Hate to Love, Love to Hate

[Madison]

Madison left the d'Artois conference room and let herself out of the complex. She hadn't driven there which meant she was walking to wherever it was that she was headed. There really wasn't a destination in mind. Sneakered feet hit the pavement with little sound. It was late and there wasn't much traffic in this section of town. Overhead a street light flickered for a moment before the light turned off completely, drowning Madison in shadows. She stopped and looked up at the light, wondering if this was some kind of omen. All it would take though was a few steps and she would be basked in the light of the next street lamp. The blonde telepath gave a shrug of her shoulders and continued walking down the street.

She tried to keep her mind occupied, thinking about what had all transpired at the family meeting. It was the first one she had ever gone to and had arrived wholly expecting everyone to fight her on her opinions save for Lancaster and maybe Star. To her surprise though no one had argued against her. They claimed to see her point and agreed with it. There should have been some sense of validation to that but there wasn't. Just like it had been during the meeting, Madison's mind was clouded. Yeah she had participated, given her opinion and made suggestions but the whole time her thoughts had been divided between the family and her sire, who had even come up during the meeting and made Madison extremely uncomfortable.

The night before Madison had tome'd in to the portal room to take advantage of the shadow gate that they opened there. The amount of other people there, even though they were family, often made her uneasy so she mostly kept to herself. She rarely spoke to anyone unless they spoke to her first. As it stood, most of them just left her alone. But the previous day had been different. She'd been half asleep when he came in, her mind not fully registering that he was there. Possibly thinking that he was simply part of a dream. He spoke a greeting but there were others around, maybe he was speaking to them. He passed her by then, his hand reaching into her back pocket. Madison was conscious enough to slap the hand away from her before he was able to get anything out of it, not that she had much. And then he was gone and Madison had slipped fully into slumber.

When she awoke she realized that it hadn't been a dream. Robert Pratt had been in the portal room, again. He'd also tried to rob her. For someone who had been warning her to stay away from Pi, he sure wasn't making an effort to avoid her himself. Annoyance ran high as she shot him off an email, threatening him that if he tried to rob her again or she found him in the portal room uninvited once more that she would shoot him on sight. He had responded and she wasn't surprised that he said that he wouldn't stay away from the portal room unless it suited him. She hoped bullet wounds suited him because her threat hadn't been idle. But the way he ended his message, telling her that he loved her and never stopped caring had her scoffing. What was even better was that he had admitted he was wrong for things that he said to her. She didn't believe him though, why should she?

Madison had responded to him and managed to keep spite out of her message. It would be so easy to spit written words of venom at him but that had lost its appeal over time and she wanted to think herself better than that now. The correspondence continued for several more emails which was probably a bad idea now that she looked at it in hindsight. He had told her several times that he wanted to reconnect, to rebuild the bridge that the both of them had burned from either side. Madison had told him that she didn't think it was possible but could tell by his last message that he held hope she would return to him.

It was three little words that ended the conversation. All he had to say was 'I love you' and that was it for Madison. She didn't respond in kind, she didn't respond at all. In such a short period of time, all her hatred and anger had subsided some and been thrown into a swirling abyss of other emotion that she wasn't quite clear on what they all were. It was this that had distracted her thoughts during the meeting.

Madison had no doubt that if she saw him in the portal room again that she would shoot him without hesitation. Then why had she felt relief when Lancaster had downplayed using him as a target for the d'Artois to train with? Why did she still care about him? It was so much easier to hate him. For six months almost she had held the silence between them and was happy to sit with the anger and hatred. But that was all changing in the last week and it was her that had broken the silence between them.

A car approached her from the direction she had came and Madison looked up to peer inside to see if it was anyone she recognized. An unknown face glanced back at her and she looked forward once more. She was a few blocks away now and there was a magic shop coming up. A thought about stopping in passed through her mind but was quickly dismissed, she had been spending too much money as of late and needed to slow down on it again. The last thing she needed was to make some emotionally driven purchase of some crap she didn't have use for. Bypassing the magic shop, Madison began to recognize exactly where she was. A few blocks away would be the Bullwood transit. She still didn't know where to go though.

Truth be told she wanted to talk to someone about what was going on. Someone who knew the history between Robert and herself and would understand where she was coming from. Except those people were few and far between. In fact there were only three people that knew, Blake, Lancaster and Pi. None of her options seemed that ideal. All three of them would probably tell her to be wary of anything Robert told her and she was but they would probably also tell her that it was her decision to make. A decision she didn't know how to make. Six months had passed since she had had any real interaction with her sire and even before then their contact had been few and far between since then and the time she had been turned. That was quickly approaching as well. Her one year anniversary as a vampire. Didn't really seem like something to celebrate.

Walking up to the transit station, Madison checked the board to see when the next one came. It would be another ten or fifteen minutes yet, depending on if it was running on time or now. She still didn't know where she was going to go so the blonde took a seat on an unoccupied bench just outside of the awning. Her gaze turned upward and she stared at the sky. There weren't as many stars out that she could see. The city lights were enough to blot out some of them. But there were enough to look at to pass the time, to try and help the thoughts of her sire from her mind. It wasn't long before a low rumble in the distance signaled that the next transit was coming into the station. Madison stood from her spot and methodically moved forward like everyone else around her, leaving space for people to exit before they boarded. Once inside, she took a window seat towards the back and silently hoped none would sit near her.