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[AGAINST THE CURE]

When rumours started speculating about an apparent cure, Elizabeth had multiple feelings on the subject. The first was disbelief, because vampires had only been around, to the world's knowledge for a handful of years. But only recently, they had been revealed to the world. A year, perhaps at most. Yet, there were diseases that had been around for decades...even centuries that still had no cure for their affliction. There was skepticism; at first.

But...skepticism aside...what if it were possible? What would be the side effects of such a cure? Would someone be able to once again walk in the sun without any issues? Eat regular food and both taste and appreciate it? Have a family? It was something to consider. Vampire life had been good for Elizabeth. Great, compared to most. She had been alive to see not decades pass, but centuries. Even while in the realms, she was still 'around' in a sense and time continued onwards. But, what would life be like when she saw one thousand years? One thousand years of technological advances, but what about personal?

Family was something Elizabeth never truly really had. Not after her father had died. Her household shifted dramatically and there was a lot of unhappiness within the home. Mostly between her and her mother. When Elizabeth attempted to have what was robbed with her, even against her 'choice,' there was still the absence of the familial ideal. There were fleeting moments of happiness. The birth of James. Followed by Abigail, but had been robbed of that happiness with her last child when she died months after she had been born. Though she wore a mask of happiness around James, Elizabeth had never recovered completely from the death of Abigail. That was not to say that she had never been happy with James or that he did not ever make her smile, or there was no love between her and her child. But there was a hole that could never be replaced with the death of Abigail. So, after her escape from the realms, Elizabeth tried to attempt what it was she felt had always been lacking. And that too, eventually failed. Perhaps, all good things do come to an end.

Still, personal and skepticism aside, Elizabeth could not actually favour one side or the other in regards to her opinion about a cure. She could see the dangerous consequences of a supposed cure falling into the wrong hands, but at the same time, could not blame someone for wanting the cure for themselves. It was quite the conundrum. The names of companies that worked alongside with the government working on this cure had been attained by word of mouth and a little research of her own. Once the companies names were attained, Elizabeth entered their databases and began going through email logs. It was surprisingly...easy. Something to potentially be wary of. Still, Elizabeth retained the snippets she was able to find and then frowned when she saw the word 'politicians.' There was only one person she could think of sharing this information with, given his desire to enter the world of politics. No one liked to be caught with their pants down. The information she gathered was sent to Doc through an email for him to decipher and not long after, a reply was sent from him, to her.

Not wanting to take any chances on too much back and forth, Elizabeth decided to reply into his mind. Immediately. Name the location and I will be there. Elizabeth moved from her computer, turned it off and moved to the front door of her penthouse apartment. By the time she was in the elevator, she suspected Doc would have a location for her.

He had doing the vampiric equivalent of eating a bowl of cereal when the news had struck. This was to say that he had been seated in his new apartment with a fresh, warm mug of blood clasped between his fingers, seated in his favored ASOS joggers and t-shirt (early evening yoga was always part of the routine), as the evening news played on the television screen. Little headlines ran across the bottom in bold print as the anchors talked about how there was this cure in the works, and how there was a compound in the forest around Harper Rock, which was under attack by ‘terrorists’. Well. It didn’t take much guesswork to assume that ‘terrorist’ was a euphemism for ‘a bunch of angry vampires and suped up magical humans’. In that moment, he was the vampiric equivalent of a human with a spoon sticking out of the corner of his mouth, milk dribbling over his chin with something of a dumbfounded expression. This was to say that he had a blood mustache and hadn’t realized it. “Well the **** really hit the fan quickly on that one.” He commented out loud to himself. Not surprising. People hated change.


Fear of the unknown.


To Az, this was just like the issue facing the vampire community back when the bloodthieves had first become a thing. The cure, much like the Broussard in that case, was a tool, and tools could be used either for beneficial or nefarious purposes. To him, that made the issue essentially neutral, which meant he needed to do some research, find out more about the whole thing. The first step, he supposed, was to reach out to Nikolae. The father of dragons (a nickname lovingly doted upon the man by the avid fantasy nerd that was Az), was a lot more together in the head than most people realized. Yes. Nikolae was...well. Insane. There was no two ways about that, but he possessed a keen type of crazy, which lended itself to a clarity of vision. Nikolae was a survivor.


Unfortunately, after a few of Az’s texts weren’t returned, it was pretty clear that the mystic was on his own. Which. Well, it wasn’t all that odd. The Dragomir did their own thing. They all had their own beliefs, ideals, agendas, and projects. They weren’t a ‘family’ in the sense that there was a ‘daddy’ who gave the orders. They more closely resembled a family made up entirely of adults, with their own opinions and lives, which did not always, but sometimes intersected. Agency and independence were pretty big amongst the dragons. Unfortunately, that meant that sometimes one or more of them were unreachable. Az knew eventually Nikolae was going to get back to him.



Thus, he decided to leave a message on the Voodoo Dragons CrowNet, before going to investigate this research facility on his own. Before he actually even got into the building, he let the shadows cloak him in darkness to hide his presence. If he was just there to observe, it didn’t make much sense to draw attention. He made his way inside, and already it looked like things were well underway, with humans and vampires fighting en masse. He recognized some of the faces, but others he didn’t. It was utter bedlam, and there didn’t seem to be much of a place to sit, so Azraeth found a mostly still warm body. The person, whoever he was, had his head spun entirely around, so the mystic just sort of dusted him off a little, unrolled his yoga mat (he wasn’t much of a germaphobe, but it was someone else’s kill, and ew), and took a seat, legs folded so he could watch exactly what was happening.

A streak of darkness flashed across his vision.


Nikolae. Of course it was. His lips just sort of twisted into an expression of amusement. There he was. Sat. Trying to figure out what his next move was going to be, and naturally his sire had already decided. Already made the call. It looked like Niko was trying to actually rip the spine out of a human guard of some sort. So Raeth reached into his pocket, grabbing his phone. There was a line of texts leading up connected to Niko’s name, and he quickly added one to the list. So you’re a terrorist now?


Though he already knew what the response would be. Since when is that new?


And that was when he noticed a few replies on the VooDoo Dragon CrowNet. He scrolled through those for a moment. It seemed that Mortll and Amalea were pretty adamantly opposed to the cure - not that he blamed them in the slightest. He just needed to think about it. What he wanted was definitive evidence. He wanted some kind of leaked document that outright said the cure was bad news, and that he should do something about it. But there was no such paper, or even hints of it to appease his need for reason. Even if that did exist though, who was to say it was real? Speculation. Fabrication. It was easy to lie to people, and even easier for someone to lie to themselves. People wanted to fundamentally believe things that enforced their world view. So maybe his desire to look for some kind of proof was misguided.


He needed time to himself. He needed to get away from the chaos, and actually think about how he felt. So he left his yoga mat right where it was, and let himself descend into the blighted land of mental decay and spiritual grayness that was the Shadow Realm. There, he was not corporeal. There, the only thing he had to worry about was the static inside of his own brain. It was silent. It was like the mouth of the void. And so he was down there, the shadow of a man with his legs folded together, and his hands in his lap. He was a silhouette, a blip of blackness in a caliginous sea. He was nothing. And in being nothing, he knew he could well and truly contemplate the current of thoughts spilling through his mind like a cascade of images and voices.


The cure itself was not inherently dangerous was it? If the government intended to make it a choice for vampires to take, rather than as a compulsory measure, then it wasn’t necessarily going to hurt anything. And yet that was an assumption wasn’t it? There was the chance that the cure could be used to give people back the lives they wanted. And perhaps that was for the better of the vampire community. That meant people who were disgruntled at having been turned could be given life. How many issues had been created because someone was turned against their will? Turned by the person who killed them? Or turned for the wrong reasons, under false pretenses, with fake promises? The cure could be used to weed out those people who actively worked against the community. The foolish. The chaotic. The dangerous. The cure was not just a way to give people something they wanted; it was a way to smooth over the whole of vampirism itself. Make it cleaner and more polished.


But what if it could be weaponized? What if people were made to become human against their will? Was there a chance that it could be used to wipe out each and every single one of them? What if Nikolae was made human again? What if that bond he shared with his sire was broken? Would that make him alone? Would that sever his tie to the Dragomir. To the Worthington bloodline? Would that make him alone? He realized that stream of thoughts was motivated by fear. By his own insecurities, and he was about to pedal away from it when he felt what might have been warmth touching his shoulder. His eyes, or lack thereof, had been closed to drown out even the minimal distraction the grayscale world had to offer. They shut even tighter as he heard the voice echo softly in his mind.


She was like silk to the ears. “You have a lot on your mind.” She observed.


He knew she was sitting across from him. If he were to look, he would see eyes like molten honey staring back at him. He knew that her gaze held a sort of magic he had never been able to capture. He knew that when she looked at someone, she saw the best possible version of that person. And that looking into her meant seeing a reflection of that. He was haunted by who she had been, and who she might have made him if he’d been able to hold onto her. He didn’t say her name. “You were always better at these things than me.” He said.


“We always arrive at the same conclusions. I just do it more quickly.”


“That’s what I mean.”


“You know the only reason for that, is that you want to be right. Me. I know exactly who I am. I know that what matters to me is my sire, my bloodline, and myself. I know that you view your life is a miracle. That you know you died some six years ago, and every moment you’ve survived since then has been a blessing. Every friend. Every minute. Every lover. Every choice you have made - all of it has been a gift. I know that we are of the same mind in this. If the choice was to step into hopeless and eternal oblivion, or lose the ones you love, you would, without hesitation, pick the former. The only difference between you and me is that you feel the need to justify your feelings, to use reason and logic to support what you think. Me? I just act on instinct. Without hesitation. Without regret.”


“Why can’t I be more like you?” He asked, words spoken into the nothingness around him.


“You are me, and you know what you have to do.”


It was over. His eyes popped open, and he realized he was at home. He didn’t know how it had happened exactly, but at some point, he had returned to the world above. He had returned to himself. In his hand, he held a human tibia with fae language etched into it. He was home, at his apartment in Tomkin.


He pocketed his homebound tome and out came the phone.


Time to act.


To Mortll : This cure thing seems like a holocaust waiting to happen. If you have any plans, I’m down for them. If you need any help, let me know. We have to fight this fang tooth and nail. If you hear about anyone with plans, pass them my way as well. I’ll do whatever is needed.


To Amalea : You always have good ideas. If you have any clue how to combat the spread of this ‘cure’ everyone is talking about, let me know. Hell. If you know anyone with a good plan, count me in.


At the end of the day, there were a lot of questions about this ‘fix all’. But when was the last time the vampire community had been handed some sort of magical elixir that was going to save it, and repair all the many problems it faced? Never? That seemed about right. Azraeth frankly didn’t trust it, and in absence of evidence to the contrary, it benefited him to maintain the status quo. To uphold what he knew versus a maybe.