OOM: it cuts both ways

[sunbaked_baker]

It was always dark when Sunshine arrived at the coffeehouse, no matter the time of year. The dark hours of the early morning were pleasantly cool as the summer settled in, and the walk from her car into the cobblestoned pedestrian district of Old Town was quiet. Even so, she always locked the door behind her again as she let herself into the coffeehouse, before she moved to turn off the alarm.

Four-thirty Tuesday mornings after a Monday off were always a bit slow to start, making her wrists ache as she sought to convince thirty-hour refrigerated dough it was time to warm up, loosen up, wake up. The first batch of gigantic cinnamon rolls would be in the oven by five-thirty, and one would be able to smell them baking by the time Charlie came in at six to open the till and start dragging the outdoor seating and tables out front. Over the next half-hour the morning's shift of cooks and waitstaff would show up, getting everything ready before the first hungry customers bustled in at six-thirty.

Usually, Sunshine found these early mornings peaceful, alone in the quiet, normally-bustling coffeehouse, its lights nevertheless bright against the darkness of the lingering night. The stillness was oddly refreshing, something special only she and her apprentice got to experience in a place so loud and full of life once the sun rose.

But today, Sunshine was having difficulty relaxing into her comfortable routine. She found herself looking out of the bakery window often, as though she could find the source of her inner discomfort somewhere out in the dark.

Old Town had been the downtown area when New Arcadia had not yet grown into a city, when the center of commerce hadn't yet shifted to the newer Business District. It was the oldest part of the city, but the lack of big name businesses had led to a slow decline even before the Wars hit. Years ago, in an effort to gentrify the area, the city officials in their so-called wisdom had ripped up all of the pavement of Old Town and replaced the pavement with fake old-timey cobblestones, and had plopped down raised flower beds in what once been a busy thoroughfare, declaring Old Town a pedestrian-only district. To complete the transformation, they had replaced the older (and brighter) streetlights with flickery streetlights made to look like old-fashioned gas lamps. Well... they had replaced most of them. Before the money ran out. As a result, some of Old Town's shadowy corners were very shadowy, at night.

Not that the darkness really affected Sunshine, these days. Though the night was only starting to lighten towards dawn, with her Dark Sight she could see the open, flowerbed-dotted intersection in front of Charlie's Coffeehouse as clearly as if it were in plain daylight. But like trying to pinpoint the source of a sound in another room, she could not quite determine what kept catching at her attention.

It was... somewhere across diagonally from the coffeehouse, whatever it was. Likely the mouth of the alleyway that ran between the Hair'n'Now barbershop and the long-unused delivery loading bays of what had been the Cook Family Hardware store in earlier years, another casualty of the lack of traffic due to the city's gentrification efforts.

The more she dwelled on it, as the cinnamon rolls went into the oven, the more certain that the attention she felt was Other in origin. Specifically... vampire.

So there was a vampire on her turf; Rae didn't question how she knew it, but she did. This had happened before. But she was no longer the person who had once grabbed a table knife and sprinted unthinkingly out after it, staking it before conscious thought caught up with her.

No, in the dimness before dawn she made sure the cinnamon rolls were in the oven, set a timer, washed and wiped her hands dry, and remembered to take the keys to the coffeehouse with her so she could get back in, afterwards. After... after what? She didn't know what she expected, just knew that she couldn't not go out to meet whatever - whoever - it was.

When she checked that the door had locked and tucked the coffeehouse keys into her pocket, her hand briefly lingered to feel the comforting solidity of the little pocketknife that lived there as well.



It was a vampire, it turned out. They were perched on the lid of a tall trash bin along the western side of the alley mouth, visibly doing nothing. Sunshine couldn't help but wondering if it was a vampiric trait, having never mastered tranquil inactivity herself unless she was sunbathing. And even then she would likely have a book with her.

"You all right, there?" she asked, as the vampire spotted her coming and startled in that way of vampires, going suddenly (and somehow) more still. They knew they weren't passing as human, so the idea of a human (food, prey) willingly coming to check on the wellbeing of their predator was an understandably difficult one to parse.

"I'm... where I need to be." The answer was hesitant, almost wary, their voice rusty from disuse.

Sunshine smiled a little, wondering how long it had been since they had spoken to a human. Or spoken at all. "Staying out a bit late, though, aren't you?" Her words were light.

The vampire looked at her.

"If you know, why are you here?"

"I'm here because I know," she replied simply, giving a shrug. "There is a vampire in my neighborhood - you're distracting."

"Forgive the intrusion." An actual hint of tone entered the vampire's voice, the memory of dry amusement. "I will be brief."

"You'll have to be," Sunshine replied, wry. The night was ending shortly - this vampire would need to be somewhere safe before sunrise. They had to be a relatively young vampire, to be out this late already. No more than a decade or so old.

The vampire continued to look at Sunshine, considering her hair, her scars, the steady way she looked back at them. Their voice was quiet, tense: "You're her, aren't you?"

Sunshine reminded herself that news got around, even among vampires. She felt herself slip further from the thought of the muffins she still needed to make before the coffeehouse opened. "...Probably, if you're asking."

"Ha!" The vampire's laugh was sudden, mirthless. "They say you're a monster of fire, d... daylight personified. Heartrender. And you're just some human! I could break you in half, myself."

Sunshine stilled at the outburst, thinking of a bird trying to convince a snake not to strike, and wondering who would be considered the snake in this situation. "You wouldn't be the first who tried," she replied plainly, no goading in her tone, merely stating the fact.

A moment passed, and the vampire shook their head. "So I've heard."

Sunshine felt herself relax a little (dumb thing to do, said the daylit part of her), even as the silence stretched on.



"It was smaller, I think, when I came here." It took Sunshine a moment to realize what the vampire must be referring to.

"The coffeehouse?"

"Yeah. It had more outdoor seating area, more... traffic, and didn't have that side built up," they gestured, as though trying to recreate the look in their mind.

That side was Sunshine's bakery.

"This was... during the Wars?" she asked.

"Mm," the vampire replied in what Rae thought was an affirmative tone. "I lived..."

Their gaze searched the array of darkened windows on the surrounding buildings.

"...somewhere around here."

Not for the first time, Sunshine wondered just how much of their human lives vampires remembered.

"When you were human?"

The vampire glanced at her, and then went back to looking speculatively at the buildings.

"What brought you back?"

The first real expression that Sunshine had seen crossed the vampire's face - a grimace of pain or irritation.

"Can I ask-" Rae started, but startled a step backwards as the vampire made a frustrated sound in their throat and jumped down from the lid of the trash bin.

"Is it true, what you tell them?" the vampire asked her. She could feel the weight of their gaze, the question falling like a stone. "That it's all - all lies."

"Do you mean... that it is a lie that vampires must feed on and kill humans to survive?" Sunshine asked, lightly. "That master vampires depend on the perpetuation of that lie to retain power over their gangs? That the aging that causes older vampires to no longer be able to go out under open sky or hunt for themselves is a direct backlash from decades of feeding on humans? That a vampire who doesn't feed on humans also doesn't suffer the effect of that backlash and can gain strength and live an independent existence without having to depend on a gang?"

The vampire gazed levelly at her. "Yes."

"...Yes." Sunshine's answer was as gentle as she can make it. She had seen how bad the reaction can get, from the urge not to accept what she and Con told the gangs. She had scars from some of those reactions.

The vampire said nothing, but no longer looked at her, their eyes cast upwards towards the darkened windows again.

"Human society doesn't help, either," Sunshine murmured. "From childhood on, vampires are the first and worst monsters under everyone's beds. A human who is turned wakes up knowing they are a monster to everyone they've ever loved."

"And then we learn to embody that role," the vampire added, quiet.

"...Yes."

The vampire looked at her, and Sunshine felt the weight of that attention fall upon her again. "So. Everything... all that we do..."

"Every human life taken by a vampire is an unnecessary loss, yes," Sunshine murmured, "and the backlash of the savor all that... fear and torment adds to your meals is what takes its toll, in the long run."

They shook their head and were silent for a long moment.

"...No wonder they try to kill you."

"Honestly, I don't blame them," Sunshine admitted, looking at the vampire while their gaze was elsewhere. They did not look well. "Those that would still be affected by such knowledge... it could only ever be a painful thing to learn."

"And we do have a long tradition of killing messengers who dare bring bad news," the vampire admitted, their tone almost dry though it was clear their thoughts were still tied up in what she had said. "Those who find out the truth, but don't die trying to kill you... what, they're supposed to swear off killing humans and live off animals for the rest of their existence? What if they don't?"

"That... is a choice they make."

"What if they can't?"

Sunshine paused. "What do you mean?"

The vampire shifted their weight - downright agitated, for a vampire. "What if they can't accept it?"

"You mean, what if they can't change the way they are?" Rae asked. "I believe they can, if they really want to. When someone is turned... they may not have a say in what they become. But you always have a say in who you become. The difference now is you know the way you were told isn't the only way."

Pain was visible on the vampire's face. In the lessening gloom they looked smaller than they had, their pallor visibly poor. "No," they shook their head as though they might cast something away from it. 'No, not anything of what they will do. What if they can't accept what they've already done?"

"Y-"

"I can't recall how many people I've killed, human."

Sunshine's throat closed hard on her words, her gaze caught by the greyish face in the dim light.

"I've been trying to remember, and I can't. I remember keeping track at first, though. I remember it was not easy, in the beginning. Learning to kill. I remember it hurt. I remember... taking comfort in knowing it was only so I could survive. But I learned the lesson my masters wanted me to, and the blood of torment has been sweet far longer than the thought of it has hurt, by now."

Sunshine shook her head, stepping forward. "And now you know you don't have to do that anymore. No one needs to be hurt. You're free of that. But... but listen, you can't stay here. The sun'll be up any minute."

"I will stay here. This is were I'm from," the vampire replied, looking again at the apartment buildings nearby. "More or less."

"But you'll die."

"I died here years ago."

"No." In something approaching desperation Sunshine stepped up to the vampire, fear on their behalf making her bold, forgetting not to look into their eyes. "You didn't. You changed, yes, but you're still alive and you're a person, not a monster. You're still here. Still 'you,' even if the definition has changed. It can change again."

"It will," replied the vampire, meeting her gaze levelly. "Shortly. And for the last time."

Sunshine found herself wanting to take this deadly creature by the shoulders and shake them. "Why?"

"I... do not want to be a person who has done the things I have done," they answered, looking increasingly less in the gathering light, their grey, sunken cheeks speaking to the meals they had not been taking. "I am not free of it, no matter what you say. It was easier, being a monster."

Sunshine felt the sunrise coming, as they spoke, and in alarm reached forward and grabbed the vampire's wrist. The golden light broke through the trees at the end of the street and fell upon them. The vampire was startled for half a moment but soon seemed lost in thought, entranced by the bright sunlight resting on its unburned and unbroken skin.

"Let me go." They said eventually, quiet.

"No! You'll die."

"Let me go or I will break your arm."

"I can get you somewhere safe," Rae had no idea how or where, but that hadn't stopped her before. It was daybreak on a summer's day that promised to be bright, and she was well-rested. She could probably get them however far they needed to go.

Moving with human slowness, the vampire stepped forward, close to her, and with its free hand lifted Rae's chin so she looked at them directly. Their eyes were a dark, dulled steel-blue, like ominous clouds that promised an impending downpour. "Let me go, and let me burn. Or I will tear out your throat, and we will both die here, and no one else will have to hear what terrible news you intend to bring them."

Sunshine could feel her heartbeat racing against the deceptively light pressure of the vampire's fingers at her throat, as she looked into those eyes. They meant it. She didn't know a way out of this that wouldn't leave them both dead.

"At least tell me your name."

The corner of the vampire's mouth quirked up. "They called me Al."

"Al?" Sunshine echoed, desperate, thinking of Constantine called Con, and Beauregard, called Bo. "Alfred? Alice? Albert? Maybe it's short for Alyssa? Alessandra? Alessandro? Alexander? Alexandria?"

Her desperate attempts brought a real laugh from the vampire. "You wish to remember me? That is... a touching thought, human. What do they call you?"

Sunshine's gaze pleaded with them. "...They call me Sunshine."

"Mm... Fitting." The pressure of the vampire's fingers on her throat increased suddenly as they shoved her away, her grip on their wrist failing.

Con had told her once that the flames were quick.

Sunshine did not find them quick enough.