Smoke Damage [Clover]

[Jesse Fforde]

--The following transcript was a live chat roleplay--

<Jesse Fforde> [Text] I knocked on your door but you didn't answer. Where'd you go?

<Clover> [txt] I haven't been home in a while

<Jesse Fforde> [Text] Why not?

<Clover> [txt] There was a problem with the wiring. Smoke damage.

<Jesse Fforde> [Text] Have you got somewhere else to stay?

<Clover> [txt] Yeah. I could stay at the family home.

<Jesse Fforde> [Text] You could. Are you going to?

<Clover> [txt] No, probably not

<Jesse Fforde> [Text] Then where are you going to stay?

<Clover> [txt] I don't know. I really don't want anyone in the family seeing me.

<Jesse Fforde> [Text] Why? What happened?

<Clover> [txt] I don't know what to say.

<Jesse Fforde> [Text] That's hardly encouraging. Why don't you want anyone to see you, Clover?

<Clover> [txt] I was shot. It's no big deal. I just don't want anyone seeing.

<Jesse Fforde> [Text] Why don't I believe you? How long should I expect you to avoid me?

<Clover> [txt] I was shot a lot, Jesse. If I get tracked by hunters, I don't want to be tracked back to you.

<Jesse Fforde> [Text] Shot a lot? What did you do? I'm going to keep talking to you in question form until you actually answer them properly.

<Clover> [txt] I was being reckless breaking and entering.

<Jesse Fforde> [Text] How long should I expect you to avoid me?

<Clover> [txt] I'm not avoiding you…

<Jesse Fforde> [Text] Then let me see you.

<Clover> [txt] Where do you want to meet?

<Jesse Fforde> [Text] Anywhere. You choose.

<Clover> [txt] I don't know where. I want to say my house, but it's a mess.

<Jesse Fforde> [Text] Then I can help clean it up.

<Clover> [txt] Fine, but be ready to work... I'll be there in ten minutes.

<Jesse Fforde> Jesse doesn't reply. The phone is shoved into his back pocket as he stands and wanders toward the set of drawers. He's been staying at Larch Court the past week, rather than at the apartment with Grey. Of course, he has seen Grey around. He sees her at work, too, which he's just come home from. But it's still kind of prickly. Things that aren't being said. He hasn't said anything about Clover yet; he's not sure he will. Or he's waiting for the right time. Maybe some of Clover's tactics have rubbed off on him. He changes out of casual clothes into trackpants and an old shirt. If they're going to be cleaning, he best be dressed for it. It's seven minutes later that he saunters up to Clover's front doorstep, and lowers himself down to sit and wait.

<Clover> Clover didn’t want to leave her safe haven, the all-too-familiar corner spot at the Newborough trailer park, but he’d challenged her and she had trouble backing down from a challenge. She was avoiding him, despite all she’d said and all she’d promised. She even told herself it wasn’t intentional. Clo didn’t want to go back to her place dressed in the clean, yet damaged articles of clothing that she’d worn on their outing just nights before. But what choice did she have? She had no clothes. She’d said she would be at her home in ten minutes and that left no time to grab something from a shop.

When the doors opened at the Swansdale station, Clover dragged herself out to the platform and began the walk toward her home. People gave her odd looks, like they always did, but they were in passing. It was in style to have holes in clothing, so the bullet holes dotting her midsection and the bullet-shaped holes in her leggings looked fashionable. It was the collection of actual holes in her stomach and chest that worried her. And then her home. Oh, how her home was an absolute disaster. If he wanted honesty, she would give it to him in spades.

“It’s open,” she barely spoke, lightly tapping his shoulder as she stepped around him. She closed a hand around the doorknob and bumped the door with her hip. The door groaned a little as it opened, but it had opened, at least. The flickering lamp hadn’t gone out, so they had some light inside the house. She still didn’t have shoes, so she just stood there and took in the sight. Was she supposed to lie? She felt like lying. The words were circling in the pit of her stomach and slowly ascending her throat. They were crawling along her tongue. “I’ll get some boxes or bags or something?” She didn’t move though.

The home was still the wreck she remembered. The couches were shoved against the wall. The television was busted. Her computer was ruined, from the cracked monitor to the heavily dented tower. The water that had made its way from the bathroom and stopped its journey though, so most of it had dried, save for a puddle near the closed door. If he looked at the bedroom, he would have seen the same sort of destruction. “I, uh, lost my temper,” she muttered.


<Jesse Fforde> Jesse doesn’t have to wait long. But, while he’s sitting there he has his phone in his hands, keeping half an amused eye on the Crownet. Leyla, a virgin? He’d never have ******* guessed. Never in a million years would he think a girl as good looking as she is would get away with… but whatever. Each to their own. Kaelyn’s young and Marian has her… differences. Those two he can understand. But Leyla? He shakes his head, though is distracted from any response he might make by the arrival of Clover.

He doesn’t know what he’s expecting. Maybe Clover with half a face missing. An arm or a leg gone. Innards spilling from her guts. She’d said she didn’t want to anyone to see her because of how much she’d been shot. And, sure, he can see a few holes here and there but nothing that won’t heal. Maybe it’s the lack of blood that gets him. There doesn’t seem to be any. He, momentarily, forgets Clover’s path. But her easy walk and her seeming health point to only the one conclusion. One that he doesn’t voice. She’d only say she didn’t want to bring hunters home.

Jesse stands as Clover passes. He doesn’t see inside immediately. He’d made his own promises, and now that they’re face to face, now that he knows she hasn’t skipped town, he’s able to bite back his questions. “Did you know that Leyla is a vi—“ he stops, then. He’d followed Clover inside, and the house… well. It looks like it’s been overrun by trolls.

“No fuckin kidding,” he says in response to her remark. “Smoke damage, huh? Just a few faulty wires?” he arches a brow. He doesn’t ask what she was angry about. He feels like he shouldn’t. Just in case. If this is the fallout, then so be it. He would help her to fix it.

<Clover> She wasn’t sure what he was going to say, not with the way he’d cut himself off. Her mess had taken his words and left him practically speechless. At that moment, her lamp decided to buzz as if a bug were being zapped and they were cast into darkness. She didn’t tell him that she was going for matches or candles or flashlights, whichever she happened to find first; she left him where he was and walked over her mess to get to the bathroom. The soles of her feet crushed the small jagged pieces of glass and left wet footprints along dry portions of marble. Just as before, he blood blossomed and vanished.

There was the sound of her stumbling around in the bathroom, followed by endless strings of curse words. She couldn’t find a flashlight, but she’d found the familiar box of matches a few big candles. When she opened the bathroom door to go back into the living room, she left it open. The stagnant air, still tainted with the stench of burnt fabric, spread out into the rest of her house. “I did have a small fire,” she finally answered him. She considered tossing him the matches, but she decided against it. She chose to fumble with the matches, breaking one after another, until she could get one of the big candles lit. The remaining two candles were lit with the flame from the first.

Leyla. He had to bring up Leyla. She didn’t know which one of the faces matched the name; she didn’t know whether she’d met the woman or not. Clover bent down to collect some of the picture frames from the floor and she jarred her side. She dropped the frames to grab at her side and then she kicked the frames across the floor. “******* pieces of ****. ****,” she hissed, clutching the right side of her midsection. She felt exhausted and the constant ache from her stomach added to her irritation. “Good for ******* Leyla.” It was muttered, more for her own benefit than for his.

Seeing Jesse was a bad idea. She just wanted him to throw his hands in the air and leave so that she could throw her hands in the air and leave. And they would both be free of the mess and free of whatever irritation seemed to rotate around her. (Sometimes she felt like she carried around her own storm cloud.) She realized how irrational she was being when she lashed out at Leyla, someone she didn’t really know, but rationalizing wasn’t welcome in her world yet. With one sweep of her arm, she sent her desk’s contents onto the floor and she planted her *** atop the furniture. Her monitor was left dangling over the side by its cords.

<Jesse Fforde> Jesse feels selfish. It curls and curdles in his gut like a meal he shouldn’t have eaten. He might have been teasing Clover, might have been subtly calling her out on her lies, but as she leaves him by the front door, those selfish tendrils grow, climbing and twisting around the core of him. The house is a wreck. His eyes begin to adjust to the dark, but the image of it is burned into his retinas—what he saw, before the darkness engulfed them. It’s nothing that can’t be fixed, but he recognises this kind of outrage. It’s the venting of emotion on inanimate objects because there’s a lack of anything else to do. Or it keeps one from doing something foolish.

There’s a question he’d asked but not asked Clover, two nights beforehand. The wheel was on its downward spiral and … well it’s his own fault, isn’t it? He hadn’t really asked the question. The question had been implied. She’d responded. No big deal. And he hadn’t pushed it, because what right had he to know these things? What difference does it make to him, in the end? Just like she’d said it made no difference how long. And he knows he’s being selfish. He knows he’s pushing himself in where he’s no welcome. This time, all because he wants to be assured. But he should have given her more time.

There’s a grimace on his face when that match is lit and the small steady flames illuminate the area. A twisting of his features as he realises he can’t back out, now. He can’t leave her here in this mess, cussing and swearing and clutching at her side, remnants of her anger still wreaking havoc. He has to forget about all the things the old Jesse would do to fix this, because that won’t work here. That would only make things worse. So he takes a unneeded breath and he takes charge. He didn’t even flinch when Clover knocked the rest of her computer from its table.

“I don’t think it’s good for ******* Leyla,” he says, aloof. He doesn’t think anyone should be deprived of the bliss that sex can bring. But he doesn’t spell that out. He hadn’t finished his sentence, and Clover could only guess what he was talking about. His phone buzzes in his pocket; Marion. He had been texting her, too. And Kaelyn, again with her concerns about Victor. Both wanting to do things with him, to show him things, and yet here he is with Clover. It’s not fair. On any of them. He knows this. But he’s here anyway.

His own feet are clad in boots and no harm comes to them as he strides through the place. He takes one of the candles with him. His mission is clear. First, he goes to the kitchen area or wherever it is she might keep garbage bags. He opens and closes cupboards and drawers until he finds what he needs. He then moves through to the bedroom, where Clover’ll hear some curses of his own, gravelly and harsh. “Shoes? Clover? Have you got a matching pair here, somewhere?” he calls out. Making light of a situation that’s not light. But it’s his way of reciprocation. It’s okay.

Because who the **** knows, with Clover? Whether she’s got anyone else to call her from the edge of whatever the **** this is? If no one else is going to, it’s going to have to be him. Selfish or not.

<Clover> Clover didn’t know what the sound was, not at first. She just leaned forward in her makeshift seat and rested her elbows atop her thighs. The pain, a constant, throbbing reminder of her mistakes, spread from the holes in her stomach and curled up and around her back and chest. It felt almost like someone had a hold of her and was slowly squeezing the air out of her oxygen-deprived lungs. It felt like she was suffocating. When she had required oxygen, when her lungs had functioned at their full capacity, she had never felt the level of need that she felt then; she had the need to steady her breathing, or maybe it was the need to gasp and gasp until she could finally stop everything from spinning around her. Somehow she had sent her world on a different sort of rotation and the rules of gravity no longer applied.

“Is someone calling or texting you?” Her voice was flat when she asked, a show that she wasn’t surprised or disappointed. She just wanted to know. She just needed to know. If someone else wanted him, she would remain exactly as she was, sitting on top of her computer desk, swinging her legs back and forth. Some part of herself told her not to guess at the person reaching out to Jesse, but she did anyway.

Was it Grey? It was possible. Was it one of the newly turned? That was even more possible. In the end, Clover just assumed it was Kaelyn. And that’s when she realized she was being jealous again. She was being unreasonably jealous, unbelievably inconsiderate, and all too crazy. She was acting--she was acting exactly how she’d acted as a human, but the feeling was stronger. She remembered the countless arguments and the numerous affairs. She was so paranoid and so deeply in love. Her emotions had driven that relationship into the ground. Though the circumstances were very different, she felt that the same thing was happening.

Why had she thought it was a good idea to suddenly invite him into her world? She slumped further. She brought her hands up to shield her face, though it wasn’t from embarrassment. The gesture was only meant to conceal herself, to hide whatever facial expressions might have tipped him off. If he couldn’t see her, then maybe he couldn’t understand her. She scolded herself in the silence and pushed herself through sound.

When he moved away from her and began rooting around her home, she followed him with her eyes. The place was a mess and nothing would ever save it from her wrath. She had reasoned weeks ago that destroying property garnered better results than destroying people. That was also before she started dabbling in the realm of serial killers, but who was she to judge such a ragtag group? He’d called to her from her bedroom and she had to wonder if she really had anything left to destroy. There was the necklace Nik had given her. There was the book Kenlie had given her. There was the knife Victor had given her. There was the stuffed snake. There was her bracelet. Did she have any shoes?

“I have some,” she spoke softly, so soft that she barely heard it herself. Yes, she had shoes. She had a pair of flats she’d stored underneath Mabel’s side of her bed. She slid off her desk and padded into the bedroom. Without saying anything to him, she got down on her hands and knees and groped blindly at the dark space beneath her bed. She produced the left shoe, then the right shoe, and she slipped them onto her feet. “I have shoes.”

There was a moment when she just sat there and looked up at him. She didn’t even feel like standing up. She didn’t even feel like a part of Clover anymore. She felt like Oriana. Wasn’t the woman a tax accountant? Was it inappropriate to bring her up again after such a length of time. She ran her tongue over her dry lips and forced herself to say something. Anything.

“I killed someone I would have rather turned because I can’t handle being responsible for someone else’s well being. Because look at this,” she laughed, humorless as it was, “I can’t bring someone into this. I can’t believe I brought you into this. What was I thinking?” She slowly let her head fall, until her eyes were focused on his boots. Why didn’t she save her boots? Why didn’t she have control? She desperately needed control. She desperately needed a constant. “This isn’t your fault, you know. I was this way. I’ve been this way.” She was saying anything at that point to keep him from thinking he was responsible. He wasn’t responsible. It was her own fault. Self-loathing resurfaced and swallowed her fragile form, dragging her deeper into the piles of broken glass and charred linen. “Let’s just clean this up, okay?”


<Jesse Fforde> “Someone’s always calling or texting me,” he says. He’d considered lying. He gets notifications whenever someone posts to the forum. He could just have said that. But there’s no point in lying. As much as Clover might be rubbing off on him, it’s not the kind of behaviour that should be encouraged, and when has he ever been a liar, anyway? He’s a firm believer in honesty. If he’s going to be honest, he’d have preferred if it was Grey texting him. But she doesn’t text as much as she used to. There aren’t cheeky selfies anymore. And he doesn’t know what’s wrong. He doesn’t know how to fix it.

He doesn’t tell Clover who’s texting him, though. Not yet. As much as he’d considered spending the next few hours just chatting to her about the rest of the family and his thoughts and opinions on things, now he realises that might not be the best course of action. Instead, they’d have to find some other common ground. Something that has nothing to do with anyone else.

He turns and watches as Clover comes into the room behind him, rifling under her bed until she finds a pair of shoes. He’d realised she’s more severely beaten up than he had first assumed, so shoes satisfy him; at least her feet won’t be subject to constant hurt. His brows furrow; they’re getting dangerously close to that topic she said she never wanted to talk about again. But she was the one who had brought it up. His boots scuff through the debris of the bedroom as he approaches Clover. As he holds out his hand to help her to stand.

“I’m the selfish one who wanted to make sure you hadn’t skipped town. I’m here because I couldn’t give you space. And I’m going to help you because--correct me if I’m wrong--I don’t believe you’ll ask anyone else for help,” he says. Clover looks like she belongs in this wreck of a house. She looks as broken and ruined as the furniture she’s single-handedly destroyed. If she takes his hand, if she allows him to lift her from the ground, he’ll do the only thing he feels he should. His arms will wrap around her shoulders, enclosing her bullet-ridden body in a hug that could be a bad idea. Could be. But sometimes a hug is all a person needs to realise they’re not alone.

<Clover> Selfish. Maybe he was selfish. Something told her to shift the blame and thrust him into the spotlight, to let him suffer for everything she thought and felt and did in the past several months. Everything was his fault. Everything was her fault. She went back and forth between the two realizations just as she went back and forth between those two sentences.

Clover looked up at him. More specifically, she looked at his outstretched hand. What if she took his hand? What if she actually accepted help instead of running and hiding? She was stubborn; she knew how stubborn she could be about every little thing, from the mundane to the extreme. Normally, she would have slapped his hand away and stood up on her own. She didn’t need his pity. And that’s exactly what she thought it was, what she saw in that gesture. He pitied her. He felt responsible. He felt like he had an obligation.

Her brown eyes were on his hand for so long that she swore she’d memorized every line. She could see the small patterns in his skin, the veins beneath his flesh. Clo mentally traced along the length of his life line and then let her eyes slide across to his heart line. He couldn’t read her mind in the way that she could read his hand, something she was thankful for; otherwise, he probably wouldn’t have been reaching out to her at all.

“I got upset when you challenged me. You’re selfish. I was being impulsive again,” As if she hadn’t spent so much time thinking about his gesture, Clo reached out and took his hand. She allowed him to help her stand, sacrificing whatever remained of her pride. It was a momentary loss, a loss that she would remember to compensate for later.

She didn’t want him to hug her, but it happened. A hug ensued. Honestly, she didn’t remember if he had initiated it or she had initiated it. Her arms wrapped awkwardly around him and she didn’t know whether she should pat his back or rub his back or let the seconds tick by until they were separated once more. Her body ached, but the hug meant more than the pain. Hugs, for her, were few and far between.

Without saying anything else, Clover grabbed two of the garbage bags and began picking up the remnants of her clock radio and the broken legs of her bedside table. The bags were large enough, considering she’d bought them to store body parts, so she could fit a good amount in them without worrying about them rupturing. For once, she wanted him to make conversation with her. She wanted him to pick the perfect topic, one that wouldn’t ignite anger or jealousy, one that would fix whatever problems she had going on with her head.

<Jesse Fforde> There’s nothing that Jesse can do, really, to prove to Clover that there’s no pity. That he doesn’t feel sorry for her in the way that he could. Instead, he feels as if he should be able to help her, and wants to be able to help her, and he’s going to be the annoying ******* asshole who won’t leave her alone until she realises this. Jesse, too, can be stubborn. But he’d long ago decided to at least not be stubborn in this regard. He will help, and he will give all that he can. Not just to Clover, but to all of them. For now, however, Clover may as well be his only progeny. It might not be a good thing that that’s how he’s acting. But there’s little he can do to help it.

In classic Clover fashion, she does not melt into his hug. She does not break down in a spectacularly feminine fashion. Like Grey might. Like Grey has done on numerous occasions. But Grey has leave to, he supposes. Grey allows herself to open up to him and trust in him in a way that Clover can’t. Jesse understands this, even as he offers the hug anyway.

And then it’s over, and Clover is moving on. They had come here not to rehash the evening of two nights previous, but to clean up the utter fuckery Clover has made of her house. They are working by weak candlelight, and as much as Jesse revels in the light of fire, he also realises the nonsensical nature of it. He straightens his shoulders, even as he shakes out a bag in front of him.

“Is it really bad wiring? Or is this a blown fuse that I can go out and fix?” he asks. There’d be a power box, somewhere, and he could go flick a switch. There had been power. That much he knows, by the flickering of that one lamp. At the same time, he’s looking up, and around. Maybe she just… smashed all the lightbulbs, for whatever reason.

“Maybe we can get some music in here, if I can get the power back on…” he offers. He remembers the very small snippet of conversation from the night before, just before that second dip on the roller coaster. Muse. She likes Muse. Maybe that’ll cheer her spirits.

<Clover> Clo slowly lowered her garbage bag to the floor. The contents rubbed against each other as the plastic bag settled around the mound of junk. She didn’t know how to tell him that she’d destroyed every light in the house. She’d even tried to destroy that ridiculous lamp in the living room, but it had refused to die. That lone light could have signified a number of different things. She had to admit that she already missed its comforting glow. How insane was it that she spent time thinking about how much she missed a lamp, an inanimate object she had tried and failed to destroy?

“I, uh,” she pressed her lips together and cut off the rest of her words. Standing up straight, she turned to look at him. “It might be a fuse? I’m not really an electrician. I know I smashed every light in this dump. So if you want to go find the fuse box or dig out your copper wiring and fix this wonderland, be my guest.” That wasn’t what she wanted to say at all, but it had come from her mouth. The words poured from her lips in the way she wished so many other things would, like her hopes and dreams and fears. Somewhere, she had tons of things she wanted to say to him, to anyone, to someone. “I’m sorry. I’d really like some music.”

She didn’t know whether the apology would help or not, but it was sincere. What she said had been sincere. She was sorry that she had been so blunt with him. Her tone was harsher than she had intended. He’d offered her music; he’d offered her his time. There he was helping her clean up her mess when he could have been with any number of other people. Like Victor or Pera or Mickey or Grey. Like Grey. When the that name came to mind, she could conjure a clear image of the woman’s face. She could hear Grey’s voice.

She felt a mixture of emotions, but most of them were negative. Clo had no solid justification for her distaste. There were memories of Grey’s tone and facial expressions and texts, things that had ignited her temper like hell fires, and then there was her own jealousy. The fact was that maybe, just maybe, Grey didn’t deserve the reaction her name and faced achieved. What the hell was she thinking? She didn’t need logic when it came to raw emotion. Logic made no difference during her bursts of rage.

She picked up the bag and moved out into the living room area, knowing that it was the area with the largest space and the most variety in terms of destruction. The thought of smalltalk seemed odd when they were supposed to be focused on cleaning, but she was hoping he would take some of the focus off herself. With Jesse, she preferred him to talk about himself. Everything bad about herself remained undiscovered as long as she wasn’t the topic of conversation. “How’s,” she stopped, not knowing what person to ask about, “um, the snake doing?”

<Jesse Fforde> Whatever tone Clover might have washes over Jesse like water over a fish’s back. And anyway, he doesn’t see the bluntness in it. What he can hear is the contradiction, and maybe that’s what she’s apologising for. Is she angry, that he suggested he’d go fix a fuse if it was broken? He’s not sure what it is. Clover’s anger had once caused him to be wary, but now he sees it as a kind of life. It’s a spark. And a spark is better than nothing. It’s better than cold ash.

He rolls his eyes as he follows Clover out into the living room, gaze breezing over the debris and searching for a fireplace. Surely she has to have a damned fireplace? Maybe they could use it to burn some of the broken junk rather than tossing it all. They might need to hire a bin for every bit of thing that’s broken in here.

“Gandy?” he asks. It’s the nickname he’s given to the Green Mamba. Jormungandr can be a bit of a mouthful. “She’s blissful, I think. I recently moved all my plants out of The Eyrie, gave up my hut there. I’ve put them all in a sewer apartment and I’ve let her have free reign. She has a rather large cage, now, in the form of an underground Greenhouse,” he says, while sifting through the debris. He puts aside the things that look whole and like they could be salvaged, but shoves into the bag anything that looks broken beyond repair. Working, even though he’s still ruminating upon the possibility of music.

“You smashed all the lights. So you’ve still got power?” he asks, straightening. Now, when he looks around at the spectacle, he’s looking for anything that could play music. Anything that his phone could be plugged into. Anything that could connect to the internet. Anything at all that might not be absolutely ruined. “I mean… I could sing but I’m not very good,” he says. He recalls how his very bad singing had helped to cheer Kaelyn up in the Shadow Realm. But Clover, he supposes, is an entirely different kettle of fish. Clover isn’t one to be coddled. He’s pretty sure she’d bite of his fingers if he tried. So he’s not going to tell her it’s all okay, and he’s not going to say anything cliche or ******* naff.

No, he had not forgotten that she had told him she’d killed a man. One that she would have preferred to turn but hadn’t. But he doesn’t want to appear condescending. He doesn’t want his fingers bitten off. Later, he’d think of the right thing to say. For now, he can only attempt to lighten the mood.

<Clover> They had been different then. Clo remembered the first time she’d seen the snake. The reptile was such a vibrant shade of green that every other color Clover had ever seen seemed lost in grayscale. She remembered what it felt like to stand on the outside of the snake’s enclosure and look in on something so wonderful. At the time, she had been focusing on the snake to avoid focusing on Jesse. Back then, she had been at a point where she was trying to repay Jesse for something. She’d been trying to build a bridge and get over their differences. Maybe they’d had a bridge and it’d crumbled without her even noticing.

No one could have missed the way Jesse seemed to survey the home. Clo couldn’t tell whether he was judging his surroundings or looking for things. It was after he asked about electricity that she finally understood. He was being methodical.

When he offered to sing, she felt a wisp of a smile come to life on her lips. Yes, of course. He could sing. She didn't stop her motions, but she kept thinking over his words. Maybe that was her problem all along; she just couldn't stop thinking. The fact was that she had considered taking him up on the offer. Clo didn't think he would care how awful he sounded or how any other person might have been embarrassed to sound so bad. Hadn't he told her that he couldn't sing on some other occasion? She didn’t need to ask herself the question because she remembered the exchange quite clearly. She had been willing to listen then.

"Please sing." She could hear the amusement in her own voice. She wanted him to sound as awful as her home looked. "We can make it a round," she joked.

For a moment, she had almost forgotten the past few days and weeks and months. She hadn’t lost her mind and hidden behind a trailer like a wild animal, sobbing and begging for forgiveness from a higher being she wasn’t sure even existed, one she wasn’t sure she even truly believed in anyway. She hadn’t crawled back to the family home and sought refuge from a man she didn’t know for a problem she wasn’t sure how to explain.

But look what she had done. Look what she had done to someone as nice and thoughtful as Declan, a complete and total stranger that had reached out to her in her moment of need. He was nothing more than a good samaritan in the bad part of town. Where was the indifference she had shown all those nights before?

She wasn’t losing it in front of someone like him, someone like Jesse. She knew that showing him the aftermath was different than letting him see the meltdown. "Why are you being so nice to me? And don't say it's because you're a nice guy." Clover tied off her garbage bag and threw it into the corner of the room. The bag connected with the wall and fell down onto the floor, where it rolled to a stop near the front door. "Not that you aren't a nice guy. You’re a ******* ray of sunshine, Jesse Fforde.” There was the sarcasm and the teasing that she used to try and guard herself.


<Jesse Fforde> The search for any feasible object through which to play music is halted, as Clover instead requests that Jesse sing. He laughs to himself, the chuckle a grating thing stuck in his throat. It can go no further. The itch and burn constantly irritates him, hindering any fluidity his voice might once have possessed. Either that, or his voice just never fully recovered. Not that it bothers him much.

The singing is waylaid for two reasons. One, because he has no idea what Clover means by ‘make it a round’ and two, she’s asked another question. A question that makes Jesse screw up his nose as he nudges at what looks to be a broken coffee table. All good wood that could make a perfectly servicable fire. Although it’s tempting to suggest, it’s probably not a great idea to start a fire in the middle of her lounge room. Not unless they want to burn the house down.

Nice guy. The term has been bandied around in the past. Among other things. Jesse had never thought himself to be a ‘nice guy’. If one considers the amount of innocents who die by his hands each week, one certainly would not consider him a ‘nice guy’. Nor a ******* ray of sunshine. He laughs at that. A boisterous crack of a laugh that comes out of nowhere and is silenced just as quick.

“I thought we concluded I was a selfish prick. I’m not being nice at all,” he says. Clover is evasive when answering questions all the time, so maybe now he’s feeding her a cup of her own medicine. And would it do her any good to hear his honest answer anyway? That he cares about her more than he should but not enough to match her own possible desires. It’s thin ice that he’d prefer not to walk over. Because if it cracks and splits open, Clover’s the one who could drown, and Jesse’d just slide away. He’s smart enough to realise this. So keeps his distance.

“What do you mean, ‘make it a round’? Are you suggesting we do shots or something? I’m not sure you really want my vomit added to this mess…” he says, arching a curious brow. Taking them back to that former topic. The safer one. He drops to his haunches and starts shoving more debris into the plastic bag. After they’re done, Clover’ll probably have to go shopping for new furniture. He doesn’t comment. But he understands. He’s done this to his own place, several times in the past. Though it had never got this bad. There’d always been someone there to stop him.

<Clover> Clo stopped opening her second garbage bag and just stared at him. The plastic crinkled from the way her hand closed around the top of the partially opened bag; otherwise, there was a moment of absolute silence. Had he never heard that saying? Perhaps he spent too much time in Larch or too much time underground. Her immediate thought was that she had to drag him out more, but that thought quickly burst and fizzled out like the end of a fireworks display. She chose to ignore his first comment and focus on his misunderstanding.

“No, I don’t mean doing shots. It means,” she frowned in thought, “it means you start singing, then I jump in before you’re done. So you’d sing ‘far away, the ship is taking me far away,’ and then I’d start with ‘far away, the ship is taking me far away.’ Then we’d finish the song together.” She made it her goal not to sing the Muse lyrics, but she had to at least carry the tune long enough to get her point across.

Clo didn’t have a bad singing voice, but she knew she wasn’t in line to be the next real-life version of a siren. She loved singing, but she only sang for a few choice people, namely people she trusted not to tease her about it for the rest of her days. She bent down and started gathering some of the papers and broken glass, using the plastic bag as a makeshift glove until she could gather a big enough pile to scoop into the bag. She took the temporary distraction and ran with it, blocking the rest of her thoughts with the song lyrics quietly passing through her mind.

Forgetting just wasn’t that easy; nothing was ever that simple. After she’d cleaned a nice pathway to the bathroom, she remained in her same position. Kneeling on the floor, her left hand clutching the garbage bag and her right hand resting on her thigh, Clo looked down at her bare wrists. She’d hardly taken the snake bracelet off, not since she’d received the jewelry as a Christmas present and a show of her entrance into the family, but she’d taken it off in the last few days. Wearing it felt wrong. Wearing it just reminded her that she’d done something she wasn’t supposed to do, was never supposed to do. And then her miniature rampage. Countless miniature rampages.

The man had asked if she’d wanted to talk about it, whatever it had been. Yes, she had wanted to talk about it. Why had she shot him so many times? Why had she chopped him into pieces and then left him to rot in the rising sun? Why? Because that was what Clover did to anyone nice enough to reach out and help her. She destroyed them. “No, I don’t want to stop hugging now,” she whispered to herself, finally answering the question she’d been asked those nights ago, the question the human man, Declan, had asked her.

Small cracks began to form in the flooring around her, so small that she didn’t even notice them. The tiny network of cracks seemed to ooze dark energy that dissipated as it flowed upward. She was angry at herself and angry at her family and angry at her whole existence. She was beginning to lose the better memories; her mind clung to the worst moments in her life, from disappointments to deaths. Suddenly, the thought of singing no longer seemed as appealing. In fact, it made her want to thrust her fist right through a wall. She had been there before. Jesse had discovered her with her fist buried in a wall.

<Jesse Fforde> The smile that crosses Jesse’s lips is not a teasing one. It is not meant to make fun; it’s only a smile in recognition of the song. He had not mentioned Muse tonight. He’d thought about it, figuring that might cheer Clover up. But, it seemed with both their minds on music, they both clung to the same common factor. The only one that they each know that they have with each other. In regards to music, anyway.

The tune that Clover sings is enough to twig the memory in Jesse’s brain. The CD had been played often enough, over and over throughout particular days in the parlour, on shuffle with a few other CDs of varying heaviness. Mostly punk. Although not his preferred Muse song, Jesse can still recognise it, his mind hitching on to the train that Clover had already started, tripping over the different lyrics. Some he remembers and some he doesn’t.

Clover had moved away from Jesse. Where she clears a path, Jesse instead focuses on moving outwards, a slow circular spiral from where he stands and working his way out. Because of this, he is completely oblivious to any miniature meltdown that Clover might be having. Maybe subconsciously, he picks the lyrics on purpose. He nods in understanding, the words Now I’ll never let you go, if you promise not to fade away… slipping from his lips. He understood the song. He understood the game. He leans over to collect some more debris, his bag now full. It doesn’t register that she may have picked her lyrics on purpose, and he his. The brain works in mysterious ways.

He tosses his full plastic bag in the same place Clover had tossed hers. He finds the roll of bags and shakes out another one, forcing himself to recall old Muse songs, and which ones he’d like best. He smiles to himself, and calls through the house:

“I much prefer this one,” he says, before he clears his throat:

I've exposed your lies, baby
The underneath no big surprise
Now it's time for changing
And cleansing everything
To forget your love
My plug in baby...

His voice remains rough and broken even while singing. The tune that he carries is flimsy, at best. So bad, almost, that she might not even get which song it is until that last line. There’s no way in any man’s red hell that he can judge Clover for her singing voice. None whatsoever. Not when his is one hundred times worse.

<Clover> Slow, steady breathing. She had closed her eyes and begun counting backwards from one hundred. Sometimes, the counting helped her, since it forced her to focus on one thing at a time; sometimes, the counting fueled the rage. If it weren’t for his singing she might have lost control, but his voice mixed with the numbers and she felt the images of the mangled bodies slip further into the recesses of her mind. Her rage had cooled, though it still simmered beneath the surface.

None of the lyrics he sang made much sense to her, since she wasn’t a very big fan of Muse. She’d only selected a Muse song because she was certain he listened to them. She had about five songs that she listened to on rotation, since her love of them had been something new and unexpected. She had other musical interests, which she had a feeling he would know about before the end of the night, if things continued to improve. They needed a topic like music. She needed a topic like music. “I, uh,” she stopped to steady her voice, “I haven’t heard that one. I like their more current music. ‘Madness’ is my favorite song by them. But your singing isn’t that bad. You’re almost as good as Matt Bellamy.” Whether that was a compliment or an insult remained for him to decide.

For a moment, she had considered singing a better portion of the song she’d mentioned, but she shied away from it. By inserting himself in her space, he’d volunteered himself for more than cleaning duty. He’d volunteered himself for entertainment as well. With the left side of the room mostly cleared, she found herself looking at the entrance to the bathroom. She had no desire to open the door and venture into the dark room. It wasn’t that she missed her belongings, despite the fact that some precious items had been amongst those slaughtered at her hands; she just didn’t want to revisit the tiny room. She didn’t want to visit it with him there. She told herself she would take care of it later.

“Jesse?” Clover had tied off yet another trash bag and tossed it over near the others. She wasn’t sure what she would do with the trash, but that would matter only after they had the house cleaned and the best parts of the furniture salvaged. “Are you here because you feel responsible?” The question seemed to have come from nowhere, but all of the Muse lyrics swimming through her mind revolved around secrets and madness and loss of control. Their songs always had a lot of feeling. “Is this pity? Because I’ll shoot you.” She’d wanted to say that to him plenty of times, so it felt especially nice to say it to him then.

<Jesse Fforde> Jesse was about to tell Clover that they were at an impasse. She only listened to Muse’s new stuff, and Jesse only knew the old. They would have to teach each other the worthiness of their preferred styles. Or maybe try to find some other band that they both enjoyed. Except, she then compliments his voice and Jesse has to laugh again. An amused chuckle that isn’t just a bark, but a prolonged rumble. Surely, she’s having a laugh. Surely there’s sarcasm in that statement. What Jesse decides is that it is sarcasm, and he’s so bad that she veils it in a compliment that is far too worthy. But this doesn’t insult Jesse. He knows he hasn’t got a singing voice. Hell, his voice is hardly fit for speaking with.

Again, however, sticking to the one topic is thwarted by Clover. His name is uttered in the form of a question, and there’s a witty response to that forming on his tongue, too. So many of them text him like that. A single word. Jesse? No. Jesus. Get off my lawn. But, the name is followed up by a question and Jesse has to sigh. He straightens, pushing his inked fingers through his hair; although it’s gelled back, the continual bending over and standing and sifting and shoving has those locks loosen from their gelled security and getting in his face. He turns to face Clover, the bag still clutched tightly in his hand and a cracked and broken clock in the other. His head is cocked to the side as he considers, at length, the answer.

“Am I responsible?” he asks. It hadn’t crossed his mind until now, but it is a pertinent question to ask. Even though she had already answered him, in a way - told him this was not his fault. But still, he asks the question.

“Did I lead you on in some way?” he adds. Though he shakes his head, in the end. That wasn’t her question, and he hasn’t answered it.

“You know the answer to this, Clo. Think about it. I told you I’m here because I’m selfish. I’m here because I wanted to make sure you hadn’t skipped town. I stayed because … although I didn’t kiss you back…” he pauses, gaze wary as he watches Clover’s reaction, waits for it… “I do still care about you. This isn’t obligation. I’m here because I want to be,” he says. He clears his throat and rolls his shoulders, shoving the broken clock in the bag. “I thought you didn’t want to ever talk about this again?” he says. A question he probably should not have asked. She is a woman. Female. They don’t know what they want half the time, right? They can’t give straight answers. Their goal in life is to confuse the ever living **** out of their male counterparts.

[Clover]

--The following transcript was a live chat roleplay--

<Clover> Clover had to ask herself if he existed simply to infuriate her. Even though she asked herself the same question on at least a weekly basis, she always managed to come up with new ways to answer the question. He’d sighed at her. She hadn’t missed the sighing. In fact, the sighing irritated her more than the words and tone that followed. Had she been referencing to what had happened at the fair? She didn’t think she was, so maybe it was him with his head in the clouds. She’d been referencing to her rampage without going beyond the incident, without tracing back to the reason for the incident.

Sometimes the attitude he had with her brought out the worst in her. Sometimes she felt like their bickering was simply a record on repeat. They both had endless cycles of arguing, holding grudges, reuniting, forgiving (or forgetting), and repeating. Or at least she assumed he’d gone through some of those phases along with her; he never shared enough to let her know what was going on in that thick skull of his.

“Did you,” she trailed off, unable to finish the words necessary to mimic his question of whether or not he’d led her on. She was still in total disbelief. What had been asked in a curious, playful, and violent manner earned quite the response from him. “I thought that,” she stopped herself again because she had interrupted him. He was talking about the kiss that she didn’t want to talk about. She was seeing it all over again in her head and it made her want to destroy everything all over again, except she mentally added his name and face to the long list of destruction.

He was still talking to her. He was still telling her things she didn’t want to hear. And then he had to ask the question that seemed more like a jab than anything else. She had told him she’d never wanted to talk about the kiss again. She held no blame for the sudden nosedive down memory lane. She held no blame for any break in whatever fragile peace had fallen over them. At that point, once he’d quieted, she was left clenching her fists so tightly at her sides that she was afraid she would rip through her own skin and break her own bones.

“I know what I said, Jesse!” She chose to use his name when she yelled at him, letting him know that she was throwing every single ounce of frustration directly at him. “I wasn’t talking about the kiss! Now I’m talking about the kiss! I care too, okay? I ******* care! Why do you think you’re standing where you are right now? It’s not your boyish charm that got you into this mess! Or maybe it is! You’re such a coward! You hide behind witty remarks because you don’t want people to know you actually have feelings or you actually have wants or desires or some ********! And I’m sure you’re a shitter kisser anyway!” She didn’t even remember the point she was trying to make; she just kept shouting because shouting felt right. It was a simple equation: She felt angry; therefore, she shouted. It didn’t even matter that her words had descended into childishness.

The marble flooring directly around her cracked in snake-like patterns perpendicular to their black-and-white designs. The few good picture frames that hung on the walls, as crooked as they were, shattered outward, sending jagged shards of glass onto the floor. She just wanted to slap him and tell him to stop being himself. He needed another persona just as she needed her other persona, Oriana. As ridiculous as it sounded. As insane as it sounded.

Did he know where she wanted to be? Did he know what felt like an obligation to her? Did he know how hard it was to be near him and how hard it was to know that she’d started him down a road she couldn’t quite abandon without destroying the whole plan she’d set in motion? She couldn’t run away even if she tried. That thought made her even angrier. She was furious. It didn’t take much to tip the scales and his remarks had done just that. She blamed him. She blamed the city. She blamed herself. She blamed everyone she needed just to try and channel the negativity.

When the fissures that had blossomed along her floor began to pulse with dark energy, she felt her anger turn to panic. She tried to stop the fissures from growing and she succeeded, but they kept releasing loose tendrils of dark energy. Her home looked as if shadows were creeping along the floor and extending up toward the ceiling.

<Jesse Fforde> Destruction and chaos are things that Jesse seems to crave, sometimes. Sometimes, he pushes buttons just to see what people might do. It had landed him in some questionable situations before, and had earned him quite a few wounds. There’s a scar on the left side of his face, over the eye and above the ‘21’ tattoo. Something he’d got when human. He’d pushed someone too far. A woman, actually. A woman who was wooed by his muteness, who thought he must be sweet underneath all those tattoos, but who was proven wrong. The bottle had been smashed over Jesse’s head and he’s lucky he hadn’t lost an eye.

Of course, there are times he prefers if he were mute. Maybe Clover wouldn’t be asking him these questions if he were still mute, because it would be too tedious a process to actually get the answers out of him. Back in those days he’d wanted to tattoo ‘yes’ on one hand and ‘no’ on the other; his go-to responses were to nod, shake his head, smirk, wink, or shrug his shoulders. Life was simpler than.

Now, he can feel as well as see the rage seething from Clover; even through the dim flickering light of the candles. Their eyesight is better than that of their human contemporaries. Any other man might have backed toward the door; might have held up that white flag of surrender and run for the hills. But Jesse feeds on the dark energy. His eyes light up as the fissures bloom into existence, as the tendrils of shadow threaten to engulf them. It’s beautiful. It’s ******* amazing. He stands his ground. Even takes a single step forward. He is not afraid of Clover. Maybe he should be.

He feels like he is being challenged. It’s not a good thing. Not really. At least the furious energy his progeny exudes is enough to keep him back.

“You asked if I was here out of pity, and I’m not sure what else I have to pity you for except for the fact that you’ve landed on a path of self-destruction. Which I didn’t know about before I came in here. And you invited me in here. But if there’s something else I should pity you for, enlighten me. You thought what? Why am I here if not for my boyish charm?” he asks. Maybe another dangerous question to ask, but enquiring minds must know.

To all witnesses, it would seem as if her accusations have washed over Jesse; he’s done a lot of siring lately, and his own mood isn’t quite as volatile as Clover’s. She accuses him of being a coward and hiding behind witty remarks; he doesn’t tell her that she’s one of the ones who have seen past that mask, on more occasions than one. Although not amused, really, he’s still quite calm. For all her yelling, she has failed yet to raise his hackles. He drops to his haunches again, to touch one of those fissures that have opened up in the ground.

“....this is ******* brilliant….” he mumbles, though it crosses his mind that it might cost a mint to fix. Depending on how far down it goes.

<Clover> He wasn’t helping. Nothing he said was helping her. Nothing he did was helping. She felt the same emotions she’d felt when she’d gone to visit Axel. She wasn’t sure what she had expected. She wasn’t sure what she had wanted. Whatever it was that her mind and body craved had yet to be provided. Perhaps it was a need for contact; perhaps it was a need for just the right conversation.

Her panic slowly rose and transformed into another wave of anger. She had noticed the step he had taken toward her, the step he’d taken toward her instead of taking away from her. She didn’t understand why he wasn’t as uncomfortable. He seemed almost entranced with the environment around him. Some of the cracks in her floor slowly crept along until they lessened to mere imperfections, but some of the cracks widened and shot across the floor until they met with the base of the living-room walls. The screen of her television cracked and fell to pieces. She wasn’t strong enough, the energy wasn’t concentrated enough, to bring the house down, but she had enough rage to crack and jar the foundation.

“Because I chose this ‘path of self-destruction,’ like I made a conscious decision! I panicked! I didn’t think things through!” She refused to start crying. She clenched her fists again to focus on the feel of her nails biting into her flesh. The pain distracted her from the urge to cry. “You’re only here because I give you something you aren’t getting somewhere else! That’s all it is! That’s your siring technique! That’s your relationship technique!” Everything came pouring out unbidden. “And you’re here because I thought...I thought maybe you’d be able to handle this! Or I might have thought I could scare you away! I don’t know! I don’t know what I expected! I don’t know what I want! And if you find this so mesmerizing,” she stopped because her chest was heaving and she felt a familiar sting in her eyes, “then you should trying controlling it!”

Clover just stood there, her fists at her sides and her chest rising and falling with such an intensity that she wondered how her lungs managed to stay within her body. She wanted to hurt him. She wanted to hurt him with her words, if not with her gun or her sword. The perfect thing to say came to mind, but her lips refused to part, to let her say the final zinger that her anger produced. Instead, she let her fingers slide down the insides of her palm until her arms hung loosely at her sides. Slowly, without any thought, Clo took a seat on the floor, allowing the darkness to part for her body, to swirl up and around her in either direction.

“I thought that maybe you were different. I thought that you understood. I thought that maybe,” she paused then because she didn’t know what to insert into the rest of that sentence, “that maybe you knew that everytime I’m around you, all I want to do is kiss you.”

Her anger came in subtle flares then, so the energy took longer between the pulses. Pulse. Nothing. Pulse. Nothing. Pulse. Regret. Nothing.

<Jesse Fforde> Jesse rolls his eyes.

How so like a woman, to pick at the words he’d spoken and twist them. He’d never accused her of choosing a path of self-destruction. No one ever chooses that path. That’s the path most people are chased down with no way to turn back, and no road to take to escape it. Normally it’s a downhill track, too. Sometimes people trip and fall, and roll head over heel over jagged rock. Sometimes it’s a cliff. There’s no coming back when one accidentally rolls off a cliff.

The honesty Clover is berating Jesse with is refreshing. It’s more than he gets from her, ordinarily. If he had a beating heart, it might have quickened its pace. There’s something exciting about being in a room with someone this angry. Someone who may want to hurt him simply because he’s not showing the fear or the remorse that they expect. He feels like he’s got a very brief window through which he can lure all kinds of honesties from Clover, and he wants to get as much as he can. He wants to take as much as he can. Not because--for once--he’s feeling selfish. No, he doesn’t want to strip her of everything. Deep down he wants to know everything because he needs to know how he can help.

“I can’t control you. I’m not even going to try to control you. Everyone thinks it’s so ******* great to bottle everything but it’s not. It’s unhealthy. It’s poisonous. Let it all out, go on,” Jesse says. That’s the best form of release, right? Let it out. Let it go. His heart would be in his throat because he’s seeing in Clover now the same kind of destruction that he himself has felt. He can imagine four months down the track. Five. What is he going to be, then? Almost as if witnessing Clover like this means that in five months time, she’ll know what it is. She’ll be able to handle it. Because she’s been through it. Or something similar, anyway.

“I don’t understand. I don’t know why you think I’m only here because I’m getting something from you that I can’t get anywhere else. What? Why do you want to kiss me? Is it just my devilish good looks or is there something else? And are all these accusations and insults just moot? I don’t know anything about what’s going on in your head, and how do you expect me to understand when you don’t tell me anything? Right in front of my face you said, once, that you’d prefer to talk to someone else. You tell me things at a push. Because someone else has given you away, sometimes. Maybe,” the words spill from Jesse. Not in a heated rush. But there is a manic gleam to his eye. As if he has a plan. If they’re going to have a heart to heart, they may as well do it in style. Jesse stays where he is, crouching in front of Clover at a distance, watching the way the shadows pulse and surge around her as if she’s some kind of glorious sunrise. Beautiful until it kills you.

“Let me have it. Make me understand. I ******* dare you,” he says. Because he knows exactly what Clover is like with a challenge.

<Clover> He spoke the truth. The worst part about his words was that they were right; he was right. At first, Clover just sat there and stared at him. She let her dark eyes trace over his facial features and then down along his limbs. He wasn’t anyone of importance, not in terms of his similarities and differences from other creatures just like themselves. He wasn’t someone with unlimited power or limitless potential. He wasn’t above her, despite the fact that he had created her. But his words made her feel as if he were standing ten feet tall and she had been reduced to a pile of ash at his feet.

Still, despite her realizations, or maybe because of them, she felt angry. She felt confused. She felt wounded. He was prying at her, trying to rip her thoughts, her secrets, her fears right from her chest. Even after all of the times she went back and forth between telling him or not telling him, she felt the resistance rising up inside of her. She didn’t want to open up to him if she couldn’t trust him. And why couldn’t she trust him? Why didn’t she want to figuratively bare herself to him? Why wasn’t she talking to him? Why wasn’t she interrupting him?

If he had been prying at her before, she felt as if he were pushing her then. He was asking so many questions that she couldn’t keep them straight. Clover raised her hands to cover her face, hiding her tears from him. She started out with silent tears, but they grew into sobs that dissolved into a crescendo of screams. The screaming ate at her throat and burned in her chest, but she felt better. She screamed as the darkness enveloped her in its comforting tendrils and even as it shot outward to mix with the rest of the growing shadows in the room.

When her voice couldn’t take the screaming, she doubled over and spit up black blood that quickly faded from her floor and her lips. She wanted to keep screaming. She wanted to use her raised voice in the form of harsh words, but she’d hurt her throat and it still ached even after her blood had flaked away and disappeared. Slowly, she forced herself to stand up and she walked toward him. She stood up tall and she put her shoulders back, as if she were ready to face off with yet another enemy.

The bags of garbage they’d collected shook, just as the floor shook. She didn’t focus anymore on controlling herself or controlling what was going on around her. She stopped before she got to him and she looked him right in his eyes. “I’m tired of feeling out of control. Like this,” she stopped and waved her arms around herself. Her voice should have been louder, much louder, but it constantly cracked and failed her. “I want you to stop hiding. I want you to be more expressive. Yell! Throw things! Break things! Be more like this so I don’t have to feel so goddamn alone!” She turned away after she’d shouted her last word, but only so she wouldn’t cough in his direction.

“You’re not a bad person. You do shitty things sometimes, really shitty things. I’d rather tell someone else because they won’t make light of what I have to say. I know exactly how they’ll respond. I don’t know how you’ll react, which is ******* hilarious. I should. I shouldn’t be so afraid. Here I am, telling you this ****,” she breathed, her tone humorless. “You want to hear about how good looking you are? Or maybe you want to hear about the fact that I think you’re tired of this. I think you’re bored. Your life is stale. I think you want to go outside and lose control. I think you want to do what I’m doing right now! Am I wrong? Tell me I’m wrong. Let me hear you say that and mean it. I ******* dare you, Jesse.”

When she looked at him, she had a fire in her eyes. She wanted nothing more than to hurt him and he’d baited her as she’d baited him before. So she closed the distance between them and swung her hand out to slap him across his right cheek. She swung with such force that it felt as if she cut right through the air. The shadows parted for her; the air cooled. She just wanted to hit him.


<Jesse Fforde> Maybe Jesse is some kind of masochist. No, there’s no maybe about it. Jesse Fforde IS a masochist, probably much to Clover’s chagrin. She screams and screams until she’s spitting up blood and Jesse should be concerned. Sure, there’s concern in there somewhere, but he’s here. He’d be more concerned if he were somewhere else and someone else was dealing with this. He’d be concerned if he heard about it later, and had not been able to witness it first hand. But he’s in the thick of this thing, now. Right now, right here, is when and where the concern turns into a solution. Of a kind. If he were a coddler he might have tried all he could to calm Clover down. But he doesn’t coddle. He’s all for violence and disruption. For letting loose and gaining all those extra tough skins to help one through life. Maybe that’s the problem with Grey. He’s coddled her too much, so why should he expect her skin to have thickened?

As Clover screams, it’s as if she exudes power. It crawls beneath Jesse’s skin, electric. A prickling sensation sends the hairs on the back Jesse’s neck to stand on end. As if all the forces in the room are telling him he’s not welcome. But he ignores them, and instead absorbs them. Willingly. Happily. He takes that invisible thrashing for all that it’s worth, the heavy violent whitely jagged waves crashing against the shore of his soul.

When she stands, Jesse stands too. When she approaches and rolls her shoulders back, his shoulders roll back too. As she looks up at him, into his eyes, he looks down on her. Not to belittle her, but showing no fear either.

The question had not been answered in the way that Jesse had hoped, but his hopes are waylaid and forgotten as soon as her palm connects with his cheek. Like a crack of the whip with its immediate sting, and for the first second Jesse is shocked; his eyes wide and his jaw slack, he feels the fire in that slap. The same fire he can see scorching Clover’s eyes. But doesn’t she know just how much he likes playing with fire? His skin feels scorched, too. He can imagine that there’s a hand print painted over his cheek. Welts, even. But he doesn’t touch it. He doesn’t cower. He laughs. He shouldn’t, but he does.

“How am I supposed to show you you’re not alone if you don’t let me anywhere near you? How the **** am I supposed to know that this is what you do when this is the first time I’ve ever been invited here? You’re daring me to tell you you’re wrong? You’re not! I’d turn this whole city and those who resist, I’d rip limb from limb. I’d burn down every building. I wouldn’t confine it to just one house. You want to see me lose control? Six months. In six months time--less!--you can have front row tickets, yeah? You’re going to love it!” he said, eyes still gleaming with that manic energy, his body tense but he doesn’t get any closer or further away from Clover. He stands his ground. He pauses. He takes a breath. He seethes.

“Excuse me for keeping myself to myself when every single ******* person I’ve opened up to, every single person I have trusted to accept me and my complete ******* depression--except for the one--has torn me to ******* shreds,” he says, fingers closing into fists and his own eyes alight, as if Clover is the spark that will ignite the inferno.

Somewhere, by the door, there’s movement. A black and yellow shape slowly meandering through the debris, drawn to the potential chaos. The near imminent explosion.

<Clover> Clover should have been surprised that he hadn’t dodged or blocked her hand, but to feign shock or surprise would have been lying to him and lying to herself. He’d seemed like he would take the hit. She told herself that her slap paled in comparison to the bite of a bullet. She told herself that there wouldn’t be a lasting mark on him. In the remnants of light, in the flickering of the candles, she couldn’t make out his features enough to see if she’d left an outline of her hand on his cheek. She hoped she had left a mark.

He didn’t have to contribute to the shadowy mess surrounding him. He didn’t have to lose his temper with her in the way that she’d lost his temper, and continued to lose her temper, with him. Something about him exuded the power in the way that no actual power or ability could, something she couldn’t quite explain. She might have stopped to appreciate his gift if she didn’t feel so challenged. She felt as if she had to remain exactly where she stood, her feet planted firmly on the ground and her eyes on his face. She feared that if she looked away from him, he would stop talking. She feared that if she looked away from him, every word they’d spoken up until that point would have been in vain.

She wanted him to talk to her. She wanted him to crack in the way that she had cracked. To her, his words were long overdue. Clover wanted him to move beyond the point of words and spread to the point where he took action. Despite the fact that she’d met on common ground with both Axel and Jesse, she still felt out of place. Neither one of them acted on the level she’d expected. Neither one of them felt the intensity of emotions she felt. She wanted a firecracker in a place full of duds.

Clo wanted to push Jesse to the point where he stopped hiding and stopped playing along with the world’s routine. She wanted him to hunt and kill in a manner that suited him. Whenever she saw him drinking from blood bags, she grew disgusted; whenever she saw him playing happy family, she grew disgusted. She’d debated over and over again on the topic of vampires being monsters, but her thoughts and her hopes expanded beyond that topic to the real problem at hand. What Jesse showed wasn’t all of Jesse. He’d expected her to reveal everything and he’d shown her bits and pieces in exchange. He’d shown her restraint. She’d decided months ago that she’d get him to explode. Her selfish desire benefitted them both.

“Is that it then? You’re only like that between sirings? You use siring to cover up a part of yourself that you,” she trailed off. She wasn’t sure whether the denial of that part of himself came from disgust or fear. Was he doing it for the benefit of his family? Was he doing it because of fear of upholding the masquerade? Clover licked her lips, “I don’t want to wait six months. I don’t think it depends on time. It’s still there.” She smiled at him, though it was more like a smirk as the seconds passed. If he’d wanted to tease and poke at her, then she could tease and poke at him. She could drag him out into the proverbial town square and pry at the different parts of his personality until she reached a level he’d buried.

The way he’d looked at her sent chills up her spine. She actually wondered if he would snap at her the way she’d snapped at him or if he would run away. She knew enough to recognize the choice between fight or flight. Clo had to assume that he was the sort to stand up to such a threat, despite the fact that the threat had transformed from a physical one to a psychological one. Around them, the shadows calmed and swirled around the floor. No longer were the cracks and quakes threatening to overtake the room and its inhabitants. She was calmer. She’d shifted the focus to him.

“I’m not every single ******* person and you aren’t in the same situation. You’re making excuses. I go out every single night and I see people just like you. They’re hiding! I’m hiding. You’re hiding. You want me to open up and let it all out? You want me to stop holding it in? What the **** do you think you’re doing right now? What the **** are you doing, Jesse? You’re holding it in. You aren’t fixing anything. You aren’t feeding anything. You’re barely making it by.” She clenched her fists at her sides, her irritation spreading and crawling over her skin. “Your sirings are bandages.”

She didn’t want to leave it there, as if she were simply attacking him. She had never meant to sound so cruel, to push him into a place where he might push her back. Clo actually wondered if he would push with such an intensity she couldn’t handle the force. She had to wonder if she’d gone too far. She didn’t notice the movement in the room because she hadn’t been focusing on anything other than him.




<Jesse Fforde> Somehow, this whole thing had turned around. Where the focus had been on Clover, now it’s upon Jesse, and he’s not too sure how he feels about it. Where he’d been enjoying her fury, enjoying the way she let it all out, now he doesn’t know whether he wants to continue. He had expected to be berated and screamed at, all those inadequacies coming to light. Things he could either accept or deny, and all with a smile on his face. It hasn’t even been a month since he’s sired last. And that’s how he measures his moods, these days; the most common cause for fluctuation is whether or not he’s fed his blood to another living being, and how long in between.

What he feels Clover doing now, though, isn’t just a deluge of accusation. She’s trying to get into his head. She’s trying to figure him out. Doc has tried to do that, in the past. Yekaterina had, as well. It filled him with the same kind of simmering rage then as it does now.

Weakness is something that Jesse loathes in himself. It’s something he’d gone to great measures to hide. It’s why he doesn’t let people in. He doesn’t let them get very close, because they become a weakness. And they, in turn, become dangerous. They can get into that soft underbelly of his and rip it out from the inside. His family, such as it is, is a weakness. Or a strength, depending on how one looks at it. A strength, maybe, he they are able to rally. But Jesse does not see in them the ability to rally. They are a discordant group. He gives them credit for being independent and for being able to take care of themselves but then, yes. Clover has a point. He wants them all to open up and tell him everything but he doesn’t do them the same courtesy.

He takes a step back. Right into the path of the Salamander, who soon starts to climb the denim of Jesse’s jeans. But he doesn’t break eye contact. There’s a flicker there, somewhere, in the gleaming blue of his eyes.

“What is it, exactly, that you want me to do?” he asks. He can feel it already. Like she knows too much and is using it as a knife to threaten him with, poking and prodding at that exposed underbelly.

“What is it you want me to say? I like to spill blood because afterwards, I thoroughly enjoy tearing flimsy humans limb from limb? That I could never stop at just a few mouthfuls, but that I like to drain a body dry? And not just one! No, dozens. I could drain dozens in one night and I still wouldn’t be ******* satisfied. You want me to show you what I love doing to hide the mess I’ve made? I can do that. Right now. Have you got gas?” he asks, finally breaking all eye contact to stalk through to the kitchen, again. Looking for that stove and hoping for those little gas knobs. If she wants to see him blow up, fine! He’ll blow up her ******* house.

By this point, the Salamander sits smug upon Jesse’s shoulder, pressed in against his neck for balance. Jesse can feel the Fae-creature’s slimy body, the heat of it searing his skin. It makes him angrier. Like there’s not just one person encouraging him, now, but two. Encouraging him to break.

<Clover> What did she expect from him? He took a step back from her and she felt as if she’d lost whatever balance they’d had between them. Clover saw nothing wrong with encouraging him to embrace every part of himself, but she wasn’t just encouraging him to acknowledge and accept himself. She knew she was encouraging him to lose control. She wondered if he had it in himself to be the person he always talked about, to be that free. He’d admitted that her accusations about his mundane routine had been correct. He’d basically asked for her to continue dragging him into the light of day. But maybe she was grasping at something that didn’t truly exist, some part of him that he’d ground down into dust and thrown out with the trash. Maybe his words and memories were all he had left.

As he described what it was he wanted to do, she chewed on her lower lip. No one had ever been that honest and passionate with her, not about hunting. Hunting wasn’t just a means to an end. Hunting meant so much more than an act to sate their kind. Hunting was an art. Hunting was freeing. She wanted him to enjoy himself. Heating and cooling plastic packets of blood was pathetic. Vampires weren’t vampires unless they tore out throats and ripped at flesh. She wasn’t happy unless she made a mess. No wonder she had escalated beyond feedings to pleasure-killings. When Jesse broke eye contact, she left her thoughts behind and followed after him.

“Why?” She’d condensed everything into that simple word. She only needed one question. He’d said almost everything she’d needed to hear, so she let the question hang there for a moment before continuing. “It’s like being caught in the middle,” she spoke softly, ignoring Jesse’s demeanor and the aura surrounding him, “it’s like holding back a monster. Sometimes you succeed. Sometimes you don’t. And sometimes you just want to let go. I don’t mean the yelling and the screaming, and I don’t mean about the mess I made.”

Clover stood there and stared at him. More specifically, she stared at the creature perched upon Jesse’s shoulder. She likened it to a leech, even though she knew nothing about the creature. She tried reasoning that it could have fallen from a tree onto his shoulder or came in through a crack in the wall, but she had a feeling the salamander had a bigger connection with Jesse. The thing almost seemed like an omen.

“I can get you gasoline. I can get you matches too, if you need them. If you want to catch my house on fire, Jesse, then do it. If you want to go out and slaughter half the city, then do it. Burn the evidence.” She didn’t know why she was saying what she was saying. Her mouth kept moving and the words kept pouring out. Not that long ago, she had wanted to preserve her house. She had set a calculated fire and smothered the flames. She’d never let it get too out of control.

Crossing her arms over her chest, she lowered her gaze to floor. Eyes narrowed, she let herself continue along the violent train of thought that had overtaken their entire conversation. “Personally, I prefer cutting my victims up into even sections, stuffing them into garbage bags, weighing them down with rocks, and tossing them into the river. I like it when they beg me for mercy. I like it when they scream for me. Sometimes I like chasing them. I like forcing them to watch as I cut them up. They always bleed out before I’m done. And the blood,” she stopped and took a moment to clear the thoughts of blood from her mind.

She wouldn’t go on. She didn’t think she had to share anything else to get the point across. She released her rage in the form of her victims’ suffering. She expressed herself. She acknowledged herself. But she’d stopped doing that because it honestly disgusted her to see herself in that light. She saw herself losing everything that made her Clover, everything that made her human. She was ashamed and confused and alone. So they were both fighting with themselves.

<Jesse Fforde> No gas.

Gas was going to be an instantaneous release. It was Jesse’s spontaneous punishment. Don’t push me, or I’ll destroy everything. A growl rumbles as breath pushes out of his lungs and past his dry and burning throat, craving all this blood they were talking about. Clover had followed along behind Jesse, and at first he doesn’t hear anything she says. But she continues, and her voice distracts him from his search for something to go boom. She’d said she could get gasoline and matches, but where from? How long would that take? By the time she does, the mood will have passed.

Just as it’s passing now.

Her voice lures him away from the edge of that cliff and he turns to face her again. His head dips; he wants to watch her face as she reveals these things to him. Gloriously violent things. Things that he had never suspected. He’s trying to find the guilt and the shame. Is this why she’s so angry? Is this why she’s destroyed her house? As a metaphor for destroying herself? Because she hates the monster that she’s become?

The Salamander--Mandy, as Jesse semi-affectionately called the thing--nudges in a little closer, his little feet and claws finding Jesse’s skin and digging in. The Fae knows that Jesse is distracted. It wants fire and destruction and Jesse isn’t giving it what it wants.

But Clover has revealed something vital about herself. Something… no. Paige had been with Jesse, once, when he’d lost control. But they hadn’t talked about it like this. There’d been no talking at all. That was back when he had no voice to talk with. Or had he just chosen not to talk, or discuss the ins and outs? She’d helped him to slaughter a house of thugs and then sat with him while they watched the house burn.

He nods.

“It feels like power. To go into a house and lock all the doors. To be shot and slashed but in the end, to have the upper hand. Because you are more than they are. You are a monster and they are nothing. They are food. They are prey. And they think you’re just one man, so they fight back. They get cocky. But they die, in the end. I don’t care if they beg for mercy. I don’t care if they say nothing. I just want their blood. And I burn them to destroy the evidence. But I build fires because I like to create things. I like to … feel powerful. I like that this fire, this creation of mine, could cause such chaos,” he says. And there goes his voice, now. Too much talking, now joined by that intensified thirst. It’s cracked and broken and a husk that might struggle to be heard.

“But I can’t. I can’t go and do that every night because this whole city would be burned down by the time I’m done. And I have… I have this family that I have created. It fills a void that’s been there since I was eight years old. My priority is this family and I keep the Masquerade now not because I give two fucks about Tytonidae and what Velveteen or Micah might want from me, but because if I were to harm those I’ve brought into this world because I can’t control myself? I may as well ******* die and stay there,” he says. He breathes out. His fists clench.

There. Tit for tat. Now she can’t say he never tells her anything.

<Clover> She had ruined the moment, but he’d murdered it in cold blood. At first, she thought he’d accepted the monstrosity she’d explained and encouraged its existence, but her optimism, her hopes, fell down around her. He wasn’t who she thought he was and she felt like walking away all over again. He’d explained and described such wondrous things. He’d painted a picture that she’d never imagined. When he had finished setting the scene, he had ruined it by continuing to talk. He’d said he couldn’t let himself go in the manner that he’d described, or rather to the extent that they’d both had in mind, but he could. What he had really meant was that he wouldn’t.

Clover watched the salamander because she couldn’t look directly at Jesse. While what he’d said had been thoughtful and ringing with maturity, she found it lacking. She found him lacking. Beyond her wavering opinion of him, she found herself lacking. He’d spoken with such feeling about the family. He’d defined what he wanted and didn’t want. He lived and breathed, so to speak, for them. He sacrificed parts of himself for the good of the family.

And yet, she still felt disappointed. She still wanted more. Even when he shared her space, she felt alone. She gave him the benefit of the doubt and agreed that he understood her better, but his newfound understanding made no difference if he cast off their shared traits to focus on a family that ebbed and flowed like the river where she dumped her bodies. He’d made a conscious decision to abandon himself, to sacrifice himself. Clover had no real reason then to help him or encourage him to sever ties with his siring habits, to kick his addiction and shed his obsession, when he’d made it quite clear that he would continue repressing other urges she found quite admirable.

She wanted to open her mouth and tell him to leave. She wanted to physically throw him out on his ***. She’d been told that she would grow to love the family, but had she really grown to love them? Have she grown to accept them? Had she reached the point when she would give everything to protect them? No. He’d acknowledged something greater than himself and she’d acknowledged her selfishness.

Clover wished he would take her up on her offer of gasoline. She wished he would burn her house to the ground. She wanted to watch the flames eat every bit of her memories, even knowing the fire would regurgitate her miseries. “You won’t,” she finally corrected him. “It’s not that you can’t. It’s that you won’t. You can do whatever you want. It just,” she stopped, her eyes moving between the salamander and him, “seems like a waste of talent. It’s disappointing. It’s putting yourself through hell. You’ll snap. You’ll start over. It’s a cycle. And it’s lonely. And it’s shitty. And talking about it with someone else gets you nowhere because you’re scolded or coddled. So you retreat even more. You start to wonder who the hell you are.”

She started picking things up again, as if she hadn’t said anything at all. She stamped the remaining shadows down as if she were trying to put out a fire.

<Jesse Fforde> Jesse smiles to himself. Clover seems to have calmed down, and because she is no longer fueling him, he has calmed down, too. They were two forces coming to a head, and now they’re circling around each other after discovering that neither is moveable. One pushes and the other pushes back just as hard. Although Jesse might feel a small amount of relief, he feels disappointment, too. Burning the house down would have been fun. If there was gas and he could cause an explosion, that would have been even better. Maybe they’d have both ended up out on the front lawn laughing, cackling, and basking in the heat of the roaring inferno.

Or maybe Clover would just see her house go up in flames. Maybe she’d think she pushed him too far, or she’d be angry. Maybe she’d have regrets, and Jesse would have guilt. And he’d walk away. Clover would have got what she wanted, but was it really what she wanted? Did she want Jesse to lose control to such an extent that he burns his life down, as if it were the city he’d love to reduce to rubble? Everything he’d worked so hard for, could it really be that easy to throw away?

The Salamander clicks away on his shoulder. The thing doesn’t normally make any sound, but sometimes it does. Sometimes it hisses. Sometimes it sounds like the crackling of a fire, like it mimics its namesake. The amphibian is unhappy. Jesse reaches around to grab the thing. He should be afraid of it. He has no doubts that the creature is sentient and understands everything that he says. He has no doubt that he gained this friend through his worship of fire. It, too, wants to see Jesse go up in flames. It had doused him in flames, once, and it had burned hotter than the sun.

The Necromancer holds the creature in his palm. It slithers and crawls over his moving fingers, wanting only to climb up his arm and settle on his shoulder again. Fickle little ********.

“You just don’t see it,” he says, quietly, before he lets the Salamander so what it wants; it goes back to Jesse’s shoulder, probably still hoping for an explosion. Jesse’s gaze turns back to Clover.

“I don’t bottle as much as you assume I do, Clo. As you said. I burn the evidence and I cover my tracks. The slums. That’s where I go. Plenty of crack dens. Plenty of old run-down houses full of thugs and thieves who have no idea what’s coming for them,” he says. “They call it gangland murder. Odette was collateral damage, you know. She’d been kidnapped. She just happened to be there, a place where she shouldn’t have been,” he says. He’d done just as he’d said, just as he’d explained it to Clover. He’d gone to that house and locked the doors. Under the pretense of finding diamond teeth and syringes, and whatever else he needs for his rituals. But really, he’d just wanted blood.

“We can’t burn the city down and kill everyone inside of it. It would be counterproductive. What would we do when there’s nothing left?” he asks, finding his plastic bag to do as Clover is doing; to continue to clean up the house that was very nearly reduced to charcoal and ash.

<Clover> Her sire had returned. She spread her hands apart and let the trash fall back onto the ground. The pieces of metal and plastic and glass clattered to the floor, bouncing in several different directions. “Maybe you should go explore another crack den and find another Odette. We can start out with her as a pet and then we’ll move her up to a potential candidate for your new mistake.” She didn’t regret her words. In fact, she rose up to meet them. Where she had been stooping down before, she stood up then. She just let her words stew. She let her thoughts circle around and around in her head.

“You don’t need destruction on a massive scale. You need something. Don’t you?” She didn’t know what else to say. Her question sounded pitiful, just like her voice. It was soft and so very unsure, as if, without his input, she would drift away on a sea of uncertainty. “I want to tell you to get out and leave me alone, but I don’t want you to go. I wanted to tell you to burn this ******* place to the ground, but I don’t think it’d make a difference. What am I supposed to do now? What do I do now?”

Finally, she’d asked the questions she’d been asking herself since she’d returned from her journey all those nights ago. She’d jumped around with her words and her questions, but her thoughts jumped around. Her emotions jumped around. Jealous. Possessive. Lost. Hopeless. Angry. Her confusion had her torn between anger and despair. She really had no idea what to do or what to say. She walked to her living room and began cleaning off one of her couches. The white fabric had plastic and pieces of shredded pictures all over it, but she brushed her hand over the surface and deposited everything onto the floor. When she had cleared the sofa of the trash, Clover flopped down onto the piece of furniture and melted into the cushion. “Will you just shut the **** up and sit with me? I just want to sit here with you. No more talking, please. No more destroying things. Silence.”

<Jesse Fforde> Jesse just gives Clover a look. Maybe he should have expected it. Her ire, just because he mentioned a different name. A name that was not hers. It had been a point, though. He thinks he knows what Clover wants from him but it’s not something that he’s willing to give, not right now. Destruction on a massive scale sounds like a ******* good time, but he’s at least adult enough, and reasonable enough to understand that the consequences wouldn’t be worth it. If it was just him by himself, and Clover had come along and stripped him bare and pushed him to the brink, sure. He’d have done it. And he’d have waited for the hands of justice to come and strangle the life from him, as surely they would, sooner or later. Because he would not hide. She’s trying to say that they shouldn’t hide, right? And he would be killed. And he would stay there. Because, unlike everyone else, he kind of likes that place. He loves it. It scares him, sometimes, how much he loves the Shadow Realm.

None of this has to be said, however. Any response that might have been percolating at the back of Jesse’s tongue is silenced. She’d asked questions but then asked for silence. They are questions that Jesse is happy not to answer. Because he doesn’t have the answers. He’d tell her to figure out what she wants and go from there. But she wants large scale destruction. If that kiss was anything to go by - and the fact that she’d admitted to wanting to kiss him whenever he was with her - she wants him. Neither of which he will give her. So what is she supposed to do now?

Jesse can’t give her that answer.

But he can go and sit with her. In silence. Silence is welcome. After all this talk, when talk was something he never did. Silence sounds ******* fantastic. He drops his bag of rubbish, too. He sits on the couch that Clover had cleared. He drops his arm over her shoulders. The Salamander stays where it is. Why it doesn’t disappear, Jesse doesn’t know. But he’d never understood the creature and its wants and needs. He settles into the couch. he settles into the silence, with Clover. Soothed, for the time being. Selfish, again. Because he had got what he wanted. He had assured himself Clover hadn’t disappeared. He had nothing to complain about.