Settle

Mom arrived, 4:00 am, yesterday morning, bearing gifts, presents, gadgets. Bought us new toys.

It's a happy day and a rainy day and can I say?
Mornings without sleep make me wacky. Ducky. Crazy.
cr. az. y.

Blood Drawn Notes

Discalimer: Alan Moore, 20th Century Fox
Notes: It's a snippet, a ficlet on Mina Harker and Tom Sawyer because-- because she won't get out of my head and because he is a persistent bugger even if I don't like him. Really unbeta'd as my snippets usually are.

Fool boy. She told him to leave, he was stubborn and arrogant.

Pride before the fall.

And he had fallen, poor tinker tailor soldier boy.

There was blood on her hands red, shining from the firelight.

Fool boy and his fool smile. Agent Tom Sawyer. He came to her, his hair combed, a proper suit to visit, and an invition to dinner. Her lips were pursed, and her jaw clenched forcing down the urge to feed, turning a deaf ear to his pulse.

She declined the invitation with brittle words and urged him to return to the colony.

"America is no longer a colony," he said cheekily. His guns swayed unsteady in their holster.

"So it isn't. Is there anything more, Mr. Sawyer?" Sharp, severe but it doesnt harm him. Her words do not hurt him, but she can.

"Just the pleasure of your company this evening."

"Dinner, knowing what I am?"

"Yes." He said with certainty and smugness.

"Knowing what I feed on?"

Sawyer was silent for a moment. "Yes. Blood but not all the time, food most of the time."

"Yes, not blood all the time." Mina conceded.

"Like in Nautilus."

She wanted to hurt him but kept the urge in her. "You are a fool. Did you never wonder why I gave in the urge to feed on those miscreants?"

Mina can almost read his mind, he is predictable that way, Sawyer thinks it's Dorian, thinks its her anger but she lets the silence stretch on until his eyes light with new knowledge.

Men atop roofs with pistols and rifles, and she, a demon of the night tearing through them. Not out of anger but because of the memory of Nautilus' luxurious but claustrophobic quarters; the scent of blood and the rushing sound of hearts beating in time. It took everything in Mina not to stalk down the halls, enter Nemo's abode and tear his throat in front of his goddess Kali and become for him, Kali incarnate, goddess of destruction.

Mina waited for that realization, then. "Good day, Mr. Sawyer."

The door shut, tightly against the outside world and she returned to her studies foregoing food, both liquid and solid.


When the moon finally rose, bathing the streets with a sickly pale light Mina could no longer resist the call. She rose, planning to slip away from prying eyes of her neighbors through the back alleys to the vermin, the live stock, a petty criminal--

but not. Sawyer. "Evening, ma'am."

Mina gravely underestimated his persistence. Sawyer returned, persistent and boyish as ever. His scent and ruddy face hit her senses too fast and she was... overwhelmed.

It was a battle for control, one she was woefully ill-equipped to handle.

Allan Quartermaine treated him as his own child. Allan Quartermaine who was dead and buried, whom she adored when she was but a child, and was severely disappointed in, expecting to meet a hero but met, instead a condescending old man.

She was falling, Mina thought, detached.

"Mrs. Harker? Mina?" He caught her, by the elbows. She saw the skin young and supple and just beneath, blood.

Mina pulled away. "What are you doing here, sir?"

"My dinner inviation still stands." He drawls in his odd accent.

Dinner. "Really?" Dry voiced but beneath, sub-vocalized her heedy desire to feed.

"I should call a doctor--" Sawyer frowned.

"You will do no such thing!" She said through clenched teeth. "You will, however leave, Mr. Sawyer. This instant."

"But you're not well."

"Of course I'm not! I can take care of myself, or have you forgotten what I am?"

"I haven't. I don't fear you."

That provoked a laugh, "You boy, you silly boy. Just because you've seen does not mean you comprehend." She moved away from the door, pulled into herself, inside to the laboratory equipment, he followed the door closing behind him. "What I am is worse than your imaginings."

"I'm not afraid." Of course he was not, that was why his hand had slipped a little to where his guns lay. Of course he's not afraid. "I can handle anything."

The arrogance, the ill-concieved notion of his own standing, and her own hunger. It was never the best of combinations. Mina meant only to scare Sawyer but what she means and what she desires can never meet half way and she was suddenly before him, in all her terrific, terrible glory. A legacy forced on her by that beast. He blinked, stepping back in this state she felt his blood rise, heard his heart beat faster and scented his growing fear despite himself. A heady combination more intoxicating than alcohol.

"Not afraid of anything, Mr. Sawyer." She mocked, low-voiced a mix between a purr and roar. "More fool, you."

And the coppery taste of blood filled her mouth, lifted her from what she was and the hunger... she could not stop. Fool boy, poor boy. The more he struggled the harder she bit him, the more blood flowed. She warned him, foolish boy.

Candle light flickered, blood on her hands, on her mouth everywhere staining his white shirt.

Sawyer deserved it.

No!

He was a boy, only a boy, a friend, if an annoyance. She must stop... but she was so hungry. Your own fault, m'dear. Whose voice was that? Her own or someone elses.

You are a good woman, Mrs. Harker.

The struggling stopped, his heart would stop beating soon--

No!

She snarled, pushed Sawyer away tearing flesh as she did. He dropped on the floor, a used puppet.

Mina fled, catching on the palm of her hands the crucifix, she placed on the table earlier. She clutched it and felt it hiss and burn on her skin, she held on braving pain until the monster within her fled in fear and the cross no longer burned. A sob fell in her throat, to her lungs but she fought against it with fierce control.
She breathed in, slowly finding her center. Sawyer's prone body lay on the floor, blood trickling slowly from his wound.

Mina stood mesmerized until she felt the sting of the crucifix once more. That would not do. Methodical and sure she went to Sawyer, the crucifix still in her hand, slightly searing but not as painful, tore her skirt and wrapped it around his mangled throat she tied it tight, stopping the blood flow. She refused to acknowledge to blood. Again the cross burned but she continued her work until she was sure he would not die of blood loss.

Assured, Mina rushed away from him, into the night as she planned and fed, disgustingly on vermin. The thirst must be satisfied. Food of the other kind will follow shortly.




Tom Sawyer awoke with a splendid headache, his throat, parched and hurting. Funnily the expected taste of dead creatures did not come. If it was not a hangover why was he feeling so woozy? And he was on a floor?

"I see you are awake." The voice slid out from the flickering candle light.

Tom jerked up, the events of the night suddenly startingly clear. Her teeth, jagged, painful. His futile attempts and finally darkness. "Am I--"

"Dead? Hardly, Mr. Sawyer," Mina's voice was so reserved, so cool it was hard to reconcile her with... with that creature. Mina's face floated above him, the same stern visage but not, thankfully the monstrous ruby eyes of that creature. He reached and touched a bandage around his neck, he winced at the pain.

"It will hurt for a while," paper was pressed to his palm. "Instructions on how to mend that wound."

"Did you," it was hard to speak with a dry mouth and painful throat, "did you make me into... into you?"

Her shoulders squared. "I am not a monster enough to do so."

"Because you can't?"

"Because I won't."

He doesn't know what to make of that, he suddenly yearned for America where things were less complicated, less scary.

"Don't you have to leave for America?"

He clambered to his feet, could she read his mind?

She only raised her eyebrows at his behavior as if he was a silly child under her tutelage. And he was. Mina taught him a lesson, a lesson he would take to his dying day.

"I presume you will no longer bother me? Since you are on your way to the colony."

"America is no longer a colony." He answered, automatic but without humor.

"It would seem so."

It was bizarre. They were reenacting the scene much earlier, in the day. His head ached and his throat hurt.

"My, it's getting late in the hour, you must leave, lest the neighbors think me a woman of ill repute." Mina said, prim as a Victorian lady, without irony. As if she had not attacked him. Her too bright eyes focused on him.

"I must leave." Tom said, playing along, the gentleman until he looked down at his soiled coat and shirt at a loss.

Somewhere between his sleeping and waking Mina had changed clothes.

Mina accompanied him to the door, "There is a backway, a carriage waits for you."

Sawyer nodded. "Thank you, ma'am. Mrs. Harker."

"Murray." Off his startled look. "My maiden name."

"Ms. Murray."

Then for the first time that night, her stern visage melted slightly and reached for him, Sawyer jerked back away from her hand. Her hand stilled in the air, it hung there before it fell to her sides; he saw the burned scar on her palm in form of a cross. He was sure she did not have it earlier.

"You've learned your lesson." She said with both approval and sadness.

"I learn, eventually."

"You are a good lad, stay out of trouble." Kind words, a parting and consolation.

"Yes, ma'am." And he turned away, moving forward, not looking back. Tom thought of his semi-packed bags and his voyage to America. He would leave much earlier than expected. He did not look up but he knew a lady was peering from the window above, silent without approval or remorse, watching. Tom shivered and he was sure it had nothing to do with the warm summer air.

Tom Sawyer was stubborn, foolish but he learns, eventually. He just needed good teachers.