[CBE-177/"Anna"]

There was a word that Americans used that had described Anna lately. The word was, "stalker", and it described her behavior towards Alistair Lane over the past few weeks. She had thought, when she had leaped through his window and escaped, that she would leave behind all thought of him, but no amount of pounding the pavement could put her thoughts of him behind.

It didn't help that meeting him had put into sharp contrast something that had been gnawing at the back of her mind since she'd woken up in her casket. Perhaps some of it was loneliness, but most of it was, quite frankly, that it had been too long since she'd been with a man, and he had proved to be the sort of man of which fantasies are made. She had always preferred tall men and dark-haired ones, and they had had, in a strange sort of way, a moment whose implications she still struggled to put into words.

Sometimes she felt foolish when she considered all this. You have become infatuated, like an airheaded schoolgirl. No doubt fear of looking foolish kept her from trying to find him openly. How silly would she look if he learned she was pining after him, as if she had a child's crush? She had learned long ago that men did not notice such things. Or, if they did, it was only long enough to use you for what all men wanted, then to discard you when they grew bored. Those were her thoughts- yet Alistair Lane remained in them.

So it was really only natural that she became a stalker. She had a picture of his license plate, and a few questions to Jack got her a phone number from that Jack seemed amused by the whole affair, which Anna steadfastly ignored. It was beneath her dignity to notice such things.

Alistair's schedule was orderly and regular. If he had been an assassination target she would have been able to end him without breaking a sweat. He rarely covered his windows and from the trees near his house she could see his bedroom, bathroom, and kitchen. When he rose from the table to put his plate in the sink she would drop from the tree and run around the house to hide beneath his porch, where she could watch him get into his car and drive away. She always wondered, hoped and didn't hope, that just once he would glance back and see her. He never did. When his car drove off, that was the last she would see of him for the day. Sometimes she would make it back in time to watch him in the afternoon, but more often not. Once he was gone she would sometimes sit beneath his porch for a long while, thinking. Imagining.

But in the end she would always remember it was useless and would get up and return home. For her, in the end, there could be no joyful conclusion. No voice, knowing almost nothing of the feminine arts, an insatiable lust for blood- these things had set her course long ago. She could watch, and that was all.

It would have to be enough. She only hoped-

-only hoped that he would find a way to be happy, somehow. With someone. Someone who could whisper to him that he was not a monster. Someone who could make a real home with him, not the strange whatever-it-was that had sprung up around her. However much she might want him, she knew, in the end, that it could be only fantasy.

This was the general pattern of her thoughts when she suddenly found herself in a gunfight.

It wasn't her fault. Jack had texted her and asked her to deliver a package from point A to point B, and point B was in the part of town where young man walked with their pants hanging low and weighted down with firearms. She certainly stuck out like a sore thumb. Jack had decreed that she was not to take an uber closer than a certain distance from point A or point B, which meant that she had to walk in and out at both ends of the delivery. She endured a few catcalls, keeping her head low and walking neither too slow or too fast, ignoring the voices when they came. It was only a game to most of them. She wore her combat boots, jeans, and what they called here a hoodie.

She rounded a corner and heard the sound of shouting. A man and a woman were yelling across an open doorway, a sure sign of a domestic argument spilling out onto the street.

"Did you do it? DID YOU?"

"That b*tch is a liar!"

"You f***ing wh*re!"

The man had the woman by the upper arm. He swung, there was a smack, and the woman screamed. They were on the same side of the street as 177. It was only a step or two out of her way to walk up to them, swing her arm, and cut the man along the face with her claws. He screamed and dropped the woman's arm, clutching at his eye. The woman gave 177 a quick glance and then ran, vanishing down the street.

"What's going on? What's going on?" A young man came from around the corner. The man she'd clawed was still screaming but managed to point at 177.

In retrospect, there had probably been no violent intention when the second man came around the corner. The gun he was holding looked new; perhaps he had simply been showing off a recent acquisition. And he didn't have it raised and wasn't brandishing it in any way; he was just holding it. But what was she supposed to do? He had a gun.

So she pulled her own pistol and shot him. Twice.

(Okay, so maybe the gunfight was sort of her fault.)

What happened after that was confusing. As far as she could determine, someone decided that the best response to shots fired was to open an upstairs window, yell, "I WARNED YOU BOYS ONCE ALREADY", and to begin firing at random at everyone on the street. A bullet struck her in the shoulder, making her stumble. Someone ran from around the corner, saw the man she'd shot, yelled, "Johnny! They got Johnny!" and also began firing at random at everyone on the street. Someone threw a rock, and a window shattered. And all this time the man she'd clawed was screaming, pointing at her and clutching his other hand to his eye.

She was struck in the shoulder, in the thigh, and a third bullet buried itself in her side, just below her rib cage. She howled silently in pain and ran. But her leg was growing numb; it was unsteady, and it was bleeding far too fast. Not good. she tore a strip of cloth off of her hoodie, tightened it around the wound, and kept running. She saw stars. Oh no. Not good at all.

There was a dumpster behind a row of apartment buildings. No other place to hide. She jumped in. Pulled put her phone, took a pin of her location (Jack had showed her how to do that) and pulled up the messaging app.

Shot
Please help
Anna

There were only three contacts in Anna's phone. Her contact list looked like this:

Alistair
Coryelle
Jack

She meant to click Cory's name, but her thumb accidentally clicked Alistair, and she let her phone drop from her hands without noticing the difference.

Alistair Lane

[Deleted]

[attr="class","ohlove"]

[attr="class","lacking"]

[attr="class","eyes"]
✎ tag: CBE-177/"Anna"

※ wearing: N/A
✉ notes: Not so quiet. Not so gentle. (There, now we've both written novel entrances to catch up on how they've been the past few weeks ;D)

both were silent.

the air in my lungs, my hands on the keys.

Today had been the first day that he'd nearly convinced himself, if not for just a brief moment, that everything was back to normal. He knew it would take time, that it would eventually die down and he would find comfort and ease within the routine he so vehemently clung to. The damage to the window was quickly repaired and left no trace behind that she had ever been present in his home. Or that they'd ever met. Even her scent was gone. There had been a time or two where he swore that he caught a hint of it in the backyard while tending to his lawn, but brushed the idea away. His mind loved playing its tricks on him.

More than once a student had to call his name twice to catch his attention while he zoned out into some stress-induced daydream. Though his routine remained the same, it had been largely disrupted by a very emotionally-involved and highly unusual event. Alistair just kept telling himself- 'It'll take time. It's just time.' Even if it ended up not being true, the ritual repetition brought its own minor comforts. But today, only today, he got a reprieve. A sense of normalcy. It had been while in the shower with music playing from a speaker near the sink. It was something new he tried this week, which was a rarity all its own, but even rarer that it was something he found he enjoyed.

After spending a couple of hours going over students' sheets of music from Theory II homework, he'd hopped into the shower. On weekdays, they were in the early mornings, but the weekends were spent doing work outside. It only made sense to wash up later. The thought of getting into a bed dirty and sleeping in it until morning made his skin crawl. His playlist consisted of things he'd never heard before; pieces from award-winning film composers that students were currently analyzing and working on studying with the aforementioned music theory. Craig Armstrong was not a composer he'd listened to, and he'd never heard of the movie "Far From the Madding Crowd", but he found himself so entranced by the piece "Hollow in the Ferns" both audibly and on paper from a student that he'd set it on repeat.

Eventually, his head just rested against the tile and he let the hot water cascade over the back of his neck and shoulders with the beauty of the strings and woodwinds gracing the acoustics of his temporary music hall. He dried his hair with a thick towel before wrapping it about his hips, taking a deeper breath than he had in nearly a month, and let it out slowly while searching through an upper drawer for a fresh shirt, boxers, and shorts to sleep in and pulling them on. *Bzzz-Bzzz* His head turned to the nightstand where his phone sat beside a bedside lamp. It was 11:30pm. Who would be sending him anything? Three seconds had passed from the moment he unlocked the screen to him running barefoot out of his room towards his keys.

Alistair was smart enough to not call the police. He'd never thought that kind of sentence would run through his mind, but perspectives changed. The thought of him being exposed frightened him enough, but Anna as well? No. It couldn't be done. Then that begged the question of how on earth to take care of her. Where did he go? Where did he take her? What if it was serious? Never in his life had he sped, but he was most definitely making up for years of it with the records he broke swerving around corners now. The more burning rubber he smelled, the faster he swore his heart was beating. They screeched to a stop nearby, and immediately the conversation and a few sounds could be heard through the alley where she hid.

"Woah woah woah, who the f**k are you? Tryin' to hit us man? Tryin' to bowl us over? Huh?!"

"Where's Anna?"

"Who the f**k is Anna? You gonna answer me?"

"My homeboy asked you a question."

He'd tried to step around them, bare feet quiet against the pavement, but they quickly blocked his way. A shove. A scuffle. The sound of a large weight - a body - being shoved into a hollow, metal object. The Jeep. A clattering of small steel to the concrete. A gunshot. The sounds after were... indiscernible. Popping, tearing, cracking.

"What the f-?!"

"Shit, shit!"

"F*** MAN, RUN!"

"WHAT- GO GO GO!" 

A low rumbling built and rolled up to a thunder before the viscous roar of an enormous beast exploded down the streets nearby and bounced between alley walls. Feet scrambled, a couple more gunshots rang out but were heard bouncing off of hard objects rather than penetrating anything soft. Heavy trotting of something massive in weight gave chase against the ground, shaking it nearby, but stopped rather suddenly. The area settled into a still silence after the loud and violent events... and soon, a large, graceful shadow padded down the edge of the alleyway with its nose to the ground. The wet blood was fresh and warm, easy to trace. Some of the red stuck to the very tip of his nose as he followed it down further, further, until it nudged against her foot. Reflective eyes caught what little light there was, sadly looking down to her and accompanied by a saddened, quiet hum.

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[CBE-177/"Anna"]

Still. Falling. Slipping into a trance. It was a kind of self-defense as her body folded inward, trying to shut down her wounds and heal itself. Her gun began to slip from her hand and she forced herself to set it down instead. She might still need it. She closed her eyes, forced herself to breathe. It would be all right, she told herself. Cory was coming...

(But what if she didn't?)

...and soon things would be all right. Any minute now that motorcycle would come swerving around the corner.

...any minute now...

She wanted to rest, even as she knew it was a luxury she couldn't afford. Because there might be no rescue coming. Because she might have to find the energy to get up and run. Run- to where? She would never step into a hospital. Too many bad memories. Besides, she knew what her body needed to fix this. Blood.

And she knew where to find that. It was in all of the apartments around her. Blood, inside of walking and breathing and living people. The thought of getting up, running on her injured leg and committing murder made her sick. But she would have to, if nobody came.

Stupid thought. Cory would come. Cory wouldn't forget her. Cory...

Time seemed to take forever. She wasn't drifting out of consciousness, exactly, but she was getting distracted. By the pattern of filth on the dumpster. By the flies moving around her face. How much blood had she lost? She was in a delicate balance. If she waited too long to feed, she might not have the strength to make the kill. But if she went too soon, when rescue was moments away, what then? Another kill, another death on her conscience, and to what end? A useless kill. A useless death. Better to lie here a little while longer. Better to...

Something moved in the mouth of the alley. Large. But not human. A dog? She tried to force herself upright. Feed!

The dumpster's smell was overpowering. But the familiar scent caught her nose now. Not a dog. Her... friend. The lion. Ali... her thoughts were slow. The rest of the name drifted out of her mind. The lion's eyes flashed. It nuzzled her.

A burst of strength. She pulled herself upright, teeth bared and hissing. Her gun was left on the ground as she pushed herself at the new creature, prey to her regardless of the size and danger. Some part of her that still knew reason managed to hoist her onto his back. That was all she could manage before the need overcame her. With expert skill she found a vein and her teeth sliced it like razors.

She pressed her mouth around it, eagerly swallowing the blood and holding herself in place on his back.

Alistair Lane

[Deleted]

[attr="class","ohlove"]

[attr="class","lacking"]

[attr="class","eyes"]
✎ tag: CBE-177/"Anna"

※ wearing: N/A
✉ notes: A long journey, but safely home.

both were silent.

the air in my lungs, my hands on the keys.

He was of his right mind; the scent of her blood only bringing concern over any kind of primal hunger. Its metallic tinge was everywhere and made him go searching, prodding his nose to lift her arm and sniff about her chest and stomach, down to her thighs, giving the side of her denim a short press of his tongue. At first when she began to press herself against both the wall and his shoulder, he wanted to push her back to the ground. The thought of leaving her on the cement with the stench of metal drew a red flag to a deeper, more intelligent conscience. They needed to leave. They needed safety. They needed home.

The cat felt the thick fur of his mane tug with each of her pulls to get to her feet. He lowered until he could feel the cold ground touch his belly, legs folding beneath him him, and he curved his neck and head about her waist in an attempt to help her keep her balance and press up against her rear to push her further upwards on his back. Testing the weight distribution, the lion gingerly stood to all fours again and lifted each shoulder and hip once at a time to try and slide her into as centered of a position as he could. His head lifted, looking down the way he came, and he'd only taken a single step before a sharp pinch punctured the back of his neck at the base of his mane.

A surprised and pained mewl left him with a short breath, teeth parting, tensing the moment she bit through the thick flesh and fur. It was quick to subside and, not so bothered with the skin now broken, he had returned to making towards the mouth of the alleyway. A few sniffs around the Jeep instinctively pulled him towards a metallic shine on the gravel near the driver's door.  Keys. Lowering his snout to them, he bit at what he could and then used a few short nips to pull them further into his teeth. The first (and main) issue was getting through the city. It took far longer than his two-legged form would've sat still through... but on four, he carefully and methodically turned his head about each corner before either quietly trotting or making long bounds to another area of cover.

An hour and a half later and he was free to jog as carefully as he could alongside the freeway within a dug-out ditch. He followed the scents he knew: the arboretum on Exit 23, the 24-hour diner on Exit 20, and eventually the lake that sat near his suburb. There were much fewer eyes here, most almost assuredly asleep this late at night with either elderly folk, hard-working middle class, or couples with children that attended school early in the morning. Still, he kept to the backs of the houses and pressed against tall fences where he could until the yard became familiar. His garage had been left open in the rush. Tonight was a night of many firsts. A quick trot around the side of the house had him ducking into the shadows of the inside and with one, solid push of the top of his large head he opened the connecting door to his home.

Now was when the noises began. Worried groaning, panting, the keys dropped somewhere on the wood floor near the kitchen entrance. He was almost too large to fit through the hallway with her occasional arm or leg draping over his sides, but he slowly situated through the door frame of his bedroom to keep her on board Unfortunately the bathroom was far too small... and so he lowered back to his stomach outside of it and turned his head, carefully nipping at the sleeve that he could reach to try and pull her, encouraging her off.

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[CBE-177/"Anna"]

There was a strange relief in collapsing onto the creature's back. It felt warm, safe. She lay there, face buried in his fur, smelling him, almost insensible except to move her mouth to lap up the blood. When the bleeding slowed her teeth slashed again and reopened the wound. It must hurt him. She knew it hurt him, and she did not stop, and he did not stop, and deep inside she felt a profound sense of gratitude at the fact.

Her world was the rocking walk and the scent of fur and the taste of blood. She didn't wonder where Cory was or how the lion had found her. She didn't ask where they were going. She lay, drawing slow breaths, and trusted in the man carrying her.

It was a strange sensation. She was helpless- no, no quite. A little before helpless. But weakened, yes, and with a hard road ahead of her if she had to fight. She had always despised weakness, and, worse, helplessness. Had always pushed herself to the uttermost limits rather than surrender to it. Even at her lowest point in laboratory 1 it had always been known that inattention around CBE-177 could leave with chunk bitten out from your flesh. But she felt no flame of fury, no need to fight back now. She let herself drift, weak and, for the first time, somehow feeling it was all right. Being carried safely, under the protection of someone else. How strange it felt, to let someone else carry you for a while. Something tightly coiled inside her began to relax as the knowledge that she wasn't alone began to penetrate her. Her arms tightened around the lion. Not so much a way of holding on as it was an embrace.

The noises brought her back to herself. She looked up and found herseld in his house again. Of course. Slowly, a bit unsteadily, she pulled herself to her feet, supporting herself against the wall. Blood that was not hers stained her chin and the neck of her shirt and left a cut between the lion's shoulders. He'd given her enough that she was sane and healing- for now.

She looked around. She was in his bedroom, outside the bathroom. The lion was whining, seeming concerned. She managed a weak smile, reaching up to stroke his snout. To reassure.

She stumbled into the bathroom. Competing needs warred within her: food, rest, bandages. But she had enough blood in her now that she could work, even if she felt a little woozy. She needed to rest. Just a few more minutes and she could. She bent down to search beneath his sink for bandages and let out a silent scream as a new shooting pain went through her whole body. Her fingers felt fresh blood at her waistline.

Heedless of modesty she stripped out of her clothes, checking herself for wounds. The thigh, an entrance and an exit wound. The side, another entrance and exit. The shoulder... She hissed in pain as she moved it. She could actually feel the metal inside. She knew enough field medicine to know that removing bullets was often not recommended, but that was for normal humans. With her abilities it was better to remove the metal so that her regeneration would not be hindered. And a fourth wound, one she hadn't noticed before. A pelvic wound, just below the line of her belly button and on her right. No exit wound. Yebat! That was going to hurt.

It did. Pain shot through her abdomen and she hissed and buckled, sliding to the floor. The initial trauma was over; the pain had come. Pain shot through her shoulder. Ebat gavno blyat pizda...

And pain again. Alone on the floor of the bathroom, wracked with pain. Helpless.

Alistair Lane

[Deleted]

[attr="class","ohlove"]

[attr="class","lacking"]

[attr="class","eyes"]
✎ tag: CBE-177/"Anna"

※ wearing: N/A
✉ notes: A long journey, but safely home.

both were silent.

the air in my lungs, my hands on the keys.

The light scratch and pet of his snout had the cries internalizing for a moment, muffled and stuck in his chest with a quieter volume. When she pulled herself into the bathroom, he paced with an incredible amount of visible anxiety. The fur along his spine and the top of his mane spiked upwards. His tail flicked frantically behind him and his breathing came with heavy, verbal chuffing. His eyes would constantly look into the doorway as he passed it, seeing her peer beneath the sink in search for something. In the back of his mind he knew what it was and, even more frustratingly, knew where she could find it. A standard First Aid Kit was underneath a stack of toilet paper rolls and cleaning supplies just beneath the sink pipes.

The cat shook its heavy head, tossing its fur about heavily with an unhappy groan. As if plagued by a bad itch on its nose, he burrowed down harshly into the carpet of the bedroom and pushed himself along it. His head lifted, and he did it again. And again. Finally, the familiar grotesque pops and cracks, the stretches of tendons and muscles, began to shift the lion's form behind the other side of the bed. Groans and grunts began to transition to the moans of a man who then gasped heavily for air. Alistair stood quickly, fumbling into the wall, the bed, trying to gain his balance in the darkness of the room lit only by the bathroom light at the other side. He somewhat fell into his dresser and fitted himself with a plain set of loose shorts before stumbling with just as little grace as he had been to the doorway.

"Anna-," he panted, looking over her momentarily. It didn't matter that she was nude, only that she was bleeding. So much. Everywhere. "Here, here, it's here," He crawled about the floor, pulling the drawers to the sink open further to yank the First Aid out and open the clips after a few attempts with shaking fingers. First thing was first, he took a familiar yellow-wrapped, thin Epipen container to remove the label-less syringe within. After a few deep breaths to steel himself in the moment (it being very clear that had the situation not been dire, this wouldn't have been particularly easy for him), he quickly shoved the needle into the side of his thigh.

Good, that was done. He tossed it quickly across the tile floor elsewhere and started digging out gauze - all of it that he had - and then alcohol wipes, thread, needles, matches (did they need those?), anything and everything. "Where do I start? What do I do? Oh God-," he looked at her again, putting a hand over his mouth and trembling, "Anna, oh God, what happened- what do I do?"

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[CBE-177/"Anna"]

Focus.

Everything was about focus.

If she had learned nothing else in her life, she had learned that. Every person was a set of desires, of needs or wants to do this or that. Rarely were such desires impossible. Instead, failure came from distraction. All sorts of things could distract you. Emotion, sentiment. Modesty.

Pain.

She knew this. Despite that, she felt frustrated at his fumbling, frustrated that he was begging her to tell him what to do. How could you have such formed muscles and be so ignorant? Yet this, too, she knew was a distraction. There would be time for questions later. Taking a breath, she took everything she felt- every distraction- and balled them up, crushing them away, honing her focus to a razor's edge. Forcing herself to see this through. She would have to instruct him in her own care. All right. So be it.

One of her feet snaked up to the edge of the tub, her toes turning on the shower just slightly. Clean first. Get the dirt and blood and sweat off. She tried to push herself up and hissed as pain went through her again. She looked at him, then at the water, then at him again. She pointed.

The water hurt touching her wounds but it was soon over. When they were done she knocked a towel from the rack with her good hand and motioned for him to spread it out.

Once laid on it, she closed her eyes and took some breaths. Now for the hard part. Two wounds with exit wounds. Where were the bullets?

She found one easily. A hard lump near her hip. Her claws slashed her skin. Blood, and a piece of metal falling to the towel. She pointed at the gauze, then at the new wound she'd opened. She tried to move her other shoulder and felt pain. Yes... Metal, right against the upper bone.

With her good arm she took a pair of forceps from the box, placing their handle in her mouth. She took the box of matches next, removing one match and gripping the box in her mouth next to the forceps. She struck a match on the box and held the flame over the tip of the forceps until the match burned out. Removed the forceps from her mouth, offering them to him. She pointed at her shoulder, tracing a line with her fingers from the wound to where she felt the bullet and tapping with her fingers. She rolled onto her stomach, giving him her shoulder.

It hurt. She tore strips from her jeans, stuffing one between her teeth and clutching two in her hands. Her toes curled as she tried to keep her shoulder relaxed, knowing that would make it easier. When he was done she turned rolled onto her back again, breathing heavily. Sweat beaded on her brow. Almost done. Her hand was trembling slightly as she took the needle and thread from the box.

A problem now. The box of matches had fallen under her when she had turned. She looked at him, helplessly, and made a motion like striking a match. Once the needle was ready she made a V with her fingers and pointed at his eyes then at the needle. Watch what I do.

A piece of her jeans was between her teeth again. One-handed, she pushed the needle through her skin, working slowly, trying to make what she was doing obvious. She finished and tied off her stitch, then extended the needle to him, pointing where the next one needed to go.

This was the worst part. She gripped fragments of her jeans and bit down on another, hissing and arching her back as the needle went in again and again. But after each stitch she still pointed, again and again, where the next one should go.

At last all her wounds were closed. Raising a hand, she pointed at the gauze, then dropped to the towel and lay still. Her eyes closed and her breathing became shallow. What she needed now was rest, but he would have to figure that out himself.

As she drifted into unconscious, the thought echoed in her head that she hadn't told him she would need blood on awakening...

Alistair Lane

[Deleted]

[attr="class","ohlove"]

[attr="class","lacking"]

[attr="class","eyes"]
✎ tag: CBE-177/"Anna"

※ wearing: N/A
✉ notes: Easing back into this. I'm rusty and it's way too drawn-out, but it'll get better I think.

both were silent.

the air in my lungs, my hands on the keys.

His fear made her frustrated, he could see the steely glint in her eyes. Past the pain and past the exhaustion of her glazed consciousness was a very distinct annoyance. At him. Why shouldn't she be annoyed? A woman was bleeding out on his bathroom floor and all he could do was babble and beg to show him how to save her while trying to hold down an inevitable vomiting episode that would most definitely rear its ugly head sometime in the near future. The look she gave him was the kick he needed; some instinctive response flicking on in his brain like some hefty generator lever finally booting up an entire set of warehouse lights.

He needed to be a man.

While his breathing still continued much quicker than it should be, he forced his lips to form a firm line and breathe instead through his nose. It didn't matter that he didn't know how to do things. It didn't matter that he was scared or that the blood made him sick. What mattered was he was here and he had to try to save her, he had to ignore his fear to ease hers and not give a damn about modesty, he had to hold his stomach down and command it to be sick later. "Bath. Got it. Okay, okay, we're going to do this, alright?" he swallowed - half telling her and himself. "I'm going to lift you, okay? Ah... um... Okay. Look at me so I know if I'm hurting you." There, that'd work in place of sounds and words. His hands, once trembling like a freshly-struck tuning fork, now forced themselves to be strong and attentive to the skin they barely touched under her knees, around the mid of her back, to ensure he wasn't pulling or pushing at any of the wounds.

"Ready? One, two- up we go. Don't need to hold on, I've got you. I've got you. Nice and easy-, there," he set her carefully into the tub at an awkward angle along her uninjured side with her back somewhat facing him. Alistair moved quickly and efficiently, finding an inner strength that he'd be in major disbelief of later on. Check the water. Lukewarm. Turn on the shower head. Don't care about modesty. Just rinse and clean Once again, he cradled her back up with as little jostling as he could. She struck a match to the metal and he prepared himself with deep, long, audible breaths through his mouth as if sucking through a large straw. He knew what this was and what he had to do; thankfully, it was a quick process that - once felt - he could do with his eyes shut. 'Just taking out a trumpet valve,' he thought. Same little pop. Imagining that made it much easier. The needles, however, were NOT easy.

"Oh God...Okay...I can do this," he swallowed again and his hands returned some shaking, but the first one was forced with her quick instruction as to where. The second was slower, more hesitant. His phobia along with worrying so horribly that he was harming her had his stomach churning heavier. "Hold on-," the moment it began to rile up, no sooner did he sit up on his knees to lean severely over towards the toilet and empty the contents with a determined, violent, singular vomit. A few groans followed him as he sat back up and shook his head, swallowing the bile left behind to keep it from spilling over his lips for risk of infection. Dear Lord that was gross... "Alright, let's finish up," quick nods had him redetermined and he pushed through the rest of the stitches. Finally, cleaning... He knew this well. Alcohol, water again, dry with towel-dabs, antiseptic and pain-relief cream, gauze, tape. Done.

"Anna?" he looked over to her slumping head. Out cold. The adrenaline had run its last course, but her color was already a dozen shades better than it had been when he first found her. Alistair gently leaned his head down to the bareness of her back, listening through to hear her heart beating steady and slow. Carrying her gingerly to the bed just outside the bathroom door, he kept his eyes purposefully away until feeling for the sheet at the foot of it and pulling it up and over her. There. It was easier now to tug it carefully around and situate her on her good side again with pillows propped up on either side of her to encourage her to stay that way while she slept.

The rest of the night would be spent cleaning. In the morning, the scent of bleach lingered in the air and the room was dead silent save for their breathing; his beside her. Alistair was asleep and seated on the floor, sitting up against the bed with a blanket wrapped around his shoulders and resting his head back onto the curve of the mattress, somewhat facing up.

[newclass=.ohlove]width:480px;padding:15px;border:1px solid #d4d4d4;background: #6c9d73; /* Old breakowsers */ background: -moz-linear-gradient(90deg, #6c9d73 0%, #6c9d73 100%); /* FF3.6-15 */background: -webkit-linear-gradient(-85 deg, #6c9d73 0%, #6c9d73 100%); /* Chrome10-25,Safari5.1-6 */background: linear-gradient(-275deg, #6c9d73 0%, #6c9d73 100%)[/newclass][googlefont=Oswald][googlefont=Open Sans][googlefont=Roboto][newclass=.lacking]width: 400px; height: 0px; background-color: rgba(40,40,40,0.4); overflow: hidden; -moz-transition: 3s all; -webkit-transition: 3s all; -o-transition: 3s all; transition: 1s all;[/newclass][newclass=.ohlove:hover .lacking]width: 400px; height: 240px; padding: 10px;;[/newclass][newclass=.ohlove:hover .eyes]transition:1s;margin-top:0px;[/newclass][newclass=.eyes]background-color:#1f1f1f;opacity:.8;font-family:calibri; font-size: 9px; text-transform: uppercase;color:#ffffff;padding:20px;margin-top:400px;width:360px; height: 140px; transition:1.5s; letter-spacing: 1px; text-align: justify;[/newclass]

[CBE-177/"Anna"]

She awoke ravenously hungry.

The hunger cast a curtain over her thoughts, wrapped everything in a haze of red. It made the world sticky and fuzzy, made her brain slow and her thoughts slippery. She awoke in a strange bed, wrapped in a strange sheet, smelling strange smells and feeling pain in all her places. She remembered bullets, and blood, and being carried on a strong back and by strong arms. But it was all hazy, indistinct and insignificant next to the overwhelming need to feed.

She tried to move and hissed through her teeth as pain went everywhere through her. Her shoulder, her side- all hurt. The pain made the curtain across her senses thicker, the need to feed stronger. Her body was crying out for the raw material to repair itself, to be strong instead of weak and in pain.

Throwing off the sheet she was wrapped in, she crept along the bed on all fours. That she was naked in a strange bedroom did not bother her; her mind had become the predator's, with the lack of shame of an animal in all but one small part that was struggling to act through the haze of need. Her nose caught something. Blood, fresh and warm. A figure, breathing slowly by the side of the bed. She crept towards him, head slinking over the side of the bed.

And the part of her that was struggling to stay human thought, No! Not him! He's kind! He's good! But she already moving, hands seizing him, sinking her teeth into his shoulder. Tasting his blood.

Alistair Lane

[Deleted]

[attr="class","ohlove"]

[attr="class","lacking"]

[attr="class","eyes"]
✎ tag: CBE-177/"Anna"

※ wearing: N/A
✉ notes: Easing back into this. I'm rusty but it'll get better I think.

both were silent.

the air in my lungs, my hands on the keys.

He'd fallen into a heavy, pressing slumber. The transformation, the stress of panic, everything had pinned him down to that floor and against the bed like a limitless weight. There were no dreams; no images, clips, sounds, or colors. It wasn't dark or cold, not empty and relaxing. It simply wasn't anything. Just sleep, unconsciousness, the pure base of human necessity. Though the adrenaline had given him what energy he needed to perform the dire task at-hand and recover from his immediate condition, it was a temporary fix that only lasted in a brief burst meant to buy him time for proper rest, nutritional needs, and supplements.

Alistair had fallen asleep before any of that, weakened and half-slumped at the side of the mattress as the perfect 'prey'. It shouldn't come as any surprise that the teeth woke him with a shock, calling out with a pained grunt and stretching his arms up and over himself to grab at whatever was attacking him. His hands found her hair, holding on, but something stopped him from doing anything else. A vision... blurred, abstract, familiar. A similar feeling had penetrated his skin nearby not long ago - her teeth on his shoulder blade. It was what she needed.

The feline memory had him stilling and instead holding his hands to the back of her head as a way to cope with sitting still, hissing through the ache of how heavily she drew. A couple of minutes passed of nothing but her drinking and his heavy breathing before he felt his arms start to grow heavier and more difficult to hold up. "Hey," he swallowed, his breaths deepening to try and catch more air. "Stop-, stop," one hand tried to somewhat pat the back of her head, attempting to get her attention.

[newclass=.ohlove]width:480px;padding:15px;border:1px solid #d4d4d4;background: #6c9d73; /* Old breakowsers */ background: -moz-linear-gradient(90deg, #6c9d73 0%, #6c9d73 100%); /* FF3.6-15 */background: -webkit-linear-gradient(-85 deg, #6c9d73 0%, #6c9d73 100%); /* Chrome10-25,Safari5.1-6 */background: linear-gradient(-275deg, #6c9d73 0%, #6c9d73 100%)[/newclass][googlefont=Oswald][googlefont=Open Sans][googlefont=Roboto][newclass=.lacking]width: 400px; height: 0px; background-color: rgba(40,40,40,0.4); overflow: hidden; -moz-transition: 3s all; -webkit-transition: 3s all; -o-transition: 3s all; transition: 1s all;[/newclass][newclass=.ohlove:hover .lacking]width: 400px; height: 240px; padding: 10px;;[/newclass][newclass=.ohlove:hover .eyes]transition:1s;margin-top:0px;[/newclass][newclass=.eyes]background-color:#1f1f1f;opacity:.8;font-family:calibri; font-size: 9px; text-transform: uppercase;color:#ffffff;padding:20px;margin-top:400px;width:360px; height: 140px; transition:1.5s; letter-spacing: 1px; text-align: justify;[/newclass]

[CBE-177/"Anna"]

There had been enough of her mind left to bite his shoulder. Her instincts had been screaming at her, urging her to go for the exposed neck, jugular and carotid. She hadn't. The part of her that cared about him, that saw him as a human being rather than prey, had had enough control to steer her attack some place that would not be fatal. She did not have time to plumb the depths of what that feeling was or what it meant. Perhaps it only meant that she knew too few people to throw them away meaninglessly. But nonetheless it had happened, and she knew the reason it had happened.

Gradually her mind came back to her. Blood restored her, the urge and the need dying down. Then suddenly something seemed to click on and she was no longer an animal, desperate, starving; she was a human woman again, naked and in a strange man's room, his hand pawing the back of her head.

She jerked back, a gasp escaping her lips, putting her to her mouth, wiping and seeing blood. A second's terror. Had she hurt him? But she saw him on the floor, then, bloodied but unharmed, and she fled backward on the bed, grabbing the sheet and pulling it around her. Her face burned. The fear that she had done something truly wrong- that she had hurt him- mingled with embarrassment at her exposure, and not only of the physical kind. She had been- violent- had bared her monstrous side to him. The side that made her wonder sometimes if she was truly a human woman any more, or only, as they had said at Laboratory 1, a beast in human form. That left her wondering if her power of speech was gone because speech belonged to human beings, of which she was one no longer.

She pressed herself back against the headboard, doing her best to cover herself with the sheet. Oh how she wished she could speak! She would tell him- so much she wanted to tell him- so much she wanted to try to explain- to apologize-

But she had nothing. Her phone was nowhere to be seen. She could only sit, embarrassed, face growing hotter by the second as she waited for him to respond.

Alistair Lane

[CBE-177/"Anna"]

Alistair Lane

[Alistair Lane]

[attr="class","ohlove"]

[attr="class","lacking"]

[attr="class","eyes"]
✎ tag: CBE-177/"Anna"

※ wearing: some a'dem plain, black shorts.
✉ notes: A THING. A CUTE THING.

both were silent.

the air in my lungs, my hands on the keys.

Before she'd fully released his flesh, his hands had begun to slide from the sides of her head, fingers falling between thick strands and loosely combing on their way down until his arms dropped heavily back down to his sides. She'd be thankful, if she would've known, that all during her scrambling and covering Alistair had been too hazy to focus on her. On remotely anything, really. His eyes were open but blurred and his breathing remained drawn out and slow as if he'd fallen back asleep.

Slowly but surely, his vision started to somewhat clear and his honing focus improved. Thankfully, he was a very large man with plenty of blood to spare, though it did no favors to his already-exhausted state. Like her, he needed to eat. A lot. Thoughts of the previous night or even her recent 'assault' weren't what his mind had gone to, but rather the simple fact that she'd woken up. "M'glad you're okay," he spoke, voice tired but heartfelt. "Or... not 'okay'. Maybe that's not the right word-," he shut his eyes and forced his lips flat together, an obvious 'please shut up' moment to himself playing in his head.

"I, ah," sometime between the last time he spoke and now, his right arm had lifted at his side and rested on the mattress behind him, hand nearby and beside where she sat furiously covered in the sheet.  It'd been subconscious and he truthfully hadn't noticed, even now. "Don't have any-..." clothes for women. "You can take anything in the dresser," his unmarred shoulder gave a little shrug, head falling back against the bed with eyes shut and a deep, cleansing sigh.

[newclass=.ohlove]width:480px;padding:15px;border:1px solid #d4d4d4;background: #6c9d73; /* Old breakowsers */ background: -moz-linear-gradient(90deg, #6c9d73 0%, #6c9d73 100%); /* FF3.6-15 */background: -webkit-linear-gradient(-85 deg, #6c9d73 0%, #6c9d73 100%); /* Chrome10-25,Safari5.1-6 */background: linear-gradient(-275deg, #6c9d73 0%, #6c9d73 100%)[/newclass][googlefont=Oswald][googlefont=Open Sans][googlefont=Roboto][newclass=.lacking]width: 400px; height: 0px; background-color: rgba(40,40,40,0.4); overflow: hidden; -moz-transition: 3s all; -webkit-transition: 3s all; -o-transition: 3s all; transition: 1s all;[/newclass][newclass=.ohlove:hover .lacking]width: 400px; height: 240px; padding: 10px;;[/newclass][newclass=.ohlove:hover .eyes]transition:1s;margin-top:0px;[/newclass][newclass=.eyes]background-color:#1f1f1f;opacity:.8;font-family:calibri; font-size: 9px; text-transform: uppercase;color:#ffffff;padding:20px;margin-top:400px;width:360px; height: 140px; transition:1.5s; letter-spacing: 1px; text-align: justify;[/newclass]

[CBE-177/"Anna"]

He was listless, and she watched as he sort of half raised himself on the bed, seeming a little confused. There was no comment on her nakedness, and she was grateful for that, even as she knew he must have seen everything the night before. He cheeks were hot and they were not cooling. Foolishness, she thought to herself. He helped you. You can see he means no harm. Yet the thought did not help her embarrassment. Slowly she began to extricate herself from the bed, keeping the sheet around her. This encountered a difficulty when his body weight held part of it in place, preventing her from advancing towards the dresser. She glared at him a moment, and then she yanked, hard, getting the sheet from beneath him and going to the dresser with it wrapped around her.

He had nothing in her size, of course. Not even remotely.

She found a flannel shirt- yellow with blue stripes, and picked it up before realizing she would have to let go of the sheet to put the shirt on. He was still on the bed. She gave him another glare before her gaze fell on his closet door. Striding in still wrapped in the sheet, she closed the door behind her and emerged, a minute later, wearing his shirt. The sheet she left on the closet floor.

The shirt was big on her. It went down to about her mid-thigh, and she had to roll the sleeves up to get any use of her hands. Fortunately it was the kind of shirt that was designed to be worn with the sleeves rolled up and there was even a place to button it in that position. So dressed, she emerged from the closet and stood before him. It helped a little. She still felt vulnerable, barely one step above naked, though she wasn't sure what else she could do. Trying to fit into his pants was a completely lost cause.

She stood in front of the bed a moment, arms crossed beneath her breasts before she realized that was emphasizing them and she put her hands on her hips instead. He still seemed listless. She had taken blood from him. Too much? He was a big man, but there were limits. She could think clearly now. She noticed that she was hungry. If he wasn't, he would be soon.

A decision. He had helped her. Had given of himself, quite literally so. She owed him whatever she could do to help him. Stepping forward, she put an arm beneath he thighs and another beneath his lower back. Picked him up. His size made it a bit awkward, but the weight was no problem. She carried him into the kitchen and set him roughly down on a chair there. She didn't know where her phone was but she found a piece of paper and a pencil somewhere and wrote on a piece of paper for him:

SIT
YOU NEED FOOD
I WILL MAKE SOME

Alistair Lane

[Alistair Lane]

[attr="class","ohlove"]

[attr="class","lacking"]

[attr="class","eyes"]
✎ tag: CBE-177/"Anna"

※ wearing: Some a'dem plain, black shorts.
✉ notes: Sleepy boi, hungry boi.

both were silent.

the air in my lungs, my hands on the keys.

Anna's eyes may have been flailing about, cheeks red with embarrassment and uncertainty, but Alistair didn't seem to notice. Or move. At all. Even as she pulled the sheet closer to herself and got up out of the bed to search through his drawers, he remained where he was with eyes peacefully shut. His blood sugar (in what blood was left) and iron were horribly low. The booster shot solved the immediate problem, but it'd been hours since then and he'd had nothing to eat in the meantime. It was something he found he always needed after shifting back; immense amounts of protein.

It was a rather comedic image, the small woman standing there with very disgruntled crossed arms staring at the pathetically limp large man sleeping sitting up against the bed. It wasn't until he was being pulled up into the air that he came-to, slowly and rather weakly rolling his head and arms about as she barely fit him through the width of the hall towards the kitchen. "Uhm- woah, woah, how- ahhhh??"

-FRMP- He found himself dropped into one of the chairs at the small dining table, heavy head flopping against his shoulder off to the side and arms drooped on top of his lap. It was all he could do to thin his eyes and read the all-caps note. "Oh." How did she know? That was convenient. Had she already taken a peek in his fridge? That was sure to give it away... stacks upon stacks of ground meat and steak cuts lined nearly one entire half of his fridge. Eggs, juices, milk. One could swear a bodybuilder and their pet bear lived here. "Yeah. Thanks. And whatever you want too. All yours." His sleepy weight leaned him forward, torso curling and arms lifting to fold on the table where he rested his head.

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