taxonomites | 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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"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?"

"More than I like to share, but it sounds that way. Kind of a horrible club to be in but I couldn't ask for better company, could I," he asked with a chuckle that was only slightly tinged with the heaviness of the conversation.

"I'm sure there are a few more of us here. Maybe we could start a support group or something." See, now she's completely teasing him.

"Still kind of a sad group to belong to, don't you think?" He smiled though. "We could have shirts."

"I like that idea. We'd need some sort of a slogan."

There is very distinctly amusement in her expression.

“What kind of slogan do you have for people that retreaded before they ever came to Taxon,” he mused, willing to play along.

"Something about karma, maybe? Maybe something about another time around? I don't think I'm very good at this sort of thing."

"I don't think yours was karma, and I thought I was going to Hell," he admitted. "Both times. Then and coming here."

"Well, we're just looking for a general sort of thing, aren't we?" She shrugs and then shakes her head, "Well, I'll think about it."

"I'll tell you this though. This is the closest I've come to talking about it in a long time," he admitted.

"Do you want to talk more about it? Or would you rather not?"

Really, Madelyne's okay either way. There aren't many things she, herself, won't talk about but she understands the desire to keep things quiet.

He actually considered that, of what it meant and who he was.

"Sounds like a downright bore to you. Not to mention it's just your tragic, shouldn't be a tv movie kind of story. Especially the ending. I had her killed for killing others."

Because madness set in. Some believed it came with age, which was something that Josef needed to put long, hard thought into.

"I think it means something to you, which makes it important, as you're so fond of telling me. If it would help to talk about it, I'd be happy to listen," Madelyne says, with a small smile.

"I am sorry that it had to end that way."

"Don't be sorry. She very much made her own choices, and she knew the possible consequences. She came into my city and she started torturing her own kind and I had her put down. All part of my job," he said, knowing he was laying down the parts that could make him see the bad guy. He was the bad guy to many and Madelyne deserved to know the truth, not the whitewashed version of who he could be.

"Part of your job doesn't mean you had to enjoy it or that it was easy, Josef. Still, sometimes you have to make hard choices and that one, I don't know if I could have made it."

"In that case..." And he wouldn't say it was every one of them, but that one he could say with certainty. "I did what I had to. She was killing humans and her own kind and she was risking us all. If you knew that someone was risking an entire species, you would have done the same thing."

There is a small smile at that, "You're right, though that's usually Scott's job."

His smile echoed her own. “Not a fun job. I don’t envy him it. I loved it while I was doing it but now that I don’t, I’m glad to not have to do it.”

"I understand. There are challenges there but it is important to enjoy your work, too." Madelyne shrugs a little bit, "If you want to talk, though, you know where to find me."

"Soon, okay? Just... I don't know. I'm still accepting that people here know what I am. Talking about how it started, that's another story."

He wasn't sure how to even begin given how few he'd ever spoken to about it.

Madelyne smiles at him and nods, "No pressure. Take your time - please."

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