27th June, 1889 — The Vampire Caverns
Azazel

Never mind that Galina was still - wrongly - in custody. Galina would never have done this.

Unfortunately for Ishmael, he thought he knew who had.

He rolled up the paper after reading it a third time. It was not getting better with repetition. And he knew he was not the only one in the caverns who got a subscription to the Daily Prophet (even those amongst them who disparaged humans the most - or were so out of it they still thought it was the sixteen hundreds - liked to know when vampires were being badmouthed by wizardkind). And no doubt more than one of them would want to talk.

Before he got roped into any kind of cavern-wide inquisition, Ishmael supposed he had better carry out an inquisition of his own, because like it or not, they'd find a way to drag him into this. And if Azazel was behind this, as she had been behind Power's death last summer, and gotten off scot-free - then she might not be so lucky a second time. And everyone had gleaned that she knew him, had some history there. She would not have come here if not for him.

Dawn came so early in summer that Ishmael could feel the sun on his face and hands as it filtered through the canopy, even in these early hours. He winced, but moved swiftly - discreetly - as he wound his way over to the cavern Azazel had chosen as her own and slipped inside.

She was home, mercifully. Not about to waste this chance, Ishmael strode right in, too incensed to wait, to couch his movements in the indolent, catlike way with which he usually carried himself. The news had gotten to him today. "Tell me, Azazel," he began crisply, unfolding the front page where the picture of the pretty debutante was plastered, "do you recognise her?"

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The following 4 users Like Ishmael's post:4 users Like Ishmael's post
   Acacia Darlington, Aldous Crouch, Azazel, Katherine Midford

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Whoever in the world said that blood pops were a good idea deserved to be drawn and quartered. In an attempt to listen to Ishmael – admit it aloud or not, the vampire did feel bad about that last debutante brat having such a...un-pure ending – Zel had gotten hold of a few blood pops and decided to dig into them when she'd gotten hungry.

It hadn't even been a full 24 hours yet and she could already feel her sense of usually boundless energy fading. She'd just decided to try and have another go when Ishmael came in without as much as a "by your leave" and shoved a paper in her face. The scowl that appeared on her face was slightly less intimidating than usual seeing as she had been halfway through biting the last bit of the blood pop.

Before she flicked the last remains of the pop at the wall, Azazel's eyes flitted to the newspaper. Of course she knew who that prissy was. Without a hitch in her breath, she placed her hands on her perch and lept on the ground before sighing. "I do miss the days when knocking was one's custom." she said loftily, tossing a lock of hair over her shoulder and turning her back to him and grabbing another blood pop. "Where are your manners, my darling?"

It was compulsory. She didn't think of doing it really, but it was reflex at this point as she threw a glance over her shoulder and gave him a sly smirk. It was all she could do to not giggle.

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Blood pops? Hungry already, was she? Draining a couple people a night wasn’t quite enough to sate her, was it? Ishmael could only scowl back. Did she not realise her approach to her appetite was going to ruin things for him as well? Or did she just not care?

If she had even tried to protest about the girl’s image - even a little abrupt recoil, something to feign her innocence - he might’ve believed her. (Well. He might’ve tried to believe her. He was a generous friend. He would've given her the benefit of the doubt, when hell if anyone else would have.) But she didn’t, she didn’t spare it more than a throwaway glance, more interested in sucking on her bloodpops like an overgrown toddler.

He wanted, for a moment, to dash it out of her mouth. Shake her by the shoulders. Force her to at least look at him.

But Azazel did not speak that language, so he would have to speak hers. “Well, don’t mind me,” Ishmael replied, as if he were only bored by the little games they played, and not, today, utterly infuriated. “Take a bath, if you like. Powder your nose. I’ll wait.” He let the newspaper fall to the ground and sauntered past her, snatching up a bloodpop for himself and wandering away again, newly nonchalant.

What was the use of him being worried about her, when she was incapable of worrying about herself? “Other people are going to come knocking later,” he pointed out, certain of it, and stuck the bloodpop in his mouth, finding somewhere to lean and watching her idly from there. “And they’ll be a lot less pleasant than me.”

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She could feel his energy positively vibrating throughout the cave - she'd be lying if she said it didn't excite her. Ishmael always did have a soft spot for her, she knew it. As much as he tried to hide it, he couldn't resist her – at least that was what she liked to believe. Just wait, she told herself, he'll be scurrying after like a mouse after cheese.

She could just imagine it, him hurrying after her, perhaps shaking her like those nights long ago and operating under the assumption she was a defenseless lamb. Azazel would be remiss if she said she didn't miss those days. She was just a little sprouting compared to who she was now, thinking that she'd seen enough of the world and that it had seen enough of her. Luckily fate was to intervene in the form of an otherworldly human being to whisk her away from her horrible confines. Were her feelings for Ishmael false at that time? No, but looking back she knew she'd been operating under the false delusion that she was the damsel in distress just waiting for her prince to take her away.

Her daydreams were interrupted by the sound of – nothing. No hands seizing her to make her realize she had done something dreadful and try to sway her towards the greater good. Instead his voice rung out, breaking through her illusions and painting a sour expression upon her face. A bath would have sounded lovely had it not been employed with such an annoyingly false casual tone. He was pandering to her vanity and he was winning. "Other people?" she trilled in a transparent lofty tone. "They'll have to find me first, won't they?"

He was right and she knew it. If she'd been sloppy, she'd pay dearly for it. She faced him, her attention held by the damned figure now assuming her usual careless stature, with her own in a position of suppressed rage. Were she more addled, she'd have stomped her foot in indignation.

"Or at least go through you." In her mind, it was a bold statement, however it came out a daring question.

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“It might not even be the Ministry this time,” Ishmael declared, thinking of Galina’s forced departure from her home. “The rest of the caverns could decide to throw you out first, and save themselves the scrutiny.” He kept his tone offhand, still, but there was a note of warning in it. She still hadn’t mentioned the girl in the newspaper - still had not admitted to being the killer - but there was little need, the way she was talking. They both knew she was responsible.

And he was not responsible for her, Ishmael told himself again; a mental rallying cry to combat the compounded feeling, the creeping sense, that maybe he was, maybe he should have been, maybe he had always been to blame.

“And darling, I know I can be very persuasive,” Ishmael said smoothly, “but even I won’t be able to change their minds if you can’t convince me that you’re not more trouble than it’s worth. We both know Miss Whatshername wasn’t the first little mess you’ve made.” (And what was the use in trying to persuade anyone to protect Azazel, or merely leave her alone, if they were going to be back down this road in the blink of an eye with the next badly-buried body?)

What he deliberately didn't add, though it was just as pertinent, was that if it came down to violence - as responsible as he felt, as damnably fond as he was - there was no way in hell he was taking a stake for Azazel. (Not so gallant as she had thought him when she was a girl, he knew. It would be a pity to ruin the delusion.)

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"They wouldn't dare." Her words had more of a bite to them this time, and showed more of her gradually rising frustration with him than she cared to admit. "Besides, it wasn't as if Miss Whatshername was contributing much to the growth of society." If there was one flaw that Azazel refused to admit to (or fix, for that matter) throughout her existence, it was her quickly rising temper. Her eyes raked over his figure, boring into his gaze when it met hers.

It wasn't fair. Ishmael was treating her like a child, but he didn't see how infuriating that bitch was being. "I mean please," she scoffed, rolling her eyes. "They hated vampires and think we're a waste of space!" She glared pointedly at him. "Is that the kind of person you want around out there, spreading lies about us?" Her hands moved from fists at her side to on her hips as she stared at him unblinkingly.

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“Lies like the one where we go about murdering them on the street?” Ishmael countered coolly, settling into biting ice if she was going to be all fire. Every sentence of hers was filling the cavern with more smoke, more reason for her to continue about her mischief, stoking the heat of hate both ways. Ishmael didn’t care if humans hated them, or they hated humans. He didn’t care if everyone was thought equal. It didn’t matter, as long as he was free.

Which meant Azazel was a problem.

He took the blood pop out of his mouth, regarded her with a rare solemness, without his usual smirk. “I don’t want to watch them throw you in a cell,” he said honestly. He didn’t. “But I can’t have you bringing the caverns down with you. And I can’t let you ruin what I’ve built here.”

He cared about Azazel - of course he did - but there were other people he cared about now. And much fun as she had once been, she didn’t seem to have aged at all in her afterlife, hadn’t changed a bit. He didn’t need her now. She couldn’t help him.

Maybe it wasn’t too late to help her, though. “You can still have your fun,” Ishmael said, wishing she would only listen for once in her life. Everyone was always telling him how to live, but from what he’d seen, he had struck a better balance than all of them put together. “But there are smarter ways.”

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The following 1 user Likes Ishmael's post:1 user Likes Ishmael's post
   Amelia Evans

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The corners of her mouth stretched as Azazel conveniently went deaf for the approximately 3.5 seconds of his first rebuttal, and she crossed her arms over her chest. "What you've built here ––" she spat out, glaring at him before she bit her tongue. She'd stopped just before she launched into a monologue about how he'd left her back in Portugal. She could talk all she wanted but in the end, she knew it was her actions that directly drove him out to seek somewhere else for comfort .... someone else. It was her fault, and there was a board at her back keeping her stiff at that realization.

What's more, she could sense his concern for her slipping slowly out of her grasp. Panic was bubbling just beneath the surface, but she pushed it down to fix her mask of anger into one of placid acceptance. So, Ishmael liked being right - he liked being in control? Let him fucking think so, then. The vampire forced her shoulders to relax from their haunched position. "And what, did you have in mind, my dear?" She said, her head cocked to one side inquisitively.

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The following 1 user Likes Azazel's post:1 user Likes Azazel's post
   Ishmael

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What he’d built here. He didn’t know why he’d said that. He had never meant to look like he cared about growing roots, that he was trying to build anything lasting. Still, there was a certain satisfaction in having set something down here - made connections, fashioned a life, people in orbit around him - that was at odds with the thought of wandering on. On, and on, and on. There would come a time to move on, and he wouldn’t fight it. But he didn’t want to exist as a ghost, as a shadow, as a wisp: he still wanted to have his presence felt, wanted to roll up his sleeves in the world, wanted to have things to remember even if no one was left to remember him.

Azazel would bring it all down without thinking, would force him to move on much too soon to save himself. And she wouldn’t understand, because she hadn’t lived that way. He had been nothing before he was this, but he knew where she had been born, and as what. She might’ve had the world at her fingertips already in her life if she hadn’t longed for something different. If she hadn’t wanted her freedom so fiercely, too fiercely to wait. And she had that now: she was free to do as she liked, free to roam the whole world. Perhaps she had, since he had last seen her. But she had built nothing, and would build nothing, and be nothing but a destroyer. It was in her eyes.

Unless she - maybe, perhaps, possibly - decided to listen to him. He didn’t think she would - he knew he had no power over her, and hadn’t since the moment he’d sunk his fangs into her neck and turned her - but he might as well try. A last ditch attempt. For old times’ sake. Because he’d made her this.

She was stiff and upright and still, he thought, on the defensive, but Ishmael stepped in close to her, tracing a finger along the arch of her neck pensively. “Learn a little control,” he told her. “Drink all the blood you like without killing. Ask me for help.” He wouldn’t - couldn’t - help her unless she asked, and he thought she might be too proud to. “You don’t always have to be running. It doesn’t always have to be a war.”

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Despite the contempt she felt for him, the physical contact caused her to straighten her back once more and she narrowed her eyes. The last time they'd been this close, they were in a shockingly similar situation. She'd been known as Inez then, angry at the world as she was now, and just as belligerent. It was her family that couldn't stand her then, and she'd just met a much younger Ishmael who was offering her a way out.

Back then, it was a way out of the mundane life with her insufferable family. Praying every single day, acting the perfect daughter, perfect sister and perfect example of a young lady. Now...well, it wasn't a way out but it was Ishmael extending an offer, yet again. Stay out of trouble, ask him for help. She wasn't a child. She wasn't him either. She never desired to be so connected as he seemed to be, and it perplexed her. Azazel furrowed her brow. She'd heard his words - would take them

"Why do you want to be remembered so badly?" she countered, reaching up with the hand opposite his and brushing a lock of hair out of his face. "Is it that important to you for people who will never outlive us to remember someone like you?"

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Maybe they were too different to be able to debate things like this. No, but he and Galina - and he and Lyra, and he and Lancaster - held different beliefs of how to approach this ‘life’, and what to do with it, but he had always enjoyed their discussions. Perhaps because they had beliefs, and Azazel, when it came down to it, had none.

Logic couldn’t win against pure chaos. He pretended not to have beliefs, he supposed, but had his reasons for things, had his desires - and it turned out it was not particularly pleasing to have Azazel trying to tear them apart.

How could he get through to her? Maybe the problem was that the two of them, whether they liked it or not, were almost too much the same. She just couldn’t see it, that he had always harboured the temptations to do as she did; that he had needed to construct him a life that he liked just as passionately. “Yes,” he answered intently, staring squarely at her, as if she might remember how it felt to have human - or not quite human - connection. “Because it feels good,” and it felt good in a way - being needed, wanted, loved - that lasted longer than the high of draining someone of blood. Even with the way human lives wasted away. She had proved it, that thrill of connection: he didn’t even much like her anymore, and still he felt a thrill when she brushed her fingers through his hair. Surely she could feel it too. It was what she had wanted as a girl, wasn’t it? To feel somehow more alive?

“Maybe one day you’ll figure it out,” Ishmael said in a murmur, holding their closeness for as long as he could before he walked out, as if he could possibly coax her to the right conclusion, “that there’s more than one way to make a mark.”

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More than one way to make a mark.

If he was trying to be funny it was working. Of course, she knew multiple ways to make a mark but Azazel knew cracking grin at a stupid joke would not bode well for this situation. Hey, it would break the tension though - at least for her. In lieu of a grin, she let out a sigh. If her hair had any life to it and was in front of her eyes she would have coyishly blown it away.

"Very well." she settled on, looking him up and down. The sentimentality of him! That's what she'd blame, seeing as his humor seemed to have vanished without a trace. Apparently Ishmael had been a vampire a little too long. There was no "all of us" in this equation from the way she saw it. Only us and them.

And yet...she wanted him. After all his infuriating behavior, she still craved his attention. Whether her desire for his presence relied upon the bond between sire and vampire, she didn't know; and frankly wasn't sure she wanted to know. "Perhaps one day I'll know."

As she watched him walk away from her, a thought crossed her mind. Did she want to know?

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