Beau - After The Weekend Game, part 1.
Aug. 6th, 2012 11:54 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
helblingSo, some odd odd people apparently want to read Beau's entries.
The previous ones, written over the last few months, can be found:
After her very first training session with 'Bill'.
Before attending a certain ball.
After attending a certain ball.
A bet going very very wrong for Beau. I may write up the resultant phone conversation for this one when I've got time, and not more things to write.
This is going to be the first of two - she'll kind of segue from one emotional state to the next, and this is the initial angst fest. Writing them separately as it's easier on me, as this is quite emotion-heavy stuff, even if she does get a little ridiculous. Also, this is assuming no one (is stupid enough to) decides tonight is a good time to go visit her in her new domain - or that 'Bill' doesn't turn up early. If anyone is planning on doing these things, lemme know, we'll take it to the boards.
In their normal clearing, a couple of hours before Beau is due to meetBill, Treads, Zigmantas her boyf her mentor....
When Beau was 6, her father had taken an exceptionally rare afternoon off in the middle of what was a sweltering August even for Texas and left the farm in the hands of their hired help and her mother to take her to the local waterhole.
Not that they'd told her mother that; she had travelled through Florida before arriving at where they now lived, and resultantly, to her, any body of water larger than a small trickle was potentially a hiding place for such critters as alligators and highly poisonous swimming snakes and cause for alarm at a very loud volume.
Most of the details of this trip had gained the blurring of an incident long remembered, but what she did recall was clear as crystal - they had not been the only ones with this idea; some of the other farmers with their children - all to a one boys - had also been there, and at some point, for some reason, the adults had been called away. Beau had been smart enough to try and stay out of the other's way, but at six years old and surrounded by children several years her senior, there was only so much she could practically do, and after only a few minutes they'd had her surrounded. What followed was a few exchanges of catcalls before the altercation turned physical, and their response had been to hold her under the water.
Thankfully her father had returned seconds later and dragged them off her, bringing her back to the surface in a gurgle of relief, but she'd never quite been able to forget the rushing horror of the water in her ears and nose and mouth and eyes, being unable to breathe, unable to move, helpless and panicking and no matter how hard she fought, never being able to land a blow on what was doing this. She'd had nightmares for several years about the experience until sheer stubbornness led her to immerse herself in the same watering hole every morning until, over time, the fear had faded, even if the memory hadn't.
It was a sensation she had thought she was rid of as a vampire - afterall, she no longer needed to breathe.
But right now, all she could think was that she was drowning. And her father wasn't going to be arriving with a big stick to beat the perpetrators off any time soon - although bless his long dead heart, Beau had a sneaking suspicion that if the old boy could have worked out how, he'd have had a crack at it.
She was curled in the fork between a branch and the trunk in a tree in their normal clearing - not her normal tree, but rather directly across from that - and couldn't seem to stop positioning her body like she was nursing some sort of near-fatal wound.
Better to think about that than to think about-
Her mind skittered away from it before her innate stubbornness brought her back around. Thinking about Johnny hurt. It was the sort of pain that mde her catch her breath and clutch at her side, trying to alleviate the agony - a vain attempt.
No way to alleviate death.
The Elysia had been hell at first. It had been quiet and there were new people, people she couldn't trust, she didn't know, didn't want to, she just wanted Johnny. She didn't do well on her own, she needed a guiding force, and to be without him - and not just without him, but without him in the knowledge that he'd never be there again...it was like missing a limb. No, worse, it was like missing her head, her balance, something so fundamental to keeping her upright that she'd been a little surprised that once Johnny - Jesus, but she wasn't going to be able to hear that name for some years without getting a flash of pain through her stomach like someone was trying to stake her from the inside - had turned into that blasted pile of ash, she had still been able to walk in a straight line rather than accidentally careening off walls and into people.
She wasn't ashamed to say when it was over she hadn't thanked Bill (Bill, was he Bill now, was he Bill then, was he Treads, should she think Treads even when he'd been Bill, would she have to go over every memory she had of him, every word she ever remembered him saying, every touch, every challenge, every bruise bought in pleasure and pain and rewrite it to be Treads, no, no, can't think, don't think, toomuchtoomuchpainpainpainSTOPTHINKING). Hadn't greeted Mark. Had ignored Casper, and Francis, and Kristov, and Calen, and those she should probably have checked up on after they were injured, and just walked out.
Turns out if you go far enough into the Rainbow woods, you can scream as loud as you like, in fear and pain and grief and mourning and rage and everything else that's swirling around your heart and head until nothing is better, nothing will ever be better, but you can think again, you can talk and not feel like your thoughts will take over your tongue and spill from your mouth like blood from a mortal vessel in a rush you're powerless to stop.
And then Bill had turned up (Bill?WasheBill?STOPIT).
And then he had turned up.
And it hadn't been better, but it had hurt less. Just a little. It had been a balm to remember that she had him - a physical reminder she had her clan, even if she was on her own mostly. That she had more on her plate than just the city, that the war stretched out in front of them, and most didn't even know they were fighting.
But it had been what she needed in that moment - someone to lean on, someone to owe her loyalty to, just for a little while, and if she hadn't loved him already, she would have just for being there for that.
And then...
And then.
Her brain stopped before willpower alone restarted it. His speech was almost too painful to replay - when he'd started, she'd been smiling.
It wasn't anything she didn't already know, she thought. A quick scare-lesson in respecting the garou, in staying out of their territory and away from spirits. In bringing attention to the kill they'd just done for the court. For free. To drive the point home. Things she knew already - things she was free to watch everyone else's reaction for.
This, she reminded herself harshly inside her own head, was why arrogance, and dignity, and pride and assumption, and everything else the fucking Ventrue - a clan she was swiftly coming to despise - seemed to enjoy holding themselves upright on were nothing but luxuries, expendable in an instant, because they could get you killed for hanging onto them, or worse.
They could get you this.
And then he had spoken on his boredom. And she'd felt the first stirrings of panic. Of dismay. Which had only deepened when he'd given over the domain to her - he was leaving?! She'd tried not to ask him then and there, was he going, was he sleeping, he couldn't sleep, torpor wasn't an option, they had a war on for god's sake, she'd go with him, when would he come back, what was he doing?!
The idea he might leave just when Johnny was dead was twisting her insides so much, she didn't see the warning shot.
"Bill Derrincourt....is me."
The build up, what he was coming to.
Treads the darkness.
Shadow Lord.
Alpha.
No - the Shadow Lord Alpha.
Pain would have been a blessing. Feeling anything would have been a blessing.
The numbness that took her was a form of disbelieving self defence, she understood on some intellectual level.
'You can't be, you're lying, you're not, please don't be, please, please don't leave me here, please don't let this be real, please, please turn around and laugh, tell me this is a joke, a test, a challenge, tell me something, you're hurting me, stop, please stop, god no, don't be, don't be this, because then what were we, remember I'm here, you're looking at them, and not me, and you're hurting me, please Bill, if you ever were Bill, if I was ever anything more than a toy, a joke, please stop, oh god it hurts, please, please remember me, please look at me, you're hurting me, please look at me, please LOOK AT ME!'
And he didn't.
Not a glance. Not a care. As if she wasn't stood in the corner feeling like someone put their hands inside her chest - which felt curiously mortal and vulnerable - and stopped her heart all over again. As if she wasn't suddenly leaning on the wall just to keep her upright, and she needed someone, she needed Johnny, if she didn't have Bill, she needed Johnny and he was dead, and Bill was walking away and he wasn't Bill, but he was going, and he was all she had-
She'd said something - anything - in reply to Casper and just run. After him.
Looking back, it was a stupid thing to do - or maybe a smart thing to do. Because in that moment, all those expendable things like dignity and pride had gone to the wind. She'd have crawled if it would have somehow helped matters. She'd have begged. In the middle of the street with god knows how many onlookers. Even now, she couldn't have said if they had anyone from the court eavesdropping, or spying in on them - she hoped that Bill - no, Treads, he was Treads now - had more awareness of the situation, but she couldn't guarantee it.
"Everything I had told you has been true with the exception of my race."
"I have not...lied where it counts."
It was like breathing again. Sort of. The knowledge that she wasn't a toy, a joke, a running bet to see how long he could string along some leech scourge, a convenient source of court information, it was the smallest glimmer of light in the dark hell she'd been dropped into over the course of the last 24 hours.
"Still love ya."
The words had come unbidden. The hug hadn't been thought out, she'd just been so glad he wasn't leaving her totally as well that it had happened, and then those words had jumped from her throat without her permission, muttered into his chest while she felt like she was hanging on like she was dangling off a cliff and he was a rescue rope.
And the fact of the matter was it was true. She did. She couldn't have helped it, even in that moment, even if he'd turned and laughed, she'd have loved him, even as she'd have attacked and done her best to kill him, even as she'd have sworn never to trust him - or anyone else - ever again. 'Loyal as a barnacle and twice as stubborn' George had once dubbed her, but so few people seemed to realise stubbornness like that cut both ways, and she was no more capable of letting go than she was of sunbathing.
And then he'd left, and she was kind of regretting that text she'd sent, because he was due here in a few hours, and she wasn't so sure she was going to be presentable by then, because she was steadily coming to the realisation that the breath, the light she'd gotten in that three minutes of conversation, that was all it was, she was still drowning, it was just now it was going to take longer.
Because only now was it hitting her - the full extent of how things would change after those wretched, wretched 24 hours.
Because there was no more Johnny. No more sheriff. Now she had Calen, who she trusted but he wasn't pack, was the best word to describe it she had. Maybe he would become so, in time, but he wasn't now.
And she didn't have Bill. She had Treads...did she? She didn't know Treads, he kept insisting they were the same, but Bill had been more to her than just a friend and just a lover and just a mentor, he had been the face of her clan to her, he had been a haven all on his own, because he'd always know how things lay, because he was an Elder, and he was a powerful Elder, but he was clan and while he was busy, she'd stll felt she could reasonably bother him over her concerns, trivial things though they were but now...
...Now suddenly he wasn't just that, he was the fucking Shadowlord Alpha of the UK, so she'd lost her clan, lost her confidante, lost everything even down to feeling like she had a right to his time, because his people needed him, and she was just some stupid little neonate from a fucked up Praxxis that was too close to their territory for anyone with a brain's comfort, how the hell could he justify spending time with her if the ruse was no longer ongoing and it was like she'd had a full rope she was hanging by - she had her clan and her beliefs and Bill and Johnny and now, now everything was gone, and only a single strand remained which was her feelings for him, not even his feelings for her, because before that had never mattered, she had been content just knowing he liked spending time with her, but now everything had changed and she knew he'd never say, she'd never get that but right now....
Right now, she finally admitted, inside her own head as she felt a sensation almost like something had cracked, right now, she was lost. And she was scared. And she'd give just about anything to have more than the strand that was just her feelings to hang onto...And before she knew it, she was crying, sobs wracking her body in a way she couldn't seem to stop, so visciously that it almost seemed they'd tear her apart.
The previous ones, written over the last few months, can be found:
After her very first training session with 'Bill'.
Before attending a certain ball.
After attending a certain ball.
A bet going very very wrong for Beau. I may write up the resultant phone conversation for this one when I've got time, and not more things to write.
This is going to be the first of two - she'll kind of segue from one emotional state to the next, and this is the initial angst fest. Writing them separately as it's easier on me, as this is quite emotion-heavy stuff, even if she does get a little ridiculous. Also, this is assuming no one (is stupid enough to) decides tonight is a good time to go visit her in her new domain - or that 'Bill' doesn't turn up early. If anyone is planning on doing these things, lemme know, we'll take it to the boards.
In their normal clearing, a couple of hours before Beau is due to meet
When Beau was 6, her father had taken an exceptionally rare afternoon off in the middle of what was a sweltering August even for Texas and left the farm in the hands of their hired help and her mother to take her to the local waterhole.
Not that they'd told her mother that; she had travelled through Florida before arriving at where they now lived, and resultantly, to her, any body of water larger than a small trickle was potentially a hiding place for such critters as alligators and highly poisonous swimming snakes and cause for alarm at a very loud volume.
Most of the details of this trip had gained the blurring of an incident long remembered, but what she did recall was clear as crystal - they had not been the only ones with this idea; some of the other farmers with their children - all to a one boys - had also been there, and at some point, for some reason, the adults had been called away. Beau had been smart enough to try and stay out of the other's way, but at six years old and surrounded by children several years her senior, there was only so much she could practically do, and after only a few minutes they'd had her surrounded. What followed was a few exchanges of catcalls before the altercation turned physical, and their response had been to hold her under the water.
Thankfully her father had returned seconds later and dragged them off her, bringing her back to the surface in a gurgle of relief, but she'd never quite been able to forget the rushing horror of the water in her ears and nose and mouth and eyes, being unable to breathe, unable to move, helpless and panicking and no matter how hard she fought, never being able to land a blow on what was doing this. She'd had nightmares for several years about the experience until sheer stubbornness led her to immerse herself in the same watering hole every morning until, over time, the fear had faded, even if the memory hadn't.
It was a sensation she had thought she was rid of as a vampire - afterall, she no longer needed to breathe.
But right now, all she could think was that she was drowning. And her father wasn't going to be arriving with a big stick to beat the perpetrators off any time soon - although bless his long dead heart, Beau had a sneaking suspicion that if the old boy could have worked out how, he'd have had a crack at it.
She was curled in the fork between a branch and the trunk in a tree in their normal clearing - not her normal tree, but rather directly across from that - and couldn't seem to stop positioning her body like she was nursing some sort of near-fatal wound.
Better to think about that than to think about-
Her mind skittered away from it before her innate stubbornness brought her back around. Thinking about Johnny hurt. It was the sort of pain that mde her catch her breath and clutch at her side, trying to alleviate the agony - a vain attempt.
No way to alleviate death.
The Elysia had been hell at first. It had been quiet and there were new people, people she couldn't trust, she didn't know, didn't want to, she just wanted Johnny. She didn't do well on her own, she needed a guiding force, and to be without him - and not just without him, but without him in the knowledge that he'd never be there again...it was like missing a limb. No, worse, it was like missing her head, her balance, something so fundamental to keeping her upright that she'd been a little surprised that once Johnny - Jesus, but she wasn't going to be able to hear that name for some years without getting a flash of pain through her stomach like someone was trying to stake her from the inside - had turned into that blasted pile of ash, she had still been able to walk in a straight line rather than accidentally careening off walls and into people.
She wasn't ashamed to say when it was over she hadn't thanked Bill (Bill, was he Bill now, was he Bill then, was he Treads, should she think Treads even when he'd been Bill, would she have to go over every memory she had of him, every word she ever remembered him saying, every touch, every challenge, every bruise bought in pleasure and pain and rewrite it to be Treads, no, no, can't think, don't think, toomuchtoomuchpainpainpainSTOPTHINKING). Hadn't greeted Mark. Had ignored Casper, and Francis, and Kristov, and Calen, and those she should probably have checked up on after they were injured, and just walked out.
Turns out if you go far enough into the Rainbow woods, you can scream as loud as you like, in fear and pain and grief and mourning and rage and everything else that's swirling around your heart and head until nothing is better, nothing will ever be better, but you can think again, you can talk and not feel like your thoughts will take over your tongue and spill from your mouth like blood from a mortal vessel in a rush you're powerless to stop.
And then Bill had turned up (Bill?WasheBill?STOPIT).
And then he had turned up.
And it hadn't been better, but it had hurt less. Just a little. It had been a balm to remember that she had him - a physical reminder she had her clan, even if she was on her own mostly. That she had more on her plate than just the city, that the war stretched out in front of them, and most didn't even know they were fighting.
But it had been what she needed in that moment - someone to lean on, someone to owe her loyalty to, just for a little while, and if she hadn't loved him already, she would have just for being there for that.
And then...
And then.
Her brain stopped before willpower alone restarted it. His speech was almost too painful to replay - when he'd started, she'd been smiling.
It wasn't anything she didn't already know, she thought. A quick scare-lesson in respecting the garou, in staying out of their territory and away from spirits. In bringing attention to the kill they'd just done for the court. For free. To drive the point home. Things she knew already - things she was free to watch everyone else's reaction for.
This, she reminded herself harshly inside her own head, was why arrogance, and dignity, and pride and assumption, and everything else the fucking Ventrue - a clan she was swiftly coming to despise - seemed to enjoy holding themselves upright on were nothing but luxuries, expendable in an instant, because they could get you killed for hanging onto them, or worse.
They could get you this.
And then he had spoken on his boredom. And she'd felt the first stirrings of panic. Of dismay. Which had only deepened when he'd given over the domain to her - he was leaving?! She'd tried not to ask him then and there, was he going, was he sleeping, he couldn't sleep, torpor wasn't an option, they had a war on for god's sake, she'd go with him, when would he come back, what was he doing?!
The idea he might leave just when Johnny was dead was twisting her insides so much, she didn't see the warning shot.
"Bill Derrincourt....is me."
The build up, what he was coming to.
Treads the darkness.
Shadow Lord.
Alpha.
No - the Shadow Lord Alpha.
Pain would have been a blessing. Feeling anything would have been a blessing.
The numbness that took her was a form of disbelieving self defence, she understood on some intellectual level.
'You can't be, you're lying, you're not, please don't be, please, please don't leave me here, please don't let this be real, please, please turn around and laugh, tell me this is a joke, a test, a challenge, tell me something, you're hurting me, stop, please stop, god no, don't be, don't be this, because then what were we, remember I'm here, you're looking at them, and not me, and you're hurting me, please Bill, if you ever were Bill, if I was ever anything more than a toy, a joke, please stop, oh god it hurts, please, please remember me, please look at me, you're hurting me, please look at me, please LOOK AT ME!'
And he didn't.
Not a glance. Not a care. As if she wasn't stood in the corner feeling like someone put their hands inside her chest - which felt curiously mortal and vulnerable - and stopped her heart all over again. As if she wasn't suddenly leaning on the wall just to keep her upright, and she needed someone, she needed Johnny, if she didn't have Bill, she needed Johnny and he was dead, and Bill was walking away and he wasn't Bill, but he was going, and he was all she had-
She'd said something - anything - in reply to Casper and just run. After him.
Looking back, it was a stupid thing to do - or maybe a smart thing to do. Because in that moment, all those expendable things like dignity and pride had gone to the wind. She'd have crawled if it would have somehow helped matters. She'd have begged. In the middle of the street with god knows how many onlookers. Even now, she couldn't have said if they had anyone from the court eavesdropping, or spying in on them - she hoped that Bill - no, Treads, he was Treads now - had more awareness of the situation, but she couldn't guarantee it.
"Everything I had told you has been true with the exception of my race."
"I have not...lied where it counts."
It was like breathing again. Sort of. The knowledge that she wasn't a toy, a joke, a running bet to see how long he could string along some leech scourge, a convenient source of court information, it was the smallest glimmer of light in the dark hell she'd been dropped into over the course of the last 24 hours.
"Still love ya."
The words had come unbidden. The hug hadn't been thought out, she'd just been so glad he wasn't leaving her totally as well that it had happened, and then those words had jumped from her throat without her permission, muttered into his chest while she felt like she was hanging on like she was dangling off a cliff and he was a rescue rope.
And the fact of the matter was it was true. She did. She couldn't have helped it, even in that moment, even if he'd turned and laughed, she'd have loved him, even as she'd have attacked and done her best to kill him, even as she'd have sworn never to trust him - or anyone else - ever again. 'Loyal as a barnacle and twice as stubborn' George had once dubbed her, but so few people seemed to realise stubbornness like that cut both ways, and she was no more capable of letting go than she was of sunbathing.
And then he'd left, and she was kind of regretting that text she'd sent, because he was due here in a few hours, and she wasn't so sure she was going to be presentable by then, because she was steadily coming to the realisation that the breath, the light she'd gotten in that three minutes of conversation, that was all it was, she was still drowning, it was just now it was going to take longer.
Because only now was it hitting her - the full extent of how things would change after those wretched, wretched 24 hours.
Because there was no more Johnny. No more sheriff. Now she had Calen, who she trusted but he wasn't pack, was the best word to describe it she had. Maybe he would become so, in time, but he wasn't now.
And she didn't have Bill. She had Treads...did she? She didn't know Treads, he kept insisting they were the same, but Bill had been more to her than just a friend and just a lover and just a mentor, he had been the face of her clan to her, he had been a haven all on his own, because he'd always know how things lay, because he was an Elder, and he was a powerful Elder, but he was clan and while he was busy, she'd stll felt she could reasonably bother him over her concerns, trivial things though they were but now...
...Now suddenly he wasn't just that, he was the fucking Shadowlord Alpha of the UK, so she'd lost her clan, lost her confidante, lost everything even down to feeling like she had a right to his time, because his people needed him, and she was just some stupid little neonate from a fucked up Praxxis that was too close to their territory for anyone with a brain's comfort, how the hell could he justify spending time with her if the ruse was no longer ongoing and it was like she'd had a full rope she was hanging by - she had her clan and her beliefs and Bill and Johnny and now, now everything was gone, and only a single strand remained which was her feelings for him, not even his feelings for her, because before that had never mattered, she had been content just knowing he liked spending time with her, but now everything had changed and she knew he'd never say, she'd never get that but right now....
Right now, she finally admitted, inside her own head as she felt a sensation almost like something had cracked, right now, she was lost. And she was scared. And she'd give just about anything to have more than the strand that was just her feelings to hang onto...And before she knew it, she was crying, sobs wracking her body in a way she couldn't seem to stop, so visciously that it almost seemed they'd tear her apart.
