almightythirst | Open Post

No. Hard to appreciate when he's on this side of the divide, even if what Jesse is doesn't fit neatly into any one category.

He is so many things. Demontouched. Vampire. Hunter. Possibly this...Overwatch as well. Hanzo understands what he thinks, what he feels, but what guides him? What path he is meant for? There is still much he doesn't understand, and might never.

"Secure enough. I chose carefully," he replies shortly, before reaching to draw the window blinds closed. A glance, and he notices Jesse is staring at him as well. Hanzo's lips tighten. "We will likely need to hunt, tomorrow," he murmurs, before turning towards the inner hallway, and the bedroom beyond.

The bedroom had no windows, thankfully, so there would be no risk of accidentally burning. But that's not the reason for his hesitation.

Those are the same questions that hound Jesse’s waking moments, and would keep him up through the day if their kind could suffer insomnia. He’s a man with a strong moral compass, but without a purpose—aside from hunting the Reaper, but even that doesn’t seem so clear-cut anymore with Talon involved. And a man can’t live just for the sake of a single kill.

He looks up, catching sight of the bedroom beyond where Hanzo stands. Even from here, he can get a sense for it. Looks perfectly dark. Secure. Probably set up with fancy locks or even an alarm.

And also, surely just the one bed.

“Shouldn’t be a problem if we’re careful not to attract the wrong attention.” He turns away from where Hanzo is so obviously hesitating and takes off his serape, draping it over one of the chairs.

“If you need your own space today, then that’s alright.”

There's a measured silence as Hanzo regards him, expression carefully blank.

"...that would be best."

If their paths diverge from this point going forward, they should begin that process now, shouldn't they? Begin untangling from one another as best they can. That bond might exist between them now forever, until true death takes one of them, but it does not dictate their choices.

Perhaps he simply needs that reminder himself. Or perhaps it's simply the clarity being alone will provide.

Regardless, it's harder than he makes it appear to slip into that back room and close the door behind him.

Jesse stays standing by the chair, his hand resting on the back, long after Hanzo has closed the door.

So this is it. Whatever answer Hanzo had decided on, whatever he’d found through his prayer and meditation, this is what it leads to. But Jesse truly has no one but himself to blame for starting them out on this path to begin with, and for breaking that already fragile trust. It’s a burden he’ll carry with him long after this night.

He eventually goes around to check the blinds, making sure they’re all closed as sunrise grows nearer. Just when the weight of exhaustion gets to be unbearable, that’s when he lays down on his side on the couch in the living room. Sleep takes him before his thoughts can catch up, and it’s a small blessing.

The forest around him is cold with mist, the sharp familiar smell of ancient earth all around him as he ascends the stone steps. There are small pattering footfalls behind him, familiar to his ears, but when he turns...

Nothing. A ghost, or a memory. This place is familiar, after all.

Slowly, he continues his climb, though in his peripheral he can see the slow, sinuous movement of something large slithering past the trees, climbing the hill with him. He does not turn this time, knowing full well what it is that moves in step with him. He would know them anywhere.

They are his. The reason Talon wanted him so badly. But they are not his goal now. No. That lies ahead, through the curling mist. Something red flickers ahead, like torchlight. Or perhaps the flutter of cloth, catching in the moonlight.

A green songbird rests above him in the branches, calling out suddenly as he draws near. The mist ahead on the path roils over on itself, turning black like pitch, spreading outward. He has to hurry, his legs carrying him across the smooth stone steps as quickly as he might go, but that flicker of red is very nearly out of sight, swallowed up by that darkness. Panic seizes him, though he doesn't quite know why. No, no, no no...

Abruptly, that brilliant red flares to life, bursting from the shadow like a bullet, careening towards him. Pain blossoms sharply in his chest, and then--

His eyes open to blackness. An empty room, an empty bed, and though his heart no longer beats he feels that panic shivering inside his ribs in an echo as he reminds himself of where he is.

Jesse wakes with a jolt, eyes wide and staring out across the room without registering any of it. The dream—or was it a nightmare?—had been unusually vivid. And the feeling of panic remains, as does a strong sense of Hanzo having been central to it all.

He sits up and turns, looking down the hall towards the door to the bedroom. Just a nightmare. But even though it hadn’t been real, he rubs at his chest where his pulse would have been racing had he been alive. Is it a phantom pain from his death? Why would it flare up now?

In his dream, he hadn’t been the one shot.

He curses quietly to himself and stands, suddenly full of anxious energy needing an outlet. There’s an urge to check on Hanzo that he can’t shake either. But that would be a bad idea. The last thing the man wants is Jesse bursting into his room. Might be he’ll tell Jesse to make other plans for the following sunrise as his first order of business for the night. That has the anxiousness swinging a whole other way, and for lack of a better way to shake it off, he grabs a cigarillo and lights it. Hanzo doesn’t want the smell of smoke in his hideout? Tough. Jesse at least opens the window and perches himself on the frame.

Every few seconds, his eyes go back to the bedroom door. Linger there. Then they’re forced back to the Hanamura skyline, and the whole thing starts over again.

Hanzo is fine. He’s in the fancy apartment building equivalent of the Fortress of Solitude. He’s fine.

He is not fine.

Physically, yes. But the dream -- or perhaps a vision -- lingers with him. It plays against the back of his eyes in the darkness, until he has no choice but to reach for the lamp nearby if only to banish the sight with something else.

Danger. The dream spoke to that, surely. But the nature of it, he's not entirely certain. The details muddle themselves the longer he is awake, though the feeling of dread is not so easily shaken. Was this the answer he'd sought? If so, it seems of little help. Shaking his head he draws himself to the bed's edge, steadying his hand before moving to open the door.

It's unusual for him to leave the bedroom without setting himself to rights first. Hair neatly tied, clothes set straight and immaculate. It's not messy so much as slightly off-center.

But that whisper may as well be a scream for how out of the ordinary it is.

Jesse just so happens to be watching the door when it opens. He straightens up reflexively, shoulders back, and prepares himself for the no doubt stilted greeting to come. The Hanzo that steps out, however, does not match up to his expectations. That sense of something wrong only grows.

He quickly turns and stands, stepping toward Hanzo before remembering the cigarillo in his hand. A few more seconds are wasted as he glances around for a place to set it, and not finding one, gives up. It stays in his grip as he looks back at his sire and looks him up and down.

“Did somethin’ happen?”

It could just as easily be that the night before has left him off-kilter, but something in him says otherwise.

Something twists briefly at the sight of the smoke curling around Jesse's frame, before it registers. The scent of it, so much a part of his profile it's a wonder he didn't pick it up sooner. The dream has well and truly distracted him, hasn't it?

There's a quiet grunt as he shakes his head, padding quietly past Jesse towards the window. Just a glance outside, to reassure himself of their surroundings. It's foolish, but even so.

A second glance at Jesse, however, and he wonders. The other looks on edge, though that could just as easily be the events of last night still at play. A brief crease appears in Hanzo's brow as he stares at his fledgling.

"...you?"

Jesse doesn’t stop watching Hanzo, as if he’ll see the truth of the matter by staring long enough. But there really doesn’t seem to be any truth to find, other than what had already been obvious. Hanzo isn’t hurt, and he hadn’t gone anywhere, and no one had gotten to him in there… so it’s all fine, isn’t it?

“Yeah. Yeah, it’s fine. Just one hell of a bad dream.” A little of the tension eases out of him, and he brings his free hand back through his hair to try and bring some order to the wayward strands.

Oh.

That answer earns a more intense look than otherwise might seem warranted. But he can't help but wonder.

"What manner of dream?"

Surely it couldn't be the same one. That would be so unlikely as to be ridiculous, really. And yet.

Jesse raises an eyebrow as he looks back at Hanzo. The curiosity is... well, curious. But he can't see any reason not to answer the question.

"A weird one. About you. You were in the woods, and I think somethin' was walkin' with you. I might've been there, I think?"

Yeah, sounds riveting when he explains it like that.

If one didn't know the additional details, it would seem very dull indeed. A veritable walk in the park. But the similarities are there, and Hanzo cannot help but step forward, eyes narrowing slightly.

"And a dark fog?"

A meaningless detail, unless. Unless it was the strange dream. And if Jesse had managed somehow to share that dream with him, then either they were more strongly linked than he assumed, or it was a vision in fact. Something neither of them could afford to ignore.

Even if they did part ways at this point.

Jesse snaps to attention at that, staring at Hanzo with a quickly dawning realization.

“You had it too.”

What does that mean? Jesse takes a moment to reach out with that inner awareness of his, but he doesn’t feel anything else supernatural around. Just the man standing across from him, who he is always so keenly aware of even without trying.

“Is this somethin’ that happens to vampires?”

He doubts it even as he says it. That dream had been so intensely personal to Hanzo. Even not understanding all of it, he knows that. So if Jesse is seeing it too, then what this is likely has more to do with the two of them than the greater vampire community. Still, he can’t help but ask to be thorough.

"You ask that as though I have spent enough time with other vampires to know," he replies, though whatever snide tone the words might have held falls slightly flat in the face of that answer.

The same dream. It had been the same, for both of them. That spot in his chest burns, and he wonders for a moment if it's the same place as that wound Jesse had taken just a few nights prior, from the Reaper.

“Well you’ve had longer to figure it out than some of us here.” Jesse throws just enough sass in there for it to be detectable, but he’s otherwise just as thrown by the whole thing.

“Did it make any sort of sense to you? That thing followin’ you in the woods, and…”

And the arrow. He resists the urge to touch his chest again. He’s healed up since the attack, so any lingering pain has to be a result of the dream. But what did it mean that Hanzo had dreamt of being shot in the same place Jesse had been, both by the Reaper and Hanzo himself?

“… the rest of it?”

"...only that the path ahead is dangerous. Which, knowing our kind, says almost nothing."

Danger is ever-present in the world of the undead. Hunter, fellow vampire, and other denizens of the night, all might wish their end for a variety of reasons. Although there is a small detail.

"I don't recall seeing you. And yet you saw me."

"It wasn't like I was watchin' it from the outside. I was... seein' it from your eyes, I think."

He'd seen what Hanzo had seen, and felt a muted version of what he must have felt. If there was any other insight he had into the dream, Jesse hadn't been privy to that either.

"Felt like I was the one dreamin'. But I knew it was you, at the same time."

He looks down at where his cigarello is dropping ashe onto the floor, and he huffs as he turns to go find a sink to put the embers out in.

"Guess you must've been thinkin' real hard about the future when you fell asleep last night, and it snuck up in your dreams."

He starts the tap and puts the cigarello out in one quick burst of water.

Is that really all it was? His imagination, his anxiety, bleeding through unbidden? That would be the more comforting option, truly. Hanzo lets out a small huff, eyes lowering as he considers.

"And you felt it. Saw it. As if it were your own." His lips twist wryly. "It's little wonder to share another's blood is so forbidden, if such doorways might be open. We are a secretive lot by nature."

To have not even your mind's dreams hidden from another...it's quite the vulnerable position to be in.

"That's what this is?" Jesse turns and leans on the counter, arms folded over his chest. It's embarrassing he hadn't thought of that sooner. The nature of this dream hadn't been unlike the moments they had shared blood in the past. Visions, memories, thoughts and feelings...

They've gotten themselves in real deep with this, seems like.

"Who made that decision anyway? That it's forbidden? There's no way to police that when all the vamps won't talk to each other."

"Certain things are known, even when you do live among others of your kind. Do not reveal yourself to humans, lest you be hunted." Common sense. Things any vampire maintained to survive, especially in this day and age.

"Similarly known is this. The deeper the bloodlines run, the more ancient the vampire, the stronger the blood. The was meant to prevent younger vampires from usurping strength they were not ready for."

He arches an eyebrow.

"Do you know who the best swordsman in the world fears?"

Is that what Jesse has done? Has he gotten stronger than he should have through this exchange of blood? It’s not like he’d taken it by force, but the thought still troubles him. As for the other side-effects… they have to be manageable. Maybe they'll fade as he and Hanzo spend more time apart, which seems like an inevitability now.

“I’d say ‘the second best,’ but I got a feeling this is one of those trick questions.”

Jesse isn't wrong, in that regard. Hanzo shakes his head, all the same.

"No. He fears the worst. He cannot anticipate what the fool will do, and all the master's skill and training will matter little against someone who does not care what should be done. And in so doing, that fool might be the end of all."

A young vampire with no sense of proportion, given the power of an elder? The results would be quite similar, he expects.

"Suppose that makes sense. But I haven't gotten much more powerful than any of you at this age, have I?"

He assumes not, but it's not as if he's had anyone else to compare himself to. When hunting vampires, he'd always operated on a very loose understanding of his quarry's age. The general idea had mattered more than the specifics.

"And I bet there are some people who wouldn't mind this." He taps his head and then gestures between them, indicating the bond. "Dunno, but it seems like the sort of rule people use to make sure they're the only ones doin' a thing for their own reasons."

"And do you mind...this?"

Again, Hanzo looks as though he's guarding his thoughts very carefully, his expression neutral at best. But beneath, there's that sense of sharp anxiety. The dread from the dream, the anticipation that whatever danger was foretold might yet come to pass.

And there's that sympathetic pang in his chest, or the phantom of it.

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