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Thread: Reaching Out, Reaching Up

  1. #21
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    When impact seemed nearest Sansa felt her self preservation instinct flare into belated life, and she brought her hands in defensively -

    - only to hear the grunt and crash of the Scourge in front of her, vibrations traveling through the floor into her body, but little else. Sansa's eyes flew open and she touched on her Celerity again, on top of the crate in a blink for what good it would do her. A Kindred was fighting the Gangrel, his body blurring with speed as he redirected blows. She felt a tug on her blood, a sort of sixth sense, and it confused her.

    The warehouse to her back, however, was clearly full of Kindred and kine trading bullets and blows. The kine were holding their own for the most part. Hunters. She leapt down from her perch, the crate between her and Scourge, a bullet whispering through the ends of her hair as she landed in a crouch. The nearest kine immediately slashed at her with a knife that had an extended wooden handle, but she grabbed his arm and leveraged her body against his elbow, snapping it.

    Exit, find the exit. She turned away from the kine she'd dropped on the floor, a nearly fatal mistake as he brought his gun up with his other hand. Sansa managed to react quickly enough to kick the gun away from him, and then stomped on his throat. Part of her was revolted, the other fascinated as he gurgled, but the power of her vitae would only last her a little while longer before she would need to feed and rest. Her eyes were drawn back to the dying kine, his heart faltering...

    Sansa used her speed to return to Roland's side. Logically sticking with him was her safest bet, and she still needed his help. Running away would not get her his favor.

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  2. #22
    Dylan
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    They'd come for the hunters – but Dylan was done with them now. There was a bigger threat to be dealt with now, a much more heinous crime than just trafficking in ghouls for sport, as the hunters supposedly had been. For six years, Gabriel Rodermark had eluded the law of the Camarilla. Dylan had saved the man's life on more than one occasion and now he felt it only right that he should be the one to deliver him to his final, true death – but Rodermark would not come quietly.

    “Coward!” the Gangrel spat as he swiped again at the blur that was the former Prince of London. Rodermark was fast, but he couldn't avoid Dylan forever.

  3. #23
    TheHolo.Net Poster Has been a member for 5 years or longer Roland Salisbury's Avatar
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    For the first time in living memory, Roland Salisbury did not know what to do. The situation – already one that inspired a great deal of concern – had suddenly become doubly complicated. An unpredictable variable had entered the equation. Such was the shock of seeing Gabriel again that his train of thought simply... stopped. It took a shout from Dylan to restart it, to remind him that he could not allow this to become another Isle of Dogs.

    Two quick steps forward and he caught Dylan by the shoulder. Thinking that he was about to be assaulted by Gabriel, the Gangrel twisted around fiercely – but as his eyes met Roland's, he sagged, the tension in his muscles withering into nothing as his blood frenzy evaporated, his will completely Dominated. With a gesture, Roland called two nearby Kindred to his side and had them shoulder the Scourge's considerable weight.

    Breaking eye contact, Roland looked to Gabriel next, wordless at first, though the meaning in his expression was clear: don't make me regret that.

    “No words. We deal with all of this now. The rest... later.”

  4. #24
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    Sansa remained where she was as Roland stepped out from behind the shipping container to deal with the Scourge and Gabriel.

    Gabriel

    is

    dead

    ?


    She felt her arms go limp, but the pull was there, the tug that told her yes, this is Gabriel. But it was wrong...wrong but right.

    "Your face is wrong," she blurted, and unexpectedly burst into bloody tears.

  5. #25
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    I had met few beings in my life who could bring about order quite so swiftly as Roland Salisbury. I suspected that even before he had been embraced, he had been a man of supreme self-confidence – quiet in his assuredness – yet in death the blood of his clan had made him all the more compelling. He quieted the Scourge with a touch. When he turned his eyes on me, I felt the after-effects of the pacification and for a moment was light-headed and heavy-limbed.

    It was a passing sensation. Roland blinked and the power he held over me was gone, the sound and fury within the warehouse once again hammering into me. Behind me, I heard Sansa blurt out something – but it would have to wait. Doubtless, she had grown adept at waiting in the years since she'd had the misfortune to make my acquaintance. A minute longer wouldn't kill her, would it?

    Knowing full-well who and what was within the warehouse, I stalked back into the fray with Roland at my heels. We'd fought side by side in years gone by, though with blades rather than bullets. Some things did not change, however. Roland was precise, firing two quick shots into the head and chest of anyone who made the mistake of popping into his line of sight. No gun had been offered to me, but I would of refused had it been, relying instead of inhuman speed to propel my victims against the sides of shipping containers, bruising flesh and breaking bones.

    Roland had brought just over a dozen Kindred with him, two of them to each of the fools who thought to stand against them. As much as I desired to shuffle each one personally from his mortal coil, I was neither brave nor arrogant enough to do so and was silently thankful for the coteries presence.

    The feeling – as you might imagine – was not mutual

  6. #26
    TheHolo.Net Poster Has been a member for 5 years or longer Roland Salisbury's Avatar
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    In total, it took sixteen minutes to bring silence to the warehouse. Near silence, at least. By the time the kine had been put down, Dylan had roused out of his temporary stupor and was foaming at the mouth, held back from his intent to murder Garbiel Rodermark by the hands of Roland's coterie. Sitting near Salisbury's feet, Sansa continued to murmur and sob intermittently, barely seeming to register the presence of the Kindred who moved about and around her. One by one, they were dragging the bodies of the dead to where Roland stood. They were lined up neatly – as per the Prince's request – in rows. Not out of any sense of respect for the dead, but because it was easier to search and dispose of their bodies this way.

    Roland didn't bother to watch as the kine corpses were dealt with, he knew his men and women would be thorough both in searching for potentially important pieces of evidence and in leaving no trace of the presence here behind.

    His focus was instead on the only two Toreador in the room. Neither one looking at the other. Roland frowned.

    “Put the two of them in a car and take them back to the Shard.”

    His words were all the excuse Dylan needed to shove past the hands grasping him. He grabbed a fistful of blonde hair and yanked, dragging a stumbling Gabriel towards the warehouse door. A decidedly less enthusiastic Venture stepped forward, gesturing for Sansa to accompany him.

  7. #27
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    Sansa didn't move right away, and gasped as though she'd been splashed with ice water when the Kindred touched her arm to guide her. She stumbled forward, her ponytail bedraggled and her eyes reddened. Someone had given her a handkerchief, and she clutched to it, dabbing her face to attempt to clean up the mess she'd made by crying.

    In the car, however, she found it difficult to keep her cool. HE was there, his nearness practically maddening. Sansa reached out hesitantly, and touched the sleeve of his shirt. Real. She pulled her hand back almost immediately, a touch of Celerity used in her emotional panic. "I don't understand. You were dead. I saw you die. And you... look..."

    She grasped her temples, squeezing her eyes shut. Conflicting images raced through her mind. Gabe, brown haired and eyed, laughing with her in the kitchen. Blond and blue eyed, listening to her play the violin. Brown hair, raving and stalking back and forth in one of his fits. Blond hair, walking on the beach in the moonlight listening for heartbeats. Two faces flipped back and forth in her imagination, the changes coming faster and faster until it was just a blur.

    Too much, child.

    The images stopped, though she could hear laughter in her head. It sounded like Rod, laughing at her. The car jerked forward, and she slowly released her head, smoothing her palms over her hair and releasing it from the elastic to let it fall freely. Sansa stared at the other occupant's knee, but didn't look up at his face.

  8. #28
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    In the front of the car, Dylan grunted. Even in my own time as Prince, the big Gangrel had been a man of few words, yet I understood plainly the derision and disgust he meant to express in that single, rough sound. His eyes met mine in the rear-view mirror and the wrinkles on his brow deepened. Once, I would have cautioned that the Kindred who earned the ire of the Scourge was a fool with a clear desire for Final Death – but if I have learned anything in these past years, it is that there are fates worse than Final Death.

    I turn my head a fraction, enough to see Sansa staring at the space between us. It is the closest that we have been to one another in years, and yet I have never felt so far from her.

    “Sansa,” I begin, and almost flinch; my voice sounds too loud in the confines of the car.
    Last edited by Gabriel Rodermark; Jun 29th, 2016 at 12:39:15 PM.

  9. #29
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    Her hands tightened at the sound of her name in his voice, but she didn't look up. Something was wrong, and if she looked at him - it was right but not right. "Gabriel," she replied, overly calm after the emotional turmoil of the last few minutes. "How are you here?"

  10. #30
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    Pathetic as it is, I didn't want her to look at me. I was a mess, a far-cry from the well-kempt Prince that Sansa had first met so many years ago. There was a grubby mixture of dirt and blood under my nails and ground into my skin, and the vanity of my grand-sires made my blood burn with embarrassment. A ridiculous notion, but blood is blood and I could no more deny the compulsion it carries than I could live without it.

    What was I supposed to say to her? There was the practical answer, the explanation that told her how I had come to be inside the warehouse-turned-gunfight. That wasn't the question she was asking, of course, though it was the one I wanted to answer.

    "I came in one of the containers... from Prague. It was the only way to get back into the city. Back.. to you."

  11. #31
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    There were tears filling her eyes, blood starting to pool on her lower lids, and she felt confused and happy at the same time. Sansa looked up finally, looked at him, and her eyes overflowed, trickling down her cheeks in two bloody tears. "I don't understand. You're... you were dead... a week ago. I saw you, in our kitchen.

    "You look different." He looked a mess, and part of her was turned off by how filthy he was, but the confusion was beginning to ramp up again. Sansa closed her eyes again, another tear escaping, and wiped at her cheeks to keep the blood from falling on her dress.

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    There was another low growl in the front-seat of the car. Dylan, like a dog, had sensed the rising emotion and was reacting in kind. This wasn't the reunion I had hoped for, chaperoned by the Scourge, but in my heart I knew that even if we had been truly alone, I would not have felt any less disgraced. I could feel Sansa's disgust; it made me want to bathe in bleach, to scrub away the dirt and the years and go back to what I had once been. Worse than that, though, were the tears. I squeezed the armrest in the car door beside me. I couldn't look at her. The guilt of what I had done to her – what I had made her – felt heavier than ever before.

    “I've.. been in Europe.. for years, Sansa. Thaddeus sent me away.. after I escaped from the Tower.”

  13. #33
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    The Scourge was like a dark cloud pressing in against her, and the whispers told her a number of inventively insulting things to say to him, but Gabriel's voice cut through them and demanded her attention. The car jostled them as it turned down another street, and Sansa shook her head. "No, you rescued me from the Tower. We've been together, all this time."

    She forced herself to look at him, to really look at him, a spike of anger at his lies bubbling up through the confusion. "Why do you have two faces?" A part of her knew why, and her face twisted in a grimace of betrayal. "Are you really Gabriel?"

  14. #34
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    Two faces... my lips shaped the word, but no sound came. I had to look at her now, to search her expression for any trace of where all of this was coming from. Once, I could have mapped her face like the stars, her freckles constellations that I had gazed at for countless nights. Now, she was like a stranger to me - and I to her.

    “Of course I am Gabriel. What - Sansa.. what's happened?”

    Without thinking, without meaning to, I was reaching out for her hand.

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    "You had brown hair," she said, her mouth twisted as she tried to give words to the turmoil inside of her. "But you don't have brown hair." His hand moved toward hers, and she unconsciously reached for him, completing the connection without thought. Sansa remembered once, long ago, when she had thought he had cold hands. When he'd listened to her play her violin for the first time, embarrassing her with his undivided attention.

    Now their hands were equally cold. "It wasn't you, was it." Five years. Five years. She was going to lose it again. Deep breaths, child. The Scourge in the front seat snorted derisively, and Sansa's eyes flicked to him, focusing that terrible feeling of betrayal and violation in the pit of her stomach against an enemy.

    He could tear her to pieces without a thought, and the Scourge looked over his shoulder at her, perhaps sensing her focus. Sansa tensed, like a coiled spring, her hand tightening on Gabriel's.

  16. #36
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    A sound came from Dylan, something close to a sneer. Whatever empathy and humanity had once been in the old man had long since withered and faded away. Perhaps making him the Scourge had sped up the process, indulging his anger towards everyone and everything, but I suspected that he would have been a remorseless bastard regardless.

    Sansa squeezed my hand. A shiver of sickening elation passed through me. Was it merely fear, or did she want to be close to me – did she need me? We had been apart longer than we had been together but the blood-bond between us could never truly fade. Such was the paradoxical blessing and curse of our blood.

    “Where have you been, all of this time?”

    My own confusion was plainly written into my features now. Had Roland not kept watch over her?

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    His voice brought her back from the brink, from the edge of haphazardly leaping at the Scourge and letting him take her down into her Final Death, and Sansa realized she was gripping Gabriel's hand. She released him abruptly, as if she'd been burned, and huddled back into her seat, leaning against the door.

    "I've been here," she said at last, remembering he'd asked a question. "In London. Gabe insisted we keep to ourselves." She used the name without thought. What else could she call him, the man with whom she'd shared a life for so many years? Sansa's face twisted up again. "He lied. Or you're lying." She looked up at the other Gabriel, intensity gleaming from her blue eyes, but as soon as she traced his features she knew he was not lying. A sick feeling settled into her stomach, and she looked away, unable to bear it.

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    “Calm down back there,” Dylan growled, in a voice that said he wanted us to do anything but. I had no time or mind for his threats, however.

    'Gabe insisted.' Her words twisted in me like a blade. Who would lie to her like that? Who would or could mangle her perception so completely? Who would want to?

    I had enemies within and without of the Camarilla. People who wanted to see my head mounted on a pike, dozens of them. But if they had gotten to Sansa as a way of getting to me – it had been a long game and one with little in the way of rewards. No, this was the work of someone who wanted her and saw this as the only way to get to her. Someone with a fractured mind. Someone...

    It came to me like a bolt from the blue.

    “...Jude?”

  19. #39
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    "Who the hell is Jude?" The car stopped, and Sansa looked out the window at Shard London Bridge. A Ventrue appeared and opened her door, and she escaped the car like she'd been suffocating to death inside it. The cool summer night air filled her lungs as she drew breath to speak, but she fell silent.

    What was going to happen now? If Gabriel was only just now back, then he would be facing punishment for what had happened in Mexico. The punishment that she and Gabe/whoever had been hiding from all this time. Roland had been his friend, or at least his ally, but what would the Prince of London do now that the former Prince had emerged?

    Sansa looked down the sidewalk, to freedom. Was she just to become another pawn in a ridiculous Kindred power play, as Gabe had warned her so many times? We stay hidden, or they'll just use us for their own ends. And were Ewan and Liam Dunsirn any different?

  20. #40
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    We were shepherded out of the car without a word. Truth be told, I had no words to offer. I'm not a violent man, no matter what rumours you may have heard. In that moment, however, I could think of nothing more I would to do than tear the eye teeth out of one very specific Cainite's thick skull. I had nothing other than my instinct telling me that Jude was behind this, but I would have bet my life on it.

    A hand was pushing me towards a glass doorway – the smell of Dylan strong and offensively close - but my steps faltered for an instant at the sight of the Shard. A new feature on the London skyline, built since my exile from the British isles. It was everything a Ventrue could want in a base of operations: sharp, polished and tall enough that it's occupants would be able to see just about anything in the City of London. Had it's construction been commissioned by Roland himself? If so, I had dramatically underestimated his arrogance.

    The hand guiding me became more insistent, trying to take hold of my upper-arm. I shrugged it off, frowning at the nameless lackey attempting to man-handle me.

    “Where are you taking us?” I looked between him and Sansa.

    “Somewhere safe. Prince's orders.”

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