On paper, that assessment made no sense. Trust fund kid, rarely wanted for anything with a perfectionist streak who had gone through gifted and talented programs, AP classes, parents able to provide her the best college degree, accepted into Derleth’s hyper competitive graduate program. Just an inch over five feet, only a buck fifteen soaking wet, if that.
Of course she dropped any notion of grad school the moment she discovered she had magic. Like anyone would choose law school over breaking reality’s built in physics engine.
Julia pre tragedy, still hungry for magical knowledge and willing to do just about anything to get there was not very different from Julia fallen from grace with a viscous hole in her soul. That was what made her terrifying. Julia was always a force to be reckoned with.
Which was how she found herself in a dive bar called HAIR OF THE DOG. The floor was sticky, the seats were either sticky or ripped, and most of the tables were sticky, too. Julia chose a torn seat, the flap of vinyl jabbing her ass just enough to be annoying but it was better than the alternative. Unwilling to test the cleanliness of the rest of the bar, any drinks she ordered came from a bottle. Her friends in undergrad would have turned up their noses to see her drinking something that wasn’t from a micro brewery. The drink was mostly for show, anyway. She had business.
She didn’t completely stand out in the bar. She wore jeans rolled at the cuff, a pair of Doc Martens, leather jacket, black crop top. But her makeup wasn’t as heavy and dark as some of the other patrons, and her nails were a perfectly manicured matte gold color that looked too nice for this place, even with the small tattoos visible on her fingers; triangle on one digit, crescent moon on another.
Her resting bitch face was enough to scare away anyone who wasn’t named Carver. For now.
Julia looked at her phone and then scanned the rest of the bar, waiting for the moment he showed up.
Carver walked into the bar like he owned the place. It's how he acted everywhere he went. He always put up just enough of a front to be seen by most people as an annoying and sleezy douchebag. It was good for his work with the Anarchs. He spent his unlife flying under the Camarilla's radar so he could organize against them. And who would suspect the aging punk who kept everyone at an arm's length and made women feel uncomfortable was actually a groundroots organizer who could bring people together, convince them they had the power to overthrow the status quo?
His flacid mohawk was a bright pink and purple, the remnants of last night's mascara smudged under his eyes, clad in black from head-to-toe. Obscure local punk band tshirt, torn jeans, well-worn boots, and that hand-decorated leather jacket adorned with patches and pins and the hand-pianted Brujah logo on the back.
So he didn't hide what clan he was with, but that didn't mean he was anyone the Camarilla should give two shits about.
As he walked to the bar itself to get a beer he wouldn't drink, he took a moment to take in the crowd, not with his eyes, but with his heightened sense of hearing. Mostly human with a small handful of kindred here and there. Once he'd paid for his beer, he turned to actually look at the patrons until he spotted Julia. Good friend in another life, blood donor and informant in this one.
He sauntered over to the table where she sat and offered her that self-satisfied half-smile of his while he sat down across from her.
"Hey, babydoll." It wasn't a term he saved just for Annabelle, although she was the most frequent recipient of it because she was so vocal about hating it. He knew Julia wasn't a fan either, but she hadn't threatened his life over it yet.
Babydoll got an eye roll. A lot of things Carver did got an eye roll, which was perhaps a mistake. Or it might have been if Carver had rejected his original memories as hard as Julia did. Finally a chance to start over and do better and she couldn’t help but make nearly all the same spectacular mistakes as she did the first time around.
Still, it probably wasn’t helping her own personal safety to feel a level of familiarity that allowed her to roll her eyes at him openly. Familiar enough to stare at Carver’s fresh, colder beer and switch him bottles without asking.
The glass was slightly warmer from her touch, condensation missing from where her fingers had been touching the label. It was somewhere between a third and half empty from her nursing it.
She drank from his bottle. It really wasn’t any less bitter than what she’d been nursing and she made a slight face that was, to her detriment, cute.
“So how much is this going to cost me?”
Julia was a decent poker player but she tipped her hand. No hello? Her one-track mind was activated, and often in this mode Julia missed the forest for the trees. The hedgewitch made a bad habit of that.
Carver her saw her switch the beer bottles around in the edge of his periphery while he studied her face. He couldn't drink beer anyway, so it didn't make a difference to him. The degree of familiarity she slipped into was nice too. This world, this life, was very much akin to his real one, but things had begun to change in the time he'd been trapped at Derleth. He was quietly reluctant to go back to the way things had been. But that's what he felt it took to survive and that's what he did.
"Oh, just a pint." To anyone overhearing them, it could easily be assumed that he was telling her to buy him a drink.
"Right down to business I see." He slouched down in his seat and spread his legs open more than remotely necessary. At least he refrained from kicking a boot up onto the sticky tabletop. "I hate small talk anyway."
At the mention of pint, Julia’s breath slowed. She tried not to appear as though she had frozen in place, while also doing her best to appear entirely casual, releasing her exhale over extended seconds. She’d donated blood enough times to know what it felt like, but it was in her best interest to pretend like it was more of an inconvenience rather than something she enjoyed. He knew. She knew it. Julia did her best to keep up the act anyway.
“Pretty sure you charge for small talk,” Julia said. There was a certain amount of friendly banter to their meetings. Maybe it was the impression of past memories bleeding through. Or maybe Julia was more prone to running her mouth when she was anxious.
Julia set her beer down, her wrist exposed, showing her hedgewitch star tattoo briefly. Like Carver, she wore her allegiances, too. And being merely a hedge, most of what she did also flew under the radar provided she didn’t do anything too obvious.
Naturally she was planning on doing something stupid and obvious.
Carver gave a small laugh and grabbed for the warm beer. It had long since become second nature to pretend to drink. People were always so engrossed in their own little worlds no one would even notice if he didn't, but it also gave him something to do with his hands. As someone who spent a lot of his life on the move, he had a hard time sitting still.
"So, you want to know about the Kindreds' involvement with the DSS?" He kept his voice low so nobody but Julia could hear him over the din of the bar. Nobody with normal, human hearing anyway. "Or just the Cam's?" Carver didn't see the DSS as much of an immediate threat as the Camarilla. The Masquerade helped to keep the Kindred world insulated and many vampires forgot about the dangers beyond their own kind. Not Carver. But his speed and strength kept him from feeling threatened by most.
Julia noticed. The witch was smart. She picked up on details like Carver’s seeming inability to drink or eat anything but blood. Maybe the details would help her in the future if she ever ran afoul of the kindred, some detail that Carver failed to mention for his own safety.
Too bad she wasn’t wise.
Julia kept her voice low, matching his tone and volume. “I want to know if anyone has been inside their headquarters. What might be known about their layout, particularly by any kindred that might have been taken in, especially if they managed to escape.”
Vampires, aliens, those with abilities that normal human prisons couldn’t handle? In theory they would be managed by the DSS. The specificity of her question gave a pretty good indication that she was planning something. While Julia could have accepted a more general topic, she couldn’t have been sure it would have covered what she wanted.
“Capabilities they might have for detaining or dealing with anyone more than human…” she added.
Even if it did reveal more about what she was planning than she wanted to, she didn’t think Carver would care enough to talk her out of whatever bad ideas she was planning.
"We're not a monolith. Every clan has different abilities. Dealing with anyone more than human depends on whatever the fuck more than human even means." Carver finally gave in to the inevitable and put his boot up on the table between them.
"I won't tell you what to do or how to live your life, but this is a very stupid idea you've got percolating." Even though he cared about Julia, despite the different relationship in this world, he wasn't going to go out of his way to stop her. He could just convince himself that everything would be fine after the reset.
"There are vampires who were foolish enough to get taken into custody by DSS. But they sure as fuck never escaped. None of the Anarchs anyway. The Camarilla has pull with DSS. That's probably a different story for them. Unless whoever got nabbed wasn't worth enough to the Cam and they just let them rot in there. Who knows."
Julia stared at Carver’s boot for a moment. She was not impressed. Then again, his boot was probably cleaner than the table. She took a small swig from her beer to give herself a moment before speaking.
“So what you’re saying is, you don’t have the kind of information I’m looking for.”
In all fairness to Carver, Julia was very stubborn, particularly when it came to stupid, dangerous ideas. Her head canted to the side just slightly -- stubborn and annoying -- but those were also good qualities to have when things were hard.
“Doesn’t exactly sound like a pint’s worth of intel.”
"It's not. Keep your blood, you'll lose enough of it if you plan on doing something that fucking stupid." Carver remained casual in his tone and posture, bringing the bottle of beer up for a sip which he just tipped out over his shoulder onto the already sticky floor. He hoped they didn't draw any attention and that nobody was interested in them, but he'd keep up appearances just in case.
"Go find some Camarilla lackey if you want. Maybe you can work your," he gestured at her with his beer bottle, his mouth downturned, "charm on one of them and they can get you an in. I'd offer to make an introduction but I have too much pride and sense for that."
He took his foot off the table and put the bottle down a little too forcefully, sloshing some onto the table.
"I'm out." He turned around and started to weave his way through the crowd of the bar.
Julia made a face at charm.
When he got up, she got up. Because of course she did. She wasn’t going to let a small thing like rejection get in the way of what she wanted. Carver didn’t have the information she wanted? Fine. It didn’t mean he didn’t have any useful information.
Julia was smart. She was a problem solver.
“Yeah, I’m sure they’d love to fuck over any ties or favors they have with the DSS for a hedge.” There wasn’t anything Julia could actually do if Carver was really done with the conversation. But she could keep talking in the limited time they had to convince him otherwise.
“I’m not asking you to risk yourself for me. If you don’t have the exact information I’m looking for, then maybe we approach it from the other direction. What would the DSS reasonably know to defend itself against?”
Julia knew some about the kindred, from what Carver shared, but that didn’t mean she knew everything, particularly when it came to the different capabilities of the different clans or bloodlines.
“I’m doing this whether you help or not, so…”
Carver sighed and slowed to a stop. He turned around to look at Julia. "I'm not going to help you put your life at risk, Julia. The DSS knows the common ways to defend against a vampire. It doesn't matter what clan we're from, a stake through the heart will stop any one of us." The memory of the stake driven through Annabelle's heart by the priest and the way Carver himself turn and ran without even looking back still haunted him regularly.
"If you know Kindred foolish enough to help you, good for them. I'm not one of them." He turned away again and began to head for the door.
Julia made a face. Put her life at risk? Why did that matter? She’d been surrounded so long by people trying to put on an act-- hedges that would defend the knowledge they’d scrapped together to the death, magicians who thought looking the other way was a mercy, vampires that deflected with babydoll-- it never really crossed her mind it might be at least a little bullshit.
Julia scurried to put herself directly in front of him this time. She really hated taking no for an answer. At least that’s what it looked like was about to happen-- another argument, another attempt to convince him otherwise.
But, no. Actually.
Instead she held up her hands. She cast something. Or perhaps she tried and failed. There were no sparkles or motes of light, no magic words. No tingly feeling. Julia did a magic trick and nobody noticed.
“Fine,” she said. “Someone tries to hit you with a projectile like a crossbow bolt, it’ll miss. Only works a handful of attempts but that’s the best I can do. Should be enough to give you a heads up at least. Maybe consider investing in Kevlar.”
She didn’t do it to change his mind. Julia did it more as a parting gift. If he was right and she was going to end up getting herself killed, well? At least he’d have that.
She was still going through with her plan, with or without his help.
Knowing her to be a witch, Carver didn't know if she raised her hands to cast a spell or to stop him so should could plead her case more. Either way, he curled his lip to bare his fangs at her. She didn't seem willing to take 'no' for an answer and he was getting increasingly frustrated.
And then she revealed what she'd done and his face fell, his fangs quickly concealed. He saw hints of the other Julia, the one he knew better. Maybe they weren't so different as she granted him this magical protection.
"I don't need your magic, Julia." I need you alive were the words left unspoken there. "Why are you even doing this? Who got locked up by the DSS that means this much to you?"
“It’s not a who-- I mean it is, sort of-- it’s what they know.” Julia glanced around the bar, deciding it was crowded, motioned with her chin for him to follow her. It was a brief walk into an alley where she drew a rectangle on the side of the building which turned into an open doorway, leading into her apartment.
Julia had avoided meeting at her place, or anywhere near it in the city. After all, it wasn’t like she’d ever seen his place. But he was asking about the most personal thing about her, and if she was going to tell him, it might as well be where she knew they would be alone and where they couldn’t possibly be followed, thanks to a magical shortcut.
“Would you like to come in?” She half teased, but there was a legitimate part of her that couldn’t say for certain that Carver didn’t need an invitation to enter her home.
Her apartment was a spacious one bedroom on the Upper West Side. The kitchen, while normal sized for any normal home in any sane part of the country, was gargantuan by Empire City standards, as well as the living space. There wasn’t much use in trying to hide the location of her apartment; it only took a few glances out the windows to orient to various city landmarks and see they were in Manhattan.
Carver hesitated at the portal. It felt more in his nature to turn tail and leave her to her foolishness. He grumbled to himself as he gave in and stepped through the magical doorway into her surprisingly posh apartment. Once he was in, he looked around, mouth slightly agape as he took it all in.
"Well, fuck me. This is where you live?" It was definitely the nicest place Carver had ever set foot in without any plans to steal something.
He didn't need to be invited in anywhere and he didn't need to be asked to make himself comfortable, he just did. He slumped into a chair and slouched low in it, still looking around the apartment. Rich people could be really fucking stupid sometimes.
"So what's your beef with the DSS?"
“Yeah…” Julia said at the mention of her place. “...Shut up.” There was no real force behind the words, only mild embarrassment.
Julia closed the door behind them, and took off her jacket, throwing it behind one of the tall barstool chairs up against the kitchen island that doubled as a kitchen table, second only to the coffee table in front of her couch which was her go-to location for eating, particularly when researching something.
The space was large, expensive, but the pizza boxes and dishes in the sink made it clear she didn’t spend money on a weekly cleaning service. Depending on how distracted Julia got in a project, reflected in a scale from messy & cluttered to superfund site. Thankfully her current fixation had not brought her place to superfund site status… yet.
“I don’t have one,” Julia said of the DSS. She walked to her fridge, there wasn’t much in there, and pulled out an open bottle of wine, which she poured into a cup. It was better than the beer. She took a seat on her couch, and rolled the wine glass between her hands.
“There is a goddess,” Julia started. “I know it sounds stupid, just trust me that she’s real. She speaks to me in my dreams. I’m supposed to find something. Find her? Find some new kind of magic? Find something about myself? …Only when I wake up I can’t remember most of the shit she’s told me. I just know it’s important. So…”
Julia shrugged.
“...Instead of waiting to remember or stumble onto whatever it is… why not ask a god? Lucky for me, the DSS has one.”
"The DSS has a god and you, a mortal, are going to try to break in there?" Carver did nothing to hide how he felt about it, it showed clearly on his face. Incredulous would be an understatement. Julia was smart, clever, and extremely adept with magic, but this plan was sounding more and more foolish by the minute.
"Those fuckers have found a way to detain a god, Julia. Do you realize how crazy it sounds that you want to break in there? And then what? Free this god? And hope he happens to have the answers you're looking for." Carver shook his head and raked a hand through his deflated mohawk.
"I understand these dreams are meaningful to you, but this is a fool's errand. They could just as easily lock you up along side this supposed god."
“Sure,” Julia said. She was infuriatingly undeterred by Carver’s very sensible reaction. Sure, it sounded crazy. Sure, she knew she could end up locked up. It was Carver’s level of concern that threw her.
“...You know how hedges get their magic, right? The important stuff? We steal it. Usually from magicians who have access to everything, who outgun us in basically every way. The DSS won’t be prepared on a magic level as other places I’ve broken into. That doesn’t mean they won’t have other security measures. Gods here on the material plane are basically just immortal magic users on steroids, cut off from most of their power, which is why most of them left.”
Julia found herself trying to reassure him, which surprised herself. When it came to what Julia wanted, she usually dragged everyone around her, kicking and screaming. She didn’t want to drag Carver-- minus practically dragging him to her place. She wanted him to understand her.
Julia thought maybe he could.
“I can do this,” she said. “My safehouse can do this.”
If Carver still had useable lungs, he would've sighed. Several times over the course of this conversation in fact. Was every version of Julia this fucking stubborn. For whatever reason, she wasn't willing to listen to him. She wasn't willing to change her mind. But his mind wasn't going to change either (speaking of being stubborn).
"I'm not going to pretend to understand this. I know nothing I say will stop you. But I'm not going to help you. I care about you, Julia, but I'm always going to put myself first. Annabelle found that out the hard way. At least I'm letting you know in advance. If you want to take this risk, fine, whatever. But I'm not helping."
Julia nodded. There were either one of two ways it was going to go; heated argument or acceptance. Today Julia chose acceptance. Mostly because she respected his position. She respected his blunt honesty. Dealing with anyone else, particularly other magic users, felt like a game of manipulation and half truths.
“Okay,” she said.
She paused.
Julia was still going to do it, naturally. But despite the standstill, she was strangely heartened. He seemed to understand her, and she didn’t realize how valuable that was.
“I’ll let you know when it’s done.” More like confirm that she’d made it out okay. Were they done? Was there anything else to say? She wasn’t sure. So she asked in a roundabout way: “Do you want me to drop you off back near the bar or one of the subway stations? I pretty much have the calculations to those portals from here memorized.”
She’d brought him to her apartment because they could talk freely, and it was an easy enough place to exchange blood for information privately. But if that wasn’t happening…
"I do hope you'll be okay, Julia." It's all he could really hope for. Whatever happened, success or failure, if she was able to let him know when it was done, then that meant they didn't get her. But it wouldn't necessarily mean she was safe.
He offered a hint of a smirk when Julia mentioned the portals. "Oh, you absolutely need to open that one at the bar. I cannot be seen on this side of town." It probably would've been a weird thing to say if anyone else had said it, but it was Carver. Carver who put on the air of caring more about himself and his reputation than anything or anyone else.
There was a moment, just a brief moment, when Julia almost considered opening her mouth and asking for the information on vampire abilities. Almost. He wanted her to be okay, right? But she had just enough restraint not to try again. And ruin this moment? Moment might have been a generous way to describe the understanding the two seemed to come to, but then it was Carver. Maybe this was as close to a moment as the two were ever going to get.
When he smirked, her nose wrinkled just slightly with her matching smile. It was a genuine expression, one her shadeless counterpart wasn’t quite capable of anymore; that light had been snuffed out.
She wondered if Carver had given more away than he meant to. I cannot be seen on this side of town. She knew about the Cam and the Anarchs. She hadn’t considered his words might have been a touch more literal, that he might have been standing in enemy territory. Now didn’t seem the time to ask.
“First Uber’s free,” Julia said. “Do not text me for a lift unless you plan on ponying up.” She was only half teasing, giving Carver the eye to let him know she was serious about payment. Then again, she could literally open a portal up to just about anywhere. Made travel a lot easier and safer.
She traced the outline of a door with her fingers, so that when she opened it, it overlooked the alley they’d just come from. If she was disappointed to see him go, she kept that notion to herself as she pressed her lips together.