Who: Elijah Mikaelson elijahm & Liv Moore psychicish What: Grocery shopping When: Thursday, May 14, afternoon Where: Kroger Rating: General Audiences Warnings: Possibly discussion of revolting feeding habits since he's a vampire and she's a zombie. Other than that? I can't think of anything which could offend anyone in here. Status: Random/Closed/Completed GDoc
~*~
Babies ate far more than people imagined. They required containers upon containers of food. It was as if all a person did while raising a child was put food into their mouths, wipe its remnants off their bottoms, and then return to putting food into their mouths. There was sleep somewhere in between feeding and excreting, but Elijah was hard-pressed to call it much of a time investment.
Hope was the joy of his life. He showered her with all the love he couldn't give to anyone else. Her mother was off-limits, his brother tended to think he was plotting against him if he showed any affection to him, and his sister was too damaged to remember real love as expressed by a brother. They were all of them too broken to love normally. Elijah tried to showcase the best of his love for Hope by making every grocery trip without fail. He read every label, personally tried every offering before allowing her to test it for herself, and never ran out of formula, cereals, snacks, and jars and jars of suitable foods for her developing palate.
It was soothing to him to see her eat. Her dexterity was getting better. Often she tried to help feed herself which resulted in messes Elijah was grateful his dry cleaner could take care of and he was able to smile at her freely while knowing what he was doing, feeding her, was keeping her healthy. Hope had such simple needs. Elijah felt blessed to be able to have the opportunity to attend to them. She was their family's future.
None of them would die, true enough, yet Elijah knew the future wasn't only about existing.
It was about living.
The hand basket he carried as filled with new containers along with some old favorites for Hope. He went down the condiments aisle to pick up some jam which made her wave her hands at him with excitement. She was still too young for honey and Elijah hadn't dared to try syrup as of yet, but jellies were fine. All of the books had stated a bit of natural sugar couldn't hurt her as long as they kept her to a primarily protein-rich diet.
A young woman was looking at hot sauces behind him as he contemplated the jams. Elijah would have ignored her utterly if it weren't for her smell. It was---not the most pleasant he'd ever come across. Her heart beat slowly enough to where he would have taken her for a vampire if not for her scent. He couldn't place her species. A glance at her showed her to be slight, pale, and washed out all over in her appearance. It didn't help him to identify her species at all.
Tossing a jar of jam into the air and catching it neatly, he turned to face her, leaning against the shelf while he considered her, "Alright. I'll bite. What are you? Normally I wouldn't ask, but there's absolutely nothing normal about this Test City is there?"
~*~
Unfortunately, Liv could only taste anything if it was covered in hot sauce. That meant that she had to buy a lot of it. And hot cheetos, extra hot cheetos, and all of that. Everything in the girl’s cart had something to do with hot. She liked to be able to taste things. And it was not really all that much fun to eat brains. But it was a necessary evil. And without Ravi here, that was going to be Liv’s life for the foreseeable future.
She might as well get used to it.
Liv wasn’t paying much attention to what anyone else was doing at the moment. And she wasn’t paying attention to who might be watching her. She was used to being able to more or less blend, despite her extremely pale appearance. But in Test City, did anyone quite blend? She wasn’t sure.
Elijah startled her, and she almost dropped the bottle of hot sauce she was looking at. She turned and stared at him. Definitely not a zombie. But he was...something other than human. She was really learning about all kinds of new things here.
“You probably wouldn’t believe me if I told you.” Liv said coolly, setting the hot sauce back on the shelf. Then again, maybe he would. But if he didn’t know about zombies yet, it was probably better not to share it with anyone else. It was bad enough Charlie knew.
Liv had seen the movies, zombies were rarely associated with something good. The last thing she needed was a city wide panic. It might be worse than those creatures had been. Either way, she wasn’t sure she wanted to deal with it and so she was going to be coy for now, until she could get a read on Elijah. She didn’t know how else to play it. With all the hot stuff in her cart, he might have taken her for a dragon or something.
Were dragons a thing here too?
~*~
Juggling a series of jam jars as if he performed such tricks on a regular basis, Elijah moved nothing more than his hands. Stillness was simple for his kind. Vampires technically didn't have to move, breathe, even blink. All standard responses of humanity were suspended for his kind. They weren't alive any more than they were dead. Elijah was in a perpetual state of suspended animation from which he would never recover unless his meddling witch of a mother had something to say on the subject.
The woman across from him hadn't been whatever she was for long. It wasn't a birth status then which left a few options. Werewolves and vampires could be turned. She was neither of those. Witches weren't made. They were born or possessed after being hexed or cursed. Magic didn't drive whatever her status was though he did feel her life force was strange, unusual in comparison to everything else he'd run across in his very, very long life.
"I am over 1,000 years old. I cannot die. I am one of the Original Vampires. If someone does happen to come across the only possible means by which I might meet an eternal end, it will eliminate all those who come from my line. This means any vampires I have sired throughout my thousand years of life will die with me. Instantly. I drink blood. I can compel others mentally to do my bidding. I can move faster than the eye can see. I could tear your heart out with my bare hand without any real effort."
Elijah caught all the jars of jam to stack them into the hand basket he carried as if he had been discussing the weather. For him, his life was not much more than a status of the weather. His family was as permanent as the temperature shifts or winds or rain. They would exist as long as the world lasted. Even though some of them had met an end, they still hadn't met a final end. Elijah had seen too many of them return from supposed death. Klaus was right: they were one of the only things permanent in life.
There would be Mikaelsons as long as there was an Earth.
"I will believe anything you tell me. I already know you are not vampire or werewolf or a hybrid of both. I can eliminate witch as well. There's no stink of magic on you. Otherwise? I'm lost. You are an unknown. A curiosity. There aren't a lot of curiosities left for me after a thousand years as you might imagine."
~*~
Vampires. Hmm. Liv hadn’t really even thought of them as a possibility until right now, as she was standing her with one. But would he be able to handle the big Z? Liv wasn’t much like a traditional zombie, at least not most of the time. She had moments usually brought on by some danger where she went full on zombie, but she was always able to come back. She worried about there being a time when she couldn’t.
She looked around to make sure no one was watching them, as Elijah explained a bit about his abilities. Liv didn’t want to be a thousand. She wanted to be cured. But could she even be immortal if she were dead already? That was quite the question, wasn’t it?
She stepped only slightly closer to Elijah and gave one more quick glance around to make sure that no one was listening or watching them too intently. The last thing Liv needed was for all of Test City to know they had a zombie problem. Not her though, she was a nice zombie. Yeah, that’d go over real well.
When she was sure it was safe, she whispered the big z word. “Zombie. I’m a zombie.” If he wanted to know how it had happened, well that was all on Blaine DeBeers. Stupid guy had scratched her at the party and changed her life...or unlife forever. Becoming a zombie had made her lose everything. And here, without Ravi, she didn’t even have the hope to be cured.
She took a step back from him then, mildly interested to see his reaction. Then she turned her attention to the hot sauces once more. “I can only taste something if it’s really hot.” Liv said. “I miss Reese’s.” How she had loved peanut butter cups in her pre-zombie life.
~*~
"Sriracha sauce is my favorite of the hot flavors," Elijah decided to start with, pointing to several options, "The one there with the green tip and Chinese print is authentic. It's got a nice heat without being revolting."
Zombies were on the list of things he'd never encountered as far as he knew. It really depended on one's definition of vampirism seeing as they were, themselves, a form of the undead who fed on the living to sustain themselves. They were all one and the same to certain hunters. Many sects had sought to destroy anything other than a standard human throughout the years Elijah had survived. One of his greatest fears was someone would harm Hope only because of her parentage.
No one would ever get the opportunity if he had anything to say about it, but the fear? It was real. It was omnipresent when he was with her. She was so fragile in comparison to the rest of their family. There was no fairness in the best of the Mikaelsons being the most vulnerable. There was no fairness in life at all as far as Elijah was concerned. He sighed as he realized the young woman was still adapting to her life as something other. He would run across a new kind of monster while shopping for baby food.
"I take it you're still growing used to your new life given how you stumbled over the pronouncement? It gets easier. With time. For your peanut butter cups, I'd recommend pushing some dried peppers into the chocolate. You'll get the hot and the sweet all at once. I can only taste things if I'm very well-fed. Otherwise? It's like eating dirt. In the early days? I put blood in everything. I still put it into most soups. Just so you're warned in case you would like to join my family and I for dinner some evening. Do you actually require brains to survive or is that myth? I've never eaten a brain. I can't imagine it's very appetizing."
~*~
"Thanks, I'll try that." Liv said. She hadn't really thought of it before, just going for the hottest stuff she could find. It might be nice to change it up a little, she figured. She was really surprised that he didn't seem to be bothered by the fact that she was a zombie. Even as a vampire, it wasn't news she expected anyone to take well. And who could blame them? Everyone had very specific ideas of what zombies were, and none of it was good.
Liv just looked like an extremely pale girl, but she could pass as human around most. Clearly not around vampires, as she'd now learned but he didn't really seem upset about it so she figured he was okay with the whole zombie thing. He wouldn't be giving her advice on hot sauces if he was particularly offended, probably.
She nodded when he suggested she try something with the peanut butter cups. She hadn't thought of that either, but she was so new to this whole zombie thing, as he'd also observed. One stupid party and one scratch had changed her life forever.
She made a face. "Unfortunately, that's something that can't be avoided. If I don't eat at least once a month...well I would become like the more traditional zombie." Instead of the friendly and nice little zombie she was now. "It sucks, but it helps that I work in the morgue." She said. "I do back home as well, but I'm the assistant medical examiner there. My boss, Ravi, he's been working on trying to find a cure for this."
She felt kind of comfortable talking to Elijah now, and it was kind of nice to have someone else to discuss this with. "I get these visions...from the brains I eat. And back home, I use them to help solve their murders. I work with a Seattle police detective. But here...well, not so much murder is happening." Of course, that wasn't a bad thing.
~*~
A low murder rate was generally something people sought out in a place to live. Elijah decided if he were a zombie who required brains to keep from devolving into a walking, mindless corpse? He would prefer a location which was high in crime as well. She'd fit right in at home in New Orleans. It was a pity they hadn't landed in his town. Test City was a bit mundane for their family. Elijah was trying to look on the bright side for the sake of Hope, but it was harder than one would think given his concern for what could happen to her with so few to protect her.
"I've had a lot of time to adapt to my life. I've learned to be highly adaptable period in order to survive. It helps my family is---unpredictable to say the least. Do you actually think your condition can be reversed? If it's the result of a hex? It's very unlikely. A traditional curse or a spell made up of Dark Magic? Possibly."
Elijah shrugged lightly as he went back to studying options for jam. He was hardly an expert on magic. The occult had been his mother's realm of expertise. He'd tried to avoid it as much as possible for his own health. Kol had been the most magically-inclined of his brothers while it appeared his elder sister Freya was the true witch of their direct family. He had no trust for either of them in truth though they could be useful from time to time. If they would protect Hope? Elijah would tolerate them or any witch who would ally with them to protect his niece.
Remarking offhand, he said, "I know a witch in town here. Very powerful young thing. No idea if she could deal with whatever's been cast on you, but she might be worth looking up. In terms of a lack of sustenance, I wouldn't be averse to supplying you with some fresh corpses if you're truly missing murder victims. My proclivities are rarely to kill my prey, but my younger brother is in residence and he does dearly love to play with his food. I imagine he'd give you some very interesting meals if I made an inquiry on your behalf. Are you lacking for sustenance?"
The loss of a few human lives was not remarkable to Elijah. They didn't have to maintain any peace in Test City. No one was capable of punishing them as far as he knew. There was a police force as well as the supposed shield around the city to take into account, but Elijah was hardly concerned with either of those things. He could only be killed by the White Oak Stake or being removed from his body to be placed into a mortal one. Even Davina was not capable of such magic at her level of experience. In turn, he was quite safe all things considered.
~*~
“My condition is the result of a scratch by another zombie at a party. I don’t think it’s magical in nature.” Liv said. “More like...chemical so Ravi is just working on some different formulas to try and cure it.” She didn’t want to believe there was no hope. She didn’t want to hear it if that was what Elijah was saying, either. Liv needed hope. She needed to believe that one day she was going to get her life back. Otherwise, what was this all for?
She nodded when he talked about his witch friend. She didn’t think the girl could help her but that was still useful information if a situation came up here. After all they’d been through so far, there was no telling what might happen. Having a witch on her side might do a world of good. Liv just didn’t think a witch was the solution to unzombify her. That would have to be Ravi, if she ever got back home.
She shook her head. “No, it’s okay...I don’t need to eat the brains of murder victims, that’s just what I do at home mostly.” She liked being able to help solve their murders, it kind of made up for her eating their brains, as much as anything could, that was. “Thanks though.’
Liv did alright, and working in the morgue certainly helped. Having a new friend that could see spirits, well that helped too. Because then she could essentially ask permission to eat the brains.
~*~
Offering another shrug which meant nothing and everything all at once, Elijah didn't bother to respond to her declination of fresh murder victims. He had made it with good intentions. Everything had to eat. Elijah had said such to someone else recently. He didn't find Liv's life or experience any more repulsive or repugnant than his own. Hubris was something he was working to get away from. He had to overcome his weaknesses for the sake of his family.
"In the event you've need of a friend who understands what it is to be something---other? Something," Elijah turned a sad expression her direction as he acknowledged, "---hated? I am Elijah Mikaelson. I manage Bello Italian restaurant. My hybrid younger brother is Klaus Mikaelson. My sister is Rebekah Mikaelson. Hayley Marshall is the mother of Klaus's child, Hope. She is my family as well. Tell any of them you are Elijah's friend. They will help you if you've need of the help."
Elijah nodded at her in farewell. He'd taken enough of her time with his curiosity. It wasn't fair for him to monopolize her in a grocery store when she was only trying to stock her pantry with edibles. Given her condition, it was likely difficult for her to deal with being among the living. She didn't seem inclined to break into some sort of feeding frenzy, yet he doubted her senses were standard for a human any longer. Being around the living had to trigger some kind of emotion in her. As young as she was in her change?
It was unlikely to be a positive emotion.
Two hundred years had passed before Elijah had stopped hating what he was every single second of every single day of his existence.
He hoped the young zombie woman fared better than him in her adaptation.
"Thank you for entertaining my curiosity. I apologize for taking up so much of your time, Miss. It's, again, rare for me to find anything curious."
With a final bow, Elijah turned to walk away. She might have called her name to him. He might have imagined it. All he knew was he had one more thing to be grateful for in life: at least he didn't have to eat brains to survive.