beyondthisillusion | PSL - How on earth did I get so jaded? Life's mysteries seem so faded...

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PSL - How on earth did I get so jaded? Life's mysteries seem so faded...

She'd survived the day. That was the most astonishing thing. A part of Danielle had been absolutely certain that Noah and Lucia would take her out while she was asleep. Or at the very least, stake her and shoved her in a closet. And she wouldn't have blamed them, really. She'd been prepared for that. But night had come, the sun had set, and here she still was. Under armed guard--she could hear the bullets clinking in the cartridge of the woman who'd been assigned to be her 'escort'--but alive, nevertheless.

Small favors. Although she couldn't help but wonder if she was somehow disappointed. At least if she'd been taken out, the misery would be over. What lay ahead was murky, to put it politely.

For the moment, though, she figured she'd take advantage of being among the Palmers, connect to the mother she'd never known. While she waited for Noah and Lucia to make their final decision about her fate, she contented herself to flip through an old family photo album.

What she'd been hoping to find, she didn't know. But as she turned pages and the clock ticked away, she found herself festering in disappointment.

She didn't look a thing like her mother. She was Miles Remington's kid, through and through.

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Mom and Dad hadn't told her who the new houseguest was, not yet, but they'd told Andrew, and if they hadn't wanted her to overhear they shouldn't have told her to practice stealth and silent movement this week. Maria was pretty sure that was really their way of telling her to be quieter at the table—but it was a lot easier to sneak around when everyone assumed they'd hear her coming, wasn't it?

"Julia's daughter, Danielle," they'd said, and Maria sort-of remembered hearing about an Aunt Julia, or Great-Aunt, or whatever—well older than her parents, so probably Great-Aunt, which made the woman who'd arrived last night around her parents' age. Funny, that, because Danielle ("Aunt Danielle"?) didn't look that old. Like, not Andrew's age, but definitely younger than her parents. There was definitely something weird about her, and if no one was going to tell her directly, Maria was going to find out for herself.

She found Danielle in the library, paging through what looked like old photo albums. Aunt Lupe sat nearby, in one of the cushiony chairs, but Maria could tell she wasn't there to relax—one hand hovered just a little too near her holstered gun, and her forehead creased with a little worry when she saw Maria at the door.

Maria was already thinking through the situation, like her parents had taught her—and this one said danger. But she knew her parents, and she knew they wouldn't let someone they thought was a real threat into the house. Plus, she was family. So:

"What's your deal, anyway?"

Danielle, for all of her practice in noticing things, very often let her mind wander. So the girl's arrival caught her off guard. But not in the bad way. Not in the way that had her reaching for her gun, which was definitely good because she was pretty sure she would end up staked and in a closet. It was more in a way that made her want to laugh.

Like...

Like in old episodes of Star Trek where Spock was completely baffled by some run-of-the-mill, everyday part of human life.

Yeah. Yeah, that's how she felt. Seeing a normal, little girl in the midst of her life of deceptions and violence and torment was...baffling. And it made Danielle do something she hadn't done for a very long time.

She smiled.

"Well," she said, closing the photo album and setting it to one side. "I guess that depends." Her eyes flicked over to Lupe, as if seeking permission to continue the conversation. When the other woman didn't say or do anything to stop her, she turned her attention right back on the girl. "Are you a Palmer?"

Out of the corner of her eye, Maria saw Aunt Lupe shrug, though she kept her eyes fixed on Aunt Danielle. Blessing enough to be here. Their family had always been more into asking forgiveness than permission, as a general rule.

Maria planted her hands firmly on her hips, raising her chin. "Of course I am. I'm Maria Palmer. And you're Danielle, uh..." She squinted, trying to remember the family tree—Julia Palmer hadn't kept her name, right? "Danielle Remington? Danielle Remington. If my sources haven't failed me."

(Source: Following her older brother at ten paces whenever something funny's going on. Anyway, Andrew was kind of a softie. If anything happened, she needed to be prepared, too. She might be younger, but Maria had always been better at weapons.)

The edges of Danielle's smile started to fade. While some might find a girl acting like a grown-up precocious, Dani didn't. It reminded her too much of her own childhood. Or lack thereof. Miles had started training her on a rifle when she was all of seven years old. She'd had to give up the hopes of toys at Christmas by eight. And at nine? At nine, she and Shawn were going out on jobs by themselves.

It wasn't fair.

"Maria," she repeated carefully. Shawn had always been better with kids than Danielle. He knew when to talk down to them and when to treat them like little adults. Danielle always struggled.

At least she knew better than to say something cloying, like 'That's a very pretty name.'

"You're right, Maria. I'm Danielle Remington. I'm guessing you're Noah and Lucia's daughter, which makes us..." she did the math quickly in her head "...first cousins once removed."

First-cousins once removed. Probably? That sounded right, though Maria wasn't quite sure how it worked. "Cousin Danielle. Do I just call you Danielle? You're way older than me, that'd be weird."

Maria shook her head, realizing she'd gotten distracted. She crossed her arms across her chest. "Also, you didn't answer my question. What's with that? You're like my parents' age, but you look really young, still. Why are you under guard? What did you do?"

Her words had a touch of apprehension to them, but not outright hostility—this whole adventure was mostly for her own curiosity, after all. All the same, though, the more Maria thought about it, the more worrying the age thing was. They had all kinds of un-aging creatures catalogued in their family's files, and none of them got it without some kind of cost.

Danielle tried not to take it too personally when the kid said she was way older. How old was she at this point? Twenty seven, she figured. But frozen a little bit before that.

Semantics.

"You're very good at noticing things, Maria," she said. "How about you think it over? Hmm? You're starting to notice things about me. I look really young. I'm under guard. I'm your cousin."

Very, very slowly and carefully, she unfolded her fingers, extending a room-temperature hand in Maria's direction. She kept an eye on Lupe. But she'd been frisked so many times, she doubted they suspected her of carrying a weapon at this point.

"What else do you notice about me?" she challenged the girl.

A test, sure. Mom and Dad did this a lot, to help them "learn the eye." Dad was always reminding her that eighty percent of what they did was notice stuff everyone else didn't.

Okay, so, fine. "Well," she said, "I guess normally it wouldn't be that weird that you're kind of young-looking, for your age, 'cept everyone I know that's related to me looks older than they are. Mom said it's the stress. And then told me to stop asking about her age."

She stared hard at Danielle, mouth turning down into a determined frown. "You sit very still," Maria said, finally. "Mom and Dad told me to practice stealth, and not being seen or anything, and I'm not sure I could sit as still as you basically ever. I fidget. I mean, it's like you're not even breath—"

Maria paused, and looked again. "No," she said, slowly, after a moment. "You aren't breathing at all, are you."

Edited (I noticed a typo the second I hit post >:c) 2015-06-16 20:20 (UTC)

Kid was good. As good as Shawn and Danielle had been at her age. Well, as good as Danielle had been, anyway. Shawn was less with the noticing and more with the shooting and punching and making inappropriate comments.

"I'm not," Danielle replied, trying to keep her tone neutral. Too cheerful and she'd sound like a monster. Too menacing and...

...she'd sound like a monster.

There was really no winning when it came to outing yourself as a vampire.

"Go ahead," she said, "touch my skin. I'm not gonna hurt you."

Maria's eyes darted toward Aunt Lupe, who was now looking somewhat bemused. Maybe this whole thing was more of a test than she thought. Or maybe Aunt Lupe thought she could deal with a little independence, who knew.

She looked back at Danielle, making eye contact and holding onto it as she reached to take her hand. It was hard to pull anything funny without accidentally telegraphing it in where you were looking. Even if she was safe—and Aunt Lupe seemed to have relaxed a bit—she wanted to make a good impression.

Danielle's hand felt cold. Not like, freezing, but she didn't feel warm like you'd expect a person to feel. And not the clammy kind of cold, either; her hands felt a little dry, actually. Hesitantly, she slid her fingers down to Danielle's wrist, looking for a pulse. She wasn't really surprised when she didn't feel one.

"So," she said, finally. "You're a vampire."

Danielle didn't move her hand or her arm a fraction of an inch. She let Maria explore and she made her intentions clear and plain. That she really had no intentions.

And it didn't surprise her all that much when the kid guessed correctly. "Yeah," she said. "I'm a vampire. But...I came here because...I want to be more human." Which was more or less what she'd told Noah. Only in more poetic words. It was somehow easier to be straightforward with a child.

"Do you know the clans? The covenants?"

To be more human. Maria nodded when she said that, slowly; it made things make more sense. If she herself ended up a vampire somehow, she'd sure as heck be trying to find a way out of it.

Maria couldn't help but grimace at the question, though. The one thing Andrew always beat her at was memorization. "Uh... they've all got weird names, but there's the shadowy ones, the extra-creepy ones, the snooty ones, the pretty ones, and the, uh, werewolfy ones?" She shrugged. "Covenants are like their secret society kinda thing, right?"

"Right," Danielle said. Because, that was pretty much her take on the whole thing. She'd only just begun to grasp the immense power of the Ordo Dracul. And if Ruby's promises were to be believed, they were an incredible group. No wonder the society would be secret.

They were going to make her human again.

She gestured to herself. "I'm one of the shadowy ones," she explained. "But I don't think I'm all that scary. Am I?"

There was more to the question than some light banter. Danielle was looking for affirmation from a child. The most humany type of human. Even if she wasn't a normal child, it still mattered to her.

A lot.

Maria had to think about that one a little. Right here, right now—even with what she'd just learned, she didn't think there was anything very scary about Danielle. Maybe if she met her in a dark alley, or saw her drinking someone's blood—that could be scary, sure. But she didn't think her parents were very scary, either, and yet there were probably loads of things out there that thought the exact opposite.

"I'm not sure if I trust you, yet," Maria said. "But I don't think you're scary. Not to me, anyway."

It was the affirmation she needed. A spark of hope in the darkness that maybe, just maybe, Danielle could find the things she'd been looking for. Home. A community. A family. Trust could be earned, with time. But there was no getting around looking like a monster to a child.

It was small, but it was something.

She nodded slightly. "That's good," she said to Maria, "you shouldn't trust me yet. You don't know me well enough. But I hope that...I hope that your parents will let me show you that I can be trusted."

Maria's parents had warned her often that more often than not monsters that looked human were often the worst of all, and not to get too close based on appearances. But even though there were plenty of weird, inhuman things about Danielle, she seemed... genuine. For now, anyway.

"They'll do what's best," Maria said, wary of making any promises for her parents. "But I hope you get the chance you want. To become more human again."

Frankly, Danielle wasn't entirely sure what she would have done with herself, had Ruby not come along. The idea of taking a short walk out into the sunset had a surprising amount of appeal. Not because Danielle had a flair for the dramatic--she didn't--but because she simply couldn't stand the thought of spending eternity feeling the way she felt.

Now that she knew she had the chance...

There was hope.

"I suspect they will," she said. "They're Palmers." Because, somehow, that meant more than being a Remington. It meant tradition. It meant loyalty and family and an understanding of right and wrong.

"They'll be fair. Especially if you haven't done anything wrong." There was just a slight, questioning emphasis on the if. The Palmer family was selective in their hunting—if mostly out of practicality. They'd leave those that kept to themselves and kept their claws or fangs clean alone, for the most part.

Maria hesitated. "How'd it happen?"

The machinations of Miles Remington were a sore subject for everyone in the family. Danielle figured it was probably for the best to stick to the basics. After all, Maria had parents who were still worthy of respect. She didn't want to put any ideas of disobedience into the girl's head.

"Well," she said haltingly. "When a vampire wants to turn another vampire--that's called the Embrace--he or she will find a human and...kill them. But before they die he or she will put a little bit of blood into that human's mouth. So they don't really die. They change instead."

And here, Danielle thought she would never have the chance to talk about the birds and the undead bees.

"I know that," said Maria, rolling her eyes. "That's totally in basics, kid stuff! Georgie can probably answer that one already. I mean, like, how did it happen to you."

Danielle's avoidance of her actual question probably meant this was getting personal—she'd figured out that adults rarely really misunderstood her questions—but there's no way her parents wouldn't have already asked. It wasn't rude to want to know, too. Or it shouldn't be.

Rude? In certain circles. For Danielle, it wasn't rude so much as painful. She'd wished again and again and again that that night had never happened, that she hadn't given in to Dad's demands, that she hadn't let Shawn comfort her and steel her resolve.

But...wish in one hand, spit in the other. See which one got full first.

Hint: It was always the spit. And then you had a hand full of spit, which was just gross.

"Like that," Danielle said quietly. "I don't know what her name was. I wish I did." She shook her head. "What you have to understand is that before it happened, I was a hunter, just like all the Palmers."

"You didn't choose it." It wasn't a question. Maria was still trying to figure Danielle out, but the quiet way she said her piece made that plain.

She nodded, and made a face. "I wouldn't wanna be one either. Drinking blood sounds gross."

Danielle nodded. "It's pretty gross," she agreed. "But you gotta do what you gotta do to survive. Because I can't help people if I'm starving."

Again, her thoughts drifted to Ruby. Ruby was like a fairy godmother who was going to make everything better. Of course, Danielle knew she was putting all of her eggs into one basket, but she couldn't help it. She needed something to believe in, something to keep her going.

"I want to keep hunting," she told Maria gently. "Hopefully, your parents will let me help."

"More the merrier, I figure." Maria shrugged. "They won't take me along yet, not 'til I'm a little older, but I wanna help, too." She chewed on her lower lip a little, in thought. "I guess getting that up close and personal with the bad stuff is a good reminder of why you're fighting it."

A good reminder of how dangerous it could get out there, too. But she already knew that. If it wasn't dangerous, they wouldn't have to do it, right?

Thank God or whatever entity was out there that Noah was a better father than Miles. Even if Maria wasn't exactly a conventional kid, there was no harm in keeping her safe a little while longer.

It gave Danielle hope for her own prospects.

"There are lots of ways you can help without doing the actual hunting," Danielle pointed out. "there's learning all the lore. And helping out around the house so there's one less thing to worry about. And cheering up your parents, if they had a bad night."

"I help out around the house plenty," Maria said, sighing. "Me 'n Georgie—well, we do lots of stuff." In fact, since last year, Maria had been in charge of the house while everyone else was out, taking over for Andrew—but she knew she probably shouldn't tell that to Danielle before she was officially cleared. Loose lips, etcetera.

"But I've been practicing a lot," she continued, a small grin starting to creep onto her face. "Andrew just finished his certifications last year, but I think I can do it before I'm fourteen."

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