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Tweak says, "Be."

Darklis Tinka (mindblowing) wrote in light_of_may,
@ 2011-06-18 01:48:00

Entry tags:

2009-08-17, darklis, rina

Endless remains of fading dreams, lies stranded with the past
Who: Darklis & Rina (NPC'd Trouble)
Where: Darklis' home
When: Afternoon

The paintbrush had been sat upon its stand beside the easel for an hour without Darklis' fingers so much as twitching to reach for it. Usually, she took this as a good sign. It was generally considered some kind of proof that whatever she was working on could not be added to. But her usual subject matter came directly from her own mind, or else she was recreating was she had wrought in the minds of others. This was someone else's memory, thus something else entirely. And there was another kind of weight to it – she wasn't going to even try and pretend that there wasn't. Darklis never wanted anyone's approval for her work and she didn't exactly want it now. What she did want was to know whether or not she had done something totally unspeakable in stepping into Rina's dream. Her gut told her she had. Which was why that portrait had remained unfinished, with her hovering over it as though it might actually have been the last thing she ever painted. Well, hey, it was nicer than the rest of my work. Nicer, if possibly not at all accurate because she had filled in the details missing from her own memory with touches of Rina's own features – he was her brother, it had made sense at the time. She's going to hate it, Darklis concluded as she gently pulled the portrait of Neil down from where it had been patiently waiting. She's going to hate it and then she is going to hate me. Because the only thing that bothered the Azraelan more than not being able to get the portrait at all right for her cousin was the fact that Rina had said nothing about her dreamwalking. To her that was no longer just a metaphorical elephant in the room. It was a metaphorical hierarchy of elephant-sized Azraelans and all of them were her elders. Which, okay, was an analogy that might not make a huge amount of sense outside of her race or house, but it was damn accurate. Nudging the door to her studio open, she peered around the corner and followed her senses. What were fangs for if not for biting potential bullets? She was totally remembering that line and using it in a school paper or something.

“Ew, daylight.” Well, if the accidental crash of the back door didn't announce her entrance into the rather badly kept garden, that did. Just because she was awake all hours of the day and night, it did not mean she was out during them. Today being a remarkably blue day for Darklis meant she looked a little like Alice in Wonderland whilst indoors, but outdoors... Suffice to say that this particular shade of blue did little for the distinct lack of colour in her face and made her look even more like an animated corpse. Aware she was probably emanating some degree of anxiety – how much she couldn't be sure, since it wasn't an emotion she dealt with on a personal basis – she kept the canvas facing her, fingers curling around the frame. That, at least, stopped any retarded hand gestures. “I need to invest in shades I actually look good in before I go near school... So have you eaten yet?” No, she hadn't forgotten Rina was an empath too. But both of those were completely valid points of discussion.

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mindblowing
2011-06-30 02:18 pm UTC (link)

Darklis had opened her mouth to defend her point further before she snapped it shut again. She wasn't arguing with an angel about her use of language or the fact that, maybe, she didn't want to end up somehow reverting to how anybody spoke 'back then'. Especially when before she was pushed into this project she rarely knew how people spoke in any given era without living it first. She knew how the vampires around her spoke, and many were antiques in their own right. She also knew it was impossible for them to adapt and move with the times because they'd never made the effort to do so. They were stuck sounding exactly like they had been pulled from their respective eras. Darklis always made the effort to adapt when she could, but it was increasingly difficult. And it might have been selfish, but going backwards wasn't at the top of her agenda. At least she only really swore when her mood was worsening or she got overly excited. One happened more often than the other.

"Right on the dot." She couldn't remember if she'd told her that before, but then it didn't really matter. Rina seemed to be under the impression it was new information or else she was building up to some kind of crescendo by starting with the easy questions. Or what should have been the questions before she heard the next two. "No siblings." An oddity in and of itself among families with up to eight children. Maybe more. Darklis had taken to staring through the table-top, trying to remember. She didn't like what she could recall, but she had said she would answer. "My mother was angelic. Milbrer... She was a good woman. Quiet, but sweet. Sad. She died when I was maybe fourteen." Her ankles crossed themselves under the chair. "My father - Chalin - didn't think I was his. You know, because I'm blonde and the--" Rina didn't react well the last time she used the word 'Romani'. "rest of the community were all dark. Hair, eyes, skin. So obviously she'd slept with an outsider, right? Because the last outsider brought into the community was blonde and had blue eyes and... I don't even know. He was a violent son-of-a-somethingorother who thought it was fine to take his temper out on the both of us. Mostly her." Another mouthful of angelic. Darklis was aware she was ranting and her free hand was giving a little too much emotional leakage. Leakage that shouldn't have even been there. "And fourteen years worth of beatings takes its toll on the human body. Which left me. But he more or less left me alone after that." Her hand was steadier. The angelic was kicking in. Or maybe she had just really needed to get that off her chest. "My mother didn't quite trust me either," she mused. "And she knew her grandmother was blonde. To this day I do not understand." But then she had also had a lot of time to overthink the subject.

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_breakmyself
2011-06-30 05:00 pm UTC (link)

If Darklis had mentioned her age before then Rina had heard her, and acknowledged it, and probably had the same thought regarding her mother. But that had been a different time when her own mind was in a completely different place. Now it might as well have been new information. Something for her to focus in on. A needed distraction. As was the knowledge that Darklis had been an only child because for some reason that just did not seem right. Though Rina had problems thinking the word, thinking what it was that Darklis was - or had been if she did not call herself that anymore - always made her want to cry. Because they had been needlessly killed as well, when they had done nothing but exist.

Milbrer. Chalin. Chalin was a name that Rina did not like. She liked it even less the moment that Darklis said that he thought she had been the product of an infidelity. And that he'd beaten her. And her mother. Just for that. Hearing that tickled another point in the back of Rina's mind; they should not have been accused of something that was not true. And what's more, Darklis should not have ever been accused because whether she was or not it was not her fault. How could people not see this? Children were incapable of having any influence on their creation and yet so often they found themselves under attack from parents because they wanted an easy target. Wrong, wrong and wrong again. But parents beating children unjustly had been happening since before records had been kept and no matter what Rina wished it would continue to happen as well. Something like that always left marks. If not physical then psychological and those were the marks that festered and helped to create the people that she called her own. "You were both beaten because you look like us." Which she did. Darklis looked more than a fair bit like Rina's grandmother. Who she guessed must be that other outsider who was her mother's grandmother. She could feel the emotions that were trying to leak, though she was not sure what they were. Whatever they were they were helping to focus her own mind. Rina had always found it impossible to think of herself when one of her own was involved. Despite that she felt a tendril of guilt welling in her stomach that she was doing this and set the sandwich down. "I'm sorry for asking these things of you, Darklis. You married? To?" Fourteen when her mother died and her father mostly left her alone. Seventeen when she had died. And from a time and culture where marriage would have happened before then.

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mindblowing
2011-06-30 11:14 pm UTC (link)

Once upon a time, Darklis had adored her parents. A tiny part of her still did, but mostly her mother had just existed at some point while her father had earned a strange kind of numbed hated. She didn't fear him at all, but she suspected she lacked the capacity. He was dead and gone after all. But talking about her parents, with the knowledge of all the little details that she hadn't shared with Rina because they were largely irrelevant and she'd not asked, was stirring up a confused pain that she didn't quite know how to deal with. Or even what it meant. As a child she'd known a wide variety of fear - mostly the fear of disappointing either of her parents - but she had been absurdly good at simply rolling with whatever life threw at her. It didn't help, she realised, that what she was drinking was putting a chilled layer of whatever on top of how she actually felt. Or maybe she was just emotionally stunted. It was a possibility. Flippancy doesn't help. But it made her feel a little like herself again.

Beaten because she looked like an angel. That was almost funny. Her community had been so devout. Darklis got as far as a wry smile and a nod of acknowledgement. She had always been able to appreciate irony on some level even if it was that kind of faux-irony that came into play because comparatively few people seemed able to define the word. "Don't be sorry. Be hungry," she answered, wrapping her rosary necklace around her fingers. It was a joke, Darklis didn't actually mean it as an instruction to eat, but the mention of marriage wasn't something she was fond of and balancing humour and contempt was a difficult trick to pull. "At sixteen," she started, "when I'd definitely finished healing and was finally presentable." Her tone was bordering on chipper but she really rather wanted to put her fist through something. "Sindel. He was from another settlement so I was sent to live there. I found out later - post-fangs - that he was demonic-blooded. As was every other man in his family. So you can see how well that just was not going to go." Her glass was empty. Darklis stared at it for a second before pushing it away. Sindel was the very short fuse to her righteous fury. Her parents were one thing, he was just... something else entirely. "I was his favourite source of entertainment. He'd poke and prod and try to get me to fight back, only it'd get rougher and rougher. Which all got worse when he decided I was obviously infertile. Like it was some kind of sign he could be as rough as he wanted." Aware she was only gathering speed and venom, she stopped and shifted in her seat, crossing her legs. She needed to calm down or someone in Scarlet Oak would end up with really bad dreams tonight. "Lenhard said I was found outside, between the wagons." Darklis shrugged. What she didn't remember couldn't hurt her.

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_breakmyself
2011-07-01 05:51 am UTC (link)

Telling Rina to not be sorry for something like this was truly like telling a person to not breathe. It simply did not happen. Whether it was because she was an angel or because it was simply that much a part of her personality was truly a good question. One she would need to think on at a later time. The feelings coming from Darklis hardly helped her to focus on anything else. What did help her to keep her mind on her cousin, instead of thinking about the things that she wished she could have done to people who were already well and dead, was Trouble. The small cat had worked her way up onto Rina's lap and started rubbing against her stomach. 'You wouldn't be able to do it anyhow. Don't think about it. The past is the past and you should just think about Darklis now. Be grateful she was turned. Now you can have the chance to get to know her and help her and whatever else it is that you angels do.'

"So he nearly killed you." Rina was proud of how level her voice was. It was amazing. What she did not really think of was how little the sound of her voice mattered when Darklis was every bit as able to feel the emotions flowing through her as she was. And they were not pleasant ones. They were dark, slightly bitter, and sad on top of it that Darklis had gone through that when she was so young. Was it just a thing for the women of their family when they married mortal men? Technically she started out mortal as well. And hers was worse. A demonic man. Rina had come across demons and it had made her want to vomit. To imagine being married to someone with even a touch of demonic blood... Rina could not help herself. She reached across the table to put her hand on Darklis', not caring that it was cold. She was not even sure what to say because 'at least you lived' did not really work. Since... she was not. It could explain a world of things. Especially why she ticked off so many of Rina's little buttons. "I am glad that he found you. And this is a lot harder to do than I remember it being." It honestly baffled her. "Or maybe you being my cousin is the reason... are you glad you were turned?" Did you wish that he had let you die? No, she could not ask that, could not.

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mindblowing
2011-07-07 10:34 pm UTC (link)

Darklis was adding those protein milkshakes or smoothies or whatever to the shopping list along with the breakfast bars. She was actually succeeding in not staring at Rina's sandwich pointedly, but that was only because the angel had picked an excellent subject to stir up enough things to distract her away from being demanding. She needed to research how to feed someone without them noticing. Or maybe Rina would just eat the sandwich when they were done talking about her very literal childhood trauma, though she half-expected it to have stolen what little appetite her cousin had.

"Technically, he did," she answered matter-of-factly. Again, what she couldn't remember couldn't hurt her. Darklis did not remember how she ended up outside, never mind how Lenhard found her. She knew she had given permission because the House of Azrael dictated that humans could not be turned without their consent or without the approval of both the council of elders and the head of house. See, she remembered this stuff. Because she liked her fangs right where they were. "Either I died and came back as this, or I died. There wasn't really much choice involved." And Rina seemed to feel more or less how many of Darklis' paintings ended up looking. Perhaps not quite so acutely - because they were her thoughts, feelings and memories on those canvases - but still. It was a weird kind of recognition that she didn't know how to react to. Open sympathy wasn't her thing. Wait, she's feeling that for me. No sympathy required. Oh, that was confusing in the strangest possible way. Looking down at the hand on hers, Darklis was struck by what a human gesture that was. She couldn't remember the last time anyone had actually done that. Had Lenhard? She couldn't even remember the last person she'd seen do that who wasn't on the television. It wasn't the kind of gesture that came naturally to Darklis, anyway. "Actually, he found me a few months before my mother passed away." She paused. That wasn't true. He had found her before that or he wouldn't have been able to slip into her life so easily. "Well, I met him then. When I was dreaming. He saved me then as well." That was easier to talk about because she had been drugged at the time. Her eyebrow arched slightly. "Maybe you just need to get used to your crazies again." She nearly smiled, but she knew what the flipside of that question was. The answer took a moment to think about, but in the end she just shrugged. "Yes. What's the point in dying when you could have lifetimes to offer? I gave my consent; I made this bed and some day I'll probably die in it again. But until then, I'm Darklis Tinka: junior at Scarlet Oak High School. Because not all vampires are monsters." A beat. "Just some."

"And I totally answered all those questions without you eating properly."

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