Bleeding Branches

[Alice Hart]

Again she listens.

Again she allows his voice to caresses her ears, and echo within her, and to settle into her bones.

"To...protect me? By yelling at me...by berating me? And the choices I already made." Alice turns her head, her eyelids close and she shakes her head, she raises her head, and turns her eyeless sockets towards the Burned Man, "....so you took it out on me. How is that okay?" She questions, feeling. She didn't know. She blamed herself, as he had blamed her....but he, now...was this to sooth her ego, or was it the truth?

"I refuse to be one of those people." She says forcefully to the air, to the night and to him, but she doesn't elaborate.

"I have been taken advantage of....and I'll probably will be again. That's life- or unlife-or whatever!" she shouts, "....unless....would you want to see me go cold? To close myself--my heart off from you and everyone else. Just to make sure this wont ever happen again?"

[Robert Cross]

Cross hangs his head. Not that Alice sees him do it, but when he speaks it's clear that he feels defeated.

"Listen, Alice. I...I lost my temper. And I can't take that back."

All he can do is try not to lose it again this time around.

"I was only trying to make you understand that...You're too important. To me. To the Family..." He pauses, trying to find the words. "To...well, important in general, as an...individual, on your own, to simply let others decide your fate." He stops again. "But, then again, I was telling you what to do, wasn't I? I was trying to decide for you myself." The hypocrisy of his position comes clear to him now. It is not a good feeling.

Those people? Cross doesn't understand. "What? What do you mean?" The Burned Man is clearly baffled.

"There has to be some middle ground, though. Alice...there has to be some way that you can defend yourself, protect yourself, without...going cold." And if it meant protecting you, I'd gladly have you close yourself off from me. That's the horrible truth, though he doesn't say it.

He stares at here, openly, lovingly. Pain welling up deep inside. A pain far greater than any self-castigation would ever inflict.

[Alice Hart]

Alice knows that Robert isn't one for words. Actions matter to him, so it's...nice and weird and strange to hear him speak and speak and speak.

It makes it easier, and also harder to wrangle her own tongue around the words caught in her throat.

"No. You can't." She says, softly in deference to her own ears. "No more then your anger at my actions will change what had already happened." she articulates, her ears finding strange notes in her own hollowed out voice. "I'm not used to being important to anyone." Alice says, though with her history and what of it she's told Robert, he should know that. "It hasn't been a year, that I've meant anything to anyone." Lady Stamford had brought her aside for that conversation early November of last year, naming her Seneschal. Making her important. "Time. I need time to wrap my head around that...or a lesson I'm not likely to forget....like what I've dealt with since I killed Bea and flubbed the handling." she says slowly. She tried to say this all before, but everything went wrong before she could.

"Yes. You were telling me what to do. Making my choices for me. That is not okay." She informs her, perhaps tartly, but Alice felt deserved in saying it.

The bafflement in his voice makes her snort. Thoughts of Aphrodite's gift flutter away as the real, cold truth of her indecision is drawn to the forefront of her mind.

"I don't want this to start something." She says, lost in memories. "I'll do something, you'll yell cruel things, or do meaner things. Then with an apology, or a present it'll all better. I'd fall into your arms again, but I'd still do something...and you see where I'm going with this?" She shakes her head, "My father loved my mother, and my mother was a bitch. A horrible, hurtful person. I had a front row seat my whole childhood, see my dad do something and my mom punish him for it, but he loved her so it was okay....I don't want that....if-if I make you that way...that cold and cruel...then...then I-I can't...I wont be apart of that. I don't want to do that to you...but if you are like that...and I just haven't noticed because of my own feelings then. Then. You're going to turn around and go back to your car. You'll be Whip and Deputy, and nothing more."

She says not rushing, but stumbling over herself all the same. Her voice, fleeting yet firm. Her heart in a vice, twisting and being torn apart, but she will not be like her father.

[Robert Cross]

Cross is silent as Alice explains her position. The confusion introduced into her unlife by her newfound role in the Domain.

"I understand..." he says. After all, it is a completely understandable thing. "I should have listened. I should have heard. But I didn't."

But then she starts to clarify her earlier, cryptic statement and Cross feels like he's taken a blow to the chest. A bullet to the gut. Because he's not sure that he can tell her that things will work out. He's not sure this won't happen again.

There is one thing he is sure of, though: "What happened wasn't your fault, Alice. You didn't do that. I did." But how to say what comes next? When all he wants is to reassure her. And he knows that he can't. That he must tell her the truth.

"But that doesn't mean it won't happen again. Because I can't lie to you. I won't lie to you. I'm cruel. I know that. There's a meanness inside me. One that isn't going away. And it's always getting worse. I can feel it," there's despair in his voice now.

Unbidden, the Other Cross from his dream springs into his mind. Smiling, wreathed in hellfire.

"And you're right, you don't deserve to...live with such cruelty. No matter how much I love you. No matter how much I want to be with you. You don't deserve it. How could I ask you to subject yourself to...that?" he implores, sounding wretched. Damned.

[Alice Hart]

"You should have. But you didn't" Alice agrees with an imperfect echo.

Words are like weapons. It's something they both know well. Each side, taking shots. Some inadvertently, others, other quite the opposite. So Alice, sightless as she is, and soundless as he is, knows that her words. Her reason, and ultimatum was like bolt, lightning, or arrow it didn't really matter. Alice knows that it hurts. Because it hurt to say it.

She wont move from it though. She wont.

In an action entirely human, she nods jerkily, it wasn't her fault. But his. By his word, but was it really? She'd provoked something...and he...he reacted.

"We all have something mean inside of us." Alice hears herself saying. "I killed Bea....and you know what I regret the most out of it all? Not going out there alone. Not finding myself on my hands and knees, sucking at the carpet for another drop of her blood....not even killing her. I regret what came after I killed her...that I could have handled differently. I could have claimed this or that, and everything that came after wouldn't have....everything would be different. But....a year ago...I would have been a mess of bloody tears over ending a Kindred's life when I didn't absolutely have to. Hell. When I first got here, I was nearly in tears over killing a cat.

"Now...." her head shakes again. "We all have meanness inside us." she says again, tightening her grip on her anthame, the hilt's etched designs press into her palm.

"I love you." She tells him, because it would take more then this for that to ring false. "...and I don't deserve to. But." But. That was it, wasn't it. That but. "I love you." she says again. "If....if you can promise not to turn that cruelty toward me..." she was weak. She just wanted to wrap herself up in his arms and his scent, maybe to pretend that this all hadn't happened, but mostly because she just wanted to fall back into his arms and make sure they were both okay.

[Robert Cross]

We are Predators. We are the Damned. We are God's Holy and Chosen Wolves.

He wants to say these things. Not out of some loyalty to doctrine, but in an effort to comfort her. To let Alice know there's a reason for their...monstrosity.

No matter how horrifying their existence, there's a reason.

But he doesn't say it. Not here. Not now. Not on this ground, in this situation.

Instead, he reaches out and touches her hair, gently. His hand finds her cheek, cold and smooth. Stays there.

"I promise to try, Alice. To try as hard as I can." Will that be enough? Because he won't lie. Not when either of them could give in to the Beast at any moment. Not when cruelty is their default position, whether they like it or not.

"Can you promise me something?" he asks in return. "Can you try to remember that you are no longer alone? That I will always be there to help you? With anything. No matter what."

[Alice Hart]

"I promise to try." She says echoing his words, while the rest of his rumble and roll around her mind.

He's closer now, not physically, but that is true too, Alice feels him in a way that she thought they'd lost.

"That's all I can ask." she murmurs as he makes contact.

The anthame's cold in her hand. As cold as her cheek in his. She raises it, and presses it close to him, in opposition to his soft cupping of her cheek.

"But, if that cruelty is pointed towards me again....there won't be a third time." she promises, to him, to herself. To the sky and the stars, and the wind whipping between them.

[Robert Cross]

Her words are sweet. What he wants. To hear. To believe.

But...

Cross feels the point of that blade against him, against his abdomen.

And rather than step away, he presses forward, arms wrapping around her. He feels her anthame pierce his undead flesh. Wills his blood to move so that the wound bleeds.

His vitae is spilled. Here. On her ground.

"Understood," he says. He's transfixed. His lips brushing hers.

[Alice Hart]

Alice isn't as shocked as she should be when Robert steps into her anthame.

She's...touched when he takes the time and effort to bleed.

His blood-scent is cloying, hitting her nose as it coats the blade, and the ground. It swirls up and around, clinging to her nostrils.

It's visceral. This moment. One she wont ever forget. No matter the passage of time, or the actions from this night onward.

He's bold, and paradoxically not.

He'd stepped into her blade, but only offers a whisper of his lips against hers.

Deciding she didn't like that she press up against him sharply. More teeth then lips, just to catch his bottom one, to taste him, and remap the scars that laid against his flesh.

With the same sharpness she pulls the blade free, and flicks it clean. His vitae arcs, landing on the grass.

She could be cruel, she thinks as her free hand reaches for his belt, fingers hadn't yet forgotten how to deftly work the metal and leather, but decides they'd had enough of that. So, with a thought and a bit of will, she works her own blood, and decides she'll be soft.

At least for tonight.

[Robert Cross]

The smell of his own Vitae. The insistent press of her lips. The sharp touch of her teeth.

The knife is pulled free and Cross immediately wills his blood to close the wound. Alice will make her own if she wishes.

He feels her body come alive and responds in kind, his face flushing. His heart beginning to beat.

And it is beating fast.

Scarred hands brush the loose-hanging robe from her shoulders.

The night still seems close. But she's closer. And nothing else matters.

Whether she is cruel or not, cold or hot. Nothing else matters.

Thanks for the awesome scene!