Swimming with the Blonde (Teddy) - Bathtub Beach

Teddy shook her head.
"No clue" she was leaning, so no reason to be anything but honest, now was there.

She nodded.

"It's a practice where everyone bleeds into the same cup and pass it around. Mutual blood bonds for everyone."

"Oh..." that... "So you always have someone bonded to you and you're always bonded to them... I see" kind of scary to be honest.

She nodded.

"Though it is usually between a good number of them. Your pack, much like that of wolves. And they act little better, to be honest."

"there's strength in that.." never being alone. "Guess that's part of what makes them dangerous huh? You rarely ever run into just one"

She touched the tip of her nose with a finger.

"Exactly. And add to it that they couldn't really care less about killing -- our kind, mortals, everyone -- then it makes them a force to be reckoned with. You know what shovelheads are?"

"I've heard the expression, uhm... some stories about burying newly embraced or something?" she wasn't too sure but it was something like that right? "Kinda like a real life zombie movie thing"

She smiled.

"More like shock troops. The entire point of the shovelhead is to be Embraced and buried, so that when they come out of the ground they are hungry and in frenzy, killing anyone and anything that they can to sate the Beast. It's not pretty, causes a lot of damage, and ends up generally being a nuisance for everyone."

"Sounds horrible..." because, let's face it, it was horrible. "So jut cannon fodder huh? I wonder if that's what I was suppose to be..." she found herself muttering as she thought back to the night of her own embrace where pretty much everything seemed to have gone wrong.

She tilted her head.

"What makes you think that?"

"It sounds like a cliche..." she admitted. "My family were killed on the night of my embrace, so were most of the town we lived in. It was burned, bodies left in the streets. It looked like a battlefield and I... I woke up among the dead bodies, starved and alone. Maybe I was suppose to have been... one of them"

She tilted her head.

"Maybe. It's highly possible."

"I'd make horrible cannon fodder" she smiled weakly. "I wouldn't last long"

She smiled.

"Something tells me you're not as weak as you think you are."

"Depends on how you see it. I'm not all that enduring really" which was the blunt honest truth. "And I don't really got the attitude for fighting"

She smiled.

"Most of us think that until something or someone we really care about is threatened."

There was something in her eyes, a brief something that flashed before those bright blue orbs before disappearing. Shame perhaps.
"Yeah.." she looked away, brushing her fingers through the water again. "I'd fight for those I care about. But that's different"

She tilted her head.

"How is it so different? Think of it this way: you can't protect the people you care about if you're dead."

"There's a big difference between having a cause or someone to fight for as opposed to simply being ordered to fight" Teddy nodded.

She frowned.

"Yes, I understand that well. I mean more that there's more at stake when you are fighting for yourself alone, since all of the people that you want to protect... well, you just can't, if you're dead."

The only problem there was that she wasn't sure she could protect those she cared about. She would no doubt try if she had to, but she didn't have the best track record there.
"I get that" Teddy said quietly.

She smiled.

"You'll be all right. You just need to be a little more aggressive rather than passive."

She opened her mouth, seemed to hesitate as she closed it again and then paused for a few.
"Bad things happen when I have reason to be aggressive. I don't like being that way. It doesn't feel like me"

She shrugged.

"Who does? It's just sometimes needed."

"Yeah, sometimes. Just some people do it easier than others" she chewed on her lip for a moment. "I was given an offer to have my blood analyzed, to look into who my Sire is, or was.... I said no. I decided I didn't want to know. That knowing who my Sire was wouldn't change who I am" perhaps in the eyes of others it might, but not in hers.