(no subject)

[sunbaked_baker]

It is the heart of summer, and the days are long. The sun sets late, and the nights are pleasantly warm.

At the moment, this particular day is finally relinquishing its grasp, the half-light of evening settling in, turning the world varying depths of grey.

Yet there is still a light out in the forest. Out past the baseball diamond, in a clearing where a great, thirty-foot wide circle of arcane symbols has been burned into the ground, Sunshine is practicing.

Three figures made of animate soil and water struggle with her. They are faster than she, but Sunshine has her magic. Has her knife in hand, beginning to glow as the daylight fades around her. Has her glimmering network of light set into her skin and hair, awake and alert and pulling from the sun that has already disappeared from the horizon. Has her silver and amber ring on its cord about her neck, gleaming. Her semi-transparent shielding spell appearing and disappearing in a ghostly golden light. Each strike by the figures of magically-animate soil and water she blocks, quick as thought, until she moves to lets one through so she can strike at its heart, in and up into where the chest would be.

The object of this exercise is to stay dry. Stay clean.

Except for her right hand and arm.

Comments

[vojvode]

He'd slept for a long while this time. Deep in the comfort of the earth, held in the roots of the oldest oaks on the mountain, cradled in the black loam, a pillow of granite for his head.

He'd awakened, and fed, on the beasts of the land. Boar and stag, and other strange creatures. It was good to relinquish the burden of pretending to be human for awhile. But soon, his soul ached for the sound of voices, for laughter and conversation, for warmth and light.

The wind shifted and he caught her scent, the delicate scent of cinnamon and sweetness. And something else.

Magic. Sweat. Endorphins.

He changed, swift as breathing, flowing through the trees like water, mist the colour of the emerald sea crossing the distance between them, racing the sunset.

He caught himself short at the edge of the clearing, the sigils making his senses thrum in warning. His body reformed, bone, muscle, armor, sword, without thought. Instinct drew the form from distant memory.

But he still stood, frozen at the edge of the clearing, watching her move.

She was closer to the visage of his dreams than ever before. Power swirled around and through her, and she was at home with it. It was a stunning sight to behold.

[sunbaked_baker]

Even caught up in the moment - not thinking, just reacting - she knows he's there the moment he appears. Sunshine can feel the weight of his attention on her. The next blows she lands on each of the figures surrounding her - in under the ribcage, up through the heart - scatter the figures into their component parts, falling heavily back to earth, devoid of magic.

She is breathing hard, her heart beating swiftly in her chest, her skin shiny with sweat and her arm filthy and slicked with mud.

Her eyes, though, they're clear. And they're meeting his.

[vojvode]

He doesn't need to breathe. But he doesn't need to walk or sit or do any of the other things that make him appear human either. It just comes naturally to him.

And that gaze makes him draw a deep breath.

Shadows shift around him, and he raises his sword in silent salute. The blade turns out sharply, and descends again. Before the tip hits the soil, it dissolves into mist. Another breath, and he's taken up a less martial garb.

Black trousers, black vest, white shirt with the cuffs rolled to below the elbow. His hair is still long, and his eyes still hidden by dark wire-rimmed spectacles.

"My apologies."

His voice is gravelled with disuse, and he takes a moment to compose himself.

"How long has it been?"

[sunbaked_baker]

She watches him silently. Or as silently as a living being can.

"It's been... over two years, for me," she answers, still staring with faint wonderment at seeing him at all.

"How long for you?"

[vojvode]

"Too long."

She is anything but silent as far as his senses are concerned. Her heart is pounding, her breath still ragged from exertion. The scent of her sweat makes his mouth water.

But this is Rae. The Raven. Feeder of lost souls. A beacon in the darkness.

His gaze falls to the churned up lawn at her feet.

"I thought you were under attack."

[sunbaked_baker]

Something in her face clears. Is that why he had apologized?

"I was practicing. So I can, you know..."

Fight and not die.

"...when I am under attack."

Not if - when.

[vojvode]

His head tilts to the side.

"The golems, then. They were -- of your hand?"

His accent is thicker than she might remember, his expression still on the edge of feral. Speaking seems to be requiring thought and effort. His body language still resembles that of a man on the edge of violence, though it is fading with every breath.

Another moment or two, and he adjusts the cuff of his shirt, an air of civility settling around his shoulders, calming the mist and shadows around him.

[sunbaked_baker]

Her benighted eyes can see the action for what it is, the tension settling like dust settled by rain.

It almost makes her smile.

"I made them, yes," Rae answers. "For the purpose of fighting me."

She has sparred against some of the people in the bar. They're not as fast as vampires, and they're either worried about hurting her, or she has to worry about hurting them.

This is the solution she came up with.

[vojvode]

The other cuff is subjected to the same treatment as he approaches, and then he slips his hands in his pockets, his gaze still downcast.

"You require a partner to spar with. One who can -- emulate -- your real enemy. Otherwise, what use is there in the exercise, hmm?"

[sunbaked_baker]

"Not much use at all," she admits, watching him approach.

Rae half-wants his gaze to lift and find hers.

She half-wonders if he is suggesting what it sounds like he's suggesting.

But she adamantly denies that she's wondering if she's mad enough to agree to it.

[vojvode]

He pauses at the edge of the circle, eyeing it warily.

"Not much use at all," he muses.

One hand rises to remove his spectacles. He folds them carefully and tucks them into the pocket of his vest. Another glance around the field, and he looks back to her, his expression almost what one might call soft.

One eyebrow rises in question.

"Your rules?"

He doesn't bother inquiring whether or not she trusts him. He seems to know the truth of that matter, without even asking.

[sunbaked_baker]

Her rules, he asks, and her eyes widen slightly at the idea.

Here, now, he asks, when she is already sweating filthy but not yet tired from fighting animate figures of magic and earth?

Of course, she realizes.

Who better?

Rae's teeth show in a flash of white as she grins, unconsciously but briefly. "Perhaps, only fight in human form. And on the ground."

The only other rule for sparring is the ever-present rule for sparring - no one dies.

The golden network of light set into her skin and hair glimmers, shifting, aware and alert and ready. Even if Rae trusts him, her protections do not. They know a vampire when they see one.

[vojvode]

He nods, and eyes the circle again. If she trusts him, then, he must by extension, trust her.

The ease with which he reaches his decision will trouble him, later, on the edge of sleep. But in this moment, he gives it no thought at all.

"When I was -- very young, we trained on the hard packed earth. My brothers and I. In the style of the ancient Greeks." He murmurs something under his breath, squatting down to take up a handful of the mud, letting it smear through his fingers and fall back to the ground. He looks at it, and then up at her, a smirk lurking about his lips.

"You must call the count." He crosses into the circle, and his boots have dissolved into mist, leaving him in bare feet. He takes up a fighting stance, one foot ahead of the other, his weight distributed between them. His hands hang relaxed as he raises his arms, and he beckons her. "And be gentle on an old man."

[sunbaked_baker]

An old man?

Sunshine's laughter, a bright sound, bubbles up from her throat before she can help it. Something she never thought she would do in his presence, coming as naturally as breathing.

She will not let that worry her now.

"As gentle as you must be to someone so young and green in the ways of battle," she says, inclining her head slightly. Which is to say, she won't be, and neither will he.

Because while she is still new to battle compared to his experience, and he is very old compared to her, neither youth nor age mean weakness. Not here. He must not be gentle, and neither must she, or such sparring will be not much use at all.

The ring of silver and amber - tears of the sun, it was sometimes called - on its cord around her neck glows golden as she calls her strength to her. Though neither of them carry anything as obvious as blades, there is no question of either being unarmed. Centering herself, sure of her sneakers' grip on the soil beneath her, Sunshine lunges for him, and it begins.

[vojvode]

She moves like water, and he watches her as the moment slows. Fire flows around her, and he wonders if it will leave a mark on his skin. Her fingertips brush his chest, and he spins away, hands raised to deflect any followup blow. Two steps to the right, and his thoughts reach out to hers.

How do they move in your world? Show me.

The memories aren't that far from the surface, and he takes them on, wraps himself in them like a cloak. Brutal and thirsty, like winter-starved wolves.

He adjusts his attack accordingly, aiming for her throat.

[sunbaked_baker]

The memories surface deliberately - vampires in teeming groups, each lightning-fast and lean. Pack animals, apart from the intelligence and vicious cruelty that only comes with having been human once. Whippy-looking, their movement carrying an impossible, oily suppleness that shows that the only thing remaining to make them look human is that they are more-or-less the right shape.

They are out for her death, not for food - a vampire destroying a threat need not be cool about it, no invitation needed. To come within their reach is to lose an arm, or worse.

Sunshine's ghostly golden shield materializes before her, blocking his strike at her throat even as she's dodging, striking back. It is not easy - nor should it be. Sweat beads on her forehead as they fight. Her magic is her weapon and her shield. The golden barrier flickers into being and out again at a thought, while her magic strikes at his side, the back of his knees, seeking to trip him, unbalance, disrupt - so she might eventually to duck in under his reach. To his heart.

[vojvode]

He tastes metal, bright and bitter on his tongue, and it burns. The feral beast that lives behind his breast bone howls with rage, those memories stirring others, of the hunt, of blood, bright and hot, spilling down his jaws.

But he keeps that monster under the reign of his will, bound and muzzled. He can give her what she needs without succumbing to mindless bloodlust.

His body remembers the drills, bone and muscle responding with their own memories. The takedown becomes a rolling surge, the feint countered with his own reaching grasp. They flow together, fire and mist, warrior and mage, and it feels like they've done this a thousand times before.

When they separate and he dances away, he pauses to grin at her, tossing his hair back over his shoulder. He wishes he'd had the sense to braid it first.

'Again,' he growls, and there is joy in the word.

[sunbaked_baker]

The exertion has loosed some of her red hair from its tight pony-tail, frizzed by sweat into a fuzzy corona about her face. Sunshine pants hard, heartbeat quick but steady, her teeth showing slightly between her lips. Though the corners of her mouth turn up slightly in response to his grin, there is no joy in her eyes. Satisfaction, maybe.

...Yes, satisfaction. There is no denying it. No point.

But she takes no joy in it. Her joy is not to be found on any battlefield. Her joy is in flour and spices and good things of the earth, but blood and grime and sweat are the price. This is necessity.

The moment her heart-rate begins to slow down, Sunshine goes for him again, her magic striking at his arms with force and fire, at his legs with the earth beneath his feet. Seeking to draw him out, unbalance him. Trying to make him overreach, overextend, to strike and miss and let her in.

Sunshine is careful, but not shy. She goes in without hesitation, but is quick to dart away again if necessity dictates, keeping her feet under her. Her shield, flickering there-and-then-not-there as needed with a thought, doesn't falter, deflecting strikes whose strength could cripple her if she didn't catch them. The sunlight-web in her skin glimmers and shifts like iridescent oil on water, awake, aware, calling the sun from beyond the horizon.

[vojvode]

He meets the press, and increases the force and fury of blows to match it. He feels the earth moving beneath him, and moves with it. The fire singes the air around him, and the ashes reform, knitting the burns whole again before the next strike. She's starting to learn his rhythms, predicting where the next hole in his defense will be as his movement takes form. She requires his full focus, and that becomes his downfall.

He catches himself, between moments, reveling in her beauty, her strength and her competence with the magical forces she's wielding. And that is when she catches him off guard, sending him tumbling to the ground almost to the edge of the circle. There is another laugh, and he falls to his back, staring up at the sky.

'Sweet lady, mercy.'

He should be breathing hard, should be sweating, but none of these outward signs of exertion reveal themselves. His eyes, though, burn with an unholy fire.

[sunbaked_baker]

If he thinks her strike caught him off-guard, it's nothing compared to how his fall catches her. Rae stands, breathing hard, her tank-top sticking to her with sweat, staring at his prostrate form with disbelief.

One of those hard breaths might also be a faint, incredulous laugh. "Stop messing with my head - I thought I just heard you ask me for mercy." Not serious at all, she's just a little shocked and overwhelmed by the fact the situation even came about. He's... him, after all.

[vojvode]

He turns his head, slightly, looking at her. After a moment, he levers himself up to one elbow, resting for a span of heartbeats, looking for all the world like he meant to end up like this. He looks at her with dark eyes, searching for something in her face.

'I know, I know. It is an unfathomable request.'

She is, after all, her.

[sunbaked_baker]

The woman wreathed in golden, glimmering sunlight, gazes down at the vampire, Vlad Tepes, called Dracula. She meets his dark eyes with a gaze like the reflection of the summer sky in water - grim, satisfied, pleasure shock and turmoil in equal measure.

Rae wields her magic with the skill of one who has had to learn quickly or die, but there are parts of her mind where the role she has taken on will never lie comfortably. The baker of good, honest bread will face the lies and horror and violent death, but she will never long for them; she will take her satisfaction from lessons learned well, not from the purpose for which they were learned.

The war she is waging is one of necessity. War so that humanity will survive. So that, perhaps, the relationship between vampires and humans would not just consist of bloody murder. A war of ideas, not just the body count (and wouldn't he be the very figurehead of the way of unlife against which she fights?).

It would be nice to think that she could hold tighter to the person she had been. The person who, out of mercy, does not kill spiders she finds in her apartment. Who sets catch-alive traps for mice because she can't bear the thought of killing them. Not be this person whose purpose is to be a monster to the monsters. The villain of the cautionary tales told by the villains of humanity's cautionary tales. Not a human with a vampire - this vampire, who horrifies her and yet draws her still - at her feet, asking (however lightly) for mercy.

(Again, she can see Con stagger back to thud against the far wall, all inhuman grace lost. "What in creation are you?"

Again, she can see vampires flinch first when she meets their eyes, shying away from her - choosing to face Con in battle than approach one slow, weak human with a knife, though they can clearly see from the litter of broken bodies how well all the others who made the same choice fared.)

Sunshine breaks eye-contact with him first, irrationally worrying that he'd see too much in her gaze.

"There are a lot of unfathomable ideas in the world." Like how horror and desire can coexist and mingle so readily. Like showing mercy to a vampire. Like willingly sparring with a vampire, alone in a dark forest, at the end of the universe. Like the idea that light and dark are not mutually exclusive, and that one will forever pursue the other.

Moving like someone who knows she's going to be sore in the morning, or someone who doesn't know quite why she's doing what she is, Sunshine steps forward to offer him a hand up. Whether or not he needs the help is not the point.

The point is the offer.

"And yet they insist on existing, in case someone comes along to try and fathom them."

They are exactly who they are.

[vojvode]

He places his hand in hers (cool granite on warm flesh), and clasps his fingers around those fine bones.

She is stunning. Her memories flow over him, through him, mingling with the sweet symphony of her heart beat, the flush of sweat on her skin, the scent of her hair. It's an assault on his senses, and one that he gladly submits to. She reminds him why he chose to return from the wilds.

He lets her feel his weight as he stands, using her as a counterbalance. It's easier now, after sparring with her. They've danced, so to speak.

'You need to rest. And something to drink, perhaps.'

He doesn't want to seem uncivilized.

[sunbaked_baker]

No, he has long practice at seeming civilized; it doesn't fail him now.

Sunshine smiles faintly, a bare twitch of the corners of her lips as she watches him. He is suggesting she have a drink, when she - a feeder of people - cannot return the favor.

They are both aware of it, of course. How their eyes meet, and how much of their paired attention is on the feeling of the hand against their own. How the other moves. Why they dance, and fight, and chase, and yet...

(There is always a need for ceremony, my lady. At least where you and I stand.)

"I think," Sunshine says at length, and because there is no point in it she does not hide the knowledge of just how much she is tempted to answer otherwise, "that I'll be fine. Thank you, however, for the offer."

They both know why, for they both know wars of necessity.

[vojvode]

'Another time, perhaps,' he answers, withdrawing his grasp from hers. He honors her with a bow, one hand across his chest, one foot slightly ahead of the other. It is an archaic gesture, but it comes as naturally to him as breathing.

'I have not forgotten my debt to you, lady.'

[sunbaked_baker]

A memory - a metallic thermos, and an offer.

"Nor have I."

Sunshine's replying gesture, something of a bow, something of a curtsy despite not wearing a dress -

(...she wiped her tear-stained face on the hem of her dress, there in that ruined ballroom, a dress finer than anything she had ever owned. Hearts-blood red silk, cleverly sewn on the bias so that it clung around the low-cut bodice but swirled out in the ankle-length skirt to what feel like yards of material at the hem, draping over her awkward knees in drifts like something out of a Renaissance painting...)

- comes as naturally to her as drinking blood. Which is to say, it doesn't.

Nevertheless, the gesture is true, and honest, and respectful. He represents everything she fights against and everything she is drawn to; not to acknowledge whatever gravity-like force that binds them together would be to lie.

And neither of them do that.

[vojvode]

The corner of his mouth lifts at her awkward curtsey. When she rises, he takes the liberty of stepping in close, and taking her hand, bending over it to brush his lips over her knuckles.

'Thank you, for this. I should like it if we could train like this, again. If you're amenable?'

[sunbaked_baker]

Her hand does not pull away from his, though he is still himself, with everything his hands have done.

"Thank you, as well." It is a strange feeling, to have danced in this way with a vampire, this vampire, and know that it will be genuinely useful.

In her fight against vampires.

"I would... like it, too."

[vojvode]

His gaze drops to where she clasps his hand. His skin warms to her touch, and he does not move to relinquish her grasp. There are moments when he looks -- no, when he becomes human. Perhaps it is because she fears him, or perhaps it is because she does not.

Perhaps it is simply another facet of his mask. Perhaps it is not a mask at all. Certainly, when he lifts his gaze to hers again, the look in his eyes is as open and honest as she has ever seen.

'I look forward to it. Until then?'

[sunbaked_baker]

Her throat moves as she swallows, involuntary. Sunshine's gaze finds his and holds, eyes the color of the midday sky meeting those darker than a moonless night.

Mask or not, lingering humanity or an act, she meets him as he is. With all she is, and all that he is, open and honest. Food-maker, warrior, hands covered in flour or in blood to feed her world body and soul. Monster, man, living blood and unbeating heart in unending love and impassioned hatred.

"Yes," she agrees - then, greatly daring. "Until then... Vlad."

Sunshine has never before spoken his name aloud. His title, the one best known to her, yes, but never his name.

[vojvode]

His eyebrows rise, and he inclines his head, the ghost of a smile crossing his features.

'A good evening to you... Rae.'

Again, he dips his chin, and turns to leave. The shadows pool around his feet, licking up his legs until it seems like the night itself draws him in. His silhouette dissolves and maybe she can hear a faint sound. A contented, quiet chuckle that echoes around her, coming from everywhere and no where, all at once.

[sunbaked_baker]

Her benighted eyes watch him until he is no longer there to be seen, and the sound of his voice no longer heard.

Then and only then, Sunshine lets out a breath she hadn't been aware of holding. She stands alone in the circle until her heartbeat slows towards normal, until her nerves - heightened and aware and seemingly sensitive to every breath of a breeze - calm to the point where she becomes aware again of her fight-grimed weariness, the dirt smearing her skin, the sweat making her clothes stick to her. And in that moment, complicated relationships and divided loyalties aside, all she wants is a bath.

Human again, her mother's daughter, feeder of people, Rae fetches her water bottle from the edge of the clearing, and heads back towards the bar in silence.