Alessandra Cavallaro (slaypire) wrote in zombieslogs, @ 2013-12-01 10:35:00 |
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Entry tags: | jondy, stefan salvatore |
Who: Jondy and Stefan
When: Flashback to 2003
What: Stefan meets a desperate kid and tries to help her
Where: Seattle, WA
Warnings: None
The year was 2003. The new version of Homeland Security was established and began operations. Interest rates hit an all time low inspiring a series of homeowners who couldn’t afford the mortgage. Finding Nemo and Kill Bill were lighting up big screens everywhere and bands like Coldplay and Limp Bizkit were dominating the airwaves. Pastels were in, Punk’d was a cult hit on television and Christina Aguilera was desperately trying to leave her squeaky clean Mickey Mouse Club image behind.
A twelve old girl who had only been free from her prison and the only home she had ever known for about sixteen months. Her hair had finally begun to grow out into a black shaggy mess. Her hair was still short enough that her barcode could still be seen. She tried to wear high collared jackets so that nobody would see and if they did, she would just run away too quickly for them to ask questions.
This young girl, let’s call her 5210, was very hungry. It had been a long time since she had eaten last at a homeless shelter that a kindly old lady had insisted on. Tonight she wasn’t so lucky and she had been eyeballing a grocery store from the parking lot for the better part of an hour. She took note of the shoppers, of the clerks, of store security. She learned their habits as she cased the place before she made her move. Quickly she darted into the store and began stuffing food into her jacket, as much as she could.
Stefan moved cautiously through the streets of Seattle. He was in town, expecting to go to a concert. It was Bon Jovi and no, he wasn’t following them, but it seemed that all of the artists and bands he wanted to see were in Seattle. It fit. So he got himself set up with an apartment and he would wait until they would arrive. They always came and went. He stepped inside of a store to get a few things. Dressed in jeans, boots, and a tshirt, he walked through the aisle’s, grabbing things here and there.
He kept to himself. He liked the quiet with the exception of going to concerts. He was a vampire, he could do what he wanted and as long as he wasn’t falling off the wagon as Lexi would say, he was doing fine. He wondered where she was though. Lexi seemed to pop in and out of his life, but when she did pop in, it wasn’t a coincidence. There was always something around the corner. Sometimes he wondered what his brother was doing, but the truth was, he hadn’t seen him in a long while. He hoped he was okay out there.
Turning his head, he overheard someone talking in the quiet store. He minded his business though, grabbing a few more items and heading toward the front. It wasn’t until he saw who the manager was talking to that he took a step back, watching. The manager looked like a giant compared to the small girl that he was yelling at … about what? Stefan listened and he was accusing her of shoplifting. He paused, waiting for someone to come her rescue, she couldn’t be here on her own. She was just a kid. When no one claimed her, he set his things in a basket and grabbed onto the handles, making his way over.
“Is there a problem?” Stefan asked, looking from the guy to the young girl.
“Yes,” the store clerk replied. “This girl is stealing and she’s going to jail where the little juvenile delinquent belongs.” 5210 was afraid, she was afraid of this man who would inevitably call other men who would call others then until they eventually got to the men who would take her away. They would take her back to Manticore and she would be punished for her transgressions, imprisoned again, forced to live the lie that the outside world was filled with corruption and filth.
Her bright blue eyes looked up at Stefan. He didn’t look quite like a man but he was no boy either. He was trapped in that in between state that 5210 had yet to understand. She learned quickly but undoing ten years of brainwashing was a job unto itself. She kicked the store clerk in the shin when Stefan provided the perfect cover story and then zoomed out of the supermarket. Halfway outside she realized her mistake. There were probably cameras in the store. They could call the police, the police would view the tapes and see the girl who could move faster than what was normal by human standards. Manticore would find out, she would go back.
Right now her basic survival instincts overrode her higher functioning and she crouched down behind a truck in the back of the parking lot and began to rip open the packets of food, stuffing it and shoving it into her mouth as fast as possible. She would need to run away soon which meant she had to eat quickly.
Stefan and the store clerk watched her as she went, quickly and Stefan frowned at that, wondering if she was a vampire. It was his first reaction. The clerk started to get angry and Stefan stopped him by placing a hand on his chest. When the store clerk looked him at, Stefan locked his own eyes on the man. “She was never here, there’s no problem here,” he compelled and the guy nodded, repeating what Stefan had just said. He figured the kid was gone by now, so he went up to the register and paid for what he got before leaving.
He moved toward the back of the store, through the parking lot and back to his apartment, but he stopped, taking a step back then and seeing her behind a truck stuffing her face full of food.
“Hey,” he said, not sure why he wasn’t just walking on. She would be fine as far as shoplifting in that store was concerned, but he was genuinely worried about her and wondered where her parents were. She looked up at him and he could see that fear in her eyes and he shook his head as moved closer. “It’s okay, he’s not mad at you anymore,” he said, squatting down in front of her. He opened up his bag and pulled out an apple, offering it to her. “I don’t need it,” he smiled. “You can have it.”
5210 stared at the stranger suspiciously for a long moment. She didn’t think that he had intended to create the diversion that she needed to get away. Yet it kept her firmly rooted in place. That and the apple he held out towards. Manners were a foreign concept not yet learned by 5210. She reached out and snatched the apple from out of Stefan’s hand. She began to munch on the apple, savoring in the sweet juice even as it ran down her chin. She felt gratitude towards the stranger but was unsure of how to express it so she just looked over at him for a minute.
She was twelve years old but unlike her peers, she wasn’t going through that prepubescent uncomfortable in your own skin phase. 5210 didn’t go through phases because she wasn’t a person. People couldn’t do the things that she could do. People had parents and food and warm places to stay. x5210 was nothing more than a teenage runaway, living on the streets of Seattle. She had heard rumors that not only was it warmer, but down south was a better place for the homeless to live. She was slowly making her way south.
“What do you want?” she asked him in a dark voice. Why was he here? Most people turned their nose up at her or looked away quickly like they couldn’t stand to look at her. It worked in her favor, because if they didn’t look at her, they couldn’t turn her over. They didn’t see her. That was her goal. She was the invisible girl. But this guy? This guy could see her.
“Nothing.” His answer was simple because he didn’t want anything. Not from her. He moved though and sat down, leaning against the truck that she was hiding behind. No one came for her and she wasn’t going to anyone either. It was pretty easy to assume that she was on her own, just like he was, but it was different for him. He wasn’t some kid. And plus, he preferred to be alone. She probably was separated from her family, or they had died or something. Why else would she be shoplifting food that should already be provided for her.
Grabbing the bag, he pulled out another apple for her. She snatched that one too and he wondered when the last time she ate was.
“Where’s your family?” He asked. Maybe if she could tell him where they were, he could probably help her find them, but the truth was, he wasn’t even sure if he believed she had one. She was dirty and she didn’t look well cared for.
“Are they dead?”
5210 stopped eating for a moment and thought about her brothers and sisters. She thought about Zack, the leader. He had been the oldest of them and had lead the mission to escape. She thought about Ben who she had always been especially close with. He was so sensitive, she worried about how he handled this dangerous terrain they called the outside world. And then she thought about Max, the youngest of the group. 5210 and Max had spent long nights telling one another stories because unlike their siblings neither one of them required much sleep. She wondered where they were. She wondered if they were alive, if they had been caught, if they were doing okay out there. She had a family, a family she had to forget. Family would get you caught. Family could get you killed.
“I don’t have a family,” she said and she shrugged. “What do you care?” She saw his eyes graze over the back of her neck and she self consciously pulled her jacket collar up to cover the skin there. He had kind eyes, she noticed but they were foreign to her and she didn’t trust it. She didn’t trust the easy way he had about him, didn’t recognize the empathy.
“Are you going to call the police?” she asked him. Not that she would believe him even if he said no. She had made that mistake more than once before. She looked him over quickly before getting up. Without warning she darted away into the darkness of the city.
He wondered why there was a barcode tattoo on the back of her neck and when she noticed him looking, she covered up, but he didn’t ask, not then and probably not ever. And he assumed right. She didn’t have a family. Family didn’t leave you out on the street like this, at least not at a young age, not for a normal girl which for the time being, that’s all she was to him. A normal girl. Left alone and to fend for herself.
“I was just curious,” he said honestly and shook his head when she asked if he was going to call the police. Actually, it was the opposite. He was going to try and get her a place to stay for the night, get cleaned up. She wasn’t his responsibility, but at least he could help. For one day before he was on his way again. But she was gone. He watched after her and it was like she was just a blur. Getting up quickly, he grabbed the bag and the few things she left behind in her hurry to get away from him.
He caught up with her quickly, a few blocks down the road, walking amongst the people around her. He didn’t want to frighten her, he just wanted to give her the things she left behind and then he’d be on his way. When he found his opportune moment, he grabbed her arm and pulled her into an alley. He let go, holding his hand up. “It’s okay, you just left a few things.” He pulled out from his bag some of the things she shoplifted from the store and handed them to her.
“If you need a place to stay for the night, get cleaned up, I have a spot,” he said, looking down at her. He probably shouldn’t be taking in a kid, but he figured he’d done a lot of bad things in his life. He separated families, killed off entire villages, he was still paying for that in his own way and helping her was just another tick on the redemption clock that was just turning whether he liked it or not.
“I’m going out tonight. You’ll have the place to yourself.” He didn’t care, there wasn’t anything in there that she could take that he would really care about. “Beats sleeping on the streets, right?”
She eyed him carefully. It wasn’t the first time a stranger had offered her a place to stay for the night but they sometimes wanted things from her. They wanted to touch her. When it happened to her she didn’t care for the touch so she had dislocated his jaw before ransacking his house and taking off again. Yeah, either way it was better than sleeping on the streets.
“I don’t sleep,” she said to him. “But okay.” She walked a few steps beside him before she looked up at him with some wonder. “How’d you catch up with me anyway?” 5210 was extremely fast. She could run faster than the human eye could follow. She and her siblings had liked to call it “blurring”. It would take an extraordinarily being to catch up with her like that. Was he one of them. Without warning she reached up and grabbed his collar. She was tall for her age, rapidly approaching six feet at five foot eight. She let go of him before he could push her hands away.
“You have no barcode. How did you catch up with me?” She eyed him again, half ready to bolt. The only thing that held her back was that she thought he might actually catch up to her.
“How’d you get away so fast?” he asked and rubbed the back of his own neck. So there were more like her. Good to know. He would have thought that she was a vampire, but there weren’t any screaming signals that alerted him of that. So it was her, she was different, but she was asking about him. He wasn’t going to tell her that he was a vampire. There was no reason she needed to know that.
“I guess I just run really fast. And you have a distinct look about you,” he grinned. “Unique. I just spotted you,” he lied as they walked. The apartment he was staying in wasn’t far. “What’s with the barcode? There’s more like you?” He asked her curiously as they got to the apartment building. He stopped and looked at her.
“You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to, it’s okay. We can both just say we’re pretty fast and leave it at that.” It was a simple negotiation of sorts because he’d never tell and she was dropping him hints left and right. Hints to what? He wasn’t sure. He didn’t get the barcode, he’d never seen it before, but he honestly didn’t think he’d research it to find out either.
Opening the door, he held it open for her. “After you. It’s upstairs on the left.”
His apartment was warm and 5210 stood in the middle of the room looking around for a long time. This place was really nice. Even nicer than the nice things that she had seen before, not counting television though. Everything looked fancy through that magical screen. “You’re rich,” she noted. Her eyes sought out the valuable things pretty quickly as she assessed the place. Since he seemed okay with her making herself at home she started to look around. She was essentially casing the place.
“Where’s the bathroom?” she asked. He motioned down the hallway and she closed the door behind her. She ran the water in the sink for a little while and let it get nice and warm before she splashed it onto her face. Hot water a luxury not always afforded by all and she would take advantage of it while she could. There was even a clean towel for her to dry her face on. She looked in the mirror, haunted blue eyes stared back, almost too big for her small face. Maybe she would grow into them one day.
She walked back down the hall and saw Stefan sitting in the living room. She chewed nervously on the inside of her cheek before she sat down on the sofa near the chair he was sitting in.
Stefan was sitting in the chair, watching something on the tv, but he was listening to her in the bathroom. The water ran and then it was off and here she was. He looked at her for a moment as she sat down and then went back to the tv. He had to leave soon and despite all of the ‘nice’ things in his apartment, none of it mattered, everything that mattered was somewhere else and he didn’t expect her to keep her hands to herself in that aspect. He kind of expected it.
He handed her the remote and got up. “You can watch what you like.” He pointed to the kitchen. “There’s a few things in there that you can have, take what you want if you’re hungry.” He pointed down the hall, “Across from the bathroom is an extra room. You can sleep there tonight. I should be back around midnight.” He didn’t have a way for her to get in contact with him while he was gone, but he didn’t expect her to contact him anyway. He left the room and it was his turn to close the door behind him in the bathroom as he took a shower and got himself ready for tonight.
He hoped that Lexi would show up, but he didn’t hold his breath … if he had any. Bon Jovi was their thing and he’d been going to as many of their concerts as he possibly could in order to seek her out, to see how she was, but so far he came up with nothing. Tonight was important, he had to go, he couldn’t stay behind.
When he emerged from the bathroom ready to go, he walked out and didn’t see her there, but he could hear her.
“Are you going to be alright?”
While Stefan was in the shower she took him up on his offer of food. She had just eaten a lot of it but quickly. She hadn’t had time to savor the flavor of it. Everything had Manticore had been very generic and tasteless. Food was fuel for soldiers, that was the it was the only thing it was good for. Whoever thought that had never tasted potato chips. Stefan had a bag and she tore into them and sat down in front of the television. She flipped around until she found a cartoon.
By then Stefan had emerged asking her if she would be alright. She was surprised that he was actually going to leave her alone in his apartment. His apartment full of really nice things because he was obviously rich. She could tell just by the way he was dressed that he was rich. Money was just paper really but everyone had to have it. 5210 needed it.
“You’re very trusting,” she remarked. “I’m a stranger that you caught stealing and you’re going to just let me stay in your apartment while you’re gone?” She realized she may be jeopardizing her own stay but she had to ask it because it was shocking to her. 5210 had never seen real altruism before and didn’t understand it.
“There’s nothing in this apartment that I’m going to miss,” he said honestly. They were just things, possessions that took up space. Whatever he truly cared about was gone, roaming wherever he was roaming and the other was hopefully walking the streets to Seattle. There was only one way to find out though and that was if he left.
She was practically stuffing her face with the chips and he just grinned slightly before walking into the kitchen. He grabbed a bottle of bourbon that was on the counter and hid it away, just in case. He cleaned up a little bit in the kitchen before walking out to the living room. He had a few minutes to kill before he really had to go and to be honest, he could leave at any time.
“What’s your name?” He asked. She seemed hesitant and he could understand why. She was kid that was on the streets, stealing food. Why would she even tell him her name? He didn’t expect her to, but he just looked at the tv for a second before looking back at her. She still wasn’t telling, not then anyway and he nodded.
“I’m Stefan.”
How lucky for him! To have an apartment filled with beautiful things that he wouldn’t even miss. He didn’t even understand what he truly had. 5210 filled with envy as she looked around. She would miss these things, because these things could be traded for currency and people like her didn’t have nearly enough of it. Was he encouraging her to steal his stuff? She was confused by him.
Stefan, that was a name that 5210 had never heard before. Steve, Stephen even, sure. But Stefan? It sounded like an old fashioned kind of name but she liked it. She debated for a moment about names. She didn’t technically have one. She had a designation, 5210. Those were the last four numbers in her barcode, her designation was actually far longer than that. But he had asked for a name. Her siblings back at Manticore had all named one another and they had affectionately referred to her as Jondy. 5210 felt like a Jondy in her heart but hearts were personal and meant to be kept all to yourself so 5210 did not give Stefan that name.
“Johanna,” she finally said. She had heard that name on television and she had liked it. Wherever 5210 went she used a different name. That was the way she would have to live for the rest of her life in this world. Using the name Jondy could lead Manticore right to her. They were aware of the names they had given each other and Jondy wasn’t your usual sort of name. But many years later as she was living as an adult in San Francisco she would use the alias Johanna Stefan for years.
“Well, alright Johanna,” he said, giving her a small smile as he got up. She knew where everything was, everything that she’d need and she was just a kid, he didn’t know the damage that she could actually do, not really. He didn’t know what the barcode represented either, but for some reason he was okay with leaving her in his apartment. An apartment he didn’t care much for anyway, it was just here with him for a few while he stayed in Seattle hoping that Lexi would show up, but he knew that she probably wouldn’t and he’d be gone again.
His eyes drifted to the television and whatever she was watching as she made a mess on the couch with the chips. After a few minutes, he looked back at her.
“Just don’t burn the place down. I”ll be back soon.”
With that he grabbed his coat and put it on and gave her one last look. He wasn’t sure if she’d be there when he got back. He wasn’t sure if she was going to take everything she could for a few extra bucks. At least if she had a few hours where she didn’t have to be subjected to whatever was waiting for her on the streets, that was fine with him.
She just stared plaintively at the door as Stefan retreated. She was waiting for the trap or the trick. There was no way that anybody was that trusting. Unless he really was just so rich that he didn’t care about his stuff. She looked around, silently calculating how much all of this stuff was worth. She could stay in a hotel! She could take the longest hottest shower ever and sit in the tub and just let the hot water pour down on her.
Of course, she could do that here too. Stefan was nice, Stefan was rich. She bet he had a really nice bathtub. She stood up, potato chip crumbs falling to the floor as she walked over to the bathroom. Pulling the shower curtain open her eyes were wide as she took in the large claw foot bathtub. That was some bathtub. She took a long bath, until her skin was wrinkly and her skin had turned a bright pink color. She ruined the effect when she put back on her dirty clothes but it hadn’t been about getting clean anyway.
She walked back to the sofa and curled up on the edge of it. Her eyelids drooped as she watched some ridiculous show about a family named Bluth. They drove a very impractical car. Her eyelids drooped more. What could it hurt to stay a few more days? Then she would rob the place blind and leave. Yeah, that’s what she would do. Her eyes closed, darkness ensued and 5210 had the best night of sleep she ever had in her whole life.