milliways_bar | (no subject)

"I believe she does it on purpose."

Kate winces sympathetically.

"Hello, Miss Rae."

"Hey there, Kate," Rae replies, with a tired smile, reaching to scratch the edge of the bandage where it's itching. "I suppose it's a blessing and a curse. It puts more time between me and sleep, yeah, but sleeping here will allow me extra hours to sleep before I have to go to work. Which is... about three hours from now, my-world-time."

"Sounds like maybe she's tryin' t'ensure you get a full night's sleep. Can't argue that."

Her eyes fall to that bandage. She frowns, blue eyes flicking up to catch Rae's.

"You run into trouble recently?"

"Oh, just adding to my collection of miscellaneous scars," she says, dryly. Her tone suggests that there'd normally be a shrug to accompany the words, but that'd hurt. So there is no shrug.

"Just a scrape, really." Made by teeth, yes, but still just a scrape.

Her lips pull into a wry line.

"I wish I could say somethin' without soundin' like a hypocrite. Soon you an' I will be able t'play connect the dots between the two of us."

She gestures to the seat next to her, before adding:

"Unless y'need t'get to bed?"

"Probably," she says, wry, looking down at her shoulders and upper chest, exposed by her camisole pajama-top but clothed in various long-healed scrapes and lines, and fresher bruises. The only scars that aren't miscellaneous scrapes and bites and slashes are the thin, necklace-chain burn scar looped loosely around her neck, and the sickle-shaped knife scar below her collar bone on the left side.

"I can stay a little while, I suppose, now that getting as much sleep as possible before my alarm goes off isn't an issue," she says, taking a seat next to Kate at the bar. "Could I get a cup of chamomile tea, Bar? I don't need anything to keep me up."

The fragrant cup of hot tea appears before her, but is accompanied by a surprise jar of peaches. "What's this?" Sunshine asks, looking it over.

Kate knows better than to stare, but she takes in every marking with a quick sweep of her eyes. It's hard not to react with the knot forming in her belly, but the only change to her face is the quick flinch of a line between her brows.

She swallows.

The jar of peaches provides a welcome change of topic. She smiles shyly.

"Those are my blue-ribbon spiced peaches. I spent the day in the kitchen yesterday, an' I know y'like sweets, so I thought I'd gift you a jar."

Rae is frequently attacked by very ferocious dough, yes.

"Oh! Thank you!" Sunshine beams at her. "I was so disappointed I'd missed out on snagging a jar for myself at the shindig, but now I'll get to try them. It'll be an excuse to make pancakes tomorrow."

Because buttermilk pancakes, spiced peaches, and homemade whipped cream? That'd be a yes. Yes, please.

Kate has actually seen ferocious man-eating dough in action, so she might even believe that.

"You're more'n welcome. I don't get a chance t'make 'em as much as I used to, so it gave me a welcome excuse."

Buttermilk pancakes were made for Kate's peaches. She takes on that dreamy expression one gets when they find themselves suddenly and inexplicably hungry.

"I'm gonna venture t'say you didn't get that bruise in the kitchen, did you?"

"Well, they'll be enjoyed and savored, most definitely," Rae replies.

But her tone takes on a bit of wryness as she answers Kate's question. "No, not in the kitchen, or my bakery, or really anywhere day-job related. The bruise looks bad, but it's just colorful, like the rest of me. It'll heal."

The bite hidden by the bandage will, also, but it'll take a bit longer.

"So you still have the — 'night job'?"

She never got all the details. It didn't seem worth it, when what she really wanted to do was give Rae a shoulder to lean on and a safe place to be.

"Ohh yeah," she says, deflating a little. "It's not a... short-term thing."

"Until human-ranching and vampirocracy is no longer in the cards for the world's future, or I bite the dust. Whichever happens first."

Kate picks up the bourbon at her elbow.

"Then you're stuck doin' it forever? Isn't there anybody else?"

"There's SOF, Special Other Forces, that police the non-humans, but they're the ones who asked me to help. They're overwhelmed and outnumbered as it is," she says, despondently. Her mood isn't helped by the way the bandage keeps itching, but the chamomile tea is good.

"I'm hoping that, if I can make enough of an impact on how things are... that SOF'll be able to take over, eventually, and be able to handle it, without needing me."

She nods, a chill running down her spine.

"I dunno if there's anythin' I could ever do t'help, but I'm not embarrassed t'say I'm a crack shot, an' I don't flinch too easy."

She half-shrugs, lips pulling into a wry smirk.

"If it ever comes up y'need some help."

Beat.

"An' I'm not too bad in the kitchen, either."

"I don't think that anyone's ever tried to shoot a vampire with a gun, before, at least not that I've heard," she says, smiling slightly over her cup of tea. "The only things that'll really penetrate are certain types of wood or wrought iron. Up close and... personal."

And really messy.

"I'd take being handy in the kitchen over being handy at fighting vampires any day or night of the week."

"Then there's no, ah, 'silver bullets' in your world?"

She knows things are different, world to world. And she knows wooden stakes are something else that work in the stories, though she pales at the thought of being that close to something that vicious.

"At least y'still have your bakin'. I guess it doesn't make the rest of it any easier, but it's — relaxin', bein' in the kitchen sometimes."

"Silver bullets are for rogue weres," Rae replies. "But most weres are just regular people the other twenty-seven days of the month, trying to live their lives. It's only when they go rogue and decide to start attacking other people that they become a problem."

It was a much bigger problem during the Wars than it is now, but the prejudice is still there.

"Baking is... an escape. Ingredients behave like they're supposed to, they don't ask questions and aren't dangerous. And it's away from everything, private. Quiet. Making something good, instead of..."

Instead of doing things that bring nightmares with them.

Yeah. More tea.

"Gracious. So they jus' blend right in with everyone else, until ... ?"

Until.

The shivers come back.

What Rae has to say about baking strikes home, in a much warmer, safer way. Kate finds herself nodding along — it's amazing how you know when you combine certain things in just the right amounts you're going to make something comforting and wonderful. Something good.

As Rae trails off, Kate knocks back the rest of her bourbon and takes the cue to change the subject.

"Y'know what? Never mind that. Tell me what wonderful new things you've been makin'. It's been far too long since I've tried somma your sinful treats."

"Weres are just people with an unfortunate circumstance that's no fault of their own, Kate," Rae says, seeing the woman shiver. "Ninety-nine percent of them just want to be left to live their lives, same as anyone else. Yeah, they want to 'blend.' They want to get a job, have a home, raise a family, but there's a bunch of prejudice against them, because of those three days of the month that they can't do anything about - and the government has helpfully outlawed the drugs that'll hold back the change - because of those that went bad during the Wars, and simple xenophobia. But they're just like anyone else, trying to live their lives, and if you show kindness to them while they're changed, they'll remember it the other twenty-seven days of the month."

It's important to her - too many of her friends are part-blood Others or weres. That automatic fear will never not bother her.

"I haven't been experimenting, lately," she adds, sipping her tea. "There's just not been... the peace of mind I need, lately, to feel like messing with stuff."

A deep line forms between her brows as she listens along. It's awful, and unfair. And Kate doesn't understand most of it, but she doesn't have to. Prejudice, the blind eye of the government; these are things she does understand.

"If that's the case, then — I'm sorry, I assumed y'fight t'kill. With the wood, an' wrought iron ... Or, did y'only mean y'fight the 'Rogues'?"

Rae frowns down at her tea. That's the kind of thinking, lumping all the Others in together, that led to the Wars. "I fight vampires."

No, 'fight' isn't the right word.

She kills them. With her hands, and her sun.

"Not weres."

She nods slowly.

"Beggin' your pardon. I never wanna ask too much, as it seems t'weigh heavy on you, but I ain't real familiar with who it is that leaves you — "

She's gesturing to Rae's scars before she can stop herself, and flushing the instant she does.

"I didn't know there was a difference. But, I — I think I understand now."

"Weres just... transform, at the full moon," she says psuedo-idly, with a half-shrug of her uninjured side, as though she were somehow comfortable talking about this. But Kate deserves some explanation. "Vampire kill people, and drink their blood."

"Rather, vice-versa. They drink their victims until death, and either leave them for someone to find, in which case the victim's body is immediately cremated and the ashes sterilized before being handed over to the next of kin, or they... turn them. Into a new vampire."

"They were the primary foes in the Voodoo Wars, which we only won on paper, skegging our future in the process. The daylit world, of humans and non-rogue Others, supposedly has only a century left before the vampires are running the show. That's what I'm out there to change."

She listens with one hand over her mouth. Milliways has dulled her to a number of shocks that would otherwise send her reeling; she knows vampires, mutants, superheros, and the like from different worlds, all unique, never one formula. But Rae's words are still disturbing; the imagery, the time limit, horrifying.

She nods numbly, dropping her arm back to her side. All she has to do is look at the Bar and the Miss refills her glass.

"Jesus, Miss Rae. I'm sorry. I can't even imagine — "

Nothing Kate's seen comes close to that. Nothing she's fought. Nothing she's killed.

"All I can say is I'm sorry. In my world, I've seen prejudice hang innocent men. I've seen bad men rise t'power. An' the whole world's afraid. I dunno what I could do, if I could do anythin' at all — but if y'need someone..."

'Maybe you'll end up saving some other girl's Sam.'

"I'm here t'listen anyhow."

"Thank you, Kate," she says, looking down at her tea.

There's only a slim chance that there could be someone less suited emotionally to vampire slaying. When she killed her first vampire, she hadn't drawn blood in anger since the seventh-grade playground wars of recess. She didn't eat meat because chopped-up pieces of creatures that had died in fear and pain could not be appetizing to her. When her apartment had mice? She set out catch-em-alive traps, and drove the captives far out into the country before letting them go. She didn't even kill spiders.

And she's taken on the task of saving the world through the violence of blood and fire. Because there isn't anyone else. Her SOFs, those who're supposed to keep on top of things for the sake of the human world, came to her for help, practically begging it of her. Begging her to help save the world.

And, however much she hates herself as a coward, every time the urge to run away to Milliways and stay there rather than go back and face the assurance of further bloodshed, she couldn't say no. It's her world, and it needs saving. There has to be someone to do the difficult things.

Quietly, and with unassuming lightness, Kate reaches over and touches Rae's arm. The gesture, along with the expression on her face, hopefully conveys not only her support and reassurance, but comfort and affection as well.

"We don't hafta talk of such things tonight."

Her Southern drawl is further softened into a near whisper. She smiles wanly.

"I shouldn't plague y'with questions when you're tired anyhow. Surely there must be happier things for us now, an' we'll leave off the rest for another time."

Happier?

Maybe. She'll try. "Things are... quieter, back home? Fewer people are going missing in my city; it's enough that Pat mentioned it to me, so I can see some of the difference I'm helping make."

Though that doesn't stop her from seeing the faces of the captives she wasn't able to save, when she dreams.

"This tonight was a surprise," she says, eyeing the bandage on her arm. "Con and I weren't looking for anyone, but there was a pack of five, and one of them got past both of us for a split second."

"That's certainly somethin'. Seein' that things are improvin', even if it's small things at first."

She takes a slow draw off her bourbon, following Rae's eyes to the bandage on her arm.

"Con — that's a friend of yours, or someone with the SOF?"

Friend?

Lover?

"He's my ally." And maybe she'll leave it at that. "But he's not with SOF."

Kate isn't about to pry.

She nods, smiling softly.

"Allies are a good thing t'have around. An' how does he feel about bakin'?"

"I... haven't really asked him," she answers. "Though 'ambiguous' is a word that springs to mind."

He doesn't exactly eat... food.

"I find it hard t'believe anyone who knows you can be ambiguous about bakin'. But I only ask 'cuz I know it's somethin' you enjoy."

Beat.

"I don't s'pose next time I'm in the kitchens y'could show me your recipe for buttermilk pancakes?"

"Well, he's not exactly... he's not tried my baking."

Awkward.

"Definitely. I may try and use it as a bribe to get you to tell me the secret of your spiced peaches," Rae smiles.

She chuckles.

"Among cooks, secrets are only shared in the kitchen."

Beat.

"An' only on a bribe by bribe basis."

"I think that's practically a universal law," Rae smiles, wryly. "Must be written down somewhere."

"An' signed in strawberry preserves. I take my peaches very seriously."

She's teasing.

Probably.

"Anyone who's serious about cooking is serious about the quality of their ingredients and keeping their recipe secrets," Rae grins. "Unless being used as a bribe to get others to give up their secrets."

She's laughing in earnest now.

"Y'know, I also make biscuits that are t'die for; I don't reckon that'd be worth a li'l insight into your death by chocolate?"

"We'll see, we'll see," Rae replies, smirking. "Next time I'm in the kitchen, I'll keep an eye out for you."

Her eyes sparkle.

"Deal."