Stumbling Stones (EVE)

Another day at the hospital had passed. Mind numbing work that was good for the soul. Mitchell spent most of the day going around the hopsital with a bucket and mop, lazily swishing the ratty head back and forth across the floor. The wet floor, shiny with water, was soaked up by the mop which had been squeezed to a damp dryness into the bucket. The floor never looked any different after he was done. Mitchell was slightly concerned he wasn't cleaning it properly at all. He didn't want humans to become sick and die because he hadn't done his job properly. It wasn't exactly rocket science but he was part of a good administration and hospitals had saved the lives of his men, once upon a time. This place could make people better even from the brink of death. The last time he had been here as a patient he had made a miracle recovery by drinking Josie's blood. His recovery had more or less been skipped over by his friends.

The job was simple and that was what Mitchell liked about it. It didn't involve a great deal of human interaction, incidentally, nor was he willing to look for any friendships here. The last time that happened he had befriend Lucy Jaggert who had so thoroughly broken his heart that his mind had spiralled into the chaos he had worked so hard to prevent. He lived always in a fragile state of balance and some times he got the balance perfect, sometimes his control was very good and at other times, like now, he wobbled treacherously on an edge knife between losing it and doing good. He could go either way, either way, either way at any moment. However he was not so flaky any more that he couldn't talk to someone without wanting to jump their bones and latch his teeth onto their neck. Blood blood blood blood blood....

Mitchell jerked his head back and shook it. There was no room for blood here. He was doing better after his talk with Rhiannon. Rhi Rhi was a good girl, at least, she had been good to him since they had met. Although she was an old one, she didn't have the same beliefs as they do. However as part of the American Vampire League she was in a powerful but precarious position. She had to be careful about what she did, who she was seen with and how she was viewed by the press. He didn't envy her. He didn't want that job. When the running of the vampires had fallen to him Mitchell had hated every second of it. And that was just the Bristol Solemus. Herrick had done it for years. It was exhausting. Whatever sleep Mitchell had managed to glean from life had gone. He had stressed about everything. His whole world collapsed to one spec on the horizon and that was betting the Bristol vampires off blood. Well, until they were blown up by Lucky fucking Jaggert.

Deciding it was time to get out in the world Mitchell showered and got dressed. He casually slipped into one of the new clubs in town and saw a very attractive woman sitting alone. She looked tasty. No no no no no. He wasn't here for that. He was here to be sociable. And maybe Annie...h could introduce her to annie if she could see her - he wasn't sure if she would yet. Annie needed more girls as friends to do... girl things. Her relationship with nina had been great but she needed another friend.

No. He wasn't thirsty at all.

Mitchell was thinking about being casual and how to approach a pretty girl without Annie thinking he was hitting on her should he find out and how to do it without seeming like he wanted to get it on. In doing so he tripped over a chair at her table. "Son of a..." Mitchell groaned from his place on the floor and reached to rub his now bruising shin.


notes: <3 Kmy

If someone asked Evelyn to pick one word and one word only with which to describe the past months, the young woman would have found it completely impossible. There was no word in the dictionary, she thought, that could sum up everything she had been through, no. Finding the ancient demon she had wanted to meet for the past years of her life, pleding her allegiance to it, receiving shards of ancient artifacts as implants under her skin to help strengthen and protect her... only to name the less crazy part of everything. When she took the decision to find out what was the source of power in those gems that laid nested in Knox' chest, Evelyn had been aware that she was giving her life a turn towards danger. She never imagined, though, that it could be anywhere close to this, that she would end up becoming human sacrifice for the opening of the Hellmouth. True, back then she knew nothing about Hellmouth or the First Evil. If she did... well, she would have done nothing different, she guessed. That tug she felt when she touched those gems had been so powerful, so completely impossible to resist that she would have taken the same decision, no matter the circumstances. Evelyn understood that now.

Evelyn used to think that meeting Illyria in person would be a life changing experience for her. She had been wrong. The true life changing experience had been being captured by the First Evil and cut by the Bringers above the seal of the Hellmouth. Evelyn still had nightmares about it, she still saw herself tied up, hanging upside down; she could even feel the cold blade digging deep into her flesh, then the warmth of the blood slipping out of her wound, along with her life. She had walked the fine edge between life and death and, thanks to those implants which Illyria had given her, Evelyn had managed to stay alive. The problem with that was that things had changed and this really scared Evelyn. It had been frightening enough for the young priestess to know that she carried the shards with Illyria's essence inside her body but to know that it was not her only connection with the Old Ones... The thought was enough to make Evelyn shudder and want to curl up in her bed and cry. She didn't want to do that, though. Evelyn wanted to be brave and face what was happening to her, instead of letting it get to her and change who she was.

There was a difference between what she wanted and what she actually did. Under the pretext that she needed to recover and wanted to take things slowly, Evelyn had spent the past weeks inside her apartment, refusing to return to work or to have a social life. Tonight, though, the young woman decided that it was time to get break out of her self-imposed isolation and return to doing the things she used to and liked to do before the First lured her into its trap. Having heard rumor that a new club had recently opened, Evelyn decided to go and spend a couple of hours there, see if she could bring herself to have fun after she enjoyed a couple of drinks. So far, she was still on her first drink, a cocktail that wasn't too heavy on the alcohol, and she didn't feel like standing and going to dance. Evelyn kept letting her mind wander to the same old thoughts and concerns that didn't let her rest, until the sound of a chair being toppled over snapped her back to reality. Blinking a couple of times, Evelyn stifled a chuckle at the sight of a young man on the floor next to her table. ”Are you okay?”, she asked and stood to offer him her arm for support to raise himself to his feet. ”Were you trying to catch my attention?”, Evelyn teased. ”You could have found less painful methods.” A small chuckle left her lips and she looked up at the man, curios to see how he responded to the teasing.

The supernatural...it was best to stay away, if not run in the other direction. when it came to you, often in the dead of night, wicked and smooth like the best whisky or slithering like a snake on the ground, there was no choice. It was not necessarily right to always associate supernatural with evil but far too often did they coincide. Mitchell knew from experience it was not so much 'evil' but 'lacking in morals' or 'morally grey' if not 'morally absent'. Evil was a strong notion too often bandied about, losing the strength it had once held. When John Mitchell used it, he meant a dripping acid core, black with hate, red with vengeance, sadistic in nature, lacking compassion, regret and mercy. Mitchell meant the very depths of depravity only humans can truly fear. Evil was could be supernatural but often it was a simpler thing and far more terrifying. When it came, it chilled to the bone and frightened until tears stung the eyes and limbs trembled. There was no running from evil - it was an essence, a soul, a spirit not a body or a life. Evil could not be so easily vanquished.

Evil lived within him, a supernatural being. mitchell had forced it into hibernation for a time, soothing it with a lullaby in the attempt to keep it sane. What victory had he thought he had achieved? The vampire had won the battle with himself but not the war with temptation. Like any addict the cravings came and went, washing over him in feverish lust until he finally broke. Falling off the wagon was always the sweetest of things. Climbing back on was always the hardest. Hauling his fat ass back into the game of self control and declining positivity was gut wrenchingly painful. His support, his foundation was held in George, a werewolf he had saved because he found beating of wolves to be demeaning to vampires and a complete waste of time. Instead of finding a nuisance to show the ropes to Mitchell had found a true friend. And he had betrayed him.

The one thing George could never save Mitchell from was himself. He had tried. The boy had done the best he could and for a while it worked. For a few years Mitchell was the best role model for a vampire going clean but then....then it all went down hill. Solemus Vampires walk a kinfe edge between sanity, the humanity the desire and the utter vicious chaos storming inside. Ripped from within, his heart splattering blood on his victims, Mitchell had torn their throats out in the effort to make it hurt less. He had taken their lives because Lucy had taken so many of his converted friends. he could have made it work. He could have had them all off it for good but none of that mattered. She had blown them up. She had gained his trust, his affection, his love and laughed as she took a gun to his world and wrecked it. casting his life into ruin she had run from him. And she was right to.

She was right all along. Lurking there, just beneath the charming smile, the great hair and the Irish lilt was a malignant monster cultivated by years of depraved drinking sessions and wild nights out (which always ended in some kind of cover up). Every so often he'd feel a stab of guilt, but it was so faint and foreign he recognised it only as boredom. And when reality set it, when he realised he felt giulty, when he fell for a girl who hadn't cowered, screamed or ran from him, then he began to feel again. he began to understand what mercy was. he began to realise Herrick had never shown him any. He hadn't shown the Box Tunnel Twenty an ounce either.

Haunted each step since that moment, Mitchell had locked himself away in the house only going out to work or to hide his deadly truth. Slowly he was becoming a little like himself again and each passing day ended with him feeling either better or worse about himself. The move to America helped him distance himself from the truth he so desperately tried to hide. Each day was lived with the increasing fear George would find out. He wasn't sure how long he could keep it a secret: these things always had a way of coming back to haunt him, sometimes in person. Lauren turned out to be an unpleasant experience but he had been proud and saddened in the end by her strength of character (even if she thought she lacked it). Unable to take staring at the walls of Elm Wood any longer, Mitchell found himself prowling the night, mind half on blood, mind half on getting out for a while.

Then he unceremoniously fell over a chair. Smooth. Real smooth. Oh the girl was talking to him. An image of her covered in blood flickered for a moment, looking both appetising and disgusting at the same time. Mildly horrified with himself Mitchell blinked several times as though something were in his eye. Oh she was nice. She was pretty. She was very very thin....wel that didn't matter, he thought as his mind wandered a little, same amount of blood - it wasnt like he was after the meat on her bones. Mitchell shook his head. Damnit! He really needed to focus. She had an interesting pair of eyes.

Cursing the fact Solemus vampires felt pain just like humans, he continued to rub his shin. The pain faded though as he admired her quirky good looks and bright personality. She was looking more and more promising as the minute passed. A grin split his face as he turned on that Irish charm of his. "Well, I do like to make a memorable impression," he replied. "No one said it had to be impressive for all the right reasons," he winked, stood and righted the chair which was lying on its side. Perhaps she would invite him to sit. "Mitchell," he added by ways of a greeting.

It wasn't the first time when a young man was trying to earn Evelyn's attention when she was in a public location. Without any trace of arrogance from her, the young priestess would have went as far as to say that she was used to it by now. Back when she left her home to pursue her crazy ideal in life, Evelyn wouldn't have described herself as an interesting teenager. On the contrary, she had been that passionate about reading all of the medicine books she could get her hands on, in an effort to earn herself her mother's approval, that she had ignored another popular type of teenage pass time, namely sports. She didn't start blooming – to put it very poetically - until she started her training in San Francisco, alongside the small of group of people that described themselves as being Illyria's followers. As years passed, Evelyn grew into an attractive young woman, a quality which she was perfectly conscious of and which she liked to play to her advantage. It was nice to have gone from being the dull duckling (who never really understood how she had been that lucky to ger herself a boyfriend who, at that time, seemed to be the perfect man with whom she spend her entire life) to being the petite attractive swan guys looked at intently.

Just because she had serious commitment issues and was scared of getting involved into a normal, long-term relationship, Evelyn didn't turn her back completely on intimacy with members of the opposite sex. After a little experimenting done due to her curiosity, Evelyn didn't turn her back on back members of the same sex either. A couple of dates, a couple of nights spent together, then Evelyn moved on. The Qwa'ha Xahn thought that the less time she spent with someone and the less attached she got, the more protected she was from another heart ache. So far, nothing happened to make her doubt the truth behind her little theory and she hoped things would stay the same for a really long time from now on. What with how crazy things were in her life at the moment, with Illyria being in her life and with everything that was happening around them, Evelyn didn't think she would change her mind and try to get over her fear any time soon. She really didn't want to hear it from someone else that she was crazy and to see that certain look on their face. She didn't have to if things never went past a few dates.

Back to her original thought, Evelyn imagined that the whole tripping over a chair right in front of her table routine was some new method to catch a girl's attention. Honestly, she'd seen way worse so it wouldn't have surprised her if someone didn't mind getting a bruise or two in order to get a couple of dances, maybe more. Of course, there was also a chance that the man was a klutz by nature and had a bad habit of tripping over things but, in Evelyn's opinion, he was a little too cute to fit the “klutz” label – not that she had never been wrong before. ”Trust me, I'm going to remember this”, Evelyn assured the stranger with a smile on her lips, mildly intrigued by his accent. British, she imagined, although she wasn't that good with accents and there was a chance that it was Irish or Scottish. Well, if everything went well, she could ask him to shed a little light about it, couldn't she? The Qwa'ha Xahn laughed softly at his next words. ”True. Does your ego agree with you or is it a little bruised?”, she teased. After the curly-haired stranger arranged the poor chair in its rightful placed, Evelyn gestured towards it, in a silent invitation for Mitchell – a nice name, she thought – to join her at the table. ”Evelyn”, she introduced herself. ”Nice to meet you”, she added before taking a small sip from her glass.

Going out and socialising probably wasn't the best thing for John Mitchell, Vampire Extraordinare to be doing. He should be confining himself to a room with four walls close together and banging his head against them out of boredom. But there was a very good reason Mitchell did not like going home to Elm Wood Place: a very good reason. This reason was blonde, female, petite, a nurse and also a ferociously protective mother. She spoke with eloquence and sometimes with a harsh tongue which left her victims quite rightfully bruised. Although Nina was probably unlikely to harm him physically, it wasn't the physical harm, so much as the aural accusations. If Nina learned the truth she wouldn't hesitate to tell everyone and that would ruin everything. Everything would fall apart and Mitchell very liked his unstable and highly strained relationships thank you. They were all he had. They were all he had from going completely insane.

Nina was a fearsome woman who was out to protect George from just about everything: including him. the problem was, Mitchell really liked George. Mitchell had pushed those two together with quiet words and enthusiasm because the guy deserved a chance to be happy: let's face it, he moped a lot. And there was nothing wrong with moping but there was a time when you just had to pick yourself up and dust yourself down and the werewolf just wasn't doing that. He had been a furry dog for a while now and should be trying to sort out his life: he hadn't been, so Mitchell gave him a push. As it turned out, while Nina made George happy which was good, she also could smell blood a mile away - the metaphorical kind too. There was something about him she just didn't like and she wasn't going to stop until she found out what.

So to avoid confrontations with Nina, the werewolf, the partner and new mother, Mitchell decided it was best to stay away from his own home. Bored with hiding on in the inside of his room, the kitchen, or living room, he was out and about, living with the rest of them. His chosen bar was nothing special and he had picked it for no special reason other than the fact it looked like it might be a good one. He was glad she looked for exotic than his last girlfriend, Lucy Jaggert, for that would only serve to make him mad: and no one wanted Mitchell to become embroiled in that kind of rage. He'd kill the entire room and then some. the CCTV would show it was a vampire and all hell would break loose. No. he didn't need that kind of trouble.

"Oh my shin is definitely going to blossom purple," he said. A vampire like him had to suffer like any other human, though had the added upside of healing faster. Bruise it may, but it wouldn't stay that way for long. He sat down in the chair she indicated. "Nice to meet you Evelyn," he said. "I hope you dn't mind me dropping in,"

"Oh my shin is definitely going to blossom purple”

Evelyn pursed her lips a little at the comment Mitchell made about the bruise he expected to get out of his close meeting with the chair at her table. ”Actually, it might take a day or two before the ecchymosis reaches a deep purple colour. I think you'll go through all the phases of skin coloration and discoloration with it...” Realizing what she was saying, Evelyn allowed her voice to trail off, her cheeks turning a faint shade of pink. Couldn't she have picked something a little more normal to say? A nod of her head, a giggle, some light comment about one or two bruises making a guy look a little more interesting than a guy with flawless skin? No, apparently she had to sound like a huge nerd because, by the looks of things, her passion for medicine refused to go away and most of the knowledge she accumulated during her years of preparing herself for becoming a doctor was as fresh as it had been before she threw it all away and left home to follow her own path in life, instead of the one her mother had traced for her.

”I think I read one too many medical books in my life”, she explained to Mitchell with a smile on her lips, then briefly turned her attention to the drink in her glass, taking another small sip out of it while her eyes remained on the man that kept her company. She observed his face more carefully, then her gaze wandered down to his body and Evelyn's mind wandered, trying to sketch the anatomical details that were hidden by the clothes the man was wearing. It was probably a bad idea to allow her mind to wander like that - the young Priestess could feel her face growing a little hotter and her pulse quickening. Evelyn set the glass aside, setting a goal for herself for the rest of the night – not to pick it up again. She had enough alcohol to take the edge off and relax, she didn't need to keep going until the alcohol started doing the thinking and acting for her. The Qwa'ha Xahn's first response to Mitchell's comment about dropping in was a small laughter. ”No, not at all”, she added immediately after, with a smile on her lips. ”Be honest: was it an accident or did you do that on purpose, to catch my attention?” The smile continued to brighten her expression when she asked the question, a hint that she wasn't going to take it badly if he admitted to having purposely tripped over the chair.

”Were you on the way to the bar when you tripped?”, Evelyn asked, realizing that Mitchell wasn't carrying a glass when he got a close view of the floor. The young woman bit her bottom lip gently. Should she offer to buy him a drink or would that be a little too straightforward and send the wrong message across to Mitchell? The thought of asking if he was actually heading for the dance floor also crossed Evelyn's mind but she dismissed it for fear that it might sound like she was suggesting that he invited her to dance. She would have liked to share a dance or two with Mitchell, of course, but she was curious if he felt the same and would make the first step.