Visitors! (Teddy and Cassiel) - Lad Nah's Clockwork Death House

"Uhm, okay" the Caitiff drew her breath as she lifted her wrist to her lips, pausing for a moment. "Is the magic cast with ill intent?" she said, nicking her skin with one of her fangs and holding her arm over the bowl to let a few drops of blood fall into the water and... waited..

The blood didn't mix with the water. It fell like beads to the bottom of the bowl and absorbed into the glass, giving the glass a pink hue.

"More..." Lad Nah said in a strange voice. Her hands reached out and gripped the worn edges suddenly and jerkily. Her fingers fit perfectly in the groves of the wood. She had done this so amny times for so long that she had worn the wood...

Bright blue yes flickered to the small Malkavian, watching her for a couple of moments and seeing how her fingers had worn down the wood where she gripped the edges. Then she let more of her blood flow into the water.

The glass of the bowl greddily ate up the blood until the bowl was a slick red color.

Lad Nah went rigid. Her neck snapping back in an unatural way. Her fingers strained to grip the wood harder. The room grew dark, strangely, though no lights had turned off. An ominous weight hung in the air.

She opened her mouth and without moving her lips or her tongue, a voice came out.

"Yessss.... many ill intents... foul and justified."

Okay that wasn't creepy at all.

The Caitiff was probably staring, but honestly, could she blame her?
"What did I do to deserve it...?" did she want to know? She wasn't sure.

Oh yes, creepy didn't even begin to describe it. It suddenly became clear why Lad Nah had pushed for Cassiel to come too. Facing such a thing alone would have been horrifying, because it was clear to Teddy that the little Malkavien wasn't in the room with them any longer.

"Justified to themmm... ssss... not justified to all... a threat. A thorn. Hurting those around you. Jumping... blaming others. Not seeing past the face value. The face... heh... hahaha." Lad Nah, convulsed in a painful looking way... she was so flexible, like an honest to God doll that this big horrible male voice hissed out of like a foul wind.

It was horrifying... enough so that for a moment she seemed hesitant about going further. Because God knew what thing had taken possession of the Malkavian and was currently speaking through her.
"I never meant to hurt anyone..." Teddy said weakly. "I don't even know who I'm suppose to have hurt... who have I hurt...?" she sounded honestly pained at the thought.

The malkavien's little body lurched forward and her head swung down, revealing that her eyes were compeltely white. Still her mouth hung open, not moving. Her arms actually bent backwards and by the lack of a popping sound, it could be concluded that the malkavien was double jointed.

"The path to hell is pathed in good intentions.... HAHAHAHA!!! They hate you for hurting the one closest to you and the ones furthest from you... a message... there's a message for you."

Her head snapped up again, the whites of her eyes somehow boring into the catiff.

"When you stare into the abyssssss..." She heaved a great raspy sigh. An inky blackness spread across the malkavien's eyes, turning them into dark shadowy voids. "It stares right back into youuuuu....."

Then the malkavien's eyes burst from her head, the inky blackness bled down her snow white cheeks and she screamed in her normal voice. The presence was gone. She slumped down, clutching the base of the bowl.

The man who had driven them early burst in the room and rushed to her side.

Her first instinct, despite the horror of the scene unfolding before her, was to run to the Malkavian's side, though with the man coming rushing in, she back up. Giving them both room as she trembled. The blonde's own eyes, bright blue ones that usually held so much life, slowly turning a pink colour as they started welling up. Though they remained fixed on Lad'Nah.

The one closest to her...
Medwyn...
She was.... he was hurting Medwyn..?

The trembling was accompanied by a shallow breath, as if she couldn't quite manage to breathe despite the lack of need for air.

They hated her...
They...
It wasn't just one...
They hated her... hated her for hurting him...

Oh God...

"All wrong..." the voice was broken. "It's all wrong..." weak. "Hurting him... oh God am I hurting him?" the tears started even as the shattered sob tore itself from her throat and she hid her face in her hands and staggered. "I can't do it right I can't do it right..." the pained whimpers wouldn't stop.

The man shouted over his shoulder, "It was Kupala this time!"

A servant poked her head in and nodded and rushed off. The man scooped up the tiny broken body of the Malkavien.

He turned to face the guests. "I'm sorry, Lady Lad Nah ussually takes about an hour to recover from an induced vision. Nola will see to your needs."

He didn't seem angry or overly worried. Business as usual in the Lad Nah household it would seem.

She would've said something if she could hear his words over the sound of her own screaming conscience, as it where, the Caitiff couldn't really manage to do much but pull away to move so she wasn't in their way while trying to choke back the sobs.

Then he turned and left with Lad Nah.

Nola and a very tall blonde woman appeared, shooting the little body of the malk, worried looks before the tall woman saw to cleaning up the bowl, which was now extruding black blood from the base of the bowl.

Nola looked to the women and forced a smile, "So! Umm... will you be staying for a bit or..." She looked at Teddy closely, "Um... you ok?"

There was no redemption for her... there was no forgiveness... Inner peace, forgive yourself... All of her hopes had shattered like a mirror struck by rock with just a few words.

"For hurting the one closest to you"

She truly was a monster...

"I'm fine, thank you" it as such a blatant lie spoken in her native language before the sobs took her again and she curled up in one of the chairs. A million thoughts screaming through her head, and all she could think of to even remotely try to fix anything, anything at all to atone for it? Was to remove the cause of pain.. her...

"Hey..." She looked at Teddy, seemingly unaffected by what had happened. Though, that was probably not the case. "You know, a vision can mean a hundred different things. Please, don't take it so hard...."

She could only hear those words, repeating over and over and over again.
"If I'm hurting him I'll die..." the small blonde whimpered, still curled up so tightly her muscles ached. "I can't.. I can't be hurting him... I can't... I don't mean to.."

Cass did something that she wouldn't normally do. But Teddy was killing herself. And she couldn't let that happen.

"THEODORA BLUNER! STAND THE FUCK UP!"

She hated it... She did and Teddy could see the hurt in her eyes when she yelled. But she had to help pull the girl together.

Her eyes flashed open, wide open. Once beautiful and blue, now red and filled with pain. Though she did still. Instead she stared. For the longest time she simply stared before she was finally able to at least pull three sensible words together. Spoken quietly, but at least not in panic.
"I'm sorry, Cassiel..." for freaking out.

Nola slipped out and closed the door, giving the women privacy.

"You..." She pulled Teddy by her hand. "You need to stop. This? ALL of this? The freaking out, the worry? If you are hurting him, which I doubt... This is how you're doing it. YOU HAVE TO LIVE! You can't let yourself be crippled by this. You want to know why? Because it's crippling you. You aren't what you were and that, honey, is what he fell in love with. You can still be who you are, but right now, you are letting other dictate who you should or shouldn't be, what you should do or shouldn't do. But in the end, they don't have that right. Only YOU do. Stop this, Teddy, stop this all before it kills you. Do what you have to do, ask for a truce, simply ignore it. But don't let yourself and your spirit die because of what others are doing or what you think they might do."

She let her hand go and stepped back.

"Or risk losing everything... You may feel like you already have, but the truth of the matter is that you haven't lost it."

But she'd been trying.. she'd been trying so hard to get back to who she was. She'd been getting better, worked for it, and then... Whenever she thought she might actually make it over that last obstacle, something up and struck her back down.

"I barely know what foot to stand on..." she hadn't touched Areron... she couldn't, she wouldn't... She'd stepped up, tried to get back to living in the now, even picked her tools back up to work. She'd even tried to ignore the gnawing hurt in her stomach that was there because the mere thought that Medwyn might get hurt or tricked or somehow forced to do something he didn't want made her want to throw up. She'd tried to ignore it because she didn't want it to cause more problems. She just wanted to be happy, with him...

She gave a weak smile. It looked strange with the blood shot eyes.
"I try standing on one, it get swept away from underneath me. I try standing on the other, the same happens. I try standing on both and the ground shakes. I keep failing and I can't see why..." please someone tell her why.

"Because you're expecting something bad to happen. Trust me, Teddy, please," she pleaded with her. "You can't live that way or else something, somewhere will pick up on it and knock you down for fun. You're worried, I get that... But you've been living in the dark so long that you don't know if the ground you step on is going to tumble out from under you. And if it does? Then it does. But until then, all this fear..."

She sighed. "Sometimes it's better to bury the hatchet, just so you can move on. And I've come to realize that that's what has been happening. It's happening with everyone, just so we can survive and find something to be happy about again."

And leave the darkness to linger until people forgot about it and it could strike... It wasn't fair to anyone. But evil got to do that didn't it? Because when it couldn't be fought, you simply had to accept...
Justice... it was a made word up, wasn't it?

"How can I not worry about something happening to him...?" how could you stop worrying about your love ones?

"There's a difference between worrying about something happening to him and worrying so much that you interfere with yourself. Does that make any sense? You worry so long and so hard, that it's all you do. That it's all... you can think of. Some worry is natural. But too much worry and you don't even realize that you're, in a way to others, questioning the decisions he has made for himself. You aren't his mother... You're his mate."

"But.. I... I didn't fight him...?" she sounded a bit choked up again. "I didn't question his choice for a path... I didn't question his choice of path... the only thing I questioned was when he didn't tell me as he'd promised he would?" and that was ... wrong...?
"I told him I'd walk the same path for him... I told him I'd forgo my humanity so I could keep my promise to him that he would never be alone in anything again..." how much more could she give?

"That has nothing to do with it. All of that is all well and good. But in your worry, in your tip-toeing and your hesitance to live for yourself, too, that... that is what is doing this. These are the things that build walls. Be who you always were. That's the key. Hell, Teddy, you're Brujah now, right? Tussle with him. Tussle with someone, just to get the fear out of your system. So that you can do the things you always could."