deercountry | o4 . january catchall

[ The month is still young, and Ozpin is... distracted. He suspects he will continue to be distracted until he gets what he wants. There is a building pressure here, worsening with every day he keeps the secret, every worried glance of Willow's he shrugs away. It's as though the gentle coaxing of Palebloods is toxic to resist, and the effort of it leaves him ever more wound-tight, chronically hungry.

He will not contact Stanford. He will not skulk by the Pines family home. (Except perhaps occasionally, at night, from a reasonable distance.) The latter is a truly foolish idea, because if Stanford latches on to the idea that Ozpin is some sort of threat to his family—

(Well, that would at least draw him out, wouldn't it.)

So. He avoids Willow as surreptitiously as he can, is pleasant but distant in his moments of passing with Tara, and waves away Oscar's disapproving little frowns. He trusts Qrow to leave him be. He makes a keen effort not to linger alone with Ange or with Shannon, who smell of blackberries and wine.

It will pass. Or perhaps he will break, but it will not be here in this house. This is just another facet of Deerington; it will be fine. ]

[Willow had a faint hope that maybe some of the others were right, and the passing of December would bring Ozpin some relief and a return to normalcy. If anything, it seems to be getting worse. She hasn't tried following him any more at night, preferring to leave that to Ruby. It's not lost her on though that he's been trying to avoid her.

It's not the best time to have someone new over for a visit, she knows this, but Faith is newly arrived in Trench, and Willow does want to help her settle in and acclimate.

She holds open the door to the mansion for Faith to follow her inside, and calls out:]

Hey? Anyone home?

[Faith shuffles a bit nervously outside. She's about to ask Willow if it'd be a better idea to give some prior warning but well, Willow's inviting her in and she's not a vampire, she just hunts the fuckers.

She's looking around the house, a little wideyed at how big it is. It's like a Disney movie...]

How many people live here, anyway...? Looks like you could fit a whole lot of 'em.

[She thought the Summers house was weirdly huge, this is a whole lot bigger.]

[ Willow can never be fully avoided, because she is too clever for it, and catches on immediately to the suspicious nature of the thing; better to go about his business as usual, but not linger. The door from the foyer to the library is partially open, and Ozpin appears at the gap, holding a mug of cocoa and a book under one arm. ]

Good afternoon, Willow.

[ He looks to her friend, and nods a hello. Visually, there is nothing alarming about Ozpin: he is extremely tall, slim, dressed neatly and formally with silver hair pulled back into a ponytail. But there is an inhuman reflective flash to his eyes, a predatory tension wound through him he'd rather not call attention to. It is a relief, at least, that this visitor smells of vileblood. No great temptation. ]

[Willow has to stop and think for a second when Faith asks how many people live in the mansion and do a little headcount.]

There's, like... eight of us all together? We pretty much all come and go when we want, and it's, uh, kind of a big place, so there's plenty of room.

[She grins and gives a little wave when Ozpin appears at the door to the library; she wasn't sure if he would be in the library or in his room. It seems fitting he should be the first one in the household to welcome another former Sunnydale resident to Trench.]

Ozpin - hey, this is Faith. She's from home too. She's a Vampire Slayer - you know, like Buffy.

[She glances over her shoulder to Faith.]

Ozpin's one of my closest friends here.

[Faith instinctively starts to reach for her knife when this stranger starts speaking.

She stops herself, thank god. It's just Willow's friend.]

Uh, yeah. Nice to meet you.

[...No, something is wrong. Her senses are picking it up, there's something distinctly wrong with this guy. Willow said there's no vampires in this place, but that's what she's looking at.]

...You're a vampire.

[ He catches the moment in which the girl starts to reach for a weapon; he knows it well enough from the young Huntsmen and Huntresses who come to his school from... more unorthodox backgrounds. Or simply those with good instincts. From how uncomfortably she stands in his marble-floored foyer, he suspects a bit of both.

Willow says Vampire Slayer, and he feels only a twinge of concern. His issue is a temporary one, a whim of the town, and certainly not—

Then she looks at him, and, ah.

So this will be a problem. ]

Nothing so dramatic, rest assured. [ He shifts his grip on his walking cane, tips his head to her in acknowledgment of her obvious discomfort. ] You're entirely safe here.

[Willow moves forward to step between them as Faith reaches for the knife to try to diffuse the situation.]

Hey, come on, Ozpin's not a vampire. That's crazy.

[He can't be. It's ridiculous. There's no vampires here, so he never would have been able to be turned. Just because he's been acting a little strange lately, sometimes staring a little too long, and the odd way the light seems to catch in his eyes, and only going out at night -

Oh.

Uh oh.

She glances to Ozpin. She's pretty sure he can't directly lie to her. That's probably the easiest way to solve this whole misunderstanding]

Tell me you're not a vampire.

It's not my safety I'm worried about, man.

[She looks at Willow, because ultimately Willow calls the shots here in her house. She's still tense as anything and her hand is actually hovering around where her dagger is sheathed.

(How did nobody notice? How long has he been like this? How many people has he killed and eaten?)

Unimportant. Instead she just raises an eyebrow at Ozpin expectantly, waiting for him to answer Willow's question.]

Willow. [ He sounds exasperated, on the edge of offense. When his gaze catches on Faith's movement towards her dagger, it ratchets up a notch further. He steps gently across the threshold to settle in the foyer where he can carry on this conversation properly.

It's only half a cover to help him stall; too-blunt words try to choke up out of him, and it is an effort to smooth them out. ]

I'm certainly not a monster. It's just that the town has had a greater impact upon me as of late; I have told Oscar as much.

[ It is all, at least largely, true. ]

[She fully expects him to deny it, and that will be enough for her to believe Faith is somehow mistaken - some trick of the town maybe. She even feels a hint of an apologetic smile coming on when he says her name in a tone that suggests how ridiculous the suggestion is.

He does not directly deny it, and the smile fades immediately into something more alarmed, bordering on horrified.

Ozpin steps out into the foyer, and Willow steps back so she's not within arms' reach of him.]

Ozpin. Come on, I know things have been rough lately. Just... tell me you haven't been running around, drinking blood from people. Right?

[Faith steps in front of Willow, protective. She doesn't know this guy. Maybe he hasn't killed her yet but that doesn't mean he won't. Slayer protocol would say she should have already dusted him but... this isn't Sunnydale, and again, her best friend's a vampire.]

It's a simple question with a simple damn answer.

[There's an edge of warning to her tone.]

[ He opens his mouth to say Well, and then he opens his mouth to say Really, and it all keeps getting caught. Ozpin struggles for a moment, visibly, ever more annoyed now that Willow's friend has put herself between them as though he's about to go rabid and lunge. It's profoundly unnecessary.

He really does try to say something reassuring. Instead he says: ]

That's— between myself and Stanford.

[ Damn it. ]

[Willow has been worried for awhile now that Ozpin's been hiding something significant from them. She was not expecting that something was this. It all makes too much sense in retrospect with all his strange behaviour. That he's done his best to keep this from them all in spite of their clear concerns is alarming. That he's been feeding on other Sleepers is worse.

Her voice is quietly shocked when she speaks.]

You fed on Ford? Is he - I mean, he's not...

[In his right head, of course she is confident Ozpin would never intentionally harm Ford, in spite of whatever's happened between them. In his right head, she's confident he wouldn't hurt any of them.

But neither would Angel, and she can't help but think about what happened when he lost his soul. She's sure he absolutely would have fed on Buffy given half a chance, even as he deliberately went after the people close to her, and innocents as well.

Drinking blood, she's sure, is absolutely going to lead to serious corruption, if it hasn't already.]

Shit...

[The real reason he's been visiting Cellar Door at night is suddenly abundantly and horrifyingly clear. She glances around to make sure they're not about to be interrupted before continuing.]

Shit! It's not just Ford, is it? This is why you've been creeping around at night to go visit Night Walkers, isn't it?

[She narrows her eyes. He's really just trying to lie, huh.

There's a lot about this situation she doesn't understand but one thing she does know clearly and plainly is that by and large, you can trust a vampire as far as you can throw him, which in this situation might just be out of the house.

But she's learnt, since the last time she plundged a stake into a human heart and ruined her own life in the process.

She unsheathes her knife from her thigh, holds it steady in front of her, and turns a side glance toward Willow.]

I'll let you make the call, Red.

[ Faith draws her weapon, which helps the situation not at all. Ozpin looks well and truly offended, now. ]

Wh— Stanford is fine.

[ He is not going to escalate this situation by anticipating a blow. He puts both hands on his cane, instead, and frowns at the both of them. ]

And I am not visiting Night Walkers. I've simply been a bit restless at night. [ The correction comes before he can stop it: ] Or, hungry.

[ Hm. Well. ]

I do understand how this looks, Willow, and it's really not so bad as that.

[The morning after Ange makes her post to the groupchat about Ozpin eyeing some of the young ladies of the house suspiciously, Ozpin gets a polite wakeup call.

That is, the mysterious stranger who's stuffed a gun barrel into his mouth as a way to rouse him from his slumber has elected not to shoot immediately and get this over with, and instead talk first, like civilized Sleepers.]

Ozpin, yes?

[~~Sayo put no small effort into finding a new register to put her voice in, and engineered the shadows of Ozpin's room so that she'd be difficult to make out.~~ It's like the stranger is covered in some magical darkness, making it impossible to discern their features or even place their voice.]

Shhhh. Don't yell. In case you haven't noticed, I am not very practiced with trigger discipline. Who knows what may happen if you jostle my arm too badly.

[Indeed, the stranger's index finger is wrapped around the trigger rather than straight and to its side.]

[ This is, genuinely, a first.

Ozpin jolts awake to the press of cold metal and the awareness that something has gone badly wrong. For a moment he flits through horrible possibilities: that this is Deerington, and something has come to keep him awake for a fresh month of sleepless horror; that the keepers of the Sleeper Farm have come back for him; that someone is exacting overzealous revenge for Stanford Pines.

He recoils, tenses, backwards against the green silk sheets in the mansion's master bedroom. He can hear nothing else from the room around them, or the library down below. Just his visitor, armed and intent. When he tries to speak, it just clicks the metal of the gun against his teeth, and he falls silent. ]

[ Ozpin is genuinely pleased to receive the outfit, trimmed in his usual emerald green. Surely Oscar will forgive him setting aside the hand-dyed gloves for a day and enjoying the fresh silk, in the spirit of new beginnings.

He can recall last year's ball. But he doesn't want to think of bonfire smoke and marshmallow margaritas, so he gladly takes up the offered champagne. Perhaps it won't even betray him, here in Trench.

It's a glass or two later— and an hour of watching performances, smiling to friends and acquaintances, clinking waters with Qrow— that he realizes the risk. With most blood types, the hunger is bearable. He has adjusted to the keen awareness of other people, the thrum of delicious power just under the skin. But he still knows the taste of Darkblood, that bloom of blackberries and void, and he craves it like a drowning man craves air. It has been a full month since the fight that stole him less than a mouthful.

He knows that this is a sign of the pressure building. He knows because his gaze catches on Ange again, here, and he has to turn hurriedly away. He knows because he seems to follow Darkbloods without even meaning to; he turns toward their bodies the way flowers turn to light.

So when he finds himself face-to-face with the one Darkblood he hoped not to see, it feels like both a horror and an inevitability. ]

Edited 2022-01-12 00:28 (UTC)

[Willow steps back a little when Faith pulls the same knife she's seen a little too up close and personal for her liking, and her eyes go to Ozpin in concern. She still doesn't want to see him hurt. It takes her a moment to recollect and hesitantly put a hand on Faith's arm.]

No one's getting stabbed.

[Her attention turns back to Ozpin as she tries to process. He's lied to them all repeatedly - hid his condition, even knowing about the vampire situation in Sunnydale. It's abundantly clear he'd be lying to them right now if he could, and that isn't terribly reassuring.

Not only that, but he's been feeding off Sleepers - Ford, and who knows how many Night Walkers he's bitten. That certainly calls for looking into any recent deaths around Cellar Door. She'd like to trust him, but clearly that's currently an impossibility, and who knows what else he's hiding?

Not as bad as it looks, he says.

No, it might be worse. And it might get worse. Sure, he hasn't hurt anyone in the house yet, and she doesn't think he could hold back if Ford wasn't really fine, but that could change. If he's been staring at Ange, then he's tempted, and if he's tempted, there's a chance he could lose control. If he loses control, he could end up hurting one of them, and having to live with that for the rest of his life, which none of them want.

On the other hand, he has been there for her every single time she needed him; he's saved her life more than once, he gave her a place to stay when Maul tore down her home, and accepted her even after knowing what happened in Sunnydale. Ozpin has stood with her time and time again.

It's what makes the decision she knows she has to make nearly an impossible one, but it's just temporary, and it's better than any of the alternatives she can come up with.]

We need to figure this out, but with everything - the lies, the secrecy... Ozpin, I'm really sorry. I don't think it's a good idea for you to be here right now.

Good. It seems I have your attention.

Then I'll get to the point.

[Sayo puts just an extra ounce of pressure on the gun as it digs into the back of Ozpin's mouth, to make sure he's listening. (She can't lie, it feels good to finally let loose again, especially without any guilt since she's doing this for a just cause. Sorta. She may have also wanted an excuse to let off some steam.)]

Don't think I haven't noticed the looks you have been giving Ange and Shannon. If you so much as glance at them sideways in the same manner again, let alone do something predatory to them...

I won't wake you up next time.

I trust I've made myself clear? Blink once for yes, twice for if you want the back of your skull shattered by high-velocity hot lead.

[Part of her wants to snap at Willow for apologizing, but she gets it. A bit. She's not sure how she'd react if it was Buffy, or Angel.

Definitely wouldn't stake 'em, that's for sure, even if she was supposed to. So she lowers the knife. She doesn't sheathe it, not yet. If he's going to lash out, this would be the part where he does it.

It doesn't seem like he's completely lacking a soul, though, so maybe it's closer to vampire movies where the vampires are all brooding and grim and needlessly dramatic. Like Angel.

A few comments spring to mind, ranging from smug to intimidating to sneering. But instead, she just nods in response to Willow's words. This isn't about her.]

[ Ange and Shannon?

Ozpin looks bewildered, then incredulous, then grim. Ah. So he's been noticed. But he cannot see Ange doing anything like this; she has lived with him too long, and trusts too deeply in Ruby, or so he'd hope. Shannon is brand new, an unknown. And if Ange has her own odd form of magic, it certainly makes sense that Shannon would, too.

He does not question for a moment that Shannon would need a protector.

So. Whatever form of spirit this is, it seems wholly capable of making good on its threats. Certainly good to know that Shannon is so thoroughly protected, even if he'd not intended to do her harm.

(Even if it would have been so horribly easy.)

He blinks once. ]

I have not lied to you, Willow. I— [ But that is too close to patently untrue, and he chokes on it, has to fight his way through: ] I exaggerated my degree of control, yes. I've truly believed it to be a whim of the town. It will pass, as these things do, and I—

[ Have not hurt anyone, he means to say, but he remembers the look on Stanford's face and the taste of his throat and the scream of his Omen. So. Perhaps that would be too much an exaggeration, too. ]

Very well. [ He splays his hands, cane and all, in exasperated defeat. ] House arrest, then? Consider me confined to my room until we reach a more suitable agreement.

[ Well. That was thoroughly unpleasant.

So Ozpin does what only seems reasonable, when faced with what he presumes to be the shadowy protector of an anxious and otherwise helpless young girl: he decides to make her feel more at ease. He's been remiss in his welcome. Yes, to be alone in an enclosed space with a Darkblood shall be a challenge, as he does not want to— cannot afford to— look at her with hunger. But he truly does not mean her harm, and he should be able to channel that well enough.

The next time Sayo ventures into the library, Ozpin is there in a far chair by the window, and he calls out before she can backtrack. ]

Good evening, Shannon. I trust you've been settling in well?

o4 . january catchall

[ willow, tara, faith. ]

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very early january, cw: umineko spoilers

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[ ford; early-mid jan, after returning home. ]

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[ sayo; early jan, following the polite wakeup call ]