Laura is a pragmatic superhero (nomorestrings) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2014-02-22 12:44:00 |
|
|||
Entry tags: | !complete, jubilation lee (jubilee), laura kinney (wolverine), pamela swynford de beaufort |
Who: Laura Kinney, Pam Swynford, Jubilee
What: Laura wakes up. Vampire angst.
When: 02/19.
Where: Pam's place.
Rating/Warnings: PG-13 for mild vampire stuff. Drinking blood, etc.
Status: Complete!
The last thing that Laura remembered was the best night of her life, gone wrong. The memory was still fresh in her head when her eyes popped open days later. Wherever she was was dark, and enclosed. She shut her eyes and tried to listen to the sounds around her to get her bearing - the sounds and smells of everything in the immediate area around her were sharper than she ever remembered them being before.
It wasn’t until she’d managed to crawl out of the freezer she’d been laid in that she realised that the exertion involved in getting out of it hadn’t been that much. And that she also wasn’t sweating, wasn’t even breathing, and couldn’t hear the beating of her heart under the other sounds around her.
A blurry memory came to her mind, then. Something Jubilee had said. I can save you but then you’ll be like me’. One of her hands went to her neck, where Jubilee had bitten her. Then both of her hands rubbed up over her eyes, and she let out a very loud, confused noise.
Jubilee had spent a long time trying to get Laura somewhere safe. Carried her around, even stuffed her in a trash bag in the trunk of her car for awhile. If it weren't for Pam she wasn’t sure what she would have done. She owed that woman, seriously.
She’d been like this for a century and a half, and right now she felt that old, the decades of quiet reflection closer to the surface than her usual act of being ...well Jubilee. She’d thought that if she acted the way she was expected to, she’d be herself again. And it had been working, mostly. But now it all felt pointless.
Pam had heard the thudding, and the noise. She’d have jumped eight feet, but she’d expected something like that. When you were dealing with offspring, you had to be ready for anything.
She was in the basement already, but she came up to the door separating the two halves. “Somebody alive in there?” Pam figured the answer was technically no, but no need to split hairs right now.
"I don't know. I don't..." Laura pulled the hands away from her face. There wasn't any warmth, or breathe to catch in her hands, and though she was certain she'd been crying, there weren't any tears on her face, either.
Her voice echoed through the room she’d woken up in and through the door, "...I am not alive, technically, I think? Why do I feel so..."
Angry. Cranky. Grumpy. Like she wanted to rip something’s throat out, “I want to kill something.”
Jubilee sat up, nerves on her face. She remembered feeling like that. This uncontrollable urge to hurt things. The rage and the instinct that wanted to push her to rip open a throat. To kill. She still fought it. Always fighting it, but it was so much worse in the first few weeks. "Laura?"
Pam rolled her eyes. “Been there, honey. If I open the door are you going to try and jump me? I’m like you, so there wouldn’t be any blood to spill.” To the Asian girl, she said, “You ever turned anyone before? Do you know what to do?” She’d be awfully pissed off if either of them went to pieces.
In the dreams, Laura was trained to be a predator more than a human being. When she'd first started dreaming, her natural instinct had been to repress that training. It wasn't human or normal or right to think of other human beings as targets or fodder to be killed.
It didn't make any sense, either. Humans weren't a food source. She'd been trained to hunt and kill, but only because someone else told her to. Now, she didn't know what to think.
Laura felt like the world was finally shifting into place. She pushed her claws out of her hands and looked down at them, then forced them to slide back in.
"Hunting you would be a waste of time and energy," Is what she finally ended up saying. There wasn't any reason to sugarcoat it.
Jubilee fidgeted, leaning against the wall. “I uh...there’s some bags marked with an X in there.” She’d gotten some bags from Logan in hopes that his healing factor might help quench Laura’s bloodlust the same way it had for her. “ I milked your-- Logan. His blood always makes me feel less killy.”
“You put random blood in my freezer?” Pam sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose. “Look,” she said to the girl in her cold storage. “I’m Pam. I’m a vampire, like you are now too. I helped your featherbrained friend so you wouldn’t die. If you try to kill me, you’ll waste your time because I haven’t fed lately, so I’d have no blood to give you. Eat whatever’s in there, so I don’t have to snap your neck for trying to hurt me. Got it?”
Even as she told the girl to shut up and focus, Pam couldn’t help thinking of Tara. Tara had tried to kill herself, and Pam had had to order her as her Maker to stop being a twat. She doubted this Jubilee had the stones - she’d probably weep and apologize and make Pam want to vomit.
It wasn't exactly easy to focus. Especially with her senses so suddenly sharpened the way they were. Laura took a few seconds to try, though, because she thought the woman speaking to her through the door might yell at her more if she didn't.
Her hands had healed from the claws nearly immediately and she pushed them out of her fists again, letting the pain help her focus her mind. Then she nodded her head and opened up the freezer. She knew she had to eat something. Her nose wrinkled a bit as she looked down into it, "This blood looks very cold and unappetizing."
She wanted something warm and fresh that still had pulse running through it. But obviously neither Jubilee nor Pam were going to let that happen. She lifted up a bag with an X on it, trying to figure out if she was supposed to sink her fangs into it or just drink it like a sippee cup.
Sippee cup. Really. She just likened a blood bag to a slurpee. It made her snort a bit. She started drinking it and decided not to think about who it came from.
Jubilee slid down the wall and thunked her head against it. This could have gone worse. She didn’t like to think about the way she’d turned. Or what she’d done between the time she’d escaped the X-men and the time Logan had broken free from her thrall. “Logan came back from it. When they stopped suppressing his healing factor. So when the dreams give you yours, then you’ll come back from it too. So this isn’t forever. I’m still so sorry. I couldn’t think. You were dying and I couldn’t think and I shoulda called Blink or something instead…”
Pam couldn’t deal with the self-hatred; only weak people did that. So she focused on the newly turned girl. “I know you’re thinking about something fresh and running, but it’s still light outside. You can’t be outside in the light anymore, or you torch. Maybe your friend or I can help you catch a deer or something.” They were around, after all. “Killing humans gets you thrown in a cell for murder. A cell with windows.”
"That's exactly what I was thinking of."
The cold stuff wasn't at all what Laura wanted. But it was making her feel better, anyway. No one was telling her when to stop, so she drained one bag and went for a second, taking a seat on top of the freezer, "But those are all very logical points. Except that it isn't really registering deep down where I keep feeling like sinking my teeth into someone's neck."
She wasn't exactly in the mood to hear Jubilee's worried mumbling, either, "It's fine. I am what I am now. There is no point in focusing on regrets."
She figured it was too much to expect a ‘thanks for saving my life’ at this point. Being a vampire wasn’t exactly light and fluffy and happy. Jubilee waved her hands. “It’s always going to feel like that. And sometimes you go through periods where you can’t feel anything. You’re just there. You know, just to warn you.” She snorted and pushed herself to her feet. “Dancing with you at that club years ago was the first time I’d felt anything in fifty years. I dunno how it works with Pam’s vamps.” She glanced at the blonde.
“Well, if you want to get tossed into jail, you go right ahead. Though if you happen to find my girlfriend on your meat hunt, I’ll snap you both like twigs.” Pam rolled her eyes. “I’m just telling you how it is. You two wanna talk in there?” She was glad she’d saved this girl, but she wasn’t anybody’s mama.
When it registered that she should be grateful to the two of them, Laura probably would thank them. At the moment she was just trying to figure things out.
"Sunlight is bad, right. Emotions don't exist, understood. Is there anything else I should know?" Laura finished the second bag and picked up a third one. She might as well gorge herself, "I think being snapped like a twig would be very inconvenient, for the record. And so would going to jail. It is just... hard to fight the instinct. This blood is helping."
“You’ll need permission to enter places. Shit, I’m going to need to tell Cass the truth.” Jubilee grimaced. She wasn’t looking forward to that. “There’s some other stuff but it can all wait.” She licked her fangs. She was going to miss snacking on Laura.
“Emotions exist, but there’s a time and a place for ‘em. Trust me, I get the instinct. I do. Maybe you can find some bums to snack on or something, but just running outta here when it’s dark and chomping on the first human you see is bad news.” Pam sighed. “I know it’s scary, just, you have to fight it, or you might as well have died when all this shit started to go wrong.”
The third bag emptied, Laura was starting to feel... full? She didn't think she needed another bag anyway. It was easier to focus on what Pam and Jubilee were trying to say to her. She hopped off the freezer and grabbed up the empties.
She really had just drank three bags of blood. Human blood. Her father's blood. She stared at them for a second, "I really am a vampire. I am really... a vampire. I died and then I didn't die and then I drank blood. I was just sleeping in a freezer. This is my life now."
She sounded like it was all finally dawning on her and she was a little stunned. But she shook the remote feeling of shock off and walked up to the door, then opened it, "I'm... alright."
Jubilee bounced in place a little bit, waiting to see if Laura was okay for hugs or not. She didn't want to push her yet. She remembered wanting space after.
"Yeah… you look all right." A little paler, but there was a flush thanks to the wolvie cola. It looked good on her. The flush, not the paleness. "We'll make the best of this. I brought your favorite goth makeup."
Pam tensed, just in case, but the girl finally seemed to have gotten through the rage part. “From what I’m understanding, you have some power thing where it might not last forever,” she said, a little nicer now that they were both a little calmer. “So I don’t know, hold on to that. But living this way’s a whole lot better than not living at all.” She’d made her peace with it long ago. She had a job, she had a house, she had a girl who loved her. She had kickass clothes and good money. Worked for her.
She looked at the clock. “Should be dark out in a little while. You could go find something to eat. You got somewhere windowless to be, or you wanna come back here?” She could handle the brunette, but the Jubilee girl had been getting on her damn nerves.
Wearing a bunch of goth makeup seemed a little stereotypical, but Laura thought she'd feel better with some eyeliner on and maybe a little blush. She'd feel more human, at least.
She glanced at Jubilee and then glanced back at Pam, "I guess I need permission to enter my house. We'll need to stock up on blood there, too. Hunting and feeding on small animals does not sound... filling. I wouldn't mind being allowed to stay here for a little while. Jubilee can go out in the sun but I can't."
Laura glanced down at the bloody dress she'd been wearing, and grimaced, "Do Vampires take showers? I think I need a change of clothing, at least. I just don't know what my body still needs and what it doesn't. Aside from... the blood."
"Yeah, you need to clean up. I brought you some clothing. And I've got Logan on speed dial for a warm meal. I know it's kinda weird but he can regen his blood like...really fast so it's not like you could accidentally kill him. 'cuz if you do it wrong they won't stop bleeding, or you'll snap a neck." In other words Laura needed practice.
“I shower when I feel like it.” Pam shrugged. “Or when I get all bloody, yeah. The hot and cold still feel nice on your skin. You can stay here if you want, for at least another day or so til you get a safe place.” She appreciated that the girl was being practical, instead of panicked. “If you’ve got clothes, you can go out at night and nobody’ll look twice at you.”
There were still an array of emotions Laura was experiencing about all of this, but they seemed faint and far away. Easy to compartmentalize, anyway. She could deal with them later, if she needed to.
For the time being, it was all about survival, though. She nodded her head at Pam, and then nodded at Jubilee, "The idea of using Logan as a warm meal is... very weird. Yes. I think I should avoid him. We can find something else. I'm not... hungry right now, anyway."
She turned to Pam again, then, "I think I would like to stay here for a little while, yes. I love Jubilee and I understand that you both saved my life, but you are ... less emotionally attached to this situation. I think I need that right now."
"Laura, his blood is special. It helps dull the...killer part," Jubilee insisted stubbornly. Laura had enough of that killer in her already, she absolutely needed to not have that part of her be even more alive. Or something.
Her shoulders fell when Laura asked to stay with Pam. "That's..probably a good idea."
“Why don’t you talk to this Logan guy,” Pam said. “Instead of just making plans. If he says yes, it might be easier. Cause you will need to eat a fuckload, and I know you’re special or something but I am totally capable of taking you down if you really get bloodlusty.” It wasn’t said to brag, just as a statement. “You’re new - even if you’ve got fancy powers, you’re dulled by getting used to these new vampire senses and shit. I’m not.”
She saw the girl Jubilee visibly wilt, and for once, she could understand. “I know you care, but that’s not what we need right now. You’d make decisions to make her happy, and sometimes that’s not how it works.”
"It helps dull the killer part." Laura repeated, shaking her head. She was a killer. No one could help that, and it wasn't Jubilee's fault. Drinking Logan's blood might help that a little bit, but the idea made something in Laura feel sick.
"I'm not special. I don't have any fancy powers yet. That was the problem, it's why she had to turn me. I have claws and it's only because of vampirism that I can pop them again. There isn't any reason to pick a fight with you. But Logan... Has bigger problems than me. He doesn't need to deal with this, too."
"You're his fucking daughter," Jubilee said, shaking her head. "He's always felt responsible for you over there, and he never got that chance here. Maybe I shoulda taken you to him instead but it's too late now. But no matter what else, no matter what other family he has or stuff he does, you and me and Kitty... We're his. We can always go to him. Always."
“Family doesn’t mean he’ll help.” Pam shrugged. “My mama doesn’t give two shits whether I live or die. But maybe this guy will. Just ... call him, but fucking stay here, I don’t know. All I know is that as long as you can’t go out in the sun, you can stay in that room. Or you can even come out and sit with me as long as you don’t say anything Goddamn stupid.” She could help, so she did.
"I only know I'm his daughter because I can smell it on his blood. He never claimed to be my father. He has a woman. He already has a vampire daughter. He has another child on the way. One he actually intends to raise." Laura realised talking about him was making her angry when there was an inch of claw sticking out of her fists. She took a deep breath and pushed them back inside.
Pam was the voice of reason, though, and she nodded at the woman, "But I'll call him. And I'll stay here. Out of the way, if you want."
"He'll come," Jubilee promised, folding her arms and staring her girlfriend down. Okay, part of her was jealous that Eli got to play at being Logan's daughter for awhile, but there was history for her. For all of them. Logan would come, and he'd probably yell at Jubilee which was okay, and he'd show concern in his own way.
“That shit isn’t my business.” Pam said bluntly. “I said I’d keep you alive, but I draw the line at playing Dr. Phil. If he’ll help you, fine, but no sitting in my crawl space talking about feelings.” Men left women. They fucked around. A lot more than women did. Tale as old as the hills.
"No one is asking you to be Dr. Phil. I do appreciate your efforts to keep me alive and out of jail. I can sit in the crawl space perfectly silently."
Laura was used to that in the dreams, anyway. First, you learned how to be alone. Then, you learned how to wait.
She looked past the two women, trying to figure out the layout of the place, "I would like to clean up first before I try to call him. Can you show me where the shower is?"
Jubilee rubbed at her arm. “Okay, I’m gonna go.” She wasn’t needed, and that hurt but she wasn’t going to show it, not with Queen Bitch Pamela the Vampire Cunt around. “I need to tell Cass anyway and it’s better in person.”
“Here, will you text me when you’re coming back? That way I don’t get nervous when there’s a knock at the door.” Pam gave the girl her number, sighing. “I won’t let anything happen to her.” It was as close to a promise as she could give.
As Jubilee turned to go, Laura reached out a hand and grabbed her arm. She knew Jubilee wasn't in a good place right now, and getting emotional in front of Pam was definitely out of the question, but she wanted to make sure the other woman was alright. She squeezed a bit, "I will talk to you soon. I am... not unhappy that this is how it went. It wouldn't be better if I was actually dead. I just need time to... adjust."
"I know, chica..." Jubilee squeezed her hand back, then took Pam's number. "I'll call first when I come back, yeah. Want me to see if I can talk Kit-kat into installing a camera system for you? In thanks, for everything."
She didn’t know who Kit-kat was, but the offer was appreciated. “It’s ok. You can if you want.” Pam figured she could at least make sure the Laura girl made it through first. “It’s been kind of earthquakey lately; don’t get caught up someplace.”
To Laura, she said, “Shower’s back in the corner there. Go back in the storage space, hang a left. It’s kinda tucked under the stairs, and there’s towels and shit in there.”
"Thank you." Laura nodded at both of them and then walked past them to go and find the shower. It was as heartfelt a thank you as she could muster, and she hoped they realised that it covered everything.
Jubilee watched her go, then glanced at Pam. "Okay I'm out." She wanted to wait until Pam was out of range of any stray beams of sun when she opened the door to the basement. And once she did she closed the door and turned into a bat. Maybe she could fly it off.