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Chapter Text

Something just… wasn’t right about the man with wiry hair and silly sunglasses who approached her- he seemed twitchy, betrodden with something weighing in his mind as he mumbled to himself, something she could only hear once he was closer. She was thankfully, standing in an open and public area- he couldn’t outright attack her, unless he was extremely crazy. Still, she was afraid he was about to ask her for something- money, drugs, the silver ring on her pinkie finger, and attack her if she didn’t oblige. As he stopped and peered over his sunglasses, his stare shook her to the core, anxiety eating at her chest for the split second it took for her to open her mouth. 

“Um… can I help you..?” Her voice rang out, sounding almost too loud as she stared into his heterochromatic eyes. She clutched her purse close to her side, ready to discard her heels and sprint if he turned violent. He just had such an unsettling, unstable aura around him- it made her hair stand on end.

Before the man opened his mouth, she felt the cold tendril of clarity ghost over her brain, her anxiety spiking for the slightest second before smoothing out as the fearful feelings she had towards the man instantly changed. “It’s your friend, Dale. Don’t you remember?” he laughed a little- like a mad hatter. “We were going to that party back at my place.”

Nodding slowly, she allowed herself to be led away. That made sense- she had been waiting for someone outside of the restaurant. Walking away with her friend, she ignored the strange people walking down the sidewalk who had been waving her down, before they’d given up as she passed, into the den of the beast. 

~~~

“...Good evening, my fellow Kindred,” Sebastian LaCroix greeted, cold eyes sweeping the poor turnout for his summons. He had to quell the quiet rage at that fact- it was disrespectful, the way he was regarded by the Kindred in the L.A. area. He’d have to make note of who hadn’t come, watch for any further insurrection from them. 

He continued to speak in a cool, detached manner as he paced the stage, glancing at the accused and his limp little Fledgling every so often, between perfectly timed glances at the audience and hand motions that conveyed a range of emotions he didn’t truly feel in that moment.

In reality, he was more irritated than he was passionate- a high ranking Malkavian, an old Kindred and a pretty decently reliable (for a Malkavian) associate, breaking a law that was so simple to follow. The turning of a victim was a ritual, it wasn’t something done by accident. What had been so important about this unassuming girl that would make him break the law after all of these years? And why now of all times, when the tension between the Camarilla and that damned Anarch faction was so high?   

His eyes swept the crowd as often as he could as he talked, making sure they knew he was talking to them and not some non-present audience. These were rules they all needed to follow, and he really had to drive that fact home. He caught the Anarchs whispering amongst themselves with a twitch of his eyebrow, and the lingerie-clad Toreador girl blow a kiss at Maximillian Strauss. Others were watching with faces ranging from bored to bloodthirsty.

“...The accused that sits before you tonight was not refused permission, indeed, my permission was never sought at all. They were caught, shortly after the embrace of this Childe,” he said, throwing a glance towards the girl who was struggling a little in the arms of one of his guards, glancing every which way in a frenzied manner. Likely the dementation from her cursed clan taking effect, weakening her mind and filling it with the sound of voices, paranoia, other such mental afflictions. With the cursed blood of Mad Malkov, who knew in which way the Fledgling’s madness would manifest? It didn’t matter- she wouldn’t be alive along enough for anyone to find out. 

Pushing aside the strange seedling of remorse he felt towards the Childe, he continued on, hands clasped behind his back. “...but as some of you may know, the penalty for this transgression is death. Know that I am no more adjudicator than I am a servant to the law that governs us all.” 

Despite how important of a speech this was, Sebastian felt much like he was just going through the motions, speaking to a disinterested, unwilling audience. He just wanted to get this over with so he could return to his office- he had a stack of paperwork to attend to that he had left as soon as he’d had word of the Malkavian’s transgression. The proceedings were hastily thrown together, he was given a week to carry out the execution, a timeframe given by the elders who weren’t even present for it. 

Figures, they’d dump the dirty work on to him. 

Sebastian waved his hand as he gave the order to have the Malkavian man executed, the man’s head being lobbed off by the Sheriff’s blade as his flesh and bones turned to ash. Unfortunate but necessary, in order to fully display Sebastian’s hold on the power of the LA division of the Camarilla, and show to the Elders that he was capable of maintaining order and making sure his subjects were law-abiding. He dismissed the horrified gasps in the crowd as he turned to pace towards the Childe. 

“...Which leads to the fate of the ill-begotten progeny.” He continued, addressing the crowd and their mixed reaction. Therese Voerman was stone-faced as always, the lingerie-clad Toreador was no longer looking at the stage, her hand covering her eyes, the small group of Anarchs that followed Nines were openly displaying their rage and hatred, while Issac Abrams, leader of the Hollywood Anarchs, and his Childe were watching with a more thinly-veiled displeasure. 

“Without a sire, most Childer are doomed to walk the Earth, never knowing their place, their responsibility, and most importantly, the laws they must obey, therefore I have made the decision to-”

“This is bullshit!”

~~~

“Go fetch me a damn blood pack,” Sebastian barked at the Ventrue guard who had been in charge of watching the Fledgling before the execution. The Ventrue Kindred scurried off, happy to be of service (more like happy to gain brownie points with the Prince), while Sebastian turned his attention to the fearful Fledgling in front of him. 

Her eyes were looking around wildly, flinching every so often from some unseen voice. A damn Malkavian, as if his problems weren’t numerous enough, now having some new, insane project to keep his eye on. He snapped his fingers in her face, catching her attention away from the ghostly whispers which plagued her. 

“I am sorry for the proceedings you had to witness today- law and order, after all, is such a fickle thing to balance.” Sebastian searched her face, as she seemed to be doing to him. The mad clan’s stare was always so… unsettling. Though her’s had a note of fear in it, too, which was fitting since she had witnessed him give the order to kill off her sire. He continued, anyway, “As such, to preserve the order, I’ve allowed you to live, despite myself. You’re my responsibility, now, and many are watching to see how I will proceed. You’ve been sired in very troubling times for our Camarilla, I hope you realize just the weight you may have in our new society…”

The Malkavian fledgling continued to stare, unsettlingly into his soul- to the point where he nearly felt compelled to look away, lest her insight give away the cards he held close to his chest. Her eyes were large and doe-like, one icy blue and the other a honey yellow, and if it weren’t for their mad tilt, they might have been considered cute, by kine standards, at least. He wondered very briefly if they were heterochromatic before or after her Embrace. She had short, chestnut-brown bangs, and the rest of her hair pulled up into a ponytail that curled slightly. If it weren’t for the blood staining her ripped up shirt, she could have just passed as a startlingly pale kine, some kind of movie star or some other Toreador occupation. 

“Who…” she said, quietly, eyes narrowing a little as if she were listening to something, before her face lit up. “Jester-Prince of the sand tower is missing his pail, turn it over and it’s full of crabs!” She said with a delighted little giggle. 

Sebastian’s forehead creased with confusion and offense. “You’d do well to refrain from repeating the things you hear from your ghostly little friends, lest you come across a kindred unwilling to humor your rantings. Your insight is nothing more than insane babbling, Child of Malkov.” he snapped, taking a small step back as he stared at her incredulously. He quickly tried to compose himself, assured that it really was just insane babbling- no fledgling Malkavian could spout true prophecies straight from the Embrace, it just wasn’t natural. 

The Ventrue attendant returned with a blood back, which she then handed to the Fledgling. The Fledgling glanced between the two, before looking down at the blood pack she was holding. “Drink, I’m sure you’re famished after the events of this evening.” Sebastian said, waving away the attendant once more. The Fledgling did so, pressing her teeth into the bag with an air of uncertainty and slight embarrassment, before hunger won over and she slurped it down near animalistically. 

Once the pack was empty, she turned her eyes back up to the ‘Jester-Prince’, a new clarity in her gaze. She seemed a little calmer now, too, as if the blood staved off either the volume or her fear of the voices that had encaptured her attention previously. Now that she was able to walk without stumbling, he began to lead her towards the back door, wanting to get this interaction over with. “You will refer to me as Prince LaCroix, fledgling. To judge whether you deserved my mercy, I’ll be sending you on a trial to Santa Monica, where you will meet with an associate of mine by the name of Mercurio. Do you have a name you wish to go by, childe? Or rather, do you remember yours from when you were a human?”

The childe tapped her chin in an exaggerated display of thought, before giving up and shrugging. “The human version is dead and gone, the moniker for such a life should follow,” she replied, unhelpfully, with a sure nod. 

Sebastian sighed and resisted the urge to just… do away with the Fledgling there, muttering a “Quel souci…” What a bother… under his breath. “I’ll refer to you as the name on your identification card, Chiyo. I trust you’ll find your own way to Santa Monica.” He half hoped she’d get swept up by predators so he wouldn’t have to deal with her any longer, though he knew that might look bad for him, considering he was responsible for her now. “Actually,” he paused from that thought, pulling out a cell phone to call up a cab for the girl. “Go through that warehouse, to the front doors, and there will be a cab waiting to take you to a temporary haven in Santa Monica. I trust you’ll be able to find that on your own, at the very least. Mercurio shall be contacting you through an email service an associate of mine will be setting up for you, safe travels.”

The girl- Chiyo, was still just staring at him as he turned to leave, and he gave her an expectant look, prompting her to speak. “Something’s coming...” she said eerily, eyes wide and staring straight into his. Whatever fear she’d had of him previously either dissipated in conversation, or was set aside by the arrival of some new ghostly prophecy. Immediately, they heard the thunderous footsteps of approaching- and one, punctuating roar that could only belong to a Sabbat agent who didn’t care about the Masquerade. 

Sebastian waved her away towards the warehouse as his hulking Sheriff approached from behind him. “Just... go. My Sheriff will take care of the Sabbat, you should leave before you end up as a quick meal for some lowly shovelhead.”

The fledgling gave a short nod, her multi-colored eyes sweeping over his form once more before she stalked off, seeming to be muttering to herself. 

The Camarilla Prince let out a long suffering sigh as the Sabbat mongrels showed up on the opposite side of the alley that he was exiting, feeling the ghost of a headache beginning to pound at his temples. The 3 shouted words from that Anarch bastard had just made his life that much more difficult. 

Chapter Text

Santa Monica was a city foreign yet familiar to the fledgling Malkavian- she’d been there before with some friends, back in college, to peruse the pier and hang out by the beach. It was a pretty dead town, but it had its merits- the beach, in her time, had never been all that busy, nor had the attractions on the pier. But now... she was seeing it now in a completely different light- full of vampires. If 2-weeks-ago Chiyo heard that, she would have laughed. If middle-school-Chiyo heard that, she would have been so giddy and excited- probably would have begged her parents to take her there so she could ~mysteriously disappear~ into a YA Vampire novel-like adventure. The thought brought a fond smile to her face. 

Her dwellings on the past came to a halt as the cabbie dropped her off in front of a pawn shop, handing her a key with some kind of… knowing look. “Above the Pawn Shop,” he said, voice low. 

The Fledgling took the key and flashed a grin, “Thanks, First One,” she chirped, slipping out of the car and heading towards the apartment above the Pawn Shop. Her key slipped into the lock, accompanied by the sound of whispers in her ear. He’s coming. Cranberry sauce. Ever since she woke up in that hotel room, they’ve followed her everywhere... whispering things she wouldn’t have known otherwise- all buried deep in stuff that likely wasn’t real- like the one that whispered ‘Cane’ over and over when she was in the taxi. The man didn’t even have a cane, so she had no clue what the voice was trying to tell her. That he was into caning? Not her cup of tea, but who was she to kinkshame? She was a walking-talking-bumbling vampire-kink-haver’s wet dream. 

Chiyo knew, to an extent, she’d always been a little… mentally not all there- as a human (such a weird thing to think, that she wasn’t human anymore), she’d suffered with bouts of mania and depression (and admittedly some pretty severe paranoia, but that was due to a particularly messy break up with a man that she knew full well could have killed her if he so pleased, but oh well. Men.)-- which she had just gotten a handle on when that man had approached her. She couldn’t even fully remember his face- just those eyes, those unsettling eyes. She wondered if her’s looked like that now.

As bad as her mental health seemed to be back then, it was never… this. At least half of the time she wasn’t really fully aware of what she was doing or saying- like the curse had trapped the logical part of her brain (that was carefully combing over her new condition) behind a wall. Most of the time, like that instance as she entered her new haven, she felt close to normal. It was all just… very random. She didn’t have a clue yet what caused her to act weird, like a “Malkavian”, and what allowed her to act normal. It was all just weird.

As she looked around her new abode, she could tell that this apartment had been… very well lived in. And a huge step down from the one she’d spent months saving up for. Ugh. Grimy, peeling wallpaper revealed equally grimy drywall, the floorboards were slightly rotted and they creaked when walked on, not to mention they seemed to be very hastily covered in a rug that looked like it had been dragged out of the dumpster. The metal bed frame in the corner was rusted and old, the mattress slightly askew with a bunch of questionable stains. She didn’t even want to get into how disgusting the bathroom was. Even in the deepest pits of a depression episode, she never felt as disgusting as she did just standing in the middle of her new studio apartment. 

First things first, she bounded over to the desk, looking over the papers waiting for her- one which told her the password to her new, old beat up laptop, and one from a man named Maximillian Strauss. King, a voice whispered, and she shook her head to shoo it away. Opening up the laptop, she found an Email from Mercurio, Mercury, just as the Jester-Prince said there would be in an Email before that, as well as a Penis-Enlargement ad, very nice, something about a crime-puter, and one from ‘a friend’. She didn’t dwell on who that friend was or their puzzling Email, as she stepped away from the desk to let her eyes sweep the sad excuse of an apartment again. Her Jester-Prince had very kindly left her with a little money, so she found a corner store to buy cleaning supplies and other such necessities for setting up shop in that new apartment, figuring she could put off meeting Mercury for later- he was likely fleet-footing around to collect and distribute his messages and parcels, anyway, and he’d require her assistance by the next sunset. 

While scrubbing the tiles in the shower, Chiyo thought of her old apartment and what would happen to it now that she couldn’t really go back. How long had she even been away from it? Had anyone been by to feed her cat? That brought a childish pout to her lips. The Jack had said she needed to leave everything and everyone from her old life behind, but her cat was not just anyone. Usually the kind older lady next door would go in and feed her cat when she was absent for a long time, so she didn’t have to worry about him going hungry, but… Dammit that was her cat! No giant organization of spooky vampires could take that away from her. She grew a little excited when she thought of reuniting with her beloved, plus if she went to get her cat, she could grab a few of her things while she was there--only the necessities. 

She only had a few hours of moonlight left, but still, the fledgling stood and tugged on a coat the Jack had been kind enough to spare, before she stole away to her old apartment in Hollywood for her belongings. 

~~~

Prince LaCroix stood in the middle of the fledgling’s haven with his Sheriff looming behind him, looking around with his face pulled into an expression of distaste. The studio apartment was much more rundown than he’d thought it was- though it seemed as though the Fledgling was crafty enough to make it… something. 

The places where the wallpaper had been peeling or particularly stained seemed to be mostly covered up by posters and paintings, and an easel stood beside the bathroom with a half-finished painting on it, showing that she seemed to be the source of the artwork. The work wasn’t bad- it was clear she had some technical knowledge, and he wondered briefly if and where she had learned- her art managed to be stylistic, while still doing a fair job at mimicking that of the classics- if given the right recognition and time, she very well could have carved herself a permanent spot in L.A.’s art scene, though at this level her work was still a little amateurish. 

He drew closer to the easel to see what she was working on, when his nose picked up the very distinct scent of cat shit, his head turning to see a litter box jammed in the corner of the small bathroom, likely belonging to the black cat that had been furiously hissing and spitting at him from the bed. God, he hated cats.

While he was surveying how the Fledgling had cleaned up the shitty apartment, he heard the sound of footsteps, keys jingling, and the Fledgling’s voice, so he turned towards the door with his hands clasped behind his back, cold and critical gaze ready. 

“...I know! He was trying to climb your leg like a slug, and just as slimy and gross as one too,” Her voice rang out with a melodic laugh as the lock turned over and she entered the room, the rustle reusable bags following. Her eyes widened upon falling on the Jester-Prince, in the middle of her shitty apartment, and she sputtered for a moment. “I’ll ring you up later, Jeannie, something just came up…” she said, snapping the clanky, early 2000s cellphone closed, and dropping it into her pocket. 

LaCroix looked so out of place in such a dirty apartment, and Chiyo could only wonder just how much trouble she was in to get a personal visit from the man and his hulking Sheriff. “Um… hi?” Then her ears finally picked up the sound of her cat’s distress over the overlapping, excited voices that were ringing in her ears. “Oh, Bastard, hush!”

Now, it was the Prince’s turn to sputter. “What in the devil did you just call me-”

The Fledgling’s hands raised and waved quickly, a nervous (and probably slightly deranged) laugh falling from her lips. “No, nononono!!! That’s his name, Bastard, not- not yours, you’re the Je- um, Prince. Sorry, shit, sorry,” she gently smacked the side of her head, her skin twitching a little from the mistake. Everything she did now felt so exaggerated and over-the-top.

“It’s… quite alright, I suppose.” Sebastian replied, trying not to chuckle at such a name. That’s what he’d name one of those hell beasts, it didn’t seem like something an obvious cat-lover would have picked out. He shoved aside the urge to inquire how she came to name it that, instead getting down to the matter at hand. “I’m here to inquire as to how you’re progressing in your trial run. I haven’t received any progress report from you, nor have you spoken to Mercurio about it yet, so I’m quite in the dark as to where you are in that. This is a trial you know, so your level of success in my eyes does partially depend on how swiftly you complete it.”

“Oh!! Well, um-”

“And I see that you’ve time to paint, chat, shop, and re-acquire your feline, yet the warehouse remains standing. Have you given up? Because your existence in this society, this haven, even, rides on whether or not you’re a useful asset, you know.” Sebastian finished, not once faltering in his critical glare, even as her dark-colored lips were pulled into a childish pout. 

“I haven’t given up!” She affirmed quickly, setting down her reusable bags on the bed and picking up her cat, which calmed immediately in her arms. “I’ve… the daughters of Janus, you see, the dark one has a feud with the Nosferatu that has sent him into hiding! The light one is helping me win back the favor of the dark one by defeating a group of painted canvases and grabbing a pot of gold!”

Sebastian felt a stress headache begin to come on. Damn Malkavians and their riddles, he swore it was impossible to get a straight answer out of any of them. He took a step forward, much to the displeasure of the cat in her arms, which wiggled free and trotted to the other side of the apartment, far from the Prince. He was tempted to use Dominate on her to get her to just leave and blow the damn warehouse into the pacific, but he wanted her to exercise loyalty to him by her own free will. It was never good to have an operative that needed to be Dominated every time he needed them to do something for him. He caught her chin between two fingers, making sure her eyes stayed on his. “I expect the warehouse to be dust by next sunrise, do I make myself clear, Childe?”

The Fledgling was silent, her eyes piercing into his, before she nodded, feeling thoroughly chastised. “Clear as crystal.” she replied, turning her head a little to free her chin from his grip. A very, very small act of defiance that did not go unnoticed by the Prince. She looked back up at him, by her own free will this time, the gears very clearly turning in her head as she listened… Jester’s a purveyor of the arts. “How’d you like the paintings?”

Sebastian’s eyes narrowed, how did she- “Ah, yes, your… silly little art projects,” he said, taking measured steps towards one hanging on the wall close to her bed. There was no real reason why, but he didn’t want to reveal the fact that he had been admiring them while he waited for her. The painting in question was a beastly piece of a deer with it’s entrails strewn about, and she had done a well enough job of capturing the deer in what seemed to be mid-horrified scream. “Quite gruesome. Was this done within the past few days, or previous to your Embrace?” He couldn’t help but ask.

“Previously, it won the blue ribbon in my University’s Gallery show, and I nearly ended up with coin for the canvas,” was her reply, as she looked at it fondly. It was the first award she’d ever won for her art, and the first time being offered money for her art. “But I didn’t want it to end up someone’s mantle piece, it came from my dreams.”

“I see…” So perhaps she’d been a little unstable even before her embrace. That would be something to note for the future, perhaps. Either way, it was back to business, as he strode towards the door. “Don’t give me any need to visit you again.” The Sheriff silently followed him out, having to duck to pass through her door, and then Chiyo was left alone once more. 

“Don’t give me any need to visit you again, nyeh!” She mimicked in a silly tone, throwing a pouty glance towards her kitty. “Who does that Jester think he is, anyway?” she asked her cat- or rather, talked out loud, though she made it out so she was talking to Bastard. If she had a recipient for her rantings, it made her feel a little more… stable. She didn’t like feeling unstable- a weird thing to declare to herself, considering the way she talked now, but it was still true. 

Silently, she moved back to what she had been planning to do when she got home- put away the cat food and art supplies she’d bought, and go back to just… thinking. About her condition- it was nice to parse out the details of how she felt and reacted to it all, it made her feel slightly more in control.

She noticed by now that there were a few specific and kinda weird things about her condition (things that she wrote down in her notebook, it helped her to sort her thoughts and sort what was real from what wasn’t), such as the fact that she was often compelled to blurt out certain things the voices said with no real reason as to why she said somethings and not others, and also sometimes lost the ability to speak about things clearly- which was growing somewhat frustrating to her. It was like the words she tried to speak in normal conversion were stuck behind a paywall, and the price was blood. When talking about certain things, it was easier to just speak in the garbled riddles that the spirits fed to her- when she tried to slow down and parse it out in a way that made sense, she felt exhausted afterwards. 

It was as if the curse of Vampirism had completely rewired her brain, if she revealed something not meant to be revealed so easily, it damaged her. Plus, sometimes... she didn’t bother trying to speak normally, since it was really funny to see the way people reacted to her new way of speaking! And Chiyo had always been one to enjoy a good prank. 

Though, there were times when clear speech came much easier, it seemed like when she was full, she talked closer to normal, and the hungrier she was, the more disconnected she felt from her “logical” side. The Jack had said she was “ really fucked” for the clan she had been Embraced into, but despite all of that, she wasn’t all that sure about that speculation. Sure, it was a little difficult to come across as normal to Kine, but she’d always been a little wacky (she was an art student, what could she say?). 

Plus, she got to know things- though she didn’t quite know exactly all that she knew, there were certain stuff from her ‘prophecies’, and from the voices that she could guess. (Though as said before, it was hard for her to voice the same conclusions to others. She could just say the puzzling prophecies outloud and hope the other person understood what she was saying). 

Like the daughters of Janus thing with the Voerman sisters- she may have only known what that meant because she’d taken a Roman Gods class back in her freshman year of college, but she still understood what it was referencing, and could act accordingly. Others were a little more confusing to her- why the Prince was a ‘Jester-Prince’, why Smiling Jack was ‘The Jack’, and why Maximillian Strauss guy from before had conjured the word ‘King’. She didn’t know enough about Camarilla politics to figure that one out. 

“You should keep an eye on him. You don’t know what cards he holds to his chest, young one.” A very real sounding voice replied, and Chiyo’s eyes widened at her cat, that was still staring at her. 

“Bastard? Was that you?” She asked, crouching a little and beckoning the cat over. “Can you talk?”

The black cat only blinked at her, trilling a little to inform her that his food bowl was empty. She narrowed her eyes a little, but got up to feed him nonetheless. She supposed she’d just have to get used to weird things happening to her, a thought that carried her over to her journal, as she began to carefully scribble down the events of the day and her thoughts on them, as well as what the spirits had to say regarding the day. Routines seemed to be the key to keeping her head on her shoulders.

Chapter Text

After a lot of running around (and one of the most terrifying haunted houses she’d ever been in), Chiyo finally got to meet Bertram Tung. 

It was, of course, only after managing to get Therese to call off the feud between the two of them, and getting the Voerman sisters to get along- which, for your information, was not easy in the slightest. 

But alas, the Nosferatu man was no help in her quest, not really. All he’d done was show her the way to the warehouse and then disappear, leaving her to her own devices. Wonderful. 

~~~

Chiyo very quickly learned that the warehouse wasn’t empty, as she had believed that whole time- it was nearly completely full of the things that she’d heard called ‘shovelheads’, Sabbat vampires who probably didn’t even know they were vampires. She had to kill the first one that she nearly literally ran into- as he was taking a piss. 

She had felt cold panic begin to rise in her chest, though, as she stepped away from the body. He would have attacked her first, she had to remind herself as she fled the room, and attempted to gather her thoughts. 

She thought it was going to be an easy in-and-out, plant some astrolite in an empty warehouse, but now she could only imagine how many others were going to be in the building. And what would happen to them when she set it off? Would anyone survive? If they did, would they know it was her and try to kill her? If that was the case, would it put her in the morally correct zone to do this? 

She’d been told by all of the kindred she’d asked that the Sabbat were the bad guys, but she didn’t know them- had she just become an unwitting pawn in a game that she didn’t know the rules or players of? The Jester is playing his own game of 4D chess , a voice whispered to her, that made her shake her head and swat at the air. She was sure she’d never get used to that. The broken mirror rides out on a wave of souls , another chimed in, making her shake her head and swat the air again. What did that even mean?!  

She was no closer to reaching a decision when she heard heavy footsteps approaching, and the door began to creak open. She closed her eyes tightly and covered the top of her head with her arms, waiting for the blinding pain of a baseball bat or a bullet entering her flesh- when nothing came. She looked up at the man, who was looking around suspiciously, even meeting her eyes for the briefest second, dancing right on by as quickly as it happened- it didn’t seem like he’d even seen her, before he left and closed the door again. 

Chiyo looked around in confusion, before looking down at her hands and seeing nothing there but a bit of warped air. Holy shit, had she just turned invisible ?! She remembered that being part of the things she could do- but she’d never managed to make it happen just yet. Well… she’d just found a good way to make sure no one spotted her, even if she still wasn’t all too sure about whether or not she’d be able to do what she needed to.

~~~

The young Fledgling had just made it to the steps of the old house as the ground shook from the force of the Astrolite detonating, ringing in her ears along with multiple overlapping voices- shouting, screaming, laughing, crying, to create a deafening orchestra of horror as she curled up on that beaten up porch and pressed her hands to her ears. Her eyes closed tightly, almost painfully, while small whimpers being forced from her throat, wishing for anything to cover up the noises and visions of faces as her hands continuously beat against her skull. She’d never experienced anything like it before. It was like the mix of her hunger from over-using Obfuscate to plant the Astrolite had mixed with the horror of what she’d just done, and ended up switching off the part of her brain that still clung to sanity.

Her head continued to shake as she began to grow quiet, her body twitching as a few more frightened whimpers escaped her lips. 

A Gangrel scholar watched the display with raised eyebrows. The fledgling had been pushed past her limit so swiftly- and she hadn’t even killed anyone with her own bare hands, as far as he knew. “Are you done, now?” he asked, shifting to the corner of the deck that she had pushed herself into, watching her fear-filled eyes snap up to his. 

She was trembling, her nails digging into her upper arms as she drew her knees up to her chest. Her mouth opened and closed with the attempt to push out something coherent, but instead her voice sounded, quiet and scared. “In and out and they didn’t expect the specter, in and out and they didn’t expect them. No time to scream, no time to pray, souls, souls of the damned, they scream-” she babbled, her head knocking onto the side of the building as she continued to shake her head. It was too much. It was all too much- every word those ghostly voices fed to her fell from her lips like a frenzied mantra.

“I… see.” The Gangrel replied, scratching his chin. He’d wanted to have a few words of his own with the fledgling that had caused such a stir, but she didn’t seem very predisposed to talking at the moment. 

“Mad, mad, mad, mad, mad, mad…” Chiyo muttered, head shaking. She seemed to gather her wits for a short moment, as she fumbled with the cross-body canvas bag she had on her and pulled out a pouch of blood, ripping into it and downing the contents. Finally, she stopped shaking, and looked up at the man’s beastly eyes. In a few moments, she spoke, “Wh- Who… who are you..?”

The Gangrel ignored her question, for now. “The warehouse… your doing, I presume?” He asked, crouching a little, studying her face.

“U-Um…” She hesitated- judging by his eyes (and the wolf-to-humanoid transformation that she had been too busy fighting her own demons to see) he wasn’t human, but she still felt nervous confessing such a thing to anyone. What if he were aligned with the group she just helped to murder? She didn't quite have the wits about her to realize if that were the case, he'd have gone for her throat while she was bemoaning the blood on her hands, not waiting patiently for her to calm down. “Maybe…?”

He couldn’t seem to help the chuckle that escaped his lips at that. “Well, hopefully no Sabbat saw you escape. They can be somewhat… antagonistic.”

Chiyo was silent for a long moment, before she realized that she recognized his presence, somewhat. “Wait… who a-are you? Have you been following me…?”

The Gangrel chuckled as he took a step back, giving her the space to stand comfortably, as he clasped his hands behind his back. “I see my reputation, for once, does not precede me. My name is Beckett, and I haven’t been following you per se… We just happened to be in the same places, at the same time…”

~~~

Beckett left the fledgling with a warning- “ ...And be careful, you’re very likely being hunted by the Sabbat. ” 

Chiyo still had her arms wrapped around herself as she returned to her haven, just as the sun began to rise over Santa Monica. She completed her mission on time, at least, she thought with a dry chuckle that was more like just a sharp exhale. 

She immediately curled under the covers with her Bastard as soon as she entered her apartment, comforted by the warmth of her precious cat as she finally allowed herself to attempt to rest. She was still shaken up- especially by the Gangrel’s warning, now that the guilt of murdering a warehouse full of people (supposedly ‘evil’ or not) had begun to settle. 

She got up to check the locks on her door and windows one more time, ignoring the rational voice that told her that locks probably wouldn’t do much against an angry vampire, and laid back down, curling protectively around her cat once more. 

Her mind went back to dwelling on the events of the night, instead of resting. She thought the warehouse would be empty, that it was just some kind of shipping supplies in-and-out type of deal- she felt so dumb now for being so naïve. Of course the Prince had sent her on a mission that involved murder, the night they'd first acquainted, he murdered the man who Embraced her. He called it ‘upholding the law’, but she still remembered the way the man’s head rolled and his body turned to ash. 

He wasn’t above taking lives, and… now she had to be the same. 

Except that she wasn’t okay with taking lives, not at all. She hadn’t brought Vandal back a human to drain- she ended up using her weird… dementation? power, to make him laugh his head off until he forgot about her releasing Lily. She couldn’t pick a side in the Voerman’s fight, and managed to get them to calm down and live in relative harmony without killing either. Even the deranged limb-stealer- she couldn’t stomach even killing him , so she just… knocked him out and sent the police his way. Him and the thugs that Therese sent to get back at her for unknowingly ruining her gallery opening. 

Taking lives just didn’t sit right with her, not at all, but that was normal, wasn’t it? She used to be human, afterall, and that was something most humans didn’t have to face… ever. At least, she never did. 

Her arms tightened unconsciously around her cat, who purred peacefully in her arms. In the growing light of day, Chiyo allowed herself to breakdown once more, for her hopeless struggle of holding onto her dwindling humanity.

~~~

When Chiyo awoke the next day, she had an email from the Prince- short and to the point: 

Fledgling,

Good job. Cab is waiting to bring you to my office. Don’t dawdle. 

Prince Sebastian LaCroix.

She let out a sigh, gently scratching Bastard, who had jumped up on her desk, under the chin. “I’ll feed you and head out, alright?” she said to him, giving him a little kiss on his head. Chiyo felt exhausted beyond belief, and much too ill to stomach drinking slimy, bagged blood. Skipping the meal, she reminisced about her espresso machine, desperately craving a cup of the delicious drink. She, unfortunately, knew from experience now that she couldn't stomach any human food, no matter how much she'd loved it as a mortal-kine. She’d ended up giving it to the older lady next door, when she’d gone to get her stuff, and she wished she had gotten to have one last cup of rich, dark coffee before she had been embraced. 

Once she finished feeding Bastard and topping off his water, she donned her jacket (not that she could feel cold, just to cover the unnatural pallor of her skin and the scratch marks in her upper arms), and left her shitty apartment above the pawn shop, seeing that, sure enough, a cab was waiting for her. 

~~~

Chiyo had barely taken a step out of the cab when she’d been knocked off her feet, her head hitting the ground so hard that stars exploded behind her eyes and she was sure if there were air in her lungs, it would have been knocked out. Her ears were ringing too loudly to hear whatever surely violent threats she was likely receiving from the grizzly men above her. Before she could process that her life was being threatened, they’d looked up and backed off. There was always a bigger fish, wasn’t there? She couldn’t help the pinprick of fear she felt as she looked up herself, and was helped to her feet by the ‘bigger fish’- Nines Rodriguez. 

“You’ve really got to be more careful, lick. Sabbat’s got your eye on ya, doesn’t take a genius to know that maybe you should probably keep your guard up,” He said, his voice smooth and deep- and oddly compelling. She remembered him as the man who spoke up at her sire’s execution- Nines Rodriguez. 

Chiyo dusted the dirt from her pants, frowning in thought. She’d thought she made it in and out of the warehouse without anyone seeing- she’d used Obfuscate the whole time, afterall. “Um, thanks. I probably could have handled myself…” she bluffed, feeling a little embarrassed. 

“You sure? I can call them back over if you-” Nines started, eyebrow raising as a small lopsided smirk curled into his lips, watching in amusement as the fledgling frantically waved her hands in front of herself. 

“Nonono, aha- that’s alright, I’ll, um, I’ll let that just be your victory this time, I guess,” Chiyo said, barking out a nervous laugh. She had to admit, he made her feel… a little less ill at ease- calmed her nerves that were sure to spike again before her upcoming meeting with the prince. 

“Since you clearly need some pointers before that rematch-” Nines started with a chuckle, his arms crossing over his broad chest. Chiyo briefly wondered if he purposefully wore an uber-tight shirt to show off his stocky, strong frame, to look more muscle-y and intimidating. “-and maybe a refuge from being Prince LaCroix’s little bitch, you should come and visit me at my bar, The Last Round. You deserve a choice in which side you like better.” He said, shifting a little to indicate he was ready to leave the conversation.

Chiyo nodded a little, mulling the offer over in her head. “I’ll think about it, um, thank for savin’ my skin,” she said, picking up on the hint and giving a short wave as she turned towards the Ivory Tower, giving him one last parting, unsettling look. “Watch out for your own skin, someone wishes to steal it.”

“Umm… sure, whatever you say, kid,” The Anarch said with a dismissive wave, turning and striding away. 

The fledgling watched him go for a moment, before remembering LaCroix’s ‘no dawdling’ command in his email, and hurriedly turned down the street, towards the Tower and its unsettling, metal statue-guards, her spirits lowering considerably. 

Chapter Text

“Good to see you actually took me seriously when I said no dawdling,” The Prince greeted as Chiyo walked in, looking around the large office with her heterochromic eyes as wide as saucers. 

The girl had never seen such… decadence, not in real life. In the classic paintings she’d studied, sure- in her wildest dreams, of course- in real life? Never. Not as someone’s literal office, nope. 

A museum she’d been to before had a similar aesthetic but… she was just in awe. The paintings, the marble and gold accents, the large Persian rug, the beautiful robin’s egg blue wallpaper, the ornate furniture, and the perfectly groomed prince, sitting at the center, in front of the large windows which overlooked the downtown LA area. His domain, his playground. It was no wonder he acted the way he did- he got to look down on all of his little pawns from this cushy office in the clouds. It made her a little angry, to think about. She knew her being embraced was a mistake but he has all of this money, and yet she got the world’s shittiest apartment- as confirmed by Knox, Bertrum’s excitable ghoul. It’s not like she needed a penthouse suite! But something that wasn’t infested with goddamn roaches would have been nice! 

“...Fledgling!” The Prince demanded Chiyo’s attention, snapping his fingers as she blinked and returned to herself- finding herself standing right in front of his desk. 

Sebastian had to admit- he took a weird sort of prideful satisfaction in watching her openly admire the décor of his office. To him, Chiyo had looked like she’d just entered a castle, and it reminded him a little of himself when he’d first entered his own Sire’s residence. Of course he’d had a little more sense to mask his awe, but the feeling was still the same. The look on her face towards the end was concerning, though probably understandable: contempt. He’d just have to squish that feeling with a show of his infinite generosity. Eventually. At least, once she showed herself to be a little more useful to him. 

“...Sorry,” she murmured, hands stuffed in her pockets. Now that she was standing in front of him, that pit in her stomach only seemed to grow worse. She suddenly regretted the fact that she hadn’t taken that blood pack before she left.

“You’re…” Sebastian sniffed. “...Bleeding? You couldn’t clean yourself up a little before arriving. ‘Not dawdling’ still leaves room for personal maintenance, you realize?”

Chiyo blinked, her hand slowly raising to the back of her head- remembering that she’d had the back of her head smashed into concrete barely five minutes previously. 

“I… um, just got this, outside. Couple of Sabbat…” Chiyo trailed off, feeling like her excuse didn’t matter. If she was going to be in his office she should be composed, clean. It was obvious, now that she was standing inside of it. 

“Mm,” Sebastian was instantly… put off by the change in her demeanor, once he actually noticed it. He’d been expecting some insane quip from the girl- some stupid riddle. Not a pathetic excuse. The once wacky, alluring (not that he’d ever admit to that thought) girl had seemingly receded into herself. It was concerning- not out of any concern for her personal feelings, but because if he was going to make use of this girl, he couldn’t have her spacing out like this after every mission! “Have you got the report for the mission?”

Chiyo blinked a few times, eyebrows drawing together. “What…?”

Sebastian resisted the urge to roll his eyes. How dense could this girl be? “The report on your mission- do you think I’d just send you to blow a warehouse up without a report on how it went? Pre-detonation casualties, witnesses that might still be alive, can you not even comprehend that much, you-” His fist clenched, before releasing as he stared hard into her mis-matched eyes- which wouldn’t meet his. He had half a mind to use dominate to get her to look at him. She had barely spared him a glance for this entire meeting, it was infuriating. It was outright disrespectful- she was always so disrespectful. The Prince was itching for a chance to show her what respect meant. “Just… get it to me by tomorrow. You can email it to me, if you can even accomplish that much. I’ve another task for you.”

The poor Malkavian felt like she’d just been slapped- twice. Being reprimanded, then handed another task when she’d barely recuperated from the previous one. Those never-ending voices made up a deafening roar in her ears as she stared blankly at his ornate, shiny desk, her stomach dropping. She couldn’t hear him, now, she felt like she was spinning, or she could feel the world spinning under her feet. After everything she’d done in order to get here- the fight with that gang for Mercurio, the haunted hotel, the painting’s blood guardian, that crazy limb-person, watching a thin-blood murder a nurse and have to help to cover it up, blowing up a goddamn warehouse full of people who she’s been told are morally the worst but she has no frame of reference for- and this fucking bourgeoisie vampire dictator sat in his high ivory tower and yelled at her like she was incompetent because she didn’t show up with a report on the literal terrorist attack he made her commit. 

Never one to just lie down and take it, Chiyo opened her mouth to chew him out- before her eyes rolled back and she fell into the oblivion of a vampire’s sleep. 

…

When Chiyo dropped to the ground like a corpse, Sebastian jerked back in surprise, standing- only now noticing just now the blood spilling from the back of her head from a wound that hadn’t healed. Standing, he stepped around his desk and crouched to inspect it- her skull had practically been bashed in, and he could smell the sweet scent of her blood wafting from the wound. Shaking his head of that thought, he focused on the wound trying to repair itself, slowly, much slower than it would if she were full. Had he not provided her with enough blood bags? Surely he had. Had she not been eating them? She hadn’t shown the same kind of wariness towards drinking blood as other fledglings had. So what was wrong with her?

“Bring me a blood pack, one of the higher grades,” Sebastian snapped at one of his attendants, who scurried away to carry out the task. 

Sebastian removed his suit coat, rolling up the sleeves of his dark gray button down before he picked the limp girl up, moving her onto one of the couches. What a pain. Cradling her head to attempt to keep the blood from spilling onto the upholstery, he gazed down at her face, noticing for the first time a light smattering of freckles that covered her nose and a bit of her cheeks- as well as how long her eyelashes were. He supposed her face was shapely, in general. Plump lips, heart-shaped face, the smudge of some kind of dark makeup product left on her eyelids that had given them a deeper, smoky look. When she was resting, she even seemed attractive. No blank stare, nor that piercing, unsettling stare common for Malkavians. She looked peaceful, bearable. 

The Prince shook those thoughts from his head as soon as the attendant arrived. He couldn’t be thinking of this nuisance in such a way- what was he becoming? Perhaps he needed a lay, the stress of this occupation was wearing on him, now- especially if he thought that Childe of the Moon was attractive, now. Perhaps he’d give Jeanette a call. 

Grabbing the blood pack, he opened it and pressed it to Chiyo’s lips, emptying the contents down her throat. Immediately he saw the difference- a bit of color returned to her face (making those light freckles stand out a little more, not that he noticed), and the wound on the back of her head closed fully. Though, she still didn’t wake. Rolling his eyes, he lifted her, handing her over to the attendant. “Go get her cleaned up and in something more presentable. Throw her old clothes out- it looks like she got them from a dumpster.”

With that taken care of, Sebastian returned to his desk, sitting down with a heavy sigh, resting his head in his hand. What was he even doing? Babysitting this thorn in his side, admiring her features, wasting his goddamn time on her. He needed her to either be taken out, or made more useful, soon. 

…

Chiyo was pulled from oblivion sometime later, staring up at an unfamiliar, white marble ceiling. She felt much less weak, and much less grimy, too. She sat up, looking down and noticing for the first time the… dress she was wearing. It looked similar to the attire she’d seen some of the Ventrue kindred wearing- high class, dark material. And very much not what she’d been wearing when she… oh, shit-

“Finally awake, I take it?” 

Chiyo turned, realizing just then that she’d been napping on a couch in the Prince’s office. The Prince’s eyes wander . “Did you change me?” she asked incredulously, a hand raising towards her bust in an attempt to protect her modesty. 

LaCroix gave her a dry look. “Can you stop playing games for once? One of my attendants changed your clothes- your blood-covered clothes, I’ll remind you. Take better care to conceal that in the future, would you? There are strange things in LA, but not everyone can ignore a young woman covered in blood. And take care to sustain yourself better. Do you know how much of a hassle it was to clean up your mess because your head wound wasn’t healing fast enough? I know that I supply you with more than enough blood to get you through each night.”

The Malkavian resisted the urge to roll her eyes. This was embarrassing. She could remember now what had actually happened, at least- it wasn’t the first time stress had caused her to black out like that. It was common enough when she was human, particularly during or right near the end of manic episodes. Though usually that involved her losing memory of her actions- not passing out. She must have just been exhausted, or hungry, or a combination of both. She was just glad she hadn’t frenzied, or something- she’d only heard of frenzy, thus far. She was terrified of experiencing it. 

Despite how much the action pained her, she bowed her head a little, apologizing. 

The Prince waved his hand. “Just don’t let it happen again. Now, I’m going to brief you on your next task. Do well and you may get a reward. You-”

“Will I… have to kill again?” Chiyo interrupted, looking nearly small, from where she sat, her posture hunched a little. Like a child preparing to be scolded. 

“No, quite the opposite. I don’t want you to kill anyone- in and out, no witnesses, no casualties.” With that assurance aside, Chiyo was able to relax, and listen to the rest of the briefing. The Jester even answered her questions without much annoyance- what was an Antediluvian, what was Gehenna, what was The Book of Nod- all of that. He even held back most of his ‘stop using riddles’ requests- like he was beginning to realize it was less to mess with him and more of a compulsion. 

At the end, they were met with silence, as Chiyo scribbled in her journal everything he’d just told her- shorthand notes she’d expand upon once she returned home- home , to think she considered that hovel a home now, she could have laughed. 

Sebastian broke the silence, looking up from the paperwork he was writing on. “You do realize that you’ll have to kill more, don’t you? You’re a Kindred now, not Kine. As much as it’s not necessarily commonplace , if you wish to survive your new nights, you have to be willing to get your hands dirty. The code of morals has changed. Right now the task at hand is espionage, but next time you may have to take down a kindred that is violating the masquerade, or a group of kine who threaten to break it. I don’t tolerate weakness within my ranks. You’ve gotten a pass this time, but there will be no others- if you’re no longer useful to me, then your immunity to the original law over your embrace is nullified.”

Chiyo nodded slowly, a wobbly frown pulling at her lips. He’s soft. Scared. He has no idea what you will do to him. She nearly gagged trying to hold the words back- “The Prince is just scared, the broken mirror will show him his reflection,” she blurted, her hands raising to cover her mouth immediately after. 

She flinched when a sound escaped his lips- terrified she was about to be torn into, but instead it was a harsh, bitter laugh. “What could that possibly even mean? Go back to your little haven, Childe of Malkov. I expect that report soon- and the completion of your next task as well. Faster this time, do you understand?”

Chiyo nodded, standing- infinitely glad that he found that humorous rather than antagonizing. “I- um, yes,” he said, giving him the slightest bow before starting to scurry off, before stopping. “O-Oh, right, um… I meant to tell you, about the Sabbat attack in the parking lot- Nines Rodriguez is the one who saved my skin. He told me to stop by his bar, is… uh, is that okay?”

“Mm, go ahead. See if you can stomach his little ‘down with the bourgeoisie’ tirades. Perhaps he’ll teach you how to handle yourself in a fight, at the very least. Go ahead, go,” LaCroix shooed her away, and this time she left without faltering. 

Boy, her journal was about to receive one hell of an entry.

Chapter Text

Chiyo nervously made her way into the Empire Arms Hotel, her knife hidden in her belongings, at the bottom of her crossbody canvas bag. She’d gotten the information she needed from the poor prostitute she’d been referred to–who’d died of the very Kindred-spread illness she was investigating, immediately after talking with the Fledgling. Not knowing what to do, she’d called the paramedics, saying she had been a friend who was worried because she hadn’t heard from her friend in so long. Obviously that call was made from a payphone, halfway down the street. Lord knows she couldn’t be questioned by the police- or on their radar at all, lest she break the masquerade.  

She gave a slight, polite nod to the man behind the desk of the hotel, who stopped her from proceeding to the elevators like she’d intended. Nothing was ever easy. “What’s your business, ma’am?” He asked evenly, though firmly. No nonsense here.

“Just… A visitor for a miss.. Locke, Jezebel.” The Malkavian replied, trying not to sound too nervous. 

At that, the concierge gave her a filthy once-over, making the girl shiver as her voices whispered exactly what he wanted to do with her. “Go right on ahead… Maybe when you’re done you can give me the same treatment, hm?” 

Blinking, she briefly had the urge to use dementation on him- make him lose his mind and bash his skull into the wall. Instead, she left him with a withering look, his harsh laugh following her to the elevator. Did she look like a hooker? She glanced down- ripped shorts, a tank top that had seen better days, canvas shoes. She didn’t think so. She looked like a regular college student- she really would have been, had she not been embraced. 

At the very least, that interaction was bizarre enough to kill some of her nerves for the up-coming interaction. She really hoped she could just talk this woman into giving up. She didn’t want to fight, she really didn’t- she had what she needed to if it came to that, but the thought of taking another person’s life, even if they were this bad… It made her feel ill. The mirror cracks again. The Malkavian physically shook her head. She had to focus, she had to focus, she had to focus…

…

“Please I just- I just wanted t- to talk-” Chiyo panted between dodging Jezebel’s blade, the other woman’s manic energy rivaling even her own. The Malkavian’s eyes were as wide as saucers, trying desperately to use one of her disciplines to make the other woman stop- but Jezebel’s fortitude was too powerful for her to penetrate her mind. 

In the end, the Fledgling had to take the other woman’s life, after an arduous battle, she watched the woman’s body fall, her skin and bones decaying- but not turning into dust. She supposed she wasn’t old enough to just be turned to dust, but… that made for a predicament that Chiyo wasn’t equipped to handle, as she pushed herself in the corner of the hotel room, face buried in her knees with her blood covered hands pushing against the sides of her skull. 

She hadn’t wanted to do it, she hadn’t! She wanted to talk, she’d just wanted to reason with the woman- make her see that she was doing something immoral, and now her blood , her rotting blood was on her hands, and her face and her clothes, and oh Gods the smell of it was awful. What was she supposed to do? Who could she call? There was a fully rotted corpse in the hotel room that she was documented as going into- the concierge would know. She’d break the masquerade, she’d end up with her head detached from her body, just like her sire. 

Voices laughed, cried, and screamed in her ears as she sobbed quietly, knocking her head against the wall. She’d done what she’d had to, she would have been killed if she hadn’t. She had to, she had to do it. Nervous laughs broke up the pattern of her sobs, her body curling further into itself. The image of the woman’s face continued to assault her memory, the pained shock in her features when Chiyo finally delivered a fatal wound. The way her face screwed up in something akin to remorse as her body fell, immediately decaying before the poor Fledgling’s eyes. 

Her nails dug harshly into the skin of her upper arms, trying to keep herself from spiraling. Why couldn’t she have turned into dust like her Sire had? Why was her rotted corpse still laying merely feet away? Why couldn’t anything go the way it was supposed to?

Eventually, slowly, the voices backed off and Chiyo returned to herself, still a little dazed as her body slowly unfurled while she fumbled with her cell phone, glad that Damsel had given her her number before sending her on this task. All the Malkavian had wanted was to earn some brownie points with the Anarchs so they wouldn’t be so hostile towards her, it was the same reason she’d sent that annoying Ghoul on a wild goose chase to San Diego for Skelter, and why she was carrying out this wild goose chase of her own for the “Plaguebearers”. 

Shakily, she managed to write a text to the Anarch girl, informing her of taking care of the girl, and the predicament with the body. Within a few moments Damsel replied, letting Chiyo know that she’d send someone to clean up the body, but that Jezebel wasn’t the only one, that she’d probably want to question some of the homeless population to get to the bottom of things. 

Chiyo hung her head, feeling frustrated sobs bubble to the surface once more. She bit them back, forcing herself to stand and stumble into the hotel room’s bathroom, cleaning her hands and her knife as well as she could. Rhythmically cleaning her hands under the icy cold water until they were raw, images of the carnage in the other room running on repeat through her head.

She shook her head, shutting off the water and drying her hands on a towel that she then tossed next to the corpse, to be cleaned up with it. It. The Malkavian couldn’t stand to think of that rotting pile of meat as a person anymore- lest she continue to break down over her own self-flagellation.

Sneaking past that damn concierge, the young Malkavian activated her obfuscate–not willing to be subjected to any more disgusting comments as she scurried away. As much as she often liked a good meaningless lay after something traumatic, that slimeball was the last person she’d be putting out to anytime soon.

She’d honestly just figured that would be a quick in-and-out–stop by and take care of that plaguebearer on her way back to the Ivory Tower, she wasn’t at all expecting the sun to be threatening to rise by the time she stepped out of the hotel. 

Shit. 

She sprinted down the sidewalk, glad that the Tower was only a block away from the hotel, making it inside just in time- even the night guard was already being switched out. 

The usual night guard gave Chiyo a friendly nod, waving her up without much chatting- he seemed too tired for once to attempt to flirt with her, not that she minded much. It was a little sweet most nights. Tonight it would have been annoying. 

Arriving in her Jester’s office, she saw him packing up the stuff on his desk, as a couple attendants were lowering the steel blinds over the large windows. “Fledgling? Do you realize what time it is?” Sebastian asked almost incredulously. 

“I- I know, um, I’d just taken care of a bearer of plagues, I didn’t expect it to take this long, and I know you wanted the report before the sunset and also your tower is here and my haven is in Santa Monica…” Chiyo rambled, trailing off as her shoulders slumped. Her haven was in Santa Monica- she’d completely forgotten until just then, too focused on making sure she got here before the sun rose. 

The Prince raised an eyebrow at her, striding over and holding his hand out. Chiyo gave it a confused look as she placed her hand in his, looking up at him with her eyebrows drawn together. LaCroix let out a scoff that could have been mistaken for a laugh as he dropped her hand. “The report, Fledgling,” he admonished. 

If she could have blushed, she would have. Her mind was still scattered from her breakdown, she couldn’t help it. She dug around in her canvas bag and procured the documents, stapled together. A couple pages were a little crumpled and folded at the corners from being in her bag, but otherwise it wasn’t the worst thing she could have handed him. 

Sebastian flipped through it, skimming through the surprisingly well written report. She was actually eloquent when she wasn’t babbling off inane prophecies or rambling like an idiot. “Acceptable,” he commented. “Did you seriously convince a cop that you were a reporter? And he bought it?”

The fledgling nodded quickly. “I- er, admittedly didn’t mean to bump into him, but he pulled me up and told me I looked even more stupid trying to sneak around, so I was like ‘well what else was I supposed to do’? And he just rolled his eyes and radioed to get the people in the office-place to leave, and let me go in. It was… oddly convenient, right?” 

“In…deed.” Sebastian couldn’t help but be a little dumbfounded at her luck. “What was that before, about a… ‘bearer of plague’?”

“When I went to talk to the Anarchs, they gave me a couple tasks. I… er, thought it could be helpful to gain some favor with them. So they wouldn’t distrust me so much. One of them was about this illness spreading through the kine- erm, blood-transmitted, I think. The one I.. took out targeted um, ladies of the night.” The Malkavian confirmed, nodding. She was glad she’d managed to stomach a blood pack on the way up- she was sure that this late in their night, the Jester wouldn’t have tolerated her compulsive riddles. As LaCroix studied her face for any sign of betrayal or doubt- she had to bite back a grin from a soft whisper that told her that he was sexually frustrated. It could have made her giggle, had she been alone. 

Sebastian took a slight step back, clearing his throat, tugging a bit at the collar of his shirt. “That’s acceptable, I suppose. Is that why you smell like rotten blood, then? Since you cannot return to your haven, I suppose I can allow you to use my shower and rest on the couch.”

Chiyo’s eyes widened in surprise, before narrowing warily. “You’d really let me impose like that?” she asked, sounding very doubtful. 

“I would not offer if I didn't mean it,” The Prince replied, almost annoyed that she would doubt him so- though he had to stifle a slight grin at her excitement. She seemed so easy to please. “Here, my personal loft is connected to my office.”

The Fledgling nodded, her eyes still a little wide- that made sense, since she’d very rarely ever seen him outside of his office. In fact, she’d never even seen him on a sidewalk or anything. Just standing in the middle of her shitty haven, and on the stage of that theater. She had honestly wondered if he nailed his shoes to his desk chair, or something. To get to see him do something as casual as get ready for bed, she felt… odd. Like she’d be intruding, even though he was inviting her in. 

Upon walking inside of the haven, the Malkavian got to see that the decadence of his office didn’t stop there, extending to his personal home. It felt less grandeur, and a little more cozy, though it still showed just how deep his money ran. Plush, expensive-looking rugs, antique-yet-comfortable-looking couch and chairs. A marble fireplace, a large and extensive couple of bookshelves, completely filled with titles ranging between at least four different languages, and that many centuries it seemed from the state of some of them. Small busts and knick-knacks that were all likely priceless.

Her wide-eyed gaze sweeped the other way, where she could see an ornate, yet… surprisingly small, dining table, with a chandelier above it. In the room adjacent to the dining room was probably a kitchen- and she saw a hallway that likely led to the bedroom and bathroom. Everything was accented with gold or deep red. There was even a piano, though it looked a tad dusty. Paintings adorned most of the walls, classics- varying between the neoclassical and romantic eras, if she had to guess. Above the fireplace hung a self portrait of the Prince of the Camarilla, similar to…

“Oh my Gods, is this a Jacques-Louis David original? Like the guy who painted Napoleon’s portrait?” Chiyo gushed, making a beeline towards the painting. 

Sebastian felt himself sporting a prideful, satisfied grin on her face watching her openly admire his home. He approached, nodding. “Indeed. I’d had it done not long after I was embraced. I’m surprised you could tell.”

“How could I not ? He was legendary in the Neoclassical era of painting, and I’ve always found his style easily recognizable. I came close to picking him for my dissertation- I ended up picking Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun, though…” Chiyo trailed off, thinking about her abandoned dissertation. It was only half finished when she was embraced. “I… um, focused on the scandal surrounding her self-portrait with her daughter. If you can even call it a scandal- well, it was a big deal back then.” At the Prince’s curious look, she continued, “She painted herself open-mouthed smiling, which was a huge deal because it went against the norm of the style back then. She was condemned for a little while, even called narcissistic because of it. It was in… mm, 1787, I think.”

“Ah, that is a little before my time,” Sebastian said, surprised at how knowledgeable and passionate the eccentric Fledgling was. “Though I do have one of her paintings, too, over on this wall. An Angelica Kauffmann original, as well.”

Chiyo’s eyes were wide with wonder as she inspected each of his paintings- he favored the same era of paintings that she did, it was obvious. “Oh my Gods, a Degas original too?!” she practically squealed, trotting over to the painting of some ballerinas milling about. 

Sebastian took a step back, hands clasped behind his back as he found himself actually smiling at her. He shook the expression from his face. She was like a kid in a candy store, anyone could have been swayed by the display. He cleared his throat once more, gathering her attention. “If you’re done gawking, the bathroom is down the hall, on the right. There are towels in there, and I’ll have clothes waiting for you right outside the door.”

The Malkavian nodded quickly, her head ducking a little in embarrassment as she passed, towards the bathroom. Anyone could tell that he was giving her a hint that she was being annoying. 

Sighing as she stepped into her bathroom, her eyes immediately bulged out of her head once more. To hell with this man and his expensive tastes! Everything was gilded, white marble, and huge. Two toilets, even??? Though one looked a little weirder- smaller? Or something? She wasn’t sure. He even had a separate bathtub and shower. The room was nearly bigger than her goddamn haven! “What the hell…” she whispered. She should get stuck in his haven more often, she decided- or at least any time she had to bathe. Her roach-infested and unkillable-mildew-y shower could never compare. 

Saying to hell with whatever embarrassment she had left over her situation, Chiyo stripped herself of her clothes, stepping into the shower. She figured she shouldn’t take too long, as much as she wanted to soak in that huge, luxurious tub, she knew that the Jester-Prince likely needed to bathe as well. She had enough sense not to be rude. Still, she took her time scrubbing the blood from her skin and hair, washrag gliding over the scars in the tops of her arms- noting that what should have been fresh wounds there had healed up, thankfully. It was a bad, bad habit but a lot of times it was the only way to ground herself back in reality. It wouldn’t be the first time she’d ended a breakdown with her arms scratched up. She was just glad that they’d healed by the time she’d gotten to the Jester’s office- though she wasn’t sure if he’d really notice, or care. So she wasn’t really sure why she cared if he saw them, besides it making her feel pathetic. 

Before long, half an hour passed and she was stepping out of the shower, feeling much better. She wrapped herself in a fluffy, red towel and poked her head out of the bathroom, grabbing the neatly folded pile of clothes outside of the door, taking them inside to change into. It was a soft, old night-gown type of thing. Black, a frilled collar with a red ribbon strung through it. It didn’t even have a tag- she had to wonder where it came from. Was it an antique? It had to be- but why did LaCroix just have a woman’s nightgown laying around? Old lover , a voice whispered. Another added, he wore it himself , making Chiyo snort as she pulled the garment on. She supposed it was none of her business, and she should just be thankful he wasn’t making her wear her blood-stained clothes, or go naked. 

“So where’d you get this nightgown?” The Fledgling asked anyway, as she walked back out into the sitting room, where the Jester-Prince was reading a book. 

Sebastian looked up, finding her figure in the flowing garment to be quite shapely–the way the light from the hallway shone through its sheer-ish fabric gave him a nice view of her body’s silhouette underneath… a picture that he quickly repressed as he turned his attention back to the book in his hand. “I was… acquaintances with a woman who owned a boutique of sorts for women. She left it and I figured it’d be a waste to throw out. You can keep it if you like it.”

The Malkavian nodded as her whispers clued her in to his lie- though she didn’t say anything. With each passing day it was getting much easier to get a handle on keeping her insight to herself, thankfully. It would have been pretty awkward if she blurted out that she thought he wore nightgowns. 

“Right… Well, I’m going to wash up and lay down. Make yourself comfortable on the couch, if you wish. Or read a book, I don’t really care, just don’t break anything,” Sebastian said, setting his book aside as he stood and exited, leaving the Fledgling to her own devices. 

Once alone, she, obviously, snooped over to see what he had been reading. Her fingers brushed the cover of the book as she read the title- ‘The Art of War’, she rolled her eyes, a small smile tugging at her lips. Typical. She drifted towards the large bookshelf, eyes scanning the different titles. A lot were in French, quite a few in Latin, and a decent chunk were in German, too. It seemed like he had them organized by language, so it wasn’t hard to find the section in English. Inside of that section, it had its own sorting system based on the author’s last name, so she skimmed through the names- seeing a lot of philosophers. She snorted when she spotted the Twilight series- and the Interview With a Vampire series after that. He even had the box set of the Vampire Academy series. Logically it was probably to keep track of how the media viewed vampires and make sure they weren’t too close to uncovering the masquerade, but the idea of LaCroix being a vampire fanatic tickled her. She could always find a way to tease him about it later, if she felt ballsy enough. 

Instead of grabbing one of those, she settled for a favorite of her’s, plucking Jane Eyre from the shelf, from its place beside Wuthering Heights. She was a little surprised he kept those on hand too, but she supposed he had to be a fan of the classics, considering they weren’t exactly ‘classic’ when he was alive. Her eyebrows knit together at that thought as she made herself comfortable, lounging on the ornate couch, a throw pillow propping her back up. How old even was he? He looked like he was in his late 20s, she supposed, and he said that he had his portrait painted by Jacques-Louis David ‘not long after his embrace’, he’d said. She tried to do the math in her head, and when that failed she tried to somehow direct her insight towards that question, coming up with nothing helpful in the end. She supposed she could just ask, but… she felt a little apprehensive. Why did she even care?

She physically shook those questions from her head, opening up the book and turning her attention towards it, finding her eyelids growing heavy in no time. 

…

Sebastian made his way back towards the sitting room after his shower, having realized that he left his book on the coffee table- finding the Fledgling passed out still half-sitting up on the couch, an open book on her chest. Once more he found his eyes wandering as he lifted the book and marked her place, setting it aside as he pulled a throw blanket over the girl. Her sleeping face really was quite lovely, like something out of the very neoclassical paintings she seemed to adore. Soft and slightly rounded, she had no sharp angles about her. Peaceful.

He supposed if she continued to show her unerring loyalty towards him, she’d make a decent lay, he thought, accidentally having picked up her book instead of his own–Jane Eyre, interesting. He didn’t even realize he’d owned that title, and he found it interesting that out of everything there, this was the one she picked. Her tastes in art were much more mature than anything else about her- especially her clothes. 

The Prince’s nose wrinkled at that thought. She was in her… mid? twenties, and yet she dressed like a juvenile. Everything she picked out looked like she’d gotten it from the trash bin of a Goodwill. If she’s to be one of his subordinates, that’d certainly have to change. He found the styles of that day and age to be so vulgar. Short trousers, exposed midriffs, arms, and cleavage. The last part wasn’t as much of a bother to him, but really, it was like nobody had any shame. Where was the excitement of getting to discover that skin? 

He’d have some classier clothes delivered to her haven soon, he decided, as he looked down at her face, lingering for a moment longer than he’d meant to–and being nearly startled out of his skin when her eyes opened, her vacant-Malkavian stare boring into his. 

“J- Prince?” She murmured, unblinking.

“Y.. Yes…?”

“Am I a murderer?” Her voice was soft, fearful, her gaze relaxing a little as her face screwed up in distress. “Am I murderer? For what I did to that Kindred?”

“I… No, you’re not.” Jesus, he was not expecting to have this conversation when he was just thinking about bedding her. “That woman was threatening the masquerade, and you were doing your duty by snuffing her out of this world. What you did was just- she would have killed you if you hadn’t, right?”

“I know, but…”

“There should be no objections, Fledgling. If you dwell on the past and your morals this heavily every time, you’ll drive yourself more mad than you already are. That’s enough now. Rest.”

The Fledgling nodded a little, relaxing back into the couch.

Sebastian was already nearly to his room already when he heard her quiet ‘thank you’.

Letting out a heavy sigh, he closed the door, settling in to crack into the title she’d picked out, resting eventually in the early morning.

Chapter Text

Chiyo hummed softly to herself as she scrolled through her Email, deleting and replying to the newest ones- she’d been leaving the notes from ‘a friend’, as she wasn’t quite sure what to do with them yet. They gave her an ominous pit in her stomach when she read them, but if they ended up connecting to something, she didn’t want to delete them. 

Her interest was piqued when she received an Email from her friend and fellow Malkavian partner-in-crime, Jeanette Voerman. Her eyebrow raised at the contents of the Email- an invitation to come over and ‘cure her boredom’, flavor-texted with that horny drawl that Chiyo could practically hear. 

The Fledgling tapped her fingers on the shitty desk. She supposed she had some time to kill- LaCroix hadn’t given her any more tasks for the next couple of days, and she had really been wondering what was up with below-the-belt vampire physiology. She remembered Mercury- Mercurio, telling her about Jeanette’s reputation (she ripped into him for that, even if she was the one who pressed him into telling her, because how dare he slut shame a girl he barely knew?) and the follow up about how their kind “Don’t, or can’t” do that sort of thing. 

Startled out of her thoughts by her little fuzzball rubbing against her leg, Chiyo made up her mind- changing out of her pajamas, she filled up on a blood pack and filled her Bastard’s food bowl, slipped on her well-worn pair of canvas shoes and made her way out of her haven, locking the door behind her. 

…

“...Wait so we can’t feel anything ?” Chiyo pressed, sitting at the edge of Jeanette’s heart-shaped bed. 

“Mm, some can- the ones who feel, like… closest to being human. Or I suppose they’re the best at tricking themselves into feeling it. Since y’know, we don’t need to have sex anymore- Kindred don’t reproduce that way, obviously, so we’re just as dead there as we are anywhere else on our bodies,” Jeanette said, languidly stretching out on the bed beside the other Malkavian girl. “If we’re full, we can sort of… will our blood to move down there, so it’ll feel warm- and guys can still get it up. Just like we can will our blood to give our face some color when we need to, and all that. But we have our ways of still having fun, otherwise I wouldn’t have invited you over, little kitten.” She purred, running her fingers up Chiyo’s arm. 

The other Malkavian felt… weird, though. ‘Just as dead there as anywhere else’–she’d honestly forgotten that at the end of the day she was just a walking, talking corpse. Her experiences with that plaguebearer testified to that. If she died, she’d probably rot like that- a little fresher, but it’d just be time catching up with her. She really had died that day, when she was embraced. 

“...Hey, are you even listening to me, kitten?” Jeanette prodded, wrapping her arms around her little Malkavian’s waist, pouting. 

Chiyo blinked. She supposed any distraction from that horrifying realization was better than nothing. Better than trying to shut herself inside and paint death all day. So she hummed and leaned down to press her lips to her friend’s, letting the other girl lead her into the world of real, vampire stress relief. 

…

“You weren’t kidding about that drugged blood,” Chiyo murmured, staring up at the shifting, swirling pattern of the ceiling above them. Her body still felt a little tingly- felt , she actually felt something. She was still snuggled under the covers with her friend-turned-benefits, slowly being released from the high of whatever drug concoction was in a small vial of blood Jeanette had given her when they’d started. 

Drugs were always a slippery slope for the Malkavian, before she was embraced, because of her dislike of the things she was often prescribed for her mental illness. But… she was undead, now, so what did it matter? It wasn’t like it could kill her. 

“I told you,” Jeanette purred against her skin. “Why would I lie to my favorite kitten?” 

Chiyo always hated that nickname (her ex always called her that), but coming from Jeanette it actually made her feel a little giddy. She wasn’t afraid to admit that she liked the attention. 

“Do you want to know something fun?” Jeanette asked, not waiting long before she continued, “Even though we Kindred don’t do that much, it’s still a great… tool, of sorts, even with other Kindred. Kine too, of course. Some people have much looser lips when they’re naked in bed. It’s so easy to… flaunt a little skin, and get the answers you want, especially if your reputation lowers their guard.” She paused, her fingers skimming the younger Malkavian’s skin absently as she spoke. “That’s why I don’t bother denying mine. Who would care about spilling a little secret to the easy girl they just bedded? It’s pretty useful.”

Chiyo nodded, rolling onto her side to look up at her new teacher, resting her head on the other girl’s arm. “Who’s the most influential person you’ve ever laid?” 

Jeanette giggled mirthfully. “I’m not sure I should even tell you…” The younger Malkavian’s lip jutted out in a little pout, as she fluttered her long eyelashes up at the blonde girl, making her giggle again. “Oh, how could I say no to such a cute little kitten? I’ll tell you, but you can’t tell anyone -” she leaned in to whisper in the other girl’s ear, taking delight in the way her mis-matched eyes widened in surprise. 

“No way! Seriously?!” She exclaimed. 

“Indeed~ he still calls on me pretty regularly. Hasn’t in awhile, though- way to make a girl feel special, huh.”

“Um…” If Chiyo could blush, she would have, “How was he? In bed, I mean.”

“Ooh, does the kitten have a crush?” Jeanette teased, laughing at how defensive the other girl turned immediately.

“Of- of course not! I mean, like, how could I not be curious?! He’s totally got, like, um… small-dick energy, c’mon, just tell me-”

“You’ll just have to find out on your own, I can’t be spilling class-secrets,” she replied, finding a genuine joy at Chiyo’s disappointed (and mildly embarrassed) look. 

The Fledgling left it at that, relaxing back into the bed, turning her gaze back up at the ceiling. “Do you care if I take a little nap?” When the other girl hummed affirmatively, she allowed herself to fall into oblivion, content and satisfied for the first time in awhile. 

When the Fledgling opened her eyes once more, the bed was empty and she heard the rhythmic tapping of a keyboard on the other side of the partition that separated the two sisters’ room. She let out a soft sigh, as her body returned to feeling just as numb and cold as it had before. She rose and dressed back in her clothes, giving Therese a polite, if not a little awkward, passing greeting as she left for her walk of shame, trying not to feel the other woman’s hard gaze on her back. Just because Chiyo had helped to keep her and her sister from killing each other, probably didn’t mean she was very happy with the Fledgling becoming another one of Jeanette’s bedfellows. 

As the young Malkavian stepped out onto the street, she paused for a moment, closing her eyes and tilting her face up, just barely able to feel the cold rain hitting her skin- like she was feeling it through a bunch of layers of cloth. She could feel that old, sneaking tendril of darkness creeping up into her chest, the only warning sign she’d usually get before a week-long depressive episode. She hadn’t experienced one of those yet as a Malkavian–at some point Therese had explained that their clan’s bane often took whatever mental illness they’d struggled with as a human and amplified it. That much was obvious with the manic energy she’d experienced after she’d first been embraced. Spending money she didn’t have, hearing voices (though, that was just now something that never ended- really just came and went), impulsive decisions, hyper-cleaning (though, her haven really needed it, so that might not have been a manic decision). 

Now she noticed she was starting to sink. 

She could only wonder what a depressive episode might look like for her, now. Would she just end up walking herself into the street during the day? 

Mulling it over, she unlocked the door to her Haven, opening the door and finding… a box. A very large box. And a certain Jester-Prince standing in the middle of her humble abode, inspecting one of her paintings, once more. Talk about deja vu. Her face would have burst into flames if it could have, as she remembered what she was just coming back from. And what she might have just learned about him. 

“Um… hey,” Chiyo greeted awkwardly, stowing her keys on the hook beside the door. 

If she knew better, she’d have thought LaCroix looked startled when she entered. Her eyebrows were raised expectantly. 

“You didn’t respond to my Email when I said you’d be getting a package, so I came by to make sure you received it. I didn’t realize you were out.” LaCroix explained coolly. “I… see you’ve added another painting to your little collection. Another of yours?” He asked, referring to the one on the easel, sitting there waiting to dry. It was a graphic depiction of a rotted corpse, leaking its fluids and organs. It looked eerily like Jezebel’s corpse, though she painted it a day before that confrontation. At her confirmation, he continued, “Your style brings Francisco Goya to mind, I believe.”

The Malkavian couldn’t help but grin, her hands clapping together. The sinking feeling in her stomach lessened, in his presence. “That’s what I was going for! In that and a couple of the other more- er, disturbing ones. It’s why I love the Neoclassical and Romantic eras of painting so much- replicating that style, taking something soft and… twisting it. It’s, ah, cathartic.” 

“Yes, well, it’s certainly twisted,” LaCroix replied, his voice even- his face not betraying the fact that he really quite enjoyed her paintings. She wouldn’t have known that if it weren’t being whispered to her. 

“What’s in the box? Oh wait, don’t tell me-” Pausing to tap into her insight for a moment, she was surprised when the Jester-Prince actually humored her. “A body? Socks? A bomb? I definitely think the box has a bomb in it.”

Sebastian let out a half scoff, half laugh at that. “Why would I personally deliver a bomb to you?” 

“No, I’m like… definitely sure that box has a bomb in it,” Chiyo replied, eyes narrowing. That’s what the soft whispers kept saying, making her feel genuinely a little apprehensive. 

“Well, I’ve told you before that your insight isn’t always correct. Most of it is illogical- as a Malkavian, it's your job to root through the rubbish and find the correct answers. Logically, would I deliver a bomb to you?” 

Chiyo wouldn’t put it past him, but she figured he probably wouldn’t be in the room with her if it were a bomb. “Probably not…”

“So, logically , what would probably be in the box?” 

The Fledgling hadn’t expected this to turn into a lesson, of sorts, but she squatted close to the box, squinting at it as if she were trying to see through the nondescript cardboard, to see inside. “Is it… fabrics?”

LaCroix let out an amused puff of air. “Yes, sort of. It’s clothes. I’ve had them shipped from Paris. I had to guess on your size, but I figure it can all be adjusted or thrown out if it doesn’t fit right.”

“Um… why?” She didn’t understand- a nightgown he needed to get rid of was one thing, but specially ordering clothes for her? From Paris ? 

“I can’t have a close subordinate running around dressed like a juvenile,” he replied, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world, prompting Chiyo to look down at her clothes, eyebrows furrowed. “Oh, don’t get all offended. You were a college student before, yes? It’s only natural that you wouldn’t be dressing properly. Remember what I’d said before? New world, new rules. Dress however you’d like on the streets, but if you’re in my presence, you should be dressed appropriately. Consider it… a reward, for a decent job with the Elizabeth Dane.” 

The Fledgling nodded a little, opening the box to find it set up with a pole across the top, dozens of garments hanging on it. Her eyes widened as her fingers lightly brushed against the high quality fabric of one of the blouses. It was all dark, silks, laces, and velvets. She glanced up at him, her eyes still wide, mutely wondering if it was even okay to accept a gift that had to have been this expensive. 

“Go on, try some of it on. I’d like to make sure it fits, so I can send some notes back to the seamstress for future reference.”

Future reference?? He was going to do it again??

She nodded a little, grabbing the blouse she’d first laid her eyes on, along with a skirt that seemed like it might match, taking the garments into the bathroom to change into. The fabric of the skirt was soft and hugged her curves almost perfectly, it was a knee-length pencil skirt with a light pattern on it, with a bit of pleating in the back. The blouse was a different story- it would have fit nicer if her bust weren’t trying its damndest to break the buttons she was trying to fasten. An age old problem for her. Letting out a frustrated noise, she popped her head out of the door, chewing on her lip. “The top doesn’t fit.”

“Let me see.”

Her eyebrows furrowed as she stared incredulously at him, having every intention to grab a shoe to throw at him, like who the hell did this guy think he was-

LaCroix rolled his eyes, crossing his arms. “I’m not trying to debase your modesty, stop looking at me like that. I need to see how exactly it’s not fitting so I can send proper notes back to the seamstress.”

Chiyo was still giving him a wary look as she stepped out, holding the two sides of the blouse together as best as she could. She wasn’t even sure why she was feeling so shy- he wouldn’t be the first guy she’d let take a peek or a grab. She wasn’t exactly the most shameful of women, but in a setting like this, it just felt… weird. Still, she stood still as he measured her, jotting down some shorthand in a notepad before sending her to try a different blouse, and another, and another- with different skirts and slacks, even adding shoes to the mix. Louboutins, and another expensive brand she didn’t recognize. All black or red and smart, and not at all anything she’d ever find herself picking out. Mainly because of the price tag.

Eventually, they’d gone through every garment in the box, and the Fledgling was left to fall back into her dirty bed with an exhausted grunt. “Never… again.”

“Don’t be so dramatic, Fledgling,” LaCroix admonished, packing everything that didn’t fit, or wasn’t flattering back into the box and summoning his Sheriff in from outside to pick it up. “Next time won’t be as bad, now that she’ll have your measurements. Keep your eye on your Email for the next few days, as another task will be coming in soon.”

With that, he left, leaving Chiyo to reflect on the odd evening she’d had. She thought about how… just, methodical LaCroix looked when he was measuring her, his face scarcely betraying his indifference. Honestly, if it weren’t for the soft voices in her head cluing her into his lingering stare, the slight tremble in his hand as he measured her bust the first time, she would have really thought he felt nothing. But it was confusing- he’d just told her it was her job to sort through the rubbish and find the logical predictions. A conclusion like that was not logical at all. Especially if he had Jeanette to roll around in bed with.

She let out a sigh, turning over and jumping at her cat’s critical gaze. He’d had to be put in his carrier for the duration of LaCroix’s visit; she nearly forgot she’d let him out. 

“What?” 

He blinked at her.

“Ugh, don’t look at me like that, fur ball. I mean- like, it’s only normal to have a little crush on him. Even if he is a huge jerk. He just gave me a bunch of clothes! And he appreciates art, too” The Fledgling murmured, chewing on her lip as her cat continued to stare at her. “Oh get over yourself.” she huffed, clutching her pillow to her chest as she rolled over. She was only feeling weird because she just learned that he was capable of feeling the same desires as her–he felt more like an actual man now, instead of just a boss. That was it. Definitely.

Definitely…

Chapter Text

“Why dontcha just give up and join us, sister?” Bishop Vick drawled as he dodged the fledgling’s knife for the umpteeth time, his low, carefree voice nearly alluring. If he weren’t proposing the complete extinction of Kine, she might have found herself nodding along. 

“Shut the hell up,” she got out through pain gritted teeth, clutching her side as her body slowly patched up the fucking hole he just blew into her with his double barreled shot gun. She tumbled and swung again, to the best of her ability, she was going to win this fight. It’s not like she’d ever had to fight like this before, and while her heightened speed and other senses made her a better fighter, it didn’t do much when she was fighting an older Kindred, with more experience. And a shotgun. 

Bishop Vick’s crazed gaze landed on her’s (even though she was pretty sure he was a Toreador like Jezebel, his eyes were very reminiscent of the stereotypical ‘fish malk’ she’d heard of), and Chiyo took that opportunity of eye contact to summon her strength, the pool of madness that rotted in her stomach at all times, her brain demanding that he lose concentration. She imagined when she used dementation before, on Therese’s ghoul, Vandal, making him laugh almost manically. 

Within moments, a stunned expression came over the cult leader’s face as a few compulsive giggles bubbled past his lips, before he was full on laughing his head off. With no idea of how long the effect would last on a fellow Kindred (she hated that, she hated that a scum-sucking cultist preacher was a ‘fellow Kindred’, that they were one in the same), Chiyo lunged forward, dragging her knife across his neck, getting him on the ground and delivering further, fatal blows until his body began to rot beneath her. Stumbling backwards, she felt… less affected, than she had when she’d killed Jezebel. Maybe it was because of how much he infuriated her, with his slow, preachy drawl, or the horrible things he’d said, trying to get her to join their circle of freaks. Or how sore her body felt from sealing up multiple of those giant gunshot holes. She just felt… numb. 

Unable to dwell on it for very long, the last remaining zombies began to stumble towards her, too close for comfort, so she took care of them, too, before leaving. 

She wandered a bit- talking to Damsel first, in the Last Round, and getting treated to a round of ‘drinks’, blood that was taken from someone intoxicated. It was nice, getting a slight buzz. Plus, getting to fill up after using her power on someone so much stronger than her.

After that, she hit the chantry, to tell Mr. Strauss that the plaguebearers were taken care of. He was cordial, but she… felt wary around him. Like he was 10 steps ahead of her, and she was fumbling to keep up with whatever he was talking about. Also, the way he spoke was way more confusing than any kind of riddle she could spit out. 

And lastly, she made her way to the Ivory Tower, figuring she might as well give LaCroix an update on the situation. Even though it wasn’t a task that he had given her, she still felt like he was owed… something. She didn’t know why. Before getting to his penthouse office, she stopped in the lobby’s bathroom, changing into one of the outfits he’d gifted her, sweeping her messy, chestnut brown hair back into a manageable bun, and making sure all of the rotten blood had been fully washed from her skin.

The Fledgling made it up to the Prince’s office, finding it… startlingly empty. Even his ever-present Sheriff was nowhere to be found. Knowing that it was the middle of the night, she figured he’d be back soon, so she flounced her way over to his desk, plopping down on the top- something she’d wanted to for a while. She turned so she was looking out at the city, getting to experience looking down at LA’s inhabitants like ants, the very same way her Jester-Prince did. 

She crossed one leg over the other, and then switched, tapping her nails on the desk and growing impatient. Seriously, where was he? She’d changed her clothes for him! Last minute, of course, but it still counted as being in his presence “dressed appropriately”-- even though she wasn’t even in his presence because he wasn’t in his office!

Letting out a frustrated huff, she fell back onto the desk, her legs kicking as she stared up at the ceiling. She just wanted to go back to her haven, or to the Asylum. Maybe she’d blow off some steam with Jeanette after this, if she had the time. That had easily become a fun pastime of her’s- any excuse to get to use that drugged blood that the other malkavian always seemed to have on hand.  

The ~secret~ entrance to the Prince’s Haven opened, and Chiyo sat up, her eyes a little wide in embarrassment- meeting LaCroix’s, which widened in surprise. He looked vaguely frustrated, his hair mussed and sticking up in places. He quickly smoothed it down, adjusting his hastily tied tie. 

“Fledgling, what are you doing here? You don’t have anything new to report,” LaCroix said, approaching, eyebrows furrowed. He gave her an appreciative once-over, noting her compliance with his (demand) request for her to dress more appropriately. “And what are you doing on my desk? There’s perfectly good seats over there if you were waiting.”

Chiyo didn’t move from her spot on his desk, even when he stood right in front of her. She didn't quite know why- but she’d just remembered what Jeanette had said about him, and that old feeling of jealousy sparked in her chest. “The bishop- the, the last of the Plaguebearers, I took care of him. His house of corpses still stands, so…” 

“Is that seriously it, Fledgling? You could have Emailed me.” The Prince admonished.

“I wanted to see you…” She meant to say ‘tell you in person’, but that came out instead falling from her lips similarly to an unwanted prophecy, and she didn’t have the willpower to change it.

The Malkavian fell silent, her eyes boring into his with that wide-eyed, unsettling stare. If her heart still beat, it would have been pounding- she couldn’t take her eyes off of him. It seemed like he was in the same boat, not moving, not opening his mouth to berate her anymore. She kept imagining him and Jeanette rolling around in bed, the image of it making her nearly sick with jealousy. She’d never get to do that with him- she was just… a stupid, useless Fledgling. A thorn in his side. He only tolerated her because of Nines’ interjection during her trial. She was little more than an errand-boy, but she wanted more . 

The Fledgling was… slowly coming to terms with her weird feelings towards the man- the stupid little crush she had on him. How could she not? He was her type- according to her history of exes. Manipulative, persuasive, suave, demanding, demeaning. But… he appreciated art, he helped her understand her insight, he bought her nice things. He was helping her make the transition into their world of darkness, the way a sire was supposed to. He could have just left her to die, he had no obligation towards her. But instead, he was tolerating her sitting on his desk, barging into his office without any forewarning, and every other little mannerism of her’s that she knew was irritating. 

Something hungering and almost desperate simmered underneath her gaze, as she drew the Prince closer to her with her eyes alone. She wanted to kiss him, badly , imagining it so hard in her head, she almost thought he was actually about to kiss her. His hand raised to cup her jaw, leaning in like he was going to press his lips to her’s. Chiyo’s chest stirred, her eyes a little wide as her lips parted- unsure if she was going to urge him to continue, to just do it , or to stop him because it was too much for her wishes to come true so suddenly -

When, it stopped mattering, as the door opened, and the Prince jumped away from his Fledgling. Clearing his throat and tugging at the collar of his shirt, he gave Chiyo a firm push and she hopped off of his desk. 

The small group of primogens filed in, the door being held open by the Sheriff. The Fledgling was suddenly very glad she’d remembered to change before coming in, the horror of being underdressed in front of this mysterious group of leaders making her skin crawl. 

“I- I’ll submit that report as soon as I get back to my Haven,” She said hurriedly, bowing her head respectfully at the group of Primogens, quickly grabbing her canvas bag and scurrying out of the room, trying desperately to ignore their prying, judgemental eyes. 

Fuck, that was more embarrassing than getting caught having sex by her parents, she was pretty sure. 

Her hands trembled as she made her way into the elevator, smoothing down her bangs, adjusting her blouse, smoothing down her stupid skirt. Fucking hell. What was she doing? What had she done ? 

Surely she’d just… used her dementation on the Prince, or something. She’d wanted it so badly, she accidentally manifested that power- it’d make sense, seeing how much it comes and goes, sometimes. That had to be it. Guilt ate at her as she made her way back to her Haven, her hand coming up to her mouth as she chewed on the skin around her nail. What was he going to do to her once he realized she did that to him? She was dead for sure. 

Getting back to her Haven, the Fledgling slipped out of her expensive business attire, pulling on her ratty old pjs and plopping down in front of her half-finished painting. Setting it aside, she pulled out a blank canvas. She remembered the way he looked, admiring her art, the thought making her chest ache a little. Yeah, she definitely wasn’t going to be paying Jeanette a visit tonight, her chest still festered with jealousy at the thought of them together.

In a perfect universe she wouldn’t have to use her power to make him like her, she thought as she angrily started spreading some paint on a new canvas. In a perfect universe they could both just be human and she wouldn’t have to deal with this scary realization that she might not be able to control her power- that she could force someone to kiss her. In a perfect universe he would just be her’s, and no one else's, and she wouldn’t have to be jealous that her friend-with-benefits has that same relationship with the guy she likes. If things were perfect he’d just sweep her off her feet, make her stop going on these increasingly distressing missions, scare away the darkness that constantly lingered in the corners of her consciousness. Part of her knew she was putting a lot of pressure on this imaginary version of the Prince, but the other part desperately smothered that thought- wanting to believe that maybe he was soft and kind like that, underneath everything. 

He bought her things, and was patient enough with her. More patient than he had to be. And he’d bent the rules to let her live. There had to be something underneath all of that, that meant he cared about her, right? 

Practically in a trance as her thoughts consumed her, she furiously painted the image of a mansion on fire, shadowy figures in each of the windows caught in the midst of anguished cries. Barely visible, a snake slithered away from the wreckage, and a broken mirror lay on the doorstep.  

With a start, Chiyo dropped her paintbrush when she felt a sharp pain swiping down her leg- realizing it was her cat, hissing frightfully, after scratching her. Blinking, she looked around in confusion, her body tensed and a little sore. Her eyes focused on the previously blank canvas, surprised to see the full image in front of her, half-dried and smudged with paint. Ghosts of the past haunt children of the future... an eerie whisper accompanied the sight. This was the second time that happened. Spacing out in front of a canvas and coming to with something in front of her. The last time, it was the rotting corpse of Jezebel Locke- something she hadn’t realized until she’d made it back to her Haven the next night and saw the exact image of the corpse that had sent her spiraling. 

Was… this how she was channeling her insight, now? Instead of upchucking prophecies, she was painting these vague images. It made sense- Mr. Strauss told her that sometimes Malkavians with intense insight like her’s would manifest their prophecies in different ways. He even told her that Malkavians used to be on par with the Ventrue in terms of hierarchy in the Camarilla, revered by Kine and Kindred alike because of their insight. They were the Oracles of Delphi, advisors, leaders- That was back in ancient Greece and Rome, though. 

Chiyo couldn’t see herself being revered for these disturbing paintings. She didn’t even recognize the mansion in it, so she set it aside with a soft sigh, leaning down to pick her kitty up. 

“Sorry for scaring you, buddy,” she murmured, pressing a kiss to the top of his soft head. “I’m, um, scared too. Not that you probably understand, because you’re a cat, but… I’m afraid of how much I keep changing, you know?” She set him down on his desk, filling up the food bowl that was set next to her laptop as she sat down at the desk chair. “I’m afraid that pretty soon I’m going to look back and… I’m not going to remember how I used to be. How I used to act, or look. I’m already so different…” She rubbed her arms, fingertips passing over the old indented scars. “Or maybe I’m not. Maybe I’ve always been holding back this… side of myself. I just hope… this is the limit. Like, it’ll just stop with creepy paintings and talking to my cat…” 

Her head snapped towards her laptop as it pinged with a new Email. She opened her browser, feeling her heart sink at a message from her Prince. She chewed almost frantically on the skin around her thumbnail, staring at the lack of subject line for a good couple of minutes before she finally opened it.

Come to the tower tomorrow night.  

-Prince LaCroix

That was it. Fucking Christ. Oh Gods . 

She was dead, she was so dead. 

Why else would he leave such a vague Email? He was going to murder her!

Or he wanted to continue… maybe her power was still working him over. Maybe he was thinking about her. 

Shaking her head, she reminded herself to focus on the plausible insight. Her power over sending her madness to other people only worked when she was looking at them, and while she was looking at them. And it certainly couldn’t last that long over someone that much more powerful than herself. Right?

Once she dismissed the notion that it could be anything good, a sense of foreboding settled into the pit of her stomach, making her close her laptop and move to lay down on her ratty mattress, staring up at the dingy, dirty ceiling of her Haven. It seemed as though her time navigating the twisting labyrinth of the night might be coming to an end… 

Chapter Text

After a startlingly normal meeting with the Prince, the Fledgling was sent on another task: investigate the mansion of Alistair Grout, and do not return without the missing Malkavian Primogen. LaCroix had said he was likely ‘hiding under his bed’, and he was quite scared of his own shadow, so Chiyo wasn’t expecting much. In and out, go home and fuck around for the rest of the night, that was her goal. 

Stepping out of the taxi that always seemed to be available for her (very weird, but in a town like LA, always having a readily available taxi was a godsend), Chiyo looked up at the towering, eclectic mansion in front of her. It was… foreboding. She quickly checked her bag- a couple bags of blood, her knife and a new addition to her arsenal: a small pistol. Jack had given it to her (only with the promise that she’d return it, eventually), and even gave her a rundown on how to use it, letting her practice in the alleyway behind the Last Round. 

The young Malkavian felt… a pit of dread as she dawdled at the gate. She felt like she recognized the manor in front of her, but she could place quite where. Just as she was reaching out to open the gate, she jumped backwards as someone big and bulky approached, slamming open the gate. 

“Nines??” she yelped, noting he was just as startled as she was. 

“You- you shouldn’t be here, fledgling. Get out while you still can,” he replied, gruffly, oddly fidgety. He even called her fledgling instead of ‘lick’. He must have been really spooked. 

“Huh? Didn’t I just see you at the Last Round…?”

“Y- yeah, well…” The man rubbed the back of his neck. “Just… don’t say I never warned you.” He muttered, before shouldering past her and heading out. 

The confusion Chiyo felt at that appearance, at the very least, helped to dispel some of her anxiety. Ssssnake… a voice hissed, making the fledgling shake her head. Weird, very weird. 

She puffed out her chest and exhaled, though the motion brought no relief to the heaviness stuck in her chest, not in the way it would have if she actually had to breathe. She was here on LaCroix’s order- she was to check on the Malkavian Primogen, and she wasn’t allowed to return unless he was in tow. She had to repeat that little mantra in her head- don’t return without the Primogen.

The Prince didn’t even mention their near kiss- nor Chiyo’s possible misuse of her power. 

On one hand, she’d gotten to live another night, but on the other… had he just forgotten ? Or was he disgusted that that had nearly happened? (What a stupid question, of course he was.)

Scuffing her shoe on the sidewalk and forcing herself to sigh once more, she entered the den of the mad beast.

She’d heard… many stories about the eccentricities of the man- Alistair Grout, what an odd, old name. But none of the stories properly prepared her for the house of horrors she’d stepped foot in. 

It resembled that of the painting off all of the staircases, in her mind, or a booby-trapped madhouse… full of all of Grout’s demented ghouls, fighting tooth and nail to turn her into one of them, or take out their pent up aggression on her. They were all horribly disfigured, with muzzles or straightjackets, their eyes clouded, resembling that of a dead fish.

Her new gun came in handy more than once, and each time left her feeling more and more numb to the sight of their writhing, dying bodies. It was easier to convince herself they were already practically dead, barely kept alive by their master’s blood- likely having been experimented on 1950s asylum style, if the Primogen’s recorded tapes were any indication on what these poor souls had gone through. At the end of the day, she was putting them out of their misery. 

She loathed to think about the fact that they shared a clan, an affliction. Would she be this bad, someday? When her Prince ran out of quests for her and she’d amassed enough riches to shut herself up in a mansion, would she devolve into keeping mad little pets, painting the walls with blood and prophecies? 

The further she ventured into the madhouse, the more her mind kept going back to that question. Through the maze, the experimentation rooms, the riddles that painfully reminded her of the silly way of talking she’d had when she was first embraced–was this her fate? 

Mad mad mad…

Chiyo shook her head, firing into the head of a ghoul running at her with a knife. She couldn’t help but get more and more distressed- now it wasn’t just the ghouls, but the décor, the traps, the blood everywhere , and the room with a woman’s body held in a glass case in the center. She’d even found the vampire that the ghoul Patty had been so annoyingly trying to find, burned to ash under an open skylight, as well as a bag of blood labeled ‘Elder Vitae’–she’d heard that before, and it’d taken her a moment to realize it was vampire’s blood. It made her creeping sense of dread rise exponentially, that whatever he was doing to humans he could do to his fellow Kindred. That meant she was capable of doing it- people that were the same as her, deform and experiment on them. In some way once she’d realized what she’d gotten herself into, she almost expected human test subjects, it wasn’t surprising that a predatory vampire would think of humans as ‘lesser’, the way a human might look at cattle (not that she felt the same, but it didn’t surprise her), but to do that to one's own kind? Chiyo felt sick.

She just had to… remind herself that all she had to do was find the Primogen and tell him to see the Prince, that was it. Then she’d never have to come back here, and think about this horrible place or what it might mean for her future. 

Eventually she found his personal quarters, where the Prince said he’d be ‘hiding under his bed’, finding no such thing. Instead, the window had been broken, and a staked skeleton lay out on the bed, likely having been there for… who knows how long. Chiyo didn’t really know what to do- her instructions were to not come back without Grout, and she was already too freaked out to even begin to figure out how she was supposed to explain this to the prince. 

She reached out to grab the stake, wrenching it from where it was stuck between the ribs, lodged into the bedding beneath him. She felt an odd parallel to her first night as a vampire- men in dark suits barging into the hotel room she’d gotten with her sire, staking him before her. She thought it’d kill her, but someone explained that it only paralized Kindred. Standing with the stake in her hand, she stared down at the rotted skeleton in front of her. This was what was left of the man who left all of those ghouls to run amok in his house, pained and frenzying. Without a face to channel her hatred for the man into, she could only imagine her own over the face of the skull, still unable to shake the horrible feeling she had standing there, in that house, in his private quarters. 

The young Malkavian was snapped out of her trance at the acrid scent of burning . Her head shot up, just as she saw a man running into view across from the balcony, yelling about… something or other. Some kind of anti-vampire, church fanatic, his voice thick with a German accent that made his words hard for her to understand. When she asked if he killed Alistair Grout, he seemed mildly surprised. 

…Aaaand then he shouted something about how she and all of the other servants of Satan would burn, especially a Mister Sebastian LaCroix. And that was where she realized the burning smell was coming from, as the man, Grunfeld Bach, ran off. 

Chiyo quickly gathered her bearings, stuffing the stake in her bag as she ran for the door, realizing it was blocked with fire. She’d learned already that fire was a big no-no for Kindred, and now she might be fucking trapped. As if she weren’t stressed enough. She rammed her elbow into a window that overlooked part of the roof, carefully jumping through and sliding down to the gutters, jumping down to another part of the roof, running until she was close enough to some bushes to fall into. She knew she couldn’t be maimed by a large drop, but she didn’t want to be waiting for her legs to heal if that fanatic came back to finish her off. 

With some minor cuts and bruises already on the mend, she ran towards the front gate, stopping with some compulsion to look back at the burning manor. She could hear the manic, rabid screams of the ghouls inside, watching as one crashed through a window, falling down three stories onto the front lawn, writhing and twitching on the ground before going still. The flames on its body didn’t die down until its form was blackened with char, the rancid smell of burnt, half-rotted flesh reaching Chiyo’s nostrils. Her body was frozen in front of the gate, unable to take her eyes off the scene, unable to tune out the screams, knowing that in some way she’d surely caused this. If she’d gotten to put more of them out of their misery, they wouldn’t be dying such a horrible, painful death. Their nature as ghouls made an already excruciating death that much more agonizing, long- their lungs could take more smoke than a human’s, their body could take more of the flames before giving out. 

Standing at the gate, eyes lit up by the wreckage, another piece of her fragile mentality chipped away. She didn’t know how long she stood there, the flames only seeming to rise impossibly high, scorching the heavens with the sins of her clan-mate. Her feet only moved when she heard a siren approaching, and, terrified of being caught, she stumbled away from the property, her eyes wide and glassy. She’d managed to get in the back of the very same cab that brought her there in the first place, her voice reluctant to return as she gave the request for him to take her to Venture Towers. The Fledgling knew, somewhere in the rational side of her mind that was fighting against the darkness of her illness which threatened to consume her, that she needed to give her report now, that she wouldn’t want to do so later- she wouldn’t want to think about this night again, later. 

Almost all too soon, the cab pulled in front of her Prince’s ivory tower, coming to a gentle stop. Chiyo thanked the cabbie and got out, walking into the building, passing by the night guard who remarked something about craving barbeque when she passed. The Fledgling didn’t bother changing her clothes this time- she hadn’t brought any. She’d, stupidly, expected to just go in-and-out, go home and fuck around for the rest of the night. Idiot. 

“Fledgling, I thought I’d told you not to return unless Alistair Grout was with you-” The Prince stopped, his nose wrinkling, “and why do you smell like a forest fire?” 

“Grout is dead, and his stupid little madhouse was burnt down. A mister Grunfeld Bach sends his regards, he wishes to kill you.” Chiyo said, her voice low as she looked down at him from where he sat at his desk, eyes following him as he stood up, placing his hands on his desk. 

“What do you mean he’s dead? Did Bach kill him?” LaCroix asked as he stood, eyebrows creasing. 

Chiyo was silent for a long moment, her eyes burning into his. So far away from the rubble of that cursed mansion, in his pristine penthouse office, she felt her anguish at what she was becoming take a backseat to that constant anger that simmered in the pit of her stomach. 

“Fledgling, I asked you a question-”

“Let me ask you something first,” The Malkavian interrupted, her eyebrows drawn together as she looked up at him. Something about this night- she wanted a distraction, she wanted an answer. And she didn’t really care about that monster of a vampire or who killed him- he fucking deserved it. “Do you want to kiss me?” 

Sebastian scoffed, eyes rolling a little. “I really don’t think this is the time for-”

“Just answer the question!” 

“Is this really that important? Fine, then, I suppose-” At the first sign of affirmation, Chiyo grabbed him by the tie and dragged him forward, crashing their lips together. Sebastian was obviously startled at first, his cold lips stiff against her’s, before he seemed to melt into the kiss, his shoulders relaxing as he kissed her back. His hands rose to cup her face, and the Fledgling got to relish in the feeling of finally getting what she wanted, especially after a shitty night. She had no qualms in giving in to impulse, her hands moving from tugging on his tie to loosening it, throwing it aside as her fingers fumbled to undo the first couple of buttons on his dark dress shirt. 

Meanwhile, Sebastian’s hands slid around her waist, drawing her as close as he could with his desk still separating their bodies, one of his hands falling to her ass, giving it a nice squeeze that left Chiyo to gasp and chuckle into their kiss. Ignoring the papers on his desk, she shifted to crawl over it, sitting herself between his legs while her hands worked to continue unbuttoning his shirt. It was pretty clear, to her at the very least, that they were both gunning for the same thing. Especially as Sebastian grabbed her by the ass, his other hand wrapping her legs around his waist as he lifted her up with ease, not once breaking their passionate embrace as he carried her towards his Haven, stumbling over some shoes, but otherwise making it to his room unscathed. 

Soon, hands were grabbing at clothes and body parts, Chiyo pausing only for a moment to down a small vial of blood from her pocket before resuming their kiss, her eyes slightly glazed and misty afterwards. Not that Sebastian seemed to care or notice, too focused on kissing and nipping at her neck, doing the very thing Jeanette had taught her to do- puncture the neck, let the blood leak out, and lick it from her skin. It was the best way to prevent an accidental blood bond, and still get the pleasure of blood. 

Jealousy burned in the Fledgling’s chest, wondering which of them taught the other that trick, and she had to shake that thought away as she settled on top of him, her eyes rolling back in pleasure. 

He was her’s, tonight, and that was all that mattered. 

…

Chiyo sat up in Sebastian’s bed, a self-satisfied grin affixed to her lips as she lit up a cigarette. The red, silk sheets settled at her hips, and Sebastian sat up at his elbows beside her, his eyes still openly raking across her nude form. Her head turned towards him, her eyebrow raised as she brought the cigarette to her lips, taking a long drag. The draw of nicotine had died when she did, the night she was Embraced, but the habit was still strong. 

“You could always take a picture, you know,” she said, giggling when he turned away to look up at the ceiling, chuckling at her. 

“After six rounds? I think you’re burned into my memory well enough,” Sebastian replied, running his fingers through his hair. “Somehow I was surprised you had that much energy. I should have known.”

Chiyo had been mid-drag, chuckling as she exhaled the smoke. “Yeah, you should have,” she felt good, much better than she had walking into his office. The energy she felt was electric, and she was half tempted to turn to initiate another round. 

“You know, you never answered my question earlier. Did Bach kill the Primogen?” Sebastian asked, just as she was moving to put her cigarette out, starting to kiss his neck again. 

“Mm, no. He said someone else got to him first.” Chiyo replied, her hand sliding down his chest, before jerking back in surprise when he grabbed her wrist, growing quite serious. 

“Who? This isn’t some little thing, Chiyo, someone killed one of the leaders. Your clan’s leader. Do you have any idea who could have done it? Did you see anyone else leaving the premises?”

“I- I don’t know, hell maybe it was one of his ghouls. With what he was doing to them, he probably deserved it,” The Fledgling replied, growing a little indignant, feeling slightly rejected again. She remembered Nines leaving, looking twitchy and weird, though- she almost didn’t want to tell Sebastian. That looked bad of course, but she didn’t believe Nines would kill a Primogen for no good reason. 

“That’s not right, he doesn’t allow his ghouls near his personal quarters. You’re sure you didn’t see anyone else there?” Sebastian’s eyebrows were drawn together, and it felt like he was asking a question he already knew the answer to- like he was waiting for her to lie, or something. 

Growing nervous, Chiyo finally fessed up. “I… saw Nines leaving, before I went in, I guess, but I don’t think he did it…” she said, chewing on her lip. She reached out, trying to lean in and initiate things again. “Can’t we just forget about it for now? Deal with it tomorrow night? I don’t want to stop…” 

Sebastian scoffed, standing and drawing on a dark red and black silk robe. “You really have no idea what that means , do you, Fledgling? If Nines killed a Primogen …” he shook his head. “I don’t even wish to think about the consequences, but as the only suspect we’d have to call for a bloodhunt. I’d have to call for the other Primogens and discuss it.” 

The Malkavian’s eyebrows drew together as she sat up, looking very indignant, now. “You’re just going to go back to work now?”

The Prince stopped at the door, giving Chiyo a look like he was dealing with little more than an idiot. “Yes, Chiyo, I have a job to do. I don’t know what you thought this was but I’m certainly not going to neglect my duties to cuddle and neither will you.” 

Letting out an incredulous scoff of her own, Chiyo stood from the bed, stomping her feet back in her shorts. “I see, so that’s what this is.” Tugging on her shirt and stuffing her bra into her bag, she grabbed the stake, slamming it against his chest, letting him fumble to catch it. “Here’s your murder weapon or whatever. See you later, asshole.” 

With those parting words, she stormed off, only struggling to get her feet back into her boots once she was out of eyesight, having to stop next to the elevator to unlace and relace them to get them on. She fumed during the cab ride back to Santa Monica, ending her night by throwing herself into another painting. She was an idiot to believe that one night of impulse would have left him feeling different about her.

Idiot, idiot, idiot…  

Chapter Text

Chiyo slipped between some shelves, holding her breath as a small gaggle of guards ran past her hiding place, her eyes a little wide. As soon as they were out of earshot, she let out a soft giggle, biting her lip and slinking off in the opposite direction, back towards the basement of the museum. The most contact she’d had with her stupid Prince was an Email, which stated that he’d discovered the whereabouts of the sarcophagus and he wanted her to go get it before the sabbat got their hands on it. Completely cold, formal. Bureaucratic, as if he hadn’t had his dick in her a couple days previously. 

Fuck him, she thought, letting out a huff. Now that she got those damn guards off her back, she strolled leisurely through the underbelly of the museum, lighting up a cigarette as she poked around in the different rooms. She didn’t care about getting caught- the Prince told her to be discreet, so she made sure to ash in the hallways and flip off the cameras, chuckling to herself. Picking the lock into one of the offices, she slipped in and swiped a nice looking watch she could pawn, grabbing some other things she could possibly sell to Tripp later. She ashed her cigarette over the keyboard, leaving. 

Continuing on her way down to the basement, she made her way towards the specific place she’d read they would be keeping the sarcophagus while they waited to study it. The room was surprisingly spacious, considering there was supposed to be a sarcophagus in it.

Stopping in her tracks- it was empty. The space where she knew the sarcophagus should have been, empty, save for some sediment that must have come from it. 

Wolf watches …

Chiyo whipped her head around, and saw the glowing eyes of the Gangrel scholar she’d met once before. 

“It seems as though your intuition has grown since we last spoke,” Beckett said with a chuckle, beastly eyes sweeping over her form from behind his small glasses. “As has your affliction, perhaps? I do believe they frown upon smoking in the archives. Bad for the ancient items stored here.”

The Fledgling dropped her cigarette to the ground, rubbing it into the concrete floor with her boot. Not because of what he’d said, of course, as if she’d so dutifully listen to some werewolf. “The hell are you doin’ here, wolfy?”

“Well, I had planned on getting my own reading on that sarcophagus that appears to have everyone else in a frenzy, but it seems as though someone got to it before either of us. A shame.” Beckett was staring at the Malkavian meaningfully, puzzling her out as if she were an ancient riddle he’d yet to uncover. “You’ve changed since the warehouse.”

It was a harmless, nearly meaningless comment- it was something anyone could have said or noticed, but it made Chiyo’s skin prickle. Like he was seeing through her- is that how others felt around her, around other Malkavians? “I’d sure hope so,” she said, almost awkwardly, rubbing her arm. She was clearly a little on the jumpier side, now, feeling like the shadows were whispering around them and for once she wasn’t the one able to discern what they were saying. Her foot tapped, her hands stuffing into the pockets of her denim jacket, fidgeting for a moment before dropping to her sides, tapping her thighs. She didn’t know what to do- she didn’t want to have to report back to LaCroix about this, deal with his freakout, she wanted to go back to the Asylum, get good and drunk, dance with Kine. Have a fling or two. “Any idea where the sarcophagus went? I don’t think it just up n’ left on its own and I kinda need to bring it back to my… boss.”

“The Prince, correct? Still running errands for him?” Beckett’s voice always held a note of teasing, a lilt of some joke that only he could find the humor in. “Unfortunate, isn’t it?”

“Listen, I didn’t fuckin’ ask to be his lordship’s little errand boy, and I certainly don’t need get shit from you about it, okay? Can you just tell me if you know anything about where that stupid fucking box went?” Chiyo snapped, itching for another cigarette, and throwing her cares about however he may judge her to the wind as she got one out, lighting it up, her foot tapping. “ Well ?”

The Gangrel chuckled at her, apparently finding amusement in her defensive irritation. “I’m afraid I know about as little as you do about the whereabouts of the sarcophagus. You’re the one in a clan with a knack of knowing more than others, why don’t you attempt to parse out where it might be, hm?” 

Feeling as though she were the butt of the joke, Chiyo’s eyes narrowed. “Fuck you.” she spat, flicking her cigarette towards him, turning on her heel and leaving- the infuriating sound of his haughty laughter following her out. 

…

“ Gone ! What do you mean it's gone ?!” 

“I-”

“No, no, this can’t be. This-” The Prince paced his office, hands locked behind his back, shaking his head. Chiyo hardly got to get a word in since informing him, and she only continued to grow more and more irritated with each interruption. The Malkavian silently simmered, her hands stuffed in her pockets as the prince continued to pace and rant. 

“...Yes, it must have been Gary, that snake , him and his Nosferatu scum are the ones who gave me the information of where the sarcophagus would be, they're the only ones who could have taken it. Fledgling, you’ll have to go to Hollywood and find their settlement, I-”

“No.” Chiyo finally cut in, making LaCroix’s head snap in her direction. “Seriously, why am I the one you keep giving these stupid fuckin’ tasks? I’m not your errand boy. I’ve more than earned a place here, earned something more than the jack shit you’ve given me. Do you know how many messes I’ve cleaned up for you?”

LaCroix looked completely dumbfounded- he’d never had a subordinate outright refuse like this. He cleared his throat, taking a calculated step towards her. Chiyo’s legs tensed in preparation to have to run. Perhaps she pushed the wrong buttons. “I have given you things, things you seemed more than grateful for.”

“Like what? Your co-”

“A- hem ,” LaCroix gave her a sharp look. “You haven’t allowed me to finish. I was going to say, I’ve gotten you a haven. A new one, here in LA, and I’ve already taken the liberty of having your things moved in as well.”

The Fledgling gave him a flat look as he stepped even closer, reaching up for her face. “Do you do this for all of your little playthings? Because I’m not your callgirl-”

“I never insinuated you were anything other than a valued subordinate. Consider it a gift for your continued loyalty,” Sebastian’s voice was low, nearly soothing as he clasped her chin, stroking a thumb over her cheek. 

Chiyo nearly melted, that annoying crush on him flaring up in her chest. She grabbed his wrist and tore his hand away from her, taking a step backwards- Beckett’s words ringing in her ears. Such an innocuous statement- you’ve changed , it could have referred to anything- but could he see how weak-willed she’d become? When he’d last seen her she was anguishing over the lives she’d taken, could he see the invisible blood on her hands? Could he tell just by looking at her how far her morals had fallen?

“Don’t ever fucking touch me again.” Chiyo practically snarled, clutching her canvas bag at her side as she turned to leave. 

“Ask the front desk for your new key,” LaCroix called after her, as he strode back to his desk. He’d send her an email later, detailing the rest of this request. Order. Whatever it was.

Sebastian watched her form as she retreated, he could nearly see the tail tucked between her legs. She’d come crawling back eventually, that much he was sure of. At the very least, he was confident in that fact, though her behavior had become increasingly erratic since they’d hooked up. His contact in Santa Monica had confirmed as much. Erratic, unpredictable, and she’d apparently come dangerously close to exposing the masquerade during some party. Her and Jeanette. If her behavior didn’t change soon, he’d have to say something to her- if she’d even listen. 

It was strange, when she’d first been embraced he would have welcomed an opportunity to prove that she was a danger to have around, have her executed like her sire. Now, he supposed she was too useful to just get rid of so easily, at least now. Even so, the change was a little troubling to him. He doubted he’d grown that attached to her, but he supposed he did miss the time before he’d seemed to piss her off. She was amusing to have around, a nice break in the monotony of the others he saw on a daily basis. Primogen, elders, fellow Ventrue who would sooner stab him in the back to take his place. 

Setting those thoughts aside, the Prince opened up his laptop, and returned to work. 

…

Chiyo stepped into her new apartment- after nearly getting thrown out by the security guard who 1) couldn’t believe that this was the new agent of LaCroix’s, and 2) found it ‘suspicious’ that she didn’t know what floor she was on. She’d had him by the collar ready to do God-knows-what when another security guard came in to confirm her identity and let her go up. 

She knew she was a bit messy but did she seriously look that suspicious?? 

Letting out an indignant huff, she lit up a cigarette as she stepped into the elevator and ignored their attempts to inform her that smoking wasn’t allowed in common spaces. 

Her nose wrinkled at the sight of her new apartment- haven , letting her eyes scan the brand new furniture, the huge plasma TV, the fishtank embedded in the wall- she really hoped he didn’t expect her to care for them. All of the furnishings were a blend of modern and antique-looking, gone were the mothball-eaten rugs and cockroaches, clearly. She should have been grateful, she’d been wanting something better than the shithole she’d been living in for the past couple months, but part of her… hated it. She hated it. 

Little Bassy chirped, walking through her legs, rubbing up against them. At least he was here for her- she’d no idea how in the hell the movers had gotten him in there without bloodshed. 

Chiyo could barely pay her cat any mind as she turned her head and saw her paintings set up against the wall with a tarp over them, looking further to see a few blank spaces on the wall without decoration, likely a push to get her to do some of her own decorating, add her own touch. That was the last thing she wanted to do- this wasn’t her’s. Had he had this empty flat just laying around that entire time? And he only chose to upgrade her after he fucked her, of course, not because of any of the million of things she’d done for him. The amount of emotional strain he’d put her under meant nothing as long as she was a cold body for him to touch, that had to be it. 

Feeling a creeping sense of self-loathing begin to crawl up her throat, Chiyo decided she was leaving. She still had enough hours of night left to have fun, she decided. She changed into a skimpy number and tugged on a pair of platform shoes- her most prized possession, a pair of Vivienne Westwoods that she’d, by some miracle, found at a goodwill years prior. They were her good luck charm, all of her best hookups had happened while she was wearing those shoes. She’d started to associate them with manic episodes and the string of lovers she’d acquire during, though, and stored them in the back of her closet long ago. When moving from her old apartment to Santa Monica, she’d dug them back up, knowing she’d need her good luck charms at the time. 

Foregoing a cab to Santa Monica, walked down the block to the Confessional instead- Santa Monica was too far, she’d be wasting time getting there; plus she’d have to see Jeanette and at that moment that was the last thing she’d wanted to do. She was pretty sure she hated that girl, now- thinking about her made that pit of dark hatred flare up in her stomach. She didn’t need that woman to have a good time. 

Entering the club, she quickly found a niche to dance in the middle of, easily being absorbed by the group in the midst of the flashing lights and ground shaking music. She quickly found herself ass-to-hips with another girl, whose hands on her hips were the only thing keeping her grounded. She could feel her world slowing, and blurring, and she realized that in the flurry of everything that had happened that night, she hadn’t fed in so long. She could feel it in her stomach, the beast whispering for her to turn around and drain the kine behind her. She’d never drank directly from a human, she’d refused to. It was too much for her, to give in, but in that moment, that voice was turning more and more hypnotizing, and as she turned around to ask the girl to take her somewhere more private- the kine’s eyes widened and she’d slipped away, into the crowd of writhing bodies. 

Chiyo was left standing there, dumbfounded. She hadn’t even done anything yet- not to mention for the briefest moment that the kine’s face had been lit by the strobe lights, she nearly looked familiar. Someone she’d seen in the Asylum? Maybe it was someone who’d seen her and Jeanette’s stunt the other night. Chiyo shook her head and stumbled away from the dancefloor and towards the bar, taking out her compact and looking at her face- finding the eyes of a beast staring back at her. Her hand jerked and she dropped the compact on the bar, the impact cracking the mirror. 

“Whoa! You dropped this, killer,” The perky bartender said as she handed the compact back, and Chiyo flinched at the nickname. She fumbled with the compact again, and in the multiple reflections she saw between the cracks, she saw her eyes had returned to normal. 

“S… sorry,” she murmured, before she realized that no kine would be able to hear her over the music. “Um, sorry- thought I saw something,” she said, her voice raised over the music and the bartender nodded with a grin, waving her hand dismissively. 

“So, you’ve made your way into my confessional- have you confessed yet, darling?” The bartender replied. “Confess your deepest, darkest secret, and I’ll give you a drink on the house.”

Chiyo found the premise amusing, but even in her state she knew that all of her ‘deepest, darkest’ secrets were Masquerade-breaking. “I don’t have any,” she replied simply- she didn’t need a drink, she couldn’t drink alcohol anymore, not normally. She wanted to exit this conversation, her hunger pains were flaring up again and she was having trouble taking her eyes off the pretty woman’s neck, where she could practically smell her blood pumping beneath the skin…

“Oh come off with it, sweetheart, everyone’s done something~ Hit ‘n run in ‘93? Slept with a teacher? Had an affair? Killed someone?” 

The Malkavian tried not to let that get under her skin- the way the woman looked at her made her paranoid, it made her think she already knew all of her secrets. Like she could see how hard Chiyo was restraining from hopping over the bar and draining her. “Yeah, I’ve killed someone,” she said, finally, running a finger over the crack in her compact, holding the bartender’s gaze.  

“Oh, I knew I’d get under that shell eventually, sweetheart. So what was it? Accidental, or on purpose? Someone you knew?” For as terrifying as this conversation felt for Chiyo, the bartender looked near joyful. “I’ve heard them all, love, don’t be afraid. This is Los Angeles, and I’m not a cop~”

“On purpose, I didn’t know them. It was life or death.”

“And you chose life. Smart. Somehow, I believe you- unlike those other phony stories. Which is why, I believe you can help me with a problem, darling…”

The bartender introduced herself as Venus Dare, and her predicament- a certain Russian mafia boss, and an ‘unpaid’ debt. It was simple, tell the meatheads she didn’t have the money and she never would again, and take care if things got violent. 

And it was simple, Chiyo even had time to run back to her haven, grab her canvas bag from where she’d left it by the door, and drink a blood pack before she carried it out, using her unique power over the forces of crazy to make the meatheads kill each other, after delivering the news. She wasn’t fully sure why she’d even done this task for the woman, besides perhaps feeling a bit of empathy- a woman trying to do her own thing, overshadowed by a greedy boss. If Chiyo couldn’t help herself out of that situation, she could help someone else.

She returned to the club soon after, and Venus was clearly very happy to see that she was still alive. “You did wonderfully, darling, unfortunately it’s not quite over yet. You remember life or death, right? Well, Boris is threatening some rather scary things and it’s obvious to me that you know just how to deal with threats like that. Would you do me just this one last solid, love? If you get rid of that fat asshole, I’ll even make you my new partner- it’d be the least I can do.”

Chiyo didn’t even have to think about it, nodding. “Of course- anything I can do to help you,” she’d said, though admittedly now, her hands were aching for… something. To kill that man, to free Venus. 

The Malkavian was still in her clubbing outfit- a skimpy, lacy black spaghetti strapped shirt, a short leather skirt, her near-signature ripped up fishnets, when she entered the Empire Arms Hotel. Only the second time ever, and she found the very same man working behind the desk that had been there when she took care of Jezebel. Of course.

He had the same sleazy look in his eye, and this time Chiyo didn’t find herself shuddering at the feeling of his eyes roaming over her form, she found it invigorating. It made it easier to get in, if she had this boy under her belt. “Same deal, love ? I need the penthouse,” she’d said, leaning against the counter, giving the boy a very generous peek into her shirt. She was too far gone to feel the loathing that otherwise threatened to take over. The urge to gouge out his eyes and cover up, never be seen by leering eyes again. 

“I don’t know, sweetheart , you never got me back for the first time. I almost lost my job for that, you know,” the man replied, though despite the edge in his voice, he was unabashedly staring at her. 

Chiyo rolled her eyes, waving her hand and staring into his eyes. She could see the ring of darkness in his iris as manic giggles started to escape his lips while she took over his mind. She reached behind the counter and grabbed a pass, leaving him for the elevator, taking it up with her. He’d forget about that interaction, because of her use of the discipline. 

Soon enough she was in Boris’s office. It was… incredibly easy to convince his huge guards that she was an escort, with her smoky eyes and generous assets. That familiar pool of self loathing that was forming in her stomach was easily directed towards the Russian man- she’d convinced him, quite easily, that Venus had sent her as an apology. 

He’d lead her to his room, she’d locked the door. Clothes fell easily to the floor. She’d been pulled onto his lap, and when she looked down at him, his face melted into LaCroix’s, and she felt a panic begin to grip her throat. His touch burned her cold skin, his hands too rough, too heavy, his touch scraping at the layers of skin she fought to keep to herself. She’d never meant for it to go this far, she’d never meant to be sucked into this world. She just wanted to survive, to drag herself to the surface when everything else threatened to pull her under the waves. She wanted to help when her circumstances left her helpless. She hated the people who brought her here, the faceless, nameless mass of people who forced her into this spot. Her sire, the most nameless and faceless of the group- his face still managed to elude her, but that in that moment she was pretty sure she saw it quite clearly as she reversed the roles, her teeth sinking into the warm neck of the kine beneath her, draining him of the blood he didn’t deserve. She deserved it, she deserved to be mortal again, she deserved to be unknowing, to be ungrateful for the life she’d gotten to live for so long. Maybe she had changed.

The beast practically screamed in her ear to keep going, and for her first taste of kine’s blood from the source, she did. She didn’t stop until the body beneath her grew cold, and hard, and she was full. 

For the first time, full. 

Chapter Text

The Malkavian stepped out of the taxi cab, peering over her sunglasses at the glittering lights of Hollywood, finding it depressingly underwhelming. As a human she could have been overjoyed at being in Hollywood at night, especially, the promise of parties, getting into things she shouldn’t, everything . Nowadays, she found excitement like that hard to muster.

Chiyo hardly had a moment to gather her bearings before she was approached by a fellow Kindred- the action making her hand reflexively reach for the gun in her bag, her eyes a little wide, the fact that she could sense he was Kindred doing little to calm her nerves. She knew Hollywood was out of the Camarilla’s jurisdiction, and as much as she was beginning to hate the organization, she was pretty well known for being in the Prince’s pocket. Was she about to be involved in another turf war? Was he coming to silence her? His hands were raised in a universal show of ‘I come in peace’, which didn’t do much to relax her, either way. 

Somehow not backing down from her piercing, wary gaze, he opened his mouth to speak, informing her that she had to announce her presence for the Hollywood baron. Eyebrows furrowed, she just gave the barest hint of a nod that seemed to be enough to make the man go on his way, finally leaving Chiyo to slump her shoulders a bit. Seemed as though she’d never manage to escape all of these stupid archaic hierarchies the Kindred so loved. Even the anarchs. 

Scoffing, Chiyo scuffed her boot on the sidewalk, before turning towards the jewelers shop that the Baron was apparently set up in, wondering what kind of figurehead she was about to meet- hopefully not another egomaniac like her Prince. She wasn’t sure if she could go through that again, the push and pull- she quickly shook that thought out of her head. She wouldn’t allow herself to be manipulated like that again, that was all. LaCroix basically preyed upon her vulnerability- that was all. With the illness in her head dragging her down into the claws of that invisible beast, it was hard not to find herself in periods of… vulnerability. Latching herself onto ideas, signs, statements. 

Though it had been a couple days, she still thought about Beckett’s statement: you’ve changed. You’ve changed . She could still taste the sweet satisfaction of giving into her beast for the first time- and the intense, paralyzing guilt and fear that followed.

You’ve changed.  

There was no way that Gangrel had any idea of how much that statement would affect her. He was just a stupid historian. He didn’t know anything about her- nobody in that shithole city did, at the very least Chiyo could count on that fact. 

Feeling her torrent of thoughts still festering in her chest, she shoved open the door to the Baron’s haven. “I’ve been told to announce myself,” she announced pointedly. “Which is a very archaic pr- Isaac Abrams ?!” 

The Baron, who had clearly been more than slightly disgruntled at this Fledgling barging in in such a way, even more put off by the fact that one so young even recognized him. “I’m impressed,” he commented, “though your recognition doesn’t excuse the lack of decorum you used in your introduction.”

“I- I’m, uh, I’m sorry Mr. Abrams,” Chiyo backpedaled quickly, waving her hands in front of herself. “If- If I’d know, I mean, I’ve seen almost all of your movies, to think your disappearance was you… turnin’ into a vampire, is just..” she let out a breathless, disbelieving laugh. Whatever she’d been angsting over on the walk there seemed to dissipate upon coming face to face with one of her heroes.

The Hollywood Baron leaned back in his chair, the slightest hint of an amused grin on his lips. “I’ve heard a lot about you, Fledgling. Mainly that you’re the Prince’s lapdog, however you seem like someone who can get something done. I know what you’re here for, and before I give you anything, I’ll need something from you first…” 

… 

And that was how the young Malkavian found herself wading through the shit water of Hollywood, weak from her fight against the Tzimisce that guarded the entrance to the warrens, and that had once held the last, original snuff tape that she’d originally been sent to retrieve. Surely, Chiyo thought, that the Hollywood baron had to have known that the leader of the Sabbat resided in this bloodied, flesh-covered manor of horrors. 

What was up with Chiyo and stumbling into horror mansions? 

Not to mention the Vicissitude-crafted horrors, screaming, clawing at her with their horrible maws. The terrible sounds they made, echoing over the cement walls of the sewers, was surely going to follow Chiyo for the rest of her nights as she did her best to sneak past them, fighting only when she absolutely had to. She was too weak for another real fight; she hadn’t brought enough blood packs, and the overuse of her disciplines left her weak and starving. 

Stopping in a small deadend where she couldn’t hear any of those beasts nearby, Chiyo stopped to rest, pressing her back against the wall and sliding down to sit. Her hands were shaking as she looked, uselessly, into her torn canvas bag- praying to whatever God that had long turned its back on her for there to be a blood pack she’d overlooked, something that could hold her over until she found the Nosferatu’s havens, but… nothing. Just the gun that had long run out of bullets, her knife, and a journal with a pen. 

She threw the bag away from her in frustration as she resisted the urge to cry, stuffing her face in her hands. Far off, she could hear the perpetual growling of those beasts, reminding her that there was more to come- an endless cacophony to accompany the rising feeling of helplessness threatening to make her scream out. She felt a hunger like no other gnawing at her, she didn’t feel it in her atrophied stomach, no, but in her chest, her head–which pounded from the volume of voices that whispered and screamed for their need, of blood, blood, blood-

…

Sebastian paced the length of his office, turning on his heel and pacing the rest of the way back. He checked the watch on his wrist, eyebrows furrowing. It’d been weeks since he sent his little fledgling on the mission to find the Nosferatu Warrens, and he’d scarcely heard word back from her. Rather, he’d gotten radio silence. 

Now, he knew the woman was mad at him, of course, he wasn’t a naive idiot, but he figured she valued her life and her place in the Camarilla enough not to just abandon him altogether. 

Though, he supposed he didn’t know her well enough to make that call. 

Plus, he knew that the Hollywood Baron could be quite persuasive… 

“Call for my car, I have a meeting in Hollywood.” Sebastian demanded of his mousey Ventrue aide as he donned his coat and headed for the elevator. 

…

“What in the devil do you mean she’s been to fight the Tzimisce?!” Prince LaCroix shouted, slamming his hands down on the Baron’s desk. “How- How dare you presume to send my fledgling on a goddamn suicide mission?!”

Isaac, for all of the fuss the Prince was putting up, was the very picture of calm indifference- with just a hint of a creeping smirk. “Why, I never made the young Malkavian do anything she hadn’t already been sent for. I simply informed her that I’d help her on her little quest once she helped me. Sending her to the Tzimisce’s manor was me helping, considering, as far as I’m aware, he’s the source of whatever’s forced the Nosferatu into hiding. I do believe you should be thanking me, not throwing a tantrum.” 

“She’s just a fledgling , you’ve sent her to her death !” LaCroix’s hand clenched into a fist and he couldn’t… discern why he was so upset about that fact. He was the first one to ever send her on a suicide mission, the first to send her to fight something that far outranked her in the hopes that she’d perish. She was supposed to be disposable, the girl wasn’t even his actual Childe, so why- 

Oh, of course. She was his to command, his to control, the fact that she followed someone else’s orders, blindly to her (possible) second death bothered him because that man was encroaching on his possessions, his property. Of course, that had to be why. LaCroix was not a man who shared well. 

“Are you… upset, Prince LaCroix?” Isaac asked, a cruel, teasing tone creeping up in his voice as his head tilted a little. “Why, if you cared that much about the fledgling you could have just kept her up in your tower-”

A fist easily connected to the Baron’s face, sending the man flying backwards into the wall. Sebastian slowly pulled his glove back on, flexing his fingers as the bones and tendons of his knuckles began to heal. “Don’t presume I feel anything more than possession over my property for that creature. Property that you damaged, and I expect proper compensation for, should she truly have perished in the Tzimisce’s manor. We’re finished here.” 

Isaac had stood by now, returning to his desk to pull his chair from the floor, adjusting the papers that had been ruffled in the commotion. “Don’t think that she won’t come running back to me, or any other more stable force in her life, just because you hold power over her.” 

“Is that what you’ve learned from your own Childe abandoning you?” The Prince called over his shoulder as he exited, still flexing his hand on the walk to his car. 

He wouldn’t lie- he was shaken up a little, learning that the Childe held any sway over him was concerning, even if it was from a possessive standpoint, not to mention the fact that the Baron could get under his skin like that, it was simply deplorable. He shook his head a little, directing his car to the apartment building he’d moved Chiyo to when they last spoke. In the flurry of action earlier, he’d forgotten to check there first of all, it was possible she’d just been resting after the fight with the Tzimisce, she was quite crafty after all, it was possible she lived through the encounter. 

Upon making it to her floor, the most nauseating smell hit his nose, and his eyes fell upon the form of the fledgling, crumpled in front of the door to her haven. Her clothes were torn and bloody, her skin gray and bruised, blackened, and full of wounds- wounds that weren’t healing. The smell must have been decay, she was… no , Sebastian shook his head, and rushed to lift her up despite something inside screaming for him to run and gag. 

If she’d met her second death, she would have been much more rotten, he told himself. It’d been months since she’d been embraced, her body wouldn’t be this intact. The first thing he did upon entering her haven was slash open his own wrist and hover it near her pale, cold lips. Even out of a dead slumber, vitae like his would be enough to wake her. It had to be. 

A tense couple of seconds passed, Sebastian’s stomach held suspended in his throat, until the near-dead fledgling stirred, and then latched onto the Prince’s wrist, her eyes snapping open, practically glowing as she drank. She was insatiable, digging her claws into the skin of his arm to keep him from pulling away. Color returned to her skin, even adding a flush to her cheeks as she greedily lapped up the Prince’s vitae without pause. Sebastian ended up having to forcibly tear his arm away from her after a few moments, lest she end up diablerizing him. Something in her gaze was ravenous, beastial- it frightened him to see her lose herself in such a way, especially when her face didn’t change after his wound healed up, she was still staring at his arm like a hungry wolf. 

“Control yourself,” He commanded, tilting her chin upwards so his gaze could lock with her’s as he activated his discipline. A shroud of fog fell over her gaze as it overtook her weakened mind, and she slowly shifted away from the Prince’s lap. Her wounds had started to seal up, but the smell of rot hadn’t lessened at all. “Now, where the hell have you been?”

As the fog of Dominate began to clear, Chiyo looked around, as if she couldn’t tell, or couldn’t believe, where she was- wary gaze landing on the prince in front of her, blinking a few times, rubbing her eyes, and then… bursting into tears. 

Chapter Text

Water pounded on the back of the prone Malkavian, sitting on the floor of the shower. The Fledgling drew her knees up to her chest, tucking her chin into them as she watched weeks of filth wash down the drain. She was safe. She was clean. 

She was safe. She was clean. 

She was safe. 

She was clean. 

She was… 

“What are you mumbling about in there? Chiyo?” Sebastian called, leaning against the door that led into the bathroom. 

She shook her head, pressing her hands against her ears. “N- Nothing,” she called. “I’m fine.”

Her eyes squeezed closed as she desperately tried to absorb the warmth of the steaming hot water into her cold skin. She had to tell herself that she was still a person, she wore the skin of a person, the face of a person, she had the same feelings, hopes, dreams, despairs, she held onto the last shreds of her humanity, curled into herself as if trying to keep the rotten meat of her broken psyche tied together. 

The interruption of her mantra had completely dismantled what little bit of grounding she’d held onto, and she quickly began to lose it again.

Red blurred her vision, as tears slipped out of her eyes unbidden, and she quickly tried to wipe them away—staring down at her red-slicked hand in horror when she drew it away from her face. Tears weren’t tracking down her cheeks, it was blood. Blood. Like a cruel mockery of everything she was trying to convince herself she was and wasn’t, her body had to go and remind her that she was only a corpse. A corpse running on blood and some millenias-old curse and she didn’t ask to be turned into a beast, a shell of a person, a goddamn monster-

The door opened, cold hands grabbing her by her shoulders and pulling her into an upright position. 

“Chiyo,” the Prince admonished, eyebrows drawn together. She could see the shadow of some unnamed emotion in his eyes, but her muddled mind was too weary to discern its meaning. 

Once she was sat up, he’d shifted to turn down the boiling temperature of her shower, before he rolled up his sleeves—she’d noticed only then that he’d removed his suit jacket at some point, done away with his tie, and the first few buttons of his shirt. He’d gotten comfortable, while she wasted away in the tub of her own filth. 

Blood and only God-knows-what had caked on her skin, practically made itself a part of her. From that flesh-wrought mansion, to the decrepit pits of Los Angeles’ sewers, to… that place… 

The Fledgling shivered, her eyes focusing on the marbled tiles of her shower as fingers worked some floral scented shampoo into the God-knows-what that matted in her hair. 

“You may end up finding some benefit in cutting some of this hair off, I’m unsure of how much of it can be salvaged…” LaCroix’s voice swam into her perception, and only then did she realize that it wasn’t her own hands washing her hair, it was his. The goddamn Prince of Los Angeles was kneeling in her bathroom and washing shit out of her hair. 

As she focused a little more, she could feel his well-trimmed nails gently, hesitantly scraping against her scalp. It was obvious he had little-to-no practice in washing someone else’s hair, hell, she’d be surprised if he’d ever even washed his own hair. 

Was she that pathetic? That pitiful that he of all people had taken it upon himself to fix her. Like a pet project. 

A pet project, an experiment. 

An experiment… 

The heat of a UV lamp, tingling, though not burning like she’d imagined the sun might…

She could feel the well-ventilated air cycling through the room, brushing over her bare skin as rubber-gloved hands poked at her, dipping into torn-open stomach, the acrid smell of rot filling the air. The reflection of glasses, the sterile smell of product, the glint of a scalpel, the droning sound of instruction over a loudspeaker, the small room, the lights, the pain, the lights, the pain, the lights, the- blood, filling her mouth, sweet, beast, just give in, just take it all, take it all like they took from yo-

Her vision swam in sweeping splashes of blood, as she retched and lost all of the sweet, succulent vitae the Prince had given her, blinking as she watched it all swirl around the drain before it was gone. Into the sewers, with the rest of what she’d lost. 

“I’m s- sorry,” she hiccuped, drawing her knees to her chest, trying to ignore the sunken feeling in her stomach at the loss of her last meal. Her proprietor’s blood. It was the sweetest, richest thing she’d ever tasted in her entire life, her entire un-life. All of her existence. It made the rich, robust espresso she so loved as a Kine taste like day old gas station gruel. 

It was the first time she’d drank from the source and hadn’t killed them, and that was only after he’d used Dominate on her to make her let go. 

More blood tracked down her cheeks as another sob hiccuped past her lips. 

“What the hell happened to you?” Sebastian asked, concern sounding blending into disgust in Chiyo’s broken mind. How could he not be disgusted by her? She was less than an animal, less than a pet, she was a beast, nothing but a mindless beast-

“The b- broken mirror, the dark visage, the- th-they all died, they all d- died, they were to- torn apart, they shattered the mirror, the mirror, the m-mirror, the mirror, th- the, the mirror shattered them back,” a deranged croak, what was possibly supposed to be a giggle, slipped out of her lips as she started to dig her broken nails into the flesh of her upper arms, fitting perfectly into the divots of healed scars, tearing open the flesh once more. 

She turned, slowly, mismatched eyes wide with an expression of abject horror, the clouds over her irises giving away that she wasn’t here, she was there , whatever that place was. Two clear lines of red streaked down her face, dripping off her chin as her mouth opened and closed as she struggled to force the next few words out.

“I… was… so… hungry…” she whispered, turning the rest of her body to follow her neck as she crawled towards him, hooking her fingers in the silk fabric of his shirt, staining it with the blood and grime that had made its home underneath her nails. 

Sebastian’s eyes were wide—not with any kind of fear for his own safety, but for her’s. Had whatever she’d gone through truly broken her beyond repair? Was he going to have to put her down, or run the risk of her frenzying while in this delusion? 

“It’s over now, Childe. You’re home… and safe…” he murmured, but it felt as though he was talking to a one-way radio, the low mumble of her voice continuing on. All she could hear was herself, her delusions. 

He didn’t care that he was soaking one of his favorite shirts in grime and soap by drawing her bare body closer, holding her to his chest. It was… weird. The entire feeling was foreign to the older vampire, to hold someone in a non-sexual way. The woman in his arms was fragile, truly, he was holding a brittle piece of glass. Sebastian should have been using this moment to think of how he could manipulate it into his favor, to hammer in once and for all that her place was by his side, and this was what happens when she strays… 

But he couldn’t bring himself to speak, to even think of anything other than to bring this bright, artistic woman back into herself. He couldn’t allow such a light to be snuffed out by her own madness. 

He shifted a little, reaching blindly behind him for the blood pack he’d left on the counter when he’d entered the room initially. He’d already had a feeling that the little bit of his blood, while potent, wouldn’t have been enough to hold her over. And though it sounded like she’d gotten to drink a lot, in some kind of frenzy, he imagined her full-stomach then had ended the same way it just had. Down the drain. 

Sebastian gently pressed the lukewarm bag of blood into her hands, and in some ways he could see some parallel between her first night, when he’d had an attendant practically throw a bag of blood at her. 

Most Fledglings cringe away from their first feeding, especially ones that had no idea of the existence of vampires before their embrace. But she had sunk her fangs right into the bag, her only point of contention being some form of embarrassment at doing so with such hunger in front of him. It had been kind of cute, in a way. Like a starving kitten getting a bowl-full of kibble all to herself. 

Now, though, she hesitated. Her lips moved in a fervent prayer, mouthing her sins out to the world in too low of a tone for him to discern the words. If he could hear it, he had to imagine it was near unintelligible, her giving voice to the overlapping whispers that plagued her wrecked psyche. She looked down at the blood bag, slowly pressing her lips together, before she opened her mouth again and slowly leaned forward, hesitating, before retracting away from it. She did it a few times, before he touched her hand, gently guiding the bag of blood towards her cracked lips. 

Finally, she sank her fangs into the bag, sucking down its familiar, shitty nectar. It was nothing like his vitae, nor the warmth of getting it from the neck of a person. But it was safe, it was safe and it would be okay… 

The clouds slowly cleared from her eyes, and when the bag was empty, she looked up at the Prince, who regarded her with raised brows, his chilled fingers cupping her face. In that moment, she realized that she’d clawed her way onto his lap, still soaking wet and covered in barely-washed away filth. 

If she could have blushed, her face would have been beet-red with shame. 

The Malkavian slowly shifted off of his lap, dragging herself back into the shower, into the now-cold water spraying from the showerhead. 

“I- I can take it from here,” she coughed, wiping the bloody tears from her face, as she looked down at her fidgeting hands. “I’m sorry- um, about your shirt. Y- You can wash it here, if you want…”

Some, resentful part of her didn’t want to offer that much. She wanted him to have to walk through the lobby in a dirty, wet shirt just so he could feel even a fraction of the shame and humiliation that she’d felt, even if everything that happened to her wasn’t technically his fault… 

No, it really wasn’t his fault at all. Ever since she returned from Grout’s mansion, his missions had been nowhere near as… hard on her psyche. It had been like he’d chosen things specifically to be relatively easy for her. Espionage, sneaking about. All that Sebastian had asked her to do was find where the Nosferatu were hiding. It had been Abrams who had sent her to the flesh-crafter, and it had been Gary that had ended up really sending her to the belly of the beast… 

Chiyo blinked, shaking her head. The door had been shut behind him and she’d been alone for some time, lost in her thoughts again. He’d left another bag of blood on the bathroom counter, and she’d slurped that down before she braved the icy cold jets of water. It was better than the warmth, the warm water made it too easy to fall back into her thoughts. The ice cold water kept her mentally present, as she washed away every last stain of the last weeks, only allowing her mind to begin to attempt to compartmentalize, and when that failed, she started to try to list her favorite artists’ works by year until she was clean. 

Finally, she shut the water off and dried her hair, finding that Sebastian had been on the money when he’d said she’d be better off cutting it. It was matted to hell, even after being washed and conditioned a few times, she couldn’t get a brush through it. 

She rooted through the cabinet under her sink until she found the small scissors she used to keep her bangs trim, shifting to look up at herself in the mirror. Her matted, damp hair hung limply over her shoulders, and its length had been a point of pride for a while. It had taken a lot of time to grow it as long as she had, and since being embraced she’d done all she could to maintain it and its length, since she wasn’t sure if it would grow back now that she was functionally dead… 

The Malkavian took one last, long look at her long hair, before she got to work snipping it off. She worked slowly, in sections, forcing her addled mind to focus on the task at hand. After getting the worst chunks cut off, she trimmed up the rest to a uniform length. It was just above her shoulders while wet, but she watched as it curled upwards in real time, framing her face and rounding off to a length that curled just under her chin. 

She let her gaze linger in the mirror, as much as she’d tried not to look into her own face (something about staring into the abyss), her mismatched eyes were drawn to it. Her face was worn, weathered in a way that only strife could bring about. She dragged the pads of her fingers down her cheeks, watching her face melt and warp. 

Okay, that was certainly enough of that! 

Chiyo shook her head and threw a towel over the mirror, as she then tugged a robe over her form, making sure it was secure before she finally, finally exited the bathroom. 

The only bathroom with a shower was the one connected to her bedroom, and luckily(?) Sebastian hadn’t just made himself comfortable on her bed, so she still had a little bit of time to compose herself. She glanced at the clock on her nightstand—6 in the evening, it’d still be a couple hours before he could leave. Had she kept him up through the time he should have been sleeping? 

Slowly, the Malkavian drifted downstairs, catching sight of him sitting on her sofa, shirtless with a book in his hand. She could hear the quiet rumbling of her washer, and the news droned quietly on her television in the background. Or would it be his television, even though it was in her abode? Or would it be his abode, considering everything in here besides her cat, he’d paid for? 

Suddenly, she felt like she was trespassing in someone else’s home, and before she could turn tail and run back upstairs to hide in the bathroom, Sebastian’s head turned towards the stairs, catching her eyes. 

“Feeling any better?” He’d asked idly, as he marked his place in the book (Jane Eyre, Chiyo noted with the barest hint of a smile), and angled his body towards her. 

Though he made no motion, the Malkavian felt beckoned and she made it the rest of the way down the stairs and slipped over to sit at his side, fidgeting with the sleeve of her silk robe as she nodded. 

“Do you… feel like recounting what has happened?” He asked haltingly, as if he wasn’t sure if those were the right words, like he’d gone over many variations of the same phrase and they all mashed together incorrectly when it spilled from his lips. When she didn’t reply within the allotted few seconds, he lifted his hand towards her—flinching when she’d flinched, before he continued on to hit the mark, running his fingers through her notably shorter curls. “Mm, I was right about the mats, then? It’s a shame, but I believe this frames your face better.”

The Malkavian pinched a piece of her hair between her fingers, before she looked up at him, finally mustering the words. “I was… caught. By Kine.”

Sebastian’s eyebrows drew together, and she could see the wheels turning in his head—he held back an incredulous, angry outburst (just barely, by the way his jaw set, and he retracted his hand). “That’s not all that happened.” A statement, not a confirmation or question. He could just tell. 

“I was caught by Kine… scientists. In Chinatown.” Chiyo continued, slowly, her eyebrows drawn together as she fought against her own psyche’s tendency to mince up and obscure her words. 

“What were you doing in Chinatown? What about the Nosferatu?” Sebastian questioned further, barely keeping his tone from turning impatient. 

“It was… I- um,” she closed her eyes, squeezing them as she tried, really tried to straighten it all out in her mind. “I was sent to the Flesh Crafter’s mansion by Abrams. I… made it into the sewers from there, it was full of Its creatures, horrible… horrible… horrible-” 

Sebastian gave her hand a little pat, and she shook her head, biting her lip as her eyes squeezed tighter. “...C- Creatures. Monstrous, grafted creatures, so… so many, so many spliced beasts with gaping, bloody, jagged, mouths and broken limbs and so many limbs-”

“Chiyo,” the Prince pressed once more, giving her hand a soft jerk and squeeze, pulling her away from that place to the best of his ability. 

Her mismatched eyes flew open, a surprised gasp leaving her lips. The Malkavian blinked and looked around, a little frightened for a moment, before she scrubbed her free hand down her face. 

“...Sorry,” she murmured, brushing her hair out of her face. She let her other hand remain held in his, using it as well as she could to keep her grounded in that room, not back in that place. “I- I found the Nosferatu’s hideout, they’d been driven further underground, because of the Flesh Crafter. I met with Gary, he gave me another task, to- to find his operative. I… I just wanted to get it over with, I thought- I thought it would just be in and out, you know…?”

Chiyo let her gaze fall off, feeling so stupid, it wasn’t like she was invincible. She wasn’t sure where she’d ever gotten that idea, but her own weakness stared back at her in the reflective surface of the glass coffee table. She forced herself to continue to recount the last few weeks that she’d endured. Being picked up by the Fu Syndicate from the moment she stepped foot in Chinatown, as if they could smell her Cainite blood. Stuffed her in a car and drove some ways away from the city, to a ‘biology lab’, where she was locked up alongside that agent of Gary’s. 

She’d fought like hell, like hell to get out, but the harder she fought the harder they were to her, the more they did, the harsher the punishment. She was beaten down and starved until she was perfectly placated for their experiments. Hours blended into days blended into weeks until she’d been gone for a month, maybe more. 

By the end of her tale, Chiyo was babbling about how hungry she was again, and all of the red juice stored in the bags outside of her cell, how she tore into the neck of the kind researcher that had opened her cage, had broken the rules to give her a chance at freedom. 

Somewhere in that tale, she’d been moved from the couch to his lap, and by the end, she’d fully buried her face in his chest, wishing she could draw comfort from the corpse beneath her. His arms were solid around her, but there was no jostling from his chest moving in breath, there was no rhythmic beat of his heart that she could lose herself in, there was no warmth. Just another corpse, just like her. 

All was silent when she stopped speaking, and she shifted to look up at him—had she bored him to sleep with her grisly tale? 

Sebastian wasn’t slumbering, he was looking up at the ceiling, and she could once again see the thoughtful expression in his far-off gaze. He blinked and shifted to look down at her, his hand twitching as he realized he’d been stroking her hair. His fingers hesitated, before they began to gently drag through her hair again. 

“If it is any consolation, you only did what you’d had to. Backed into a corner, any sane person would convert into a beast. Any Kine, even.” he’d said, sincere words of comfort that did little to lessen the festering darkness of self-loathing that threatened to eat her alive. “What you’ve experienced was beyond comprehension, for the actions of those Kine are far worse than any beast they’d paint us to be.”

Chiyo nodded a little, some of his words lost on her. She’d gotten it off her chest, and now all she could think about was how badly she wished to be warm. The only part of her shower that she could remember had been after the water had already turned icy, his bare arms around her were chilly, the bags of blood she stomached, her own body… She was so sick of the cold. 

“Will you take me to bed?” she’d whined—she’d already gotten him to wash her hair, allowed her to cuddle up to his chest, cry in his neck, surely she could continue to push this odd, caring side of the Prince? If he pushed back, rolled his eyes and called her childish, she could go back to hating him. 

His arms tightened around her, as he easily lifted her up as he stood (vampiric strength was no joke!), an arm hooked under her knees and one wrapped around her shoulders. She’d made a soft noise of surprise that had left him chuckling lightly, as he carried her upstairs to her bedroom. 

He hadn’t even hesitated. Her heart fluttered. What was this? Had he been worried about her, as more than just an operative? 

No, she needed to stop deluding herself. She was nothing to him, nothing but a cold body to lay with, and a decently capable errand girl. Even the voices in her head seemed to agree, at least the ones that actually whispered coherently. 

Maggots love you… The Jester smacks the chess board. He stares pitifully at the reflection in the cracked mirror. Cemetery runoff congealing at the door…

Well, it wasn’t a resounding agreement, but there was some nugget of truth in the whispers she couldn’t bring herself to discern further. 

Sebastian laid her down in her bed, joining her after a moment as he drew her body back into his arms, cuddled up to his chest. She expected him to start kissing her neck, feeling her up, to even feel something hard pressed against her leg (she was clad in only a short robe, after all), but… no. He just held her. Like he knew that was what she needed. 

Well, what she needed and what she wanted rarely aligned, and in her mis-wired brain, she found it incredibly sexy how attentive he was being. In her long string of shitty lovers and boyfriends, she’d never had one that wouldn’t have taken advantage of her when she was vulnerable like this. What did it mean? Was it that he was so turned off by her outbursts that he wasn’t attracted to her anymore and was only staying with her out of pity? 

She doubted that, Sebastian LaCroix was not a man who would do anything for another person out of pity. Not unless he thought he could use them, and she was sure her use for anything other than sex had all but dried up with how shattered her mind was… 

Option B, then, please. 

He had worried for her in her absence, doted on her in her reappearance, and possibly didn’t have any ulterior motives? Was it possible that his feelings ran deeper, now…? 

She didn’t want to get her hopes up for that, but some wretched part of her was okay with deluding herself into thinking that he loved her. It felt nice. She’d be okay staying in this hell, staying with him, in his bed, in his life. Let the Anarchs and others that she befriended ridicule her for being his lapdog, at least she’d finally have carved out a place for herself in this world… 

Sebastian let out a cough of a laugh, breaking her out of her darker musings, his eyebrows raising. “Chiyo? I daresay you look as though you wish to sink your teeth into me, next.” 

The Malkavian licked her lips, blinking her wide, unsettling eyes up at him in a mockery of innocence. “This is my neutral face,” she deadpanned. She shifted out of his arms to straddle his lap, leaning down to press her cold lips against his. 

What was she doing?

Numbing the pain, she’d thought as she reached into her nightstand for a little vial of drugged blood, one of the many Jeanette had left her with. The perfect mix of uppers, alcohol, and a touch of something psychoactive that made her feel warmth from the moment it touched her lips and slid down into her rotten stomach. 

Sebastian took her ‘attack’ in stride, as if he’d been anticipating it. As she fumbled in her bedside table for something (a condom? he chuckled to himself), he got to work undoing his belt with one hand, and the tie to her robe with his other. His lips sought her neck as her body rolled against his, he sank his teeth into her neck, letting the blood spill out as he lapped it from her skin. 

The Malkavian’s blood was sweet but rich, heady and complex like a bordeaux, and it almost made his head spin, the way her damned blood filled his head with the same soft whispers she heard, just likely on a lower scale. The sound of her soft moan at the contact did more to him than her blood did, as he dragged her closer to his chest, turning her over so she was below him. Sebastian moved to open her robe and expose her bare body to the chill of the air, as her hands clumsily fumbled trying to his pants off, and he let out a low, amused chuckle before he helped her out. He supposed he could continue to be generous for this night, as she was clearly trying to avoid thinking about all that had happened, and he liked to have a reason to stay longer, past sunset. Leaving her apartment after this would mean going back to the real world, where strings were being pulled and pawns moved for slaughter and he had to return to pretending that she was disposable. 

But the feeling of her body wrapped in his was indispensable, the sound of her voice, her laugh when he’d accidentally tickled her, her fingers curling in his hair. Somewhere, somehow, she had wormed her way into his cold existence…

He’d bit down on her neck again, feeling her body stiffen and tremble in his arms as ecstasy washed over her form, and he’d felt his own release a few moments later as he licked the blood from her skin. Her vitae was more potent than usual, as his mind grew more hazy in the passing seconds. What had been a soft buzz that made his body feel warm had drifted into something further, and he had to chalk it up to the state of her Malkavian blood. His hips continued to roll into her’s, as he lost herself in her presence, her scent, her body.

In his arms he held divinity itself, her chestnut hair tickling against his neck as nipped and sucked at his skin, calling forth a warmth the older vampire had only ever felt in her embrace. She was sacred, and she was his , she would only ever be his. Her consecrated flesh, the sweet, holy blood that flowed through her veins—that flowed only because he had allowed it to. His agent, his Fledgling, his pseudo-Childe, the thorn in his side, his lover, his own personal and singular source of amusement… 

She belonged solely to him, shattered mind, desecrated body, and profane soul, every piece of her. 

~~~

“I hope you know I took the liberty of throwing away the rags you arrived in,” Sebastian murmured, as he dragged his fingers lightly over the bare skin of the Malkavian’s back. He was barely sitting up on his elbow, and she laid on her stomach, head resting on her arms, eyes closed contentedly. 

She let out an amused sound, raising a brow as she cracked open her honey-colored eye to look up at him. “You mean you didn’t throw them in the washer with your $1,000 dress shirt?” 

“Never in a million years would I set your second… third? Hand rags in the same vicinity as my $2,000 dress shirt.” Sebastian replied, lip quirking in half of a grin. 

“How can a shirt cost that much? That’s like… more than my entire car,” Chiyo replied, grinning up at him. “It wasn’t even one of your nicer shirts!” 

Sebastian shrugged with the ease of a person who had grown used to that kind of luxury, someone who viewed $2,000 in the same way any normal person would view $20. 

With nothing else to say, her eyes fell closed again, as she allowed his comforting touch to lull her into full contentment. She wasn’t ready to sleep, she wanted to go for another round soon—she wanted to keep him in this little pocket of time they’d created for themselves just a little longer. To stave away the depression that would surely take over as soon as he left her. Her mind was cracking under the pressure of keeping her upright this long.

She could already feel it creeping on her, and just as she’d started to move to sit up and jump him again-

“You… had said that you’d met with Gary, correct?” Sebastian spoke, as Chiyo began to sit up. 

“Uh, yeah… He just said to find his dude and then he’d tell me… um, ‘bout the sarcophagus,” she’d replied, slowly, as she’d nearly called the stupid box a ‘fireworks crate’, for some reason. 

“Has he gotten in contact with you since then?”

Sebastian was pulling away, slowly, rising from the bed. He knew he was spoiling the mood, popping the bubble, and she wouldn’t react well to jumping back into business. 

Chiyo rolled her eyes and fell back into the bed. “Obviously not. I haven’t exactly had time to check my Email between dodging flesh-grafted creatures and being locked up by crazy scientists for weeks. I got his operative out, I’m sure he’ll get back to me soon. Come back to bed…”

The Prince tugged his pants on, turning back towards her. “It’s not as though this is something that can just be brushed off, Chiyo. The location of-”

The Malkavian shifted to sit up again, her eyebrows drawing together. That tone , he always took that tone when he was about to treat her like a goddamn child. “Yeah, you need your little box of toys in order to keep LA in your iron fist. Tell it to somebody who gives a damn. If you’re not going to fuck me, then get the hell out of my apartment.”

LaCroix stood up stiffly, looking down at her with a mix between pity for a creature that didn’t know its place, and something that seemed more torn—stuck between wanting to stay and needing to leave. 

The cord tied between them was growing dangerous. Was he truly ready to abandon all that he’s been working for in order to lay around with a mad woman?

“You’d do well to remember your place in this world is conditional. You work under me, and my mercy has its limits.”

“Fuck you and what you call mercy,” Chiyo spat, malice festering in her gaze. “You think you paid me a solid by letting me live, that day? Get the fuck out of my room! I’m not doing anything for you after the shit, literal shit, that you’ve put me through! Find your own fucking sarcophagus!” 

Sebastian stepped to the side to avoid the shoe she’d thrown at him, moving towards the door. His face didn’t twitch, having fallen easily into the mask of an uncaring leader long before this argument started. 

“I expect your report in my Email by the end of the week. Feel better, Chiyo,” he’d said, his farewell turning up into a sneer before he closed the door behind him, just in time as the other shoe joined its partner in being hurled at his head. 

“Fuck you!” her vicious snarl rang through the apartment, cold and empty as she collapsed back into the bed with a frustrated scream. 

Hatred and self loathing made its home in her chest, replacing the old beating of her heart. The darkness of her condition that had barely been held at bay by that bitch’s presence consumed her in his absence, the only bedfellow she could truly count on. 

Alone, the young Malkavian slipped into oblivion.