Post by The Mouth on Apr 6, 2014 22:26:28 GMT -8
The apartment was as he left it; spartan, clean, the room converted to a lab still sterile and coated in plastic.
He missed his girls fiercely.
The Beast was barely chained.
Was he alone? Yes. Was this his usual state? Absolutely.
But he hadn't been; he had a family for a brief while and he had set them loose and free into a harsh and often evil world. But he had prepared them - They had tools that had taken him decades to accumulate. In setting them free he let the best of himself go.
He still remembered what it was like to be a good man, not a vampire, not an Anarch, a Ventrue, but a man. And it hurt, that memory. He wanted it back even he didn't exactly deserve it. But it is hard to be a good man when you are an angry predator.
So young. So new. He wondered how Marcus handled it. Martine had done well - Sebastian was off in the woods with his new friends. Who was left? No one. They had all left, died, or what have you.
Ricky was so powerful now. Did Richter even need allies? Were the other Anarchs just something Richter managed out of inertia or ennui?
Martine was dead. A week gone and she was dead. Already the character assassins were at work. He knew the Kindred psyche feared death. Selim wanted an avenger, a judge, a terror. What did he want? Power? Security? Blood?
Or did he want to be a man first and everything else second? Could he afford the risks?
He'd always paid, with interest. Lately it felt more and more like credit, a debt was building and it was going to come due in blood and pain and terror and the loss of his moral certainty.
Who was the enemy anymore? The 'Tal Maha Ray' as Richter called them? Elders? The sleeping Ancients?
He'd always had a fight, always. Always an enemy. Like Rome or America the lack of an enemy, a competitor, existential crises turned from external to internal divisions. He was not at war within, more akin to civil disobedience.
He wasn't happy to serve, nor to be his own master. Vacillating, gnawing, tearing his own mind and flesh to find answers. Seventy years a slave for the Ventrue, eternity a slave to his own conscience. Martine was dead; she was supposed to lead him back. It was selfish, petty, personal, everything a person ignored for years and then missed should be.
He pulls down the gun oil and retreats into a foggy world of polishing imagined blood stains from the armor.
He missed his girls fiercely.
The Beast was barely chained.
Was he alone? Yes. Was this his usual state? Absolutely.
But he hadn't been; he had a family for a brief while and he had set them loose and free into a harsh and often evil world. But he had prepared them - They had tools that had taken him decades to accumulate. In setting them free he let the best of himself go.
He still remembered what it was like to be a good man, not a vampire, not an Anarch, a Ventrue, but a man. And it hurt, that memory. He wanted it back even he didn't exactly deserve it. But it is hard to be a good man when you are an angry predator.
So young. So new. He wondered how Marcus handled it. Martine had done well - Sebastian was off in the woods with his new friends. Who was left? No one. They had all left, died, or what have you.
Ricky was so powerful now. Did Richter even need allies? Were the other Anarchs just something Richter managed out of inertia or ennui?
Martine was dead. A week gone and she was dead. Already the character assassins were at work. He knew the Kindred psyche feared death. Selim wanted an avenger, a judge, a terror. What did he want? Power? Security? Blood?
Or did he want to be a man first and everything else second? Could he afford the risks?
He'd always paid, with interest. Lately it felt more and more like credit, a debt was building and it was going to come due in blood and pain and terror and the loss of his moral certainty.
Who was the enemy anymore? The 'Tal Maha Ray' as Richter called them? Elders? The sleeping Ancients?
He'd always had a fight, always. Always an enemy. Like Rome or America the lack of an enemy, a competitor, existential crises turned from external to internal divisions. He was not at war within, more akin to civil disobedience.
He wasn't happy to serve, nor to be his own master. Vacillating, gnawing, tearing his own mind and flesh to find answers. Seventy years a slave for the Ventrue, eternity a slave to his own conscience. Martine was dead; she was supposed to lead him back. It was selfish, petty, personal, everything a person ignored for years and then missed should be.
He pulls down the gun oil and retreats into a foggy world of polishing imagined blood stains from the armor.