taxonomites | 09[Central: Visual, open to anything] You can't quit until you try

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09[Central: Visual, open to anything] You can't quit until you try

The sun was just setting over Taxon when Josef emerged from his freezer. Taking his time he donned crisp slacks and a button down shirt with the collar open. Picking up the tablet, he refrained from affixing it to his wrist as he might have his watch in those days before Taxon. So much of that was a distant memory some mornings but it was fresh and crisp in his mind that evening upon rising.

Maybe it was dreams he didn't remember. Maybe it was the cool, icy feel on his skin just rising, the night air crisp as the last rays of sunlight lit up the sky. Desperate fingers trying so hard to cling to the sky against the encroaching night. It was a battle that Josef had seen a million times over, night after night for so many years. Yet tonight it was fresh, deadly and beautiful at the same time.

Humming under his breath as he dropped the tablet on the counter, he opened the fridge, peering into the contents. For a brief moment he missed the ship. He missed fresh blood from a clean bite. He missed the heat on his cold tongue, the richness that seemed to dissipate with the cold and the storage and no amount of heating could change that. Yet he wouldn't ask. Not of Bagoas, or Madelyne, or anyone. He had a supply and it would do. No matter how it sometimes grated, though at least it wasn't animal.

Empty the contents into a decorate crystal flute, he crossed barefoot to the small patio that led off the main room of the loft. The combination of blood and those last fiery fingers fading into nothing but grey with the first speckling of stars reminded him a moment of L.A., of standing out on the pool deck and looking over all he surveyed. Now what he looked over was a prison but it didn't hold him back. Not tonight.

He didn't even realize when he started singing, lips just barely tinged red with blood. Nor did he notice that the tablet was broadcasting, catching him lit as the sunlight died.

"You can't quit until you try. You can't live until you die. You can't learn to tell the truth until you learn to lie. You can't breathe until you choke. You gotta laugh when you're the joke.
There's nothing like a funeral to make you feel alive."

Taking a sip as he let the night sky seem to wash over him as the blood bringing a flush to his cheeks, or very nearly so.

"I know some things that you don't. I've done things that you won't. There's nothing like a trail of blood to find your way back home."

Dipping his finger into the blood, suckling it off skin and imagining how it should taste as he sighed. "I was waiting for my hearse. What came next was so much worse. It took a funeral to make me feel alive."

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A smile tugs at the corner of her mouth, "Everyone has bad days, Josef, and around here who knows how that will work out."

"You have to know I wouldn't hold it against you," he pointed out, liking that smile. "Not here with the way things go."

"I would hope not," she says through a chuckle.

"I mean it, Madelyne. This place alone would be enough but I know more about the innate nature of the being a person can be than most."

"I come from a place where mind control is something that happens on days that end in Y and that's not considering possession, shape shifters or clones. Usually, we hold ourselves more to blame than the people we hurt."

Madelyne lifts a shoulder in a small shrug, "I guess that's the balance."

"I rarely blame myself for those I hurt," he admitted, though there was a softness to his tones. "I blame the reasons they made me do it."

He realized how harsh that sounded. "Of course, speaking of people that act out criminally and risk the lives of all."

"There are ...." Madelyne pauses for a few moments and then shakes her head, "There were people who could stop me if I went crazy again but Charles is gone now.... Well, I'm sure you all could come up with something to stop me."

She's not, actually, but she's not going to say that.

"If they don't want us to, we won't be able to. That's what I told Remus. All we can do is what we have to until it passes."

"I'm not worrying about it. There isn't much point."

She's totally lying but she does that reasonably well. Still, she's not worrying about it the way she was when she first got here.

"Well, I will worry for you, Madelyne and survive whatever they throw at me," he said, meaning it.

"Of course, if I die, do me a favour and make it a closed casket."

"That's not exactly funny, you know. I mean, it is a little bit but people don't die here, which is just... crazy."

She's babbling a little bit, now.

"I thought they died and came back. Which means, what do you do in between?"

He was honestly curious about this, despite making it a joke.

"I don't know what happens here. I'm not really in a hurry to find out. One death and return is really enough for me, thanks."

"Same as I've had," he pointed out, coming the closest to talking about it as he usually got. "Kind of glad for my return."

She hadn't though about that part of being a vampire. It makes her frown just a little bit as she thinks about it now. "I can understand that, though, yours was likely a little more planned."

Josef was quiet for a long moment, considering that. No, considering just what had happened. Four hundred plus years and he still remembered it clearly.

"It wasn't very planned on my part," he admitted. "Hers, that is another story and we'll never know. She's dead now."

"Well, it was planned on someone's part?"

Madelyne shakes her head, "You never know around here. Dead doesn't mean much to beings that grab people out of different points in time."

"Yes. Lola's," he said with a nod, looking away as he thought about her. The good and the bad were still there, even after all this time.

"I wonder what it means to them for people like you and I," he wondered outloud.

Madelyne is silent for awhile after that, thinking about the ... not quite a question. She chews on her bottom lip as she thinks about what death means to her, "At the time, it meant an escape."

He winced at that, wishing this wasn't a conversation being had by tablet. "I hope you never feel the need to escape like that again, Madelyne."

"No one should ever feel that need."

Madelyne gives him a brief smile, as if somehow trying to lighten the moment.

"No, they shouldn't. You and I both know the world doesn't work that way though, don't we," he asked. "So we hope the other never has to do it again.

"I would prefer, if I am to die again, that I do so peacefully in my sleep." She shrugs, showing what she thinks of that.

"If you were to die again, I hope for it to be a very long time from now," he said plainly, trying to make the subject less sad for them both. "I know what it will take for mine and it isn't pleasant."

There is more to it if she dies but she holds it for the moment. Maybe for another conversation another day, if it comes up. Right now, it is possibly too heavy to continue down this path at the moment.

"We have more in common than we thought, don't we?"

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