deercountry | Mayerling December Catchall

Notes:  1. Scene starts at the following link and plays from 39:53-45:54.
2. In Mayerling's AU, the term is dhampir, not dunpeal.
3. Mayerling will play D in this scene. You can play Leila (blond hunter), the sheriff, or the old man.
4. The image for the carving is roughly approximate. It more closely resembles Argonaut. 

CWs: racism, references to kidnapping, violence against children, bounty hunting, and killing.

Near dawn, at the staging point in Crenshaw, in the same house D lives, Mayerling carves images of Argonaut out of beast bone. When he finishes, the vampire rests his thoughts on his patron. Though they have not interacted, he hopes that the patron Pthumerian of Hope can someday restore his hope or turn them from false hopes into real ones. He feels himself pulled into the bone.

Mayerling walks across a familiar Frontier in a familiar outfit that does not belong to him. Black bodysuit. Large brimmed hat. A black cloak that wraps around him. His left hand complains at him about not wanting to die, while he carries a saddle over his shoulder. The sunlight pouring down on him hurts, but no flames burst around him.

So this is the life of a dhampir.

He asks his hand what he hears, and they continue on toward the town, to further the goal of not turning into beef jerky. The saddle tells him what D came here for. It could be anytime, so far as D with a saddle in the Frontier goes. Anything could happen. He carries forth what the vampire hunter would do and heads to the stables and asks for the price on the cyborg horse.

The price is high, but D is loaded. However D solved the matter, Mayerling scatters a heavy amount of coin on the old man's table and walks into the stall to saddle up the horse.

That's when trouble comes in the form of a sheriff. D might not be a vampire, but he's no more welcome in towns in the Frontier, not unless he's on a job there and not unless the one hiring him covers any damages he may cause. That's how it works. Passing through? It cannot happen fast enough.

It's the life of a dhampir.

Edited 2022-12-13 03:45 (UTC)

CWs: hallucinations, altered behavior, stalking, fighting/violence, alternate hell dimension, potential drowning, potential freezing, trust issues, etc

Everywhere Mayerling goes in Trench, rabbits run past him. Some whisper, some sing, some shout. They all have the same message. Run. Run. Survive. Run. Run. Survive. He spots shadows over his shoulder and flies up into the night only to see nothing below him. Trees reach for him, and Mayerling phases to run a hundred meters. When he looks behind him, everything looks like normal trees. Sometimes he sees D who disappears in a flock of bats or Carmilla directly, and Mayerling scours the surroundings illogically for Charlotte. He raises his cloak in time to block an attack. Once blocked, he escapes and sees, again, nothing.

Which attacks are real? Which are fake? He's not sure. It isn't D attacking him, nor Carmilla. Nothing strikes his cloak with force like a dhampir or vampire.

When Sharon approaches with intent he reads clearly as malicious, he takes her as another figment of his imagination. A creature of habit, a creature used to survival, he still moves to block her first attack with his cloak out of habit. The force striking it jolts him in surprise for a fraction of a second. For a vampire hunter, sometimes that's all they need.

Edited 2022-12-13 03:46 (UTC)

It's just a single moment of surprise, a single break in his attention and defense, and Sharon takes advantage of it. The air around him bends and warps with a sudden rise in temperature, the only real warning he has, before white-hot barbed wires burst forth from the distortions in the air. They don't move to wrap him up but, instead, cage him. They smash down toward the ground, snow steaming, and twist around one another. Loop upon loop, squeezing in tight, almost daring him to move.

Her intention isn't to harm him, not really. For her, it's an exhilarating game of cat & mouse, and he's her mouse. Her very powerful, very capable mouse. But that's what made it fun. He wouldn't succumb after a little rough-housing, not like members of The Order.

She tsks under her breath at him as if to admonish him for being caught so soon. It won't take much effort, if any, on his part to break free from her makeshift cage. The barbed wires are supernaturally hot but she's seen what he's capable of with that cloak of his. She's not trying to melt metal here. Not yet.

A moment later, Mayerling phases through the cage and sets more ground between them. He listens to Trench around them but continues to face Sharon, it is Sharon, he's reasonably sure. Looks, smells, sounds... Her attack even felt real.

"Good evening, Sharon," Mayerling says, a touch dry, a touch suspicious, but perfectly civil. "What's ruffled your barbed feathers?"

He refuses to assume the worst immediately. He likes her, and Sharon's been perfectly reasonable in the past. Perhaps she suffers from the same problem as him, seeing things that are not there. Perhaps she doesn't see Mayerling at all.

Edited 2022-12-17 01:27 (UTC)

"Don't you feel it?" she asks as she opens and closes her hands, fingers pressing against her palms as if she were trying to grasp something, expression almost manic, "It reminds me a little of a calling, like there's something I need to do."

Her head and her blood and her heart sing with it. She doesn't understand it; can't fully comprehend what's driving her beyond that niggling thought in the back of her mind that whispers Trench. All she knows, all she wants, is to hunt him.

"I want to chase you," she admits as she moves forward toward him, snow crunching beneath her boots, "Hunt you. Catch you."

"Maybe even hurt you," that's tougher to admit and seems to cause her some minor confusion. She's hungry for it, though, "Just a little."

More than anything else, Mayerling is... sad. Not surprised. Not betrayed. Not hurt. Those all tie around him in looser chains. Sharon is a young girl of great promise. Yes, D trains her in the ways of a vampire hunter, but vampires are rare in Trench. Mayerling doubts D intends this. Unfortunately—

This is the way the world works.

It's familiar. Trench is a smaller community, and its Frontier can give that of his home a run on its money. His path is obvious—run. He doesn't wish to injure Sharon, much less terribly enough to prevent her from chasing him, nor does he want to succumb or give in to her chase, to her hunger.

"You can control your bloodlust," Mayerling declares. He controls his. However, he no longer relies on that. In a blink of an eye he flees at speeds a human shouldn't be able to keep up with.

His words trigger shame in the tiny part of her that's self-aware but that feeling is quashed and battered down by the flood of excitement when he speeds away. Her lips stretch in a sick, twisted version of a grin, and she sing-songs after him, well aware he can hear her, "I can find you, Mayerling! No matter where you go or where you try to hide!"

It's not entirely true but she won't stop. She'll search until this feeling fades or until she collapses in the snow & succumbs to the lock joint that's been plaguing her.

Sharon does not race after him, aware enough to know that would just exhaust her, but trudges forward with an almost blind determination and drive. She looks for tiny things that may point her in the right direction, maybe the rabbits follow after him, maybe there are spots in the snow, but she keeps going all the while setting up traps made of coldblood. Snares of ice that will catch him off-guard if he rounds back.

Or, maybe, she'll make herself into the trap. Mayerling cares too much. Maybe what she needs to do is collapse.

Whatever her reasons, whether the design is her own or that of Trench, Mayerling considers his options. Surely, he can avoid her the rest of the night. That's easy. Daylight is the issue. While he can stay awake at need be, he will be trapped in whatever location he ends up. D has a fancy coffin, one large enough to survive Sharon's hunt, but a young lad lives in it. He may be out for the day, but he could return at any time without warning. Mayerling cannot risk that the boy be injured on his account. Home is out.

Success is measured in outlasting this problem. If it's a blood effect, it should only last the month. If it carries on after that... then he'll need D's help, supposing the hunter maintains his neutral affect toward him.

He moves silently, slowing down to stay ahead of Sharon without truly making an escape yet. Mayerling needs to understand more. Observe, then he can research it.

The plan forms in her mind barely an hour after Mayerling has fled. He's more powerful than she is, even with all her tricks and D's teachings, but he's soft. He's soft and he cares. Her plan won't work if he's truly fled but something in her gut tells her he isn't the type of man to simply leave when someone he knows is acting strange (strange, strange, strange but somehow the word barely bothers her).

To be a good trap, she must be convincing. She can't simply collapse into the snow now, not when her heart is pumping normally. He may be unaware of her physical limitations but he has senses beyond that of a normal human. She must drive herself to the point of near exhaustion.

And so she does. She walks for hours in the snow, occasionally calling out to him to see if he'll respond (though he never does, she knows he won't). Over thick drifts that threaten to engulf. Over thin layers of ice, even letting herself slip and fall as hard as she can. Her toes and her fingers ache and every joint is stiff. Her breath begins to come out in shallow puffs.

She stumbles once. Twice. On the third, she does not get back up, her eyes sliding shut, snow in her hair and cheeks windburnt.

It doesn't make sense. Sharon's behavior is obsessive to the point of endangering herself with no real method of tracking him. To her credit, that's no easy task: without his carriage, he's not trapped by the roads; he can fly and move practically without making a sound; his senses far exceed her own so that he can observe her when she cannot observe him.

Sharon stumbled yet again, only she doesn't rise. She's alone, isolated, and too far from anyone else for aid. Mayerling considers contacting D, but the situation is not so dire. Sunset remains a ways off.

Mayerling waits ten minutes. By then, the cold must seep into her clothes. It could mean illness, even death. He's heard of Lockjoint, the illness that eventually steals all mobility from Sleepers. Even had he not, even knowing it likely isn't the case, Mayerling weighs the risks and accepts them. He's never wanted to survive by cruelty. Watching a young woman freeze to death when he could help counts.

So he approaches softly in the dark, listening to the sound of her heart for any change that gives her away. Mayerling crouches; one hand holds his cloak around him as protective armor, and the other reaches for the girl. "Sharon," Mayerling calls out her name.

In those ten minutes, Sharon has curled her body in on itself, her knees and hands to her chest like some freezing child desperate to conserve what little warmth they had left within themselves. In truth, it barely bothers her. There's a pin & needles sensation stabbing at her joints, the Lockjoint reminding her of its existence, but that's nothing in comparison to the burning need inside of her.

She will catch him.

She doesn't hear him approach and when he says her name, she only groans and lets her eyes flutter as if she were attempting to open them but can't.

"D" she lets herself stutter out. She even tries to move a little, the snow crunching beneath her, but lets out a tiny sound of pain before she gives up.

Mayerling hesitates. Would pretending to be D save her life? It's harder to help someone when they're trying desperately to kill you. He's too familiar with that. Perhaps whatever reason Sharon has turned on Mayerling has not turned her against the vampire hunter. A fellow vampire hunter. Mayerling doesn't care for credit. Neither would D.

The collar of his cloak extends up until it forms an imitation of D's hat on his head. The rest of his clothes liquify to form a dark metal version of D's outfit, complete with hanging pendant instead of an ascot. Some of the piping from his jacket forms a curving longsword hanging off his back. It's all a deep metallic color, his hair is the wrong color, and his face isn't right. Still, it conveys many of D's recognizable features. He imitates D's voice when he says, "You have Lockjoint. I'm taking you to Lumenwood."

Well aware of the danger she poses, of the vulnerability, even with his organic metal covering most his body, Mayerling slips an arm under her shoulders to help her up.

That is what she was waiting for: touch. She lets him help her up and feigns a stumble, even lets out a sharp gasp of pain (that's real, though), and wraps her arms over his shoulders and locks them behind his neck. She holds onto him as if for dear life.

Her skin is icy and her heart starts to stutter in her chest as if from sudden physical exertion. A fog begins to creep in and grows thicker and thicker with every passing second.

"Shit," she breathes out as her skin grows hot and clammy, "I didn't know if you would fall for that or not, Mayerling." Her grip tightens but she doesn't move to hurt him. She doesn't reach for a weapon or tries to burn him. She just holds onto him like she would someone she cares for. A desperate sort of embrace.

"I think I like that about you," she says as an air raid siren begins to howl and darkness descends upon them both.

Sharon looks, sounds, and feels like shit. Whatever else can be said, she needs help. Mayerling doesn't feel any discomfort from her. He only tries to adjust them so she's at his side.

By the time she talks, Mayerling is more disappointed than anything else by the betrayal. If the weakness that kills him is kindness, he can live and die with that. He continues to hold her up as their surroundings shift around them. "Sharon," he says in his own voice, "You should go to Lumenwood."

His clothes protect him, being made of metal stronger than steel. It crawls up his throat so that should Sharon attempt to choke him, she will fail. Other than that, he makes no move to immediately escape. "You got me," he points out, "wherever this is."

He pauses, the sounds something of another age. "Where is this?" he inquires.

The sirens fade as the darkness recedes although a thin layer of fog remains. This world is empty of life. It smells strongly of fire and ash and the scent of old, rotted blood. The snow that had covered the ground has melted away to reveal patches of metal beneath the dirt and the dead grass and the trees around them are withered. It's almost as if this world is dead or dying. In the far-off distance, he may hear the sounds of creatures that stalk the streets, groans and cries, and the stumbling of the dead.

Her heart rate slows and her skin cools. Whatever she's done, it takes a lot out of her to do. She still breathes heavily and, at his mention of Lumenwood, she laughs. It's not a joyous or mocking sound. Her laugh is empty. She knows there's something wrong with her, that there is pain where there shouldn't be, but this feels so much more important than that. The fact he knows, too, stings.

He is a good man and does not deserve this. But she is not a good person and does.

"Welcome to Hell," she loosens her grip and pulls away, though her arms remain looped around the metal of his collar. It's not comfortable to hold on to him like this but she's weak at this moment, and needs him to steady her, "It's usually my hell but... I guess it's ours for the moment."

"This is my big trap. My big power." She pulls away from him entirely now, standing on her own, wobbling legs. Her powers make her sick to her stomach, smelling the ash and the blood makes her body want to rebel against her, but it's more than that now. It's the fact she's using it against someone she likes. On purpose. "And there's no escape. No matter how far you run or where you hide. Even if I don't catch you, your past will."

Mayerling stares down at Sharon and exhales. Hell. It has plenty of the markings of a horrid horrible place. It's the site of horrors, anguish, pain, and death that no one cleans up. Another another dimension. Who knows what that means for... most things. They still both smell like Sleepers, Sharon the human variety (though she's clearly something... more than your average human), him the vampire.

He wonders if the sun shines here.

No need to worry about bringing danger back to Nico and anyone else visiting D. That's off the board. Very well, Sharon can say there's no escape, but Mayerling has lived with his past for thousands of years. He mulls over it nearly constantly. That's nothing new.

He eyes Sharon, now standing under her own power, warily. "Presumably you can leave," he says, "and leave me in the clutches of my past. Presumably you can even leave, receive what care you need, strengthen yourself again, and when newly refreshed come hunt down what remains of me."

He's sure he will remain. Mayerling has only lasted this long because of how good he is at survival, even without relying upon the cruelties of the nobility toward those around them. He turns and walks away, ready to bolt should she follow him.

"We came here together, Mayerling," she calls out after him, watching as he walks away from her, "We leave that way, too."

Even if she could leave him to this world, she wouldn't. Alessa might have made a choice like that if she could have but Sharon cannot, not even as blinded as she is. As it were, this world is tied to her. When she breathes, it breathes. It beats with her heart. It exists solely through her but it takes from those that are brought in by her and uses them to birth the horrors that stalk the halls and the skies and the streets.

She does not know what monsters will find him. Cannot guess what his past will create to haunt him. But they'll hunt him down in her place. They may attack him or crowd him. Some may run from him. But they will all remind him of his regrets. His sorrow. His guilt. And the loves he let die.

Sharon will stumble to the dilapidated version of her home in Crenshaw and climb onto the couch to curl in on herself. She will let herself recover in the darkness. And, when the time is right, will seek him out again to see what this world has taken from him and to see what she can take from him herself.

What is a hunt without a trophy?

Far away though he is, Mayerling hears Sharon nonetheless. Very well, he will face whatever monsters Sharon's hell can make of his past until she looks for him. No reason remains to hide from her, not when she needs care and he is her only way out.

They cover a wide range of his experience. Mayerling relives those experiences to much the same results—all of his loves dying in his arms, one at his hand in defense, one upon the final assault of time, and one... oh Charlotte, at another's hand.

Carmilla. They play cat and mouse, both favoring bats, both with a sense of grandeur and drama. A violent bloody countess, but Mayerling is a warrior who thinks not of his own survival but of others. Other enemies become her puppets—the Marcus brothers, greedy vampires, and hunters so many other hunters over the millennia. It costs him, but Mayerling sees her reduced to nothing.

Time is a wavy concept here, so Mayerling doesn't know how much has passed. However, he's chasing and failing to intervene in battles, as his family is whittled away slowly again and again, when he senses the presence of someone else again. Someone human and more... real?

He turns away from the latest scene of carnage and focuses his senses on Sharon.

Rest does not come easy for Sharon. Between the crystallization of her joints (she chips away at them in the dark almost obsessively) and the fact it was the Otherworld, she found she could sleep only a little. Most of her time is spent in the darkness of the dilapidated, rotting version of Rose's cottage, laid out on the moth-eaten couch.

Just like it had been back home, time does not really exist here. It does not pass. No sun ever rises to light up that deep, dark horizon. This is a world stuck just like Alessa had been after the burning: unable to grow or feel joy or see the sun or heal. This place may dredge up his past and use it against him but it does the same for Sharon, even just waiting in the dark.

Minutes or hours or days pass before Sharon feels ready to hunt Mayerling down again. It doesn't take long. She just needs to follow the corpses he's left behind. Mayerling may have seen them as people he'd known but Sharon sees them as monsters. Twisted, rotting husks. When she spots him, she whistles, the sound low and weak.

"You've been busy." She states, flexing her fingers. Even walking is a pain at this point. Still, pain has never stopped her from getting what she wants. She powers through. Uses it like fuel.

Mayerlings tsks upon seeing Sharon. "You need to see someone who knows how to handle that," he points out. She clearly doesn't, not properly. He read about it in the Archives. He knows the symptoms of Lockjoint, the way it progresses unless utmost care is made to heal it. She's in as much danger as he is every moment she remains here.

"I have a lot of past," Mayerling remarks dryly. He flicks the latest sickly blood from his claws. He reeks of blood, but fortunately it's not good blood. There's something wrong with it, off-putting. That makes it easier, though not easy.

"What's it going to take to leave?" Mayerling asks. He gently holds up one claw to his chest, a finger tapping against his heart. "Should I rip out my own heart and offer it to you?"

As if in direct response to his statement, Sharon stuffs both hands into her pockets, a smooth and lazy motion that belies the sharp ache the movement triggers. The constant ache is nothing new for her. She spent over three decades with every nerve in her body screaming at her in horrific unison that this pain was a drop in the bucket. Still, even she could tell the seriousness of it. It was slowing her. It may even be killing her.

"I want a trophy," she informs him without a drop of shame as she looks him over, "Give me something of yourself and I'll let you go."

This is a catch-and-release hunt, though there's a flicker of want in her eyes when he touches his heart. Some part of her would gladly take his heart from him. Would even let him be the one to rip it out. But she suppresses that desire like she suppresses the desire to cause him serious, genuine harm. Catch and release. Catch and release, she repeats over and over in her head.

Mayerling raises an eyebrow at that. So little? Something of him might be useful for tracking in the future, perhaps even for use with magic. The options, when he seriously considers it, are simple. In the end, he's not willing to hand her a single drop of his blood, not when the price to leave is so low.

With concern for his clothes, Mayerling unbuttons what he needs to access his pale chest. It hardly shows. He doesn't need it to. With care, he reaches under his skin and clasps a rib. With focus, it turns to metal, melting away from the other bones and sliding neatly out of his body. He cleans it of any blood, splits the bone like a flower until the rib's petals each become a multi-jointed claw like his hand. It shivers with electricity, but Mayerling turns it back to bone. He won't give away his family's ability.

Rebuttoning his clothes, Mayerling then holds out the bony clawed hand made of rib bone.

Sharon watches every slight movement with a narrowed, curious gaze. There's a momentary flash of confusion as he unbuttons his shirt (heart?) but there's no flinch or twitch as he reaches into himself and pulls something out. Beneath the blood, there's a shine to it even in the darkness. She steps closer, her approach slow so as not to spook him, to watch as he splits the metal and molds it.

When he offers the claw, she takes it with a slow sort of reverence, her lips twitching upward as her eyes light up just a little. It was as if she were being given a treasure. It satisfies something in her. This was her trophy. This was a sign she'd won.

"Okay," she finally says with a nod, "We'll go back." Like it had always been as simple as that. As simple as a trophy.

She lets her eyes slide shut, swaying on her feet, and her heart rate begins to pick up. She draws black circles behind the lids of her eyes. She imagines a world devoured. Her breathing grows heavy and labored as a fog sweeps in and turns the world into one white sheet. No siren sounds this time around. No warning is needed.

In the next moment, the fog begins to lift as the sounds of Trench return. It's still dark outside but morning is on its way. Sharon's eyes snap open, skin pale and damp, and immediately bends over, hands on her knees, and heaves, emptying her stomach into the snow.

If that were all she needed, Mayerling could have given that to her from the start. Winter Mournings are a tradition here. If something drives her to need trophies with which to make them, that's odd, but he could meet that with far less violence and bloodshed. This—for all its tidy resolution—felt different. It still feels different with that look in her eye.

The vomiting, back in Trench, would be reassuring if it's emotional, not physical. Given they travel between dimensions, he doubts it.

It's over. It should be over. Yet Mayerling experiences trepidation at the thought of patting or rubbing her back. He stands close, reflexes sharp and ready at a moment's notice, and watches the world around them.

"The cost of traveling between dimensions?" Mayerling inquires, as though it's polite conversation. Trench is still at night, though he's not entirely sure how many nights it has been. It's surely not the same one as before.

Even done vomiting, she still feels woozy, her skin too warm, and her head too full. Her heart pulses as if she's been running a marathon but it gradually slows. The question takes her a moment to respond to, hearing it through ears that feel stuffed with cotton.

"Yeah," she finally mumbles, standing up straight but avoiding his eyes, her gaze on his forehead or his nose or the edges of his ears, "It's not something I'm super used to doing. It never felt like this back home."

It's a weird thing to admit to a person she just trapped in that place with ill intent. Even as satisfied as she is with the trophy in her pocket (it's like fireworks in her mind), her fingers running along the grooves, it doesn't shadow the strange feeling of shame. Or the sudden desire to run home and bury her head in a blanket. Or the pain that made every joint scream.

"I'll get over it. It just takes a few hours."

Mayerling frowns slightly at the fact that the dimension costs more in Trench than in her world. A byproduct of being a Sleeper? At least one other Trench exists, so alternates can happen and be traveled between. If it were the cost of bringing her dimension to Trench, that might be a one-time thing. Except—

In and out together. "What's the state of your dimension now?"

If she's making it exist every time, that's a larger burden.

"You have Lockjoint," Mayerling says, sure of himself, "You should go to Lumenwood. We could go now." He does not want to go to Lumenwood, but Mayerling also does not trust that Sharon will go unless he observes it personally.

"Right now, it's... it's asleep." The answer only comes after a pregnant, thoughtful silence as if she had to seriously consider how to respond. That world always exists. It's under the surface of one reality or another but here there's no transition dimension like there would be back home. It's a harder jump, both physically and emotionally, but it's been getting easier; the exhaustion and nausea last just a little less than the time before.

At the mention of the Lockjoint, she frowns at him. He's right that she's unlikely to go on her own but even in her mental state she's aware of what Lumenwood is like for vampires and responds rather cooly, "I'll get it taken care of."

Asleep. Mayerling isn't entirely sure what that means for a whole dimension. Perhaps without anyone in it to generate fears, it must sit dormant. No one. No fear. He's concerned for her, still, but this isn't the time. Not when it could turn from uneasy peace to hunting again.

"Pray tell, what does 'taken care of' mean in this context?" Mayerling asks. He will always be able to smell it on her, this condition tied to blood. Coldblood isn't particularly appealing in the first place. Crystals before it even leaves her body even less so. He's a solid wall himself. Her welfare where he draws the line.

Sharon sucks at her inner cheek briefly to keep from frowning up at him. "It means what it sounds like. I'll get it taken care of."

Already, she's searching for something to say to convince him. She just wants to go home. "I sometimes stay over at a Blood Minister's place. I'll call him when I get home." It's not a lie. She does have a room at a Blood Minister's home and she knows he'd treat her without question (she can almost hear him lecturing her about how far she's let this progress, though).

"Want me to pinky-promise?" She pulls one hand from a pocket and holds one pinky out. It's such a childish gesture. The crystals along the joints of her fingers don't hinder much of her movement yet but it's really only a matter of time.

Mayerling thinks of Charlotte on the bridge. Arrows riddled his limbs, and fire burst all over his body. Moving was so hard, and staying put, simply letting it all fade away, tempted him. Sometimes, one's own well being isn't enough. Charlotte threatened her own because she saw that in him.

Part of Sharon still wants him dead, unfortunately, which renders that method null and void. Forcing her may be possible but hurt more than it helps.

As foolish as it sounds, as wary as he is, Mayerling holds out his hand in kind. "Promise, and this shall show me its meaning to you," Mayerling says, pinky crooked and flecked with blood from the monsters he's faced. If they return, they return.

Sharon loops her pinky around his and squeezes it. The movement makes her flinch but, more than that, it's the way she recognizes that a part of her still wants to hunt him. Hurt him. Kill him. Her heart starts to race but she takes a big gulp of cold air and lets it chill her. Her heart slows. "Pinky-promise"

She got her trophy. Catch and release. There are other rabbits in the forest. She untangles their pinkies and shoves her hand back into her pocket.

"Go home," her tone verges on a command, "I'd hate for you to get caught in someone else's trap."

Mayerling raises an eyebrow, but Sharon pulled him to another dimension. That's as successful as a trap gets. His skills are many, but they don't solve that particular problem.

The idea that Trench isn't safe for him, that he isn't welcome in it, hurts more than any physical wound he's endured over the last however long its been. Nor does he indulge in the haughty claim that he will not be so easy for someone else to trap. It too only drives a wedge between him and everyone else.

"We're more than our instincts," Mayerling says instead, as someone who denies them every moment he's in Trench. He bows with a flare of his cloak and is gone.

CWs: potential hallucinations, altered behavior, potential drowning, potential freezing, trust issues, etc

The cold's bad, but the water is worse. Mayerling feels it immediately. Real or hallucination, dreamt or waking, his limbs grow sluggish at the vampire weakness, even with his resistance as a Greater Noble. Mayerling's heart burns hot within him. 6,000 years, he may have been willing to give up on the beach, death by sunlight, but he refuses this. He denies it. He'll fight to the very end of his being.

Mayerling swims as steadily as he can, following the moonlight as he looks for an exit, a weak point, someone else. He swims so long he thinks he should die. He swims longer. He swims on impossibly refusing to give up until he hears a sound. It's not a particularly promising sound, but it's novel. He angles toward it slowly, more like a great whale than a ballet dancer leaping across a stage.

The cold isn't nearly as much of a problem as the water. D knows the feeling of being submerged, and the only good thing about this is that the water is still. The warm human side of his heritage protects him to some extent from the weakening effect water has on vampires, but the pressing cold is more than enough to make up for that.

His left hand immediately opens its mouth and begins gulping in water as D kicks, fighting against his natural tendency to sink. Heavy clothes weigh him down, and he's not nearly as graceful in the water as he is outside of it.

At least, Mayerling thinks as he approaches D, it's not a human. He does not hide his approach. In fact, he's far too exhausted for that. His strength, such as it is, pushes him on, that's all. Once he's near, Mayerling forces one hand to transform into a claw. The sharp living metal pierces the ice, not enough to rip it free but sufficient to anchor himself near its surface.

A few seconds after that, such a slow pace, Mayerling hazily projects his thoughts toward the hunter. Anchor yourself on me he says. He can hold them up, if D can get them out of here.

D starts to reach for his sword when he sees the glint of Mayerling's claw, but he lets his hand hang in that position when Mayerling stabs the ice instead of coming forward to attack. In the water he can't smell the vampire, but it feels like him.

Alright. D projects in that skill just shy of true telepathy, grabbing onto Mayerling is a relief. His left hand has been greedily gulping down water, but there's no chance of any of the other three of the big four.

Mayerling grips the hunter tight. He remains aware of the ice around his claws, firm and unyielding, and D, similarly secured, save that Mayerling remains more flexible. No matter how much force D uses against the ice, he will not sink to the bottom.

Need, Mayerling sends, anything else? His offerings are limited, but dying below the ice, even if they become squids, is a dangerous proposition. Better that at least one of them should survive whatever danger this is. It could happen to others.

Being grabbed like that by a noble is a slight discomfort, but a mild one. Mayerling has never been hostile to D except when D initiated a fight.

No.

Being held as he is, D pulls out a pair of knives rather than draw his sword. There simply isn't room. But the edge of a knife will hold D's strength and his power as well as anything else as he reaches up to cut the ice.

His strength ebbs into the water, but Mayerling needs little of it. It's not his first time escaping amid terrible winter conditions. Nor his first in water. Each moment makes it worse, but—

He trusts D to get them out, both of them, not to leave him behind to whatever fate awaits the unfortunate. This world isn't entirely naive and wrong. They can work together.

Water has been used to imprison nobility before, and D wonders if it's being a squid or if Mayerling would be fully incapacitated if this were a river. It doesn't take D long to cut through the ice, and when he puts the knives away so he can climb out and pull Mayerling with him he's quite surprised at where they end up.

They're not on top of a frozen lake or frozen sea, they're standing over a very ordinary manhole in an alleyway in trench.

Mayerling frowns slightly at the narrow street and back down at the sewer system. Truly? He crouches down and reaches back into the sewer to confirm the lack of cohesion. It is empty of water and ice, at least to those high levels. The city is at less risk of flooding than he initially thought.

"Teleportation," Mayerling announces. They could have been in any lake within range of the responsible Pthumerian's power. Likely, Dorothea. He reaches into a pocket to take a blood capsule he always carries on his person. While they are relatively safe, Mayerling is weak—vulnerable to anyone else suffering from the impulse to hunt them. At least it's night.

"Let us return," Mayerling says, pausing for the right word, "to your coffin." Home isn't it, and D's coffin is notably roomier than his.

D is quite exhausted, but even though he's still wet, no longer being submerged has revitalized him almost immediately. Night brings his energy back faster, his dhampir biorhythms at their strongest at night.

"I have possession of it, but it isn't mine," D clarifies. It's an important point to him. He doesn't sleep in it, or even spend all that much time in it. But D still takes only a moment to orient himself before turning and walking.

No, Mayerling notes, D sleeps more like the human half of his lineage than the vampire. More than that, however, it washed up in Trench, but unlike Mayerling's things, it wasn't D's before, no. D traveled lighter than that.

"Has much else washed up from the Frontier?" Mayerling asks. He appreciates the return of his carriage, the possession of his coffin. They were not needed in space but help immensely here in Trench. He would trade it all for—

There is no point in wishing for that. He follows along silently as they walk an unremarkable, for Trench, way through town. Each block they walk, each person they pass, help Mayerling relax. What happened with Sharon wasn't because he's a vampire, not primarily. It's her blood. People are as accepting as always otherwise.

"Nothing I could identify for certain. No cyborg horses or any other technology belonging to the Nobility," D answers. "In fact, technology appearing here seems uncommon compared to more mundane objects."

"Those show up frequently, and sometimes fall through from other dimensions according to what I've heard."

Unfortunate. Setting up a couple weigh stations out into the wilderness would work wonders. Honestly, roads would work wonders. Whatever infrastructure existed has befallen a worse state than the Frontier, which still uses its roads, in worse condition though they are.

"I wonder if that's on purpose or more difficult," Mayerling muses. It's hard to ask the ocean what it thinks. He certainly isn't going to dive into the depths to ask, even if he would turn into a squid. Their night's adventure under the ice is enough for him.

"I've seen a few things in the archives," Mayerling muses, "They didn't appear to be functional."

Even a defunct and non-functional superhighway would be useful, the smooth and nearly indestructible surfaces of them stand up well where the support structures haven't been destroyed. It's enough elevation to provide protection from dangers on the ground without being so high as to draw extra danger from the air.

"It could simply be a matter of odds, in the course of history, how many more hand tools were made than their high tech counterparts."

A valid point. Not that he's seen many shovels, spears, or other common tools. Perhaps people don't find them worth commenting on, unimpressive as they are. People.

"The population of Sleepers don't proportionately reflect the universes present and their histories," Mayerling notes, "For example, the universe with Jedi knights has mostly humans here, despite references to a plethora of species." Not to mention what he suspects are the amount of Force users to the general population.

"It could be random," he acknowledges, "Odds are only odds." It doesn't feel random. But how much does anyone understand the process by which Sleepers come here? It's not the question of most practical use. That may be why it isn't understood, but he can at least wonder.

"The tendency towards humans, and those with very human shapes, has a few easy explanations," D points out. "Humans seem to be the only native intelligent species here, and would've been the ones the phtumerians met first when they arrived. Objects seem to fall into two categories. Significant in some way to the person that finds it or another Sleeper in a way that will cause an emotional reaction, or common items."

It's a pattern he noticed. D wouldn't have been nearly so concerned if he came across a handheld computer or fission powered stove. He probably would have still picked it up, but it wouldn't have held meaning even if it was obviously made by the nobility.

D's explanation appeals to Mayerling because it presents a logically sound reason when no other has come to his attention. The answer may not significantly impact the day to day life in Trench. It may not be one anyone's bothered to research. It still strikes his curiosity.

The matter of objects gives him pause. Some of his items—like the time bewitching incense—are ones he wished he'd had with him. He could have taken out the hunters on the bridge were day to have become night. Significant in a way far different from Charlotte's ring, the one D took as evidence.

"Are you familiar with the story of Julia?" Mayerling asks. "The half-Pthumerian half-human child." It's a tragedy because of course that is a tragedy. It's natural given the way dhampirs are treated.

"Perhaps Sleepers are their alternative," Mayerling suggests, "A less dangerous way to bridge the gap between Human and Pthumerian. From a certain perspective, we may all seem to be in the same category." Human and vampire and dhampir... when compared to the many varied and different existences of Pthumerians.

Mayerling December Catchall

Life of a Dhampir (Winter Mournings) [Open]

Can You Ever Trust a Hunter? (Run Rabbit Run // Silent Hill // Cold As Ice) [Closed to Sharon]

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cw: emeto

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CW: references to Romeo & Juliet like suicide threat

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The World's Not Out to Get You (Cold As Ice // Fight or Flight) [Closed to D]

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