head to the side, “Why not join her?”
Okay, another whiplash. A little unsurely, she says, “It’s… not really my style.”
“Because it’s gay or because it’s an orgy?”
LaVonte puts down his newspaper, sighs deeply, “HJ, man, you gotta know that’s not something you should be asking a younger girl.”
“I didn’t mean to sound creepy!” The other throws his hands up in the air defensively. “I was genuinely curious! Just saying, depending on how long we plan to stay here, I think we should start thinking about organizing a Purpee Pride Parade.”
“I know you think there’s a reasonable connection between those two points, dude, but I can assure you, there’s not.”
“Second part,” Vesper says and gets up from the couch, heading for the back door to leave before she can hear any replies.
There was a conversation she had with Madelaine after… after, in which the older girl emphasized the correlation of vampirism and freedom. “Back in my day, if someone found us in bed like this, we’d both be sentenced to death according to the sodomy laws,” she said, “Just sex outside of marriage meant complete and utter social death. But now? I can fuck and kill whoever I want, and practically no one has the power to stop me. You should do whatever you want without worrying others will stop you, chérie, because now you can.”
But it’s just not that simple — especially so when she isn’t even sure what she wants.
Well, that’s not true. Vesper knows precisely what she wants, and even more so why she could never get it now. She wants to go back to school, finish her degree, become the director of a zoo, own it and run it as she sees fit. She wants to study more, become an expert in her field, maybe try for a PhD or something, keep learning until she has the entire biology section of a small library memorized. She wants to do youth outreach, become a well-known member of her community, maybe fall in love with a herpetologist along the way.
But she can’t go back to studying full time without dying under the sun, can’t apply for a university degree with her 2002 high school diploma, can’t fall in love with her ugly bat face, can’t even go back to interning at a zoo because this town doesn’t have a single fucking zoo to begin with.
Her entire life plans went out the window when she — fine, died back in 2003, and though she loves Mitch and is so grateful to both him and their coterie, Vesper knows she will never feel truly fulfilled now — and there’s just no reason for wanting anything once you realize that.
There’s a buzz inside her pocket, so Vesper stops momentarily on her aimless wandering across rooftops to check her phone. She’s not surprised to see that the person who texted her was Madelaine.
‘Didn’t think it was your kind of thing anyway, but I’m glad you liked the outfit. Might save it for later for something more private too ;)’
Vesper almost drops her phone from a ten-story building.
Okay, maybe there’s something else she might want, but even that isn’t simple.
Vesper doesn’t know how to classify what she has with Madelaine. She isn’t naive enough to call it love. It’s definitely (maybe?) (probably) more than a friendship, and definitely (absolutely) (without a shadow of a doubt) not a relationship. It’s not like she had any good friendships when she was alive to use as a reference here, and now it’s only gotten more complicated.
She has Darkness Man, her partner in justice, the superhero to her sidekick — Mitch is caught somewhere in between that, being her best friend in the whole universe, and something of a surrogate father figure. Herb is her friend, and it is truly sincere, but he also treats her more like a granddaughter and a kid he cares about than anything else.
Zaeth is her friend too. She also knows that Zaeth isn’t a parameter for anything.
Then, there came Madelaine.
Madelaine, a born aristocrat who hadn’t worked a day in her life, spoiled and self-absorbed. Madelaine, who got herself a polycule out of people under her thumb within less than a week in town. Madelaine, who can be cruel and narcissistic and so incredibly insensitive that sometimes it’s a marvel she has people still on her side.
But she is also Madelaine, who listens to Vesper ramble about things she couldn’t care less about and still never tells her to shut up. Madelaine, who randomly gifts her clothes because she likes seeing how the younger girl looks in them. Madelaine, who decided at some point that Vesper is hers, and so needs to care for her like she is something precious.
(Madelaine, who saw Vesper at her lowest and told her, I will help you the only way I know how, and if you need me to stop, I will, with no questions asked, and I will see you laid bare underneath me and call you pretty again and again.)
Vesper isn’t fully sure of how Madelaine thinks of her, but the older vampire is kind to her in a way she isn’t with others, her patience reserved only for Vesper. She’s not the most sincere person or anything, but Vesper also has never felt like there’s been any attempts to deceive her, not even once — which, when it comes to Madelaine, is kind of a huge deal.
She’s been flirting more with Vesper lately, and not even that makes her feel used by the other girl. It’s just… fun, she guesses. To be wanted, even if she’s not quite sure why. To want someone in a way she rarely had when she was alive.
Her phone buzzes again. ‘Hope you didn’t crack your phone too much by throwing it from the rooftops.’
Vesper replies, I didn’t even let it fall!
‘Hm. Next time I'm sending you a picture. Let’s see if your phone stays in one piece then.’
Jesus Christ, Madelaine. Vesper sits down to hide her face in her hands, embarrassed despite not even having enough blood in her to blush. She’s never been religious, but she finds herself sending a prayer to whatever god or entity that will hear her for things to be simple just for once in her life. Death.
Goddamnit.
For all of her French accent, and French clothing, and French allure, Madelaine rarely talks about the time she actually spent in France.
“I mean, I remember you’ve mentioned it’s been over two hundred years since then, but—”
Madelaine scoffs, shooting her a look of pure irritation through her vanity mirror, “I didn’t think your chivalrous little schtick would allow for such a thing, yet you’re calling me old now?”
Vesper doesn’t even blink, “No, I’m asking why you never talk about France. I always thought you were proud of your French roots, or whatever. Has it really been that long since you’ve visited?”
“I’ve been to France since I’ve moved to America, how do you think I got my original Chanel suit?” Madelaine says, then stays a good minute silent after that, shooting daggers at Vesper through the mirror while simultaneously trying to do her makeup. She’s going out with Kelly tonight, if Vesper isn’t mistaken, which is probably why she isn’t wearing anything too expensive.
Finally, though decidedly still irritated, the older girl says quietly, “Well, I didn’t exactly emigrate from France. Fled the country — that sounds closer to it. For your information, countess isn’t merely a decorative title.”
Speaking to Madelaine has always consisted of reading in between the lines. This time, at least, it wasn’t difficult.
“So you literally escaped the French Revolution,” the realization falls from Vesper’s lips as it hits her.
“Congratulations, chérie, you can do math,” Madeleine says, but it doesn’t sound as biting as it should. Instead, it’s closer to something like resigned. “Lucky me, it was either death, or death but getting to live young and beautiful forever. So, hardly a choice.”
“How old were you when you left?” Madelaine shoots her a look that screams ‘Are you kidding me?’ and Vesper throws her hands up in peace. “I’m not trying to be rude, I’m just curious! If it helps, I’m– was twenty one when I died.”
“Well, good for you.” A long pause, and Madelaine momentarily looks away. “I was nineteen.”
Vesper doesn’t have time to digest the information — or even to wonder how old, exactly, had been Madelaine’s sire — before the other girl turns her gaze back to Vesper’s reflection with renowned fury, asking, “Is the interrogation over? Have I satisfied all your burning questions?”
“Yeah, I won’t pry anymore,” the younger girl says, looking away a little guilty. “Sorry. Now I get why you wouldn’t want to talk about it.”
“That’s– good,” Madelaine says, haltingly, as though unsure how to proceed when not getting met with an argument. Vesper always feels just the tiniest bit triumphant whenever she makes the older girl falter.
She turns on her seat then, away from her vanity and instead facing the bed in which Vesper is perched on. She looks the other girl up and down, frowning as she mutters, “Twenty one, huh.”
“So?”
She scowls, “I cannot believe you’re older than me, even by a technicality.”
“Because I’m not,” Vesper says easily, “You’ve lived so much more than me — and I’m not calling you old, I’m just stating a fact,” she adds when Madelaine opens her mouth to try and start another argument.
She clicks her tongue. “And how come you don’t talk about your life before getting turned?”
“Oh,” Vesper says, instinctively shrinking on her seat, “It’s… I have a hard time remembering things. And the rest it’s just… too painful to think about, I guess.” Still, she tries to put on a brave smile on her lips, “But you can ask about it, I don’t want to seem like I’m just trying to pry information out of you. I’m making conversation.”
“Quite deep conversation, I might add,” Madelaine mutters.
“Is that bad? I’m sorry, I don’t wanna be rude.”
“You’re fine,” she says and Vesper feels herself relax until Madelaine’s eyes gain a distinctly calculated gleam, seeming as though she decided to take her up on her offer.
Damnit, even if Vesper is the one who suggested it, she feels a terrible wave of dread wash over her as she wonders what Madelaine will decide to ask her. About the night she was bit? She doesn’t remember much from it, but she hates thinking about it even for just a little while. Maybe about what she was doing before meeting Darkness Man? She doesn’t remember it very well either, possibly even less so than the night that started it all, but she really doesn’t like to think about it if she could help it. Maybe something about her mortal family? God, no, anything but that.
At the same time, maybe Madelaine should ask her something that hurts. It’s more than fair — Vesper was the one to come to her bedroom and bother her while the other girl was getting ready to go out, asking her difficult questions and bringing up painful memories. She is in no position to wish for mercy.
Vesper braces herself for impact.
What comes out of Madelaine’s lips is, “I doubt you’ve ever asked anybody out before, dead or alive, so how did you realize you’re into women?” And Vesper sputters out a laugh, half-surprised and fully relieved.
“I don’t know, puberty hit in seventh grade, or something? Maybe when high school rolled around? I’m not sure,” she replies, smiling. “But you’re right, I didn’t even have friends, so asking people out was out of the question.”
“What about experimenting in college?”
“Didn’t do that either. Maybe I would’ve if I… if I continued in school.” She looks away, a little embarrassed, “I kind of wanted to.”
“Really?” Madelaine asks, her voice growing decidedly amused. “And what were you planning on doing? Flirting with a pretty girl at a party?”
“Maybe. I– I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?” Vesper looks up to Madelaine only to look away again — she has that look in her face that is in between curiosity and want, the kind that would’ve made Vesper’s heart race wildly in her chest if it could still beat.
“I don’t know,” she repeats, “I-I never flirted with anyone.”
“Oh, but it’s quite simple,” Vesper hears Madelaine getting up and getting closer, and looks up just as she stops at the edge of the bed. She holds out her hands with a smile, “It starts with something like this.” Vesper takes her hands before her mind catches up that this is probably a bad idea, but soon she’s being brought to her feet and guided gently towards the middle of the bedroom. They stop and Madelaine lets go of her only to then run her hands up the other girl’s arms and down her sides, then place them firmly on her hips.
“Then, this,” she whispers and tugs Vesper forwards, pulling her flush against her body, tightening the hold on her hips until it’s almost bruising. Vesper feels entirely too accomplished that she manages to bite back a whimper.
It doesn’t last, of course, because then Madelaine brings her mouth to Vesper’s throat — not biting, not kissing, not anything, and still Vesper shivers — and she feels herself getting moved again, and can’t focus on how or where they’re going because of course that’s when Madelaine decides to nip on her pulse point.
“Are you paying attention, chérie?” The older girl asks, still low, but also commanding, and Vesper swallows hard without meaning to.
“Yes,” it comes out way too breathless. Madelaine makes a disapproving noise.
“You sound distracted. Maybe I need to make my point a little clearer.”
Vesper’s back hits the vanity desk and she barely has a half-second to wonder when did they manage to get so close to it before Madelaine is pulling her up to sit on top of it. She grabs Vesper roughly by the jaw and pulls her face down so they are almost on eye level again, and this time the younger girl can’t contain a noise of want.
“Good,” Madelaine says, and the praise goes directly to Vesper’s lower stomach. “You are trying to pay attention.”
“I am,” she breathes out.
“You are. Now, I want to see you try that just a little harder.”
One of Vesper’s biggest accomplishments, mechanical or otherwise, is managing to get the Templer’s go-karts to run at a whopping forty two miles an hour with only some nitro and a good couple days of tinkering.
“That’s our Grand Tycoon!” Herb cheers when she tells him, and pats her firmly on the back, “I knew that if anybody could do it, it’d be you, kiddo.”
“Thanks, Herb!” She smiles wide. “I couldn’t do it without all your help, though.”
“Bah, don’t you flatter me,” the old man waves dismissively. “It’s your win, kid. Be proud of yourself and take it.” He was organizing some documents when she came into his office, making his way through pile upon pile of old, beaten down paper. If Vesper has to guess, the Templers haven’t bothered to organize their bureaucracy in at least a few decades, the need probably not seeming to arise when their members would only dwindle. It makes her unimaginably happy that that’s not the case anymore.
“By the way,” Herb says, going back to shuffling papers, “There’s an older gentleman waiting at the entrance for you. Tall like a mountain, wearing a nice turtleneck?”
Vesper frowns. “Mitch didn’t say he was going to pick me up.”
“Who’s he, your old pa? He’s got one of them hospital masks on, but I didn’t really see the resemblance.” Herb stares at her, eyes narrowing, but she knows the suspicion in this particular case only comes from a place of care.
“I’m adopted,” Vesper says, which is enough of an in-between of a lie and a truth that it rolls out of her tongue quite easily. She smiles, “But I appreciate you looking out for me.” Herb nods.
“Well, you shouldn’t keep your old man waiting, then. It’s getting late and I bet you’ve got school tomorrow. I’ll finish closing up so you can meet with him.”
“Thanks, Herb. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Have a good night, kiddo. And tell your pa he’s invited to wait inside next time he comes by.”
It’s weird.
The both of them are quite literally out of character and Vesper doesn’t know how she feels about it, except that it’s weird.
This isn’t Darkness Man and Bat Child, superhero duo, defenders of the night — it’s just Mitch and Vesper, walking home side-by-side on the sidewalk instead of jumping across rooftops together. He’s wearing one of his cozy turtlenecks and some dress pants, no trenchcoat or fedora in sight, while Vesper is in a dark wine hoodie and black ripped jeans combo, a leather choker on her neck and her white hair free of its pigtails — which is becoming more and more the norm rather than the exception.
“So, uh…” Mitch starts awkwardly, barely meeting her eyes. “I like the new outfit. It suits you.”
“Thanks,” she nods, “Madelaine helped me pick it.”
“That’s nice of her.” He hesitates slightly, “I noticed you two have been… spending quite some time with each other, these days.”
“So what if we are?” Vesper asks, suddenly feeling a spark of irritation, “Another friendship that you came to say you disapprove of?”
But Mitch shakes his head, instantly apologetic. “No, no, Bat Child– Vesper,” he sighs, “I just meant… it’s good to see you socializing more. Making friends and stuff. And for all her faults, I know Madelaine is working hard lately, getting us a ton of advantages. I gotta be honest, I’m actually relieved to see you spending more time with her rather than with Zaeth.”
“Oh,” she tries to adjust to the slight whiplash, the fight going out of her. “Yeah, well, I like Zaeth, but sometimes he can be kind of… a lot.”
“Tell me about it,” Mitch mutters with such severity that a laugh escapes out of Vesper’s lips without her meaning to.
They continue walking in silence for a long minute. It’s a nice night out, all things considered. The air is cold, but not biting, and the sky is clear, beautifully illuminated by the full moon. Distantly, Vesper wonders how Cody is doing, and if it’s any better getting transformed when it grants him a nice coat of fur for the winter.
When they get to the front of their house, Mitch suddenly stops walking.
“Listen,” he says very quietly, “I know you’re mad at me, and you have every right to be. But I wanted to say I’m sorry for… for not doing right by you. As a partner and a friend. If I’d done things differently, the whole half-bat-slash-vampire thing probably wouldn’t have been so painful for you.”
The words feel so wrong coming out of his lips, and Vesper finds herself shaking her head vehemently at all of them. She tells him, “Darkness Man, I couldn’t be mad at you. It was all my fault. I-I thought you were disappointed with me, and that’s why I was avoiding you. Like a coward.”
“Disappointed? Why?” Mitch looks genuinely taken aback before the gears turn in his head. “For the frenzy thing? That’s not something you could've controlled, it’s not your fault.”
“But I broke our code,” she says with her heart in her throat.
“I know. But I get it,” the other says without missing a beat. “You know, for all of Batman’s heroic deeds and stuff, he can be a pretty unnecessarily violent guy. Doesn’t mean he’s perfect just because he’s a superhero.”
That’s… true, but still. The thought doesn’t make Vesper feel like she just shouldn’t have done better anyway. She needs to do more, and she knows she’s not enough yet, she needs to be better, still needs to be something other than just a fucking monst—
A little unsurely, as though the action feels strange to him, Mitch brings one of his clawed hands to lay reassuringly on her shoulder and clears his throat, pulling her out of her reverie. He says, “I know I don’t say this enough, but uh… I’m really proud of you. For all you’ve done for us. And for getting out of your shell more in Purpee.”
She finds herself shaking her head. “No,” she says, “I don’t deserve that. That’s not enough.”
“Of course it is,” he says. She can’t see his mouth behind the hospital mask, but his eyes crinkle as if he’s smiling, “It makes me happy to see you’re happy.”
Guilt and shame be damned.
In an instant, Vesper throws her arms around Mitch’s middle and hugs him tightly. She doesn’t care if it makes her look too soft or too weak or childish. Even if it’s too much like acting like a kid desperate for attention, she buries her face in Mitch’s chest and tries to hold back tears.
“Thanks, Mitch,” she mumbles against his sweater, and feels the other vampire hesitate just a little before hugging her back, one hand coming up to pet her hair. It strikes Vesper, for maybe the millionth time, that she cannot believe no one else looks at her best friend and sees him for the guardian angel he is — especially so when he quietly adds, ‘Anytime, Vesper.’
Sometimes, keeping conversations with Madelaine could be really fucking difficult.
“Madelaine– mm, Madelaine.”
“What is it?”
“I said, I wanted to ask you something.”
“So? I’m not stopping you. Go ahead,” the other girl says, only to then bite down hard on Vesper’s inner thigh, making her gasp and shudder. She’s lying on Madelaine’s bed half-undressed, keeping her hands behind her back and trying not to move only by the older girl’s command. Madelaine is coloring the skin of her thighs with bruises and it’s really hard to focus on anything, but Vesper manages to push through somehow.
“Why do you never ask me to… to reciprocate, or something?”
That makes Madelaine pause for a moment. She makes a thoughtful noise, “I can take my pleasure from a lot of places and with many people, so I don’t particularly mind.” She flashes the girl underneath her a smirk. “And I like seeing for just how long I can turn you into a mess.”
Madelaine always makes a point of doing this kind of stuff right after Vesper feeds, and she knows it’s only for the pleasure of seeing the younger girl blush scarlet. Still, Vesper won’t let her get distracted from the conversation.
Tentatively, she asks, “Do you… not want me to?”
“To reciprocate? If you want to, sure. But that would mean I’d have to stop now.” Madelaine rakes her nails along Vesper’s legs, making her whimper, “Are you sure you want that?”
Shit. Damnit. It’s getting hard to keep her breathing under control now. She closes her eyes, but manages, “I-If you want.”
“That’s not an answer to my question, chérie.”
Vesper opens her eyes, tries to keep Madelaine’s gaze as she tells her, “It feels… unfair. To have all the attention on me.”
“So? Let it be unfair. Like I said, you have to learn to be more selfish. It’s a good look on you.”
“But– fuck,” she yelps as Madelaine bites directly over a bruise. It promptly shuts her up, which she knows was the intention, but even so, as she feels Madelaine smiling triumphantly against her skin, she cannot help but flush harder, feeling heat pooling in between her legs.
Madelaine lifts herself up a little on the bed, staring right into Vesper’s eyes. “I’ll ask you one last time, Vesper,” she says with a very meaningful look, “Do you really want me to stop?”
Fuck. Fuck.
Vesper can’t keep her gaze for even a full second. She shakes her head, feeling ashamed and turned on in both measures, much more so when Madelaine drawls, “Oh, good girl.” Vesper whines and the other girl laughs, “No need to pout, darling. You chose well. I’ll make sure to reward you for it.”
There really isn’t much conversation after that.
They park their car at a very specific stop near the hiking trails by Vesper’s instruction, Ghorse trailing with Zaeth not long after. She gets out of the passenger seat, closes the door, then moves to fish out her things out of the back seat, pulling out a small pile of books she borrowed from the library, a cardboard box and a spiral notebook.
Once Vesper hears the driver’s door slam shut, she turns to Madelaine with her arms full of things and a wide grin on her face, “Thank you so much for helping me out with this. You too, Zaeth,” she adds once he dismounts from Ghorse, “Even though I don’t really remember inviting you.”
“I’ll never miss out on an opportunity to invade private property,” Zaeth smirks, which makes Madelaine scowl.
“I agreed to drive you around,” the older girl says, already irritated, “Not to potentially get shot on one of my nicer coats.”
“Nobody is getting shot tonight, don’t worry,” Vesper reassures her. “We're outside of the Golden Bounty Farms’ limits and I’m pretty sure Boyd Douglas wouldn’t come to check this far. Trust me, I double-checked the map and everything.”
“You are not the problem.” Madelaine points one manicured finger towards Zaeth’s general direction, “It’s this one that I don’t trust.”
“Guilty as charged,” he laughs, completely unbothered. Vesper rushes to put her things on the ground and get in between the two of them before any blood can be spilled.
“All right, all right, that’s enough. You two promised me you would help, so no fighting.” Instantly, the both of them stand down, and okay, it is a little validating to be listened to so quickly by two people she thinks really highly of.
“What are we supposed to be helping with, again?” Zaeth asks and she motions for him to take the cardboard box in his hands while she grabs the books and notebook to venture further into the forest.
“Long story short, Florian agreed to start building a zoo for Purpee. It’s going to be just a petting zoo for now, but even so, I want to familiarize myself with the fauna and flora of the region to make sure the animals we bring into the zoo don’t disturb the ecosystem here too much.”
Zaeth frowns, “How can a couple of small sheep trapped inside a closed zoo space disturb anything?”
“Like I said, the petting zoo is just a start, so think of it like this — if we are to eventually create a reptile section, for example, depending on the species, they would require either insects or small animals, like rodents, potentially even small birds. The zoo staff would provide them food, but unless they are in a completely closed off space, there’s a small possibility they could try and eat more out of the natural fauna that infiltrates inside the zoo. In that case, it would be bad for the captive animals, not having their food regulated, and it would be bad for the natural fauna that would dwindle without our knowledge.”
“Okay,” Zaeth says, his eyes narrowed to slits, visibly trying to process the information thrown at him with difficulty. “But what does it matter if a few rats and insects die? They die all the time out here anyway.”
Vesper opens her mouth to reply, only to be surprised by Madelaine piping up with, “They die out here while keeping the food chain cycle running, obviously. If they die somewhere else, the cycle breaks, and then it's not just a few rats and insect populations missing from the region. It would be the same thing if I were to kill all the noble bloodbags here, useless though they may be. No noble blood, not enough food to keep me alive.”
“I knew that,” Zaeth throws her a scowl, and this time Madelaine is the one to smirk.
“Sure you did, bitch.”
Vesper doesn’t even register the fighting. She’s smiling from cheek to cheek, a rush of happiness coursing through her, almost like adrenaline. Without thinking, she kisses Madelaine on the cheek before resuming their walk.
(In her excitement, she fails to notice the other girl quite literally missing two steps behind her, stumbling just a little. Zaeth notices though, and smiles vindictively. Madelaine flips him off without a word.)
They come to a stop amidst a dense cluster of trees, deep inside the forest. Vesper trades the books for Zaeth’s cardboard box, and opens it next to him when he starts to crane his neck to peek inside. She takes out a thick blanket and starts to undo it neatly on the ground. “So we can avoid sitting on the wet grass,” she explains. Even though there isn’t any snow on it anymore, the alternative definitely wouldn’t have been pleasant either.
The three of them take a seat, and Vesper organizes the items around her to start her work, picking a few specific books first, opening her spiral notebook, and taking a pencil case out of the cardboard box.
“What are these for?” Zaeth asks, pulling out one of the many glass jars also tucked away inside the box.
“Bug catching. See?” She motions towards the many tiny holes punctured into the jar’s lid. “I want to get a closer look to catalogue them, but we’ll release them afterwards. We’re just here to study, after all.”
“I think now I get it,” the other vampire says. “Bug catching I can do. Crazy fast reflexes and all that. What’s she helping with, though?” He points to Madelaine.
“Moral support,” the older girl says easily. “See, I’m already helping. Now, chop chop, go get to work.”
They fall into a rhythm that is both easy and surprisingly comfortable, Zaeth catching bugs and bringing them to Vesper, who catalogues them alongside a myriad of notes inside her notebook, while Madelaine stays nearby, quiet but attentive. There aren’t that many insects active during the winter, but Vesper doesn’t mind, working tirelessly despite the non diversity in her data. It’s not ideal, but she would never skip on doing her due diligence.
It feels nice. Really nice, actually. It’s like she’s studying again — not exactly, but also not not exactly. The gears turn inside her head slowly but surely, like a muscle she grew unaccustomed to using, but that she knows she can develop again. She was prepared for it, starting with only winter bugs, knowing later those would become spring bugs and maybe spring animals, moving then to summer insects and animals too, and who knows, maybe even fall animals once those rolled around as well.
Zaeth is perched on a tree, still as a statue, waiting for another insect to fly by him. There’s a look of pure focus on his face, maybe a little more intense than necessary. Vesper hears a quiet click next to her and turns to see Madelaine quickly hiding away her phone. She whispers, ‘Blackmail material,’ and Vesper has to bring a hand up to her mouth to muffle her laugh, not wanting to distract the other vampire from his task with her giggling.
Maybe Vesper couldn’t become the director of a zoo now, but she could still come to the forest every few weeks to catalogue fauna. Maybe she is selfishly taking other people’s time with something meant for no one else but herself, and maybe that’s okay too. Maybe she is allowed to have things just for herself, and maybe she’s allowed to not let the thought bother her in the slightest.