[Deleted]

[attr="class","ohlove"]

[attr="class","lacking"]

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

※ wearing: Here

✉ notes: Not again...

both were silent.

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

As long as they were faced away from where he'd heard the barking and possible danger, he was perfectly compliant in where she wished to lead the two of them. After all, under the cover of the trees in the small grove, the lighting had become darker and softened which made it much easier on his vision. When she looked to him in thought, he tilted his head to the side to see her and meet her eyes as if to inquire about her concerns as they continued walking steadily and patiently forward. But he was only met with a firm line of her lips and no response. When she stopped, so did he, though she soon after took a step or two before them to seemingly survey the area. Why had she looked to him with such a troublesome look? It wasn't worry, but rather some form of culpability. Though he didn't understand further complexities of it, he certainly didn't want his small friend feeling so down.

As she turned to him, his nose lifted to meet the hands he watched extend closer to him. No teeth bared, no jowl lifted, he simply allowed the small scratches of her nails to reach through the shorter fur around his muzzle and the bridge of his nose. It was calming. But even in her smile she seemed disturbed. Again he reached his nose further towards her only to have her turn back away from him and earning a perturbed, "Hff..." Still, he watched with as much understanding as he could - if not simply out of concern - and perked a rounded ear about at the sound of her familiar clicking. His head angled down, slightly tilted just in case he needed to catch any further sound from her (though it appeared rather comical, almost as if he were overly curious), and watched as her hand patted the ground. He understood. Though, he didn't understand why.

His tail flicked sharply with uncertainty and thoughtful concentration behind him. With a quiet and deep grumble, he stepped froward towards her hand before folding his legs and resting his stomach to the ground. "...Nnnnnr-," oh, a finger. On his mouth. His head backed away for a moment only an inch in slight surprise. It was something he simply didn't expect. It returned to its original position as he watched her motions again. To her lips, then again to his (remaining still this time). Ah... His ears flattened and he gave an airy exhale through his nose, almost pouting, and set his chin to the paws extended out in front of him. His eyebrows lifted so that his eyes might look up and see her more clearly as she walked away with his instructions having been to clearly stay here. Silently, at that.

Thankfully she wasn't gone more than a minute or two, back with incredible speed until slowing down to walk over to him and drape a blanket over his lower back and legs. His head followed wherever she went, curious to see what exactly this all was, and then she lied down herself. Oh. Were they just... going to stay here and lie down then? Perhaps she didn't feel well? Maybe that was what had made her so solemn. Alistair lifted his front half from the ground only enough to use his forelegs to turn to face her more clearly and set his head down again. For a while, he just stared straight at her. His eyes were present, concerned, but still patient and soft. They remained opened and watching for as long as the two were able before finally, sometime, falling asleep.

The panic had washed away... and then the stress was no more.

The guilt for raiding a clothes donation drop-off box was making him sweat and shiver all at once. The protein and iron deficiencies probably didn't help either. Senri had done wonders to help him find little answers, but knowing didn't make it feel less miserable. As soon as he awoke to a strange, tense pulling in his spine even his feline brain had felt terror when he realized what was happening with his small friend so nearby. With every step towards the large, metal, blue box until he was able to climb up into it, joints shoved and popped together. Eventually in the pile of clothes and plastic bags full of more of them, the fur had fully receded and his skeleton had changed. It took a bit for his trembling hands to search for something to cover him that would fit in this dim light of near-daybreak, but eventually he was able to pull on a relatively relaxed pair of workout shorts and settled for giving himself a small break by falling back down into the pile to catch his panting breath.

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[CBE-177/"Anna"]

Concrete walls, green with water-growings in the low light. Cold where it touched her bare skin as she pressed herself into the corner, as far away as possible from that awful door they would come for her through, dread sickening her, fear making her hands shake and her head pound and her stomach roil as inside her mind she begged with a jabbering plea that this time they not come for her, that just once they leave her alone, but under the door she saw shadows and she heard voices and she knew it was time, time, time for pain, the terror making it impossible to move, impossible to act, impossible to do anything but press herself into the wall and silently scream-

With a snap, her eyes opened and the nightmare vanished. She was not in a cell; far from it. Outdoors, and with the ends of her hair brushing the dirt. She felt a warmth near her middle and with a jolt of disgust realized what she had done. And the bag was borrowed, too.

But an instant later she was distracted from that. The movement she had heard in her dream had been real. It had come across from her, where her friend was moving and moaning under his breath. He seemed not to have noticed she was awake; so far she had moved only her eyes. Her friend seemed agitated. The blanket had fallen off of him and he was moving unsteadily away from her. She frowned, unsure what was happening. She could hear no danger. A bad thought: suppose now he was hungry? This would be the worst time for it, in daylight, in this populated area. She pulled herself out of the bag, embarrassment momentarily forgotten. She left it unzipped and picked up the blanket as she followed the lion. After a few steps it became clear that hunting was not what was on his mind. His walk was odd, as if he was injured. But she had heard no fight; surely she would have woken up for that.

It was not until they had gone a few hundred feet that she realized what was happening: the way the feet came down oddly, the posture becoming less and less quadrupedal, the tail shrinking. The transformation was at an end and the man was coming back again. She kept following, curiosity now mixed in with her concern. She was surprised at how muscular the man was. Well formed indeed, she thought, then thought it strange that she had thought so. Still, it was true.

He came to the box, which was in a clearing, and she paused at the edge of the trees, watching as he rifled through it and eventually chose a piece of clothing to cover himself with. She was- to her own surprise- somewhat disappointed for it. She supposed such feelings were natural. Still, it had been a long time since she had experienced anything like it. Her past experiences had left a bad taste in her mouth.

When he sat down she emerged from the tree line, slowly walking into his line of sight carrying the blanket. The spot on her trousers was visible but, for the moment, she had forgotten about it. When she was close she tossed the blanket to him and stood facing him with her arms crossed.

Alistair Lane

[Deleted]

[attr="class","ohlove"]

[attr="class","lacking"]

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

※ wearing: N/A

✉ notes: A haze.

both were silent.

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

He felt the air in front of the opening door of the large drop box blow by and scrape slowly, softly against his skin with brush-like stings. The moisture that dampened his skin only soaked the chill in further, sweating almost as if feverish. Maybe he was. His body shivered more and more by the second and was eventually visible, hands curling in and out of loose fists to try and get blood pumping through his arms. They felt so weak. Two days ago he'd shifted... he'd never done it this close in succession before. Even then he knew now to be prepared with vitamins, food, sustenance. 

Senri narrowed it down to deficiencies. Iron, protein, calcium, hydration. If he could pin it down to words, it was like having the life sucked out of you or getting hit with the world's worst influenza in a matter of seconds. His vision was coming clearer but much slower than he was used to (now that he somewhat had an average to gauge from). Thankfully, it wasn't light out yet. Barely. The sky was a dull blue-gray and waited for the break of early morning. The most prominent sounds he heard were the blood rushing behind his ears and the air going in and out of his lungs like someone had gone and put him underwater with a breathing apparatus.

There were shots in his car; booster shots she told him to use only in case of an emergency. He hadn't tried them before. Today might be that day... Or so he thought briefly before a blanket tossed up and over him. Alistair flinched, gripping at it quickly and almost weakly in his short-lived fight-or-flight reaction to tear it away and do his best in sitting up. An elbow propped him up enough to look forward at her through the large, square drop-in opening and the blanket fell to his lap. He was panting already, or maybe he just hadn't stopped with how hard it seemed to catch his breath, but for a silent moment he could do nothing but stare at her in shock.

Her arms were crossed. Anger? No, certainty. Whoever she was... she'd known somehow. She'd seen. She'd caught him, and yet somehow the absolute fear that he'd had of this day eventually coming wasn't the first thing that came to mind. Alistair's chest rapidly rose and fell in-sync with his shallow, trembling breathing. His tongue pressed to the roof of his mouth and took a frustratingly long time to form his shaking words. "D-d-did I hurt you?"

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[CBE-177/"Anna"]

While he struggled for words she studied him, trying to set her mind properly on the man before her after yesterday's mistake. It seemed madness now that she had ever thought of him as something dangerous- something that had threatened her friend. Yet his size and his toned muscles bespoke of someone who might have been dangerous, at least to an ordinary woman of her size. There was an odd contradiction in him. Power in his body, strength in his limbs, but very little, now that the question of the blood was resolved, indication of the will or desire to use it. It was... strange. It was unlike most men she had known. Strength was what made them men, strength and the casual use of it on the weaker. Men with haughty eyes and twisted, laughing mouths and a crude joke or leer as you walked by. Those were the men she had known. Watching this man, she saw none of that. Quite the opposite. She might have been tempted to dismiss him simply as a weakling, but the sight of his bare chest before her prevented that. Judged by the standards of ordinary men, he would be strong. So why did she not sense the same common contempt?

She took a step closer to him, catching his scent again. Yes! There is was. The wild, woodland smell, the one she knew from running through the woods with a great cat. It made her heart skip a beat. Her friend had been like that too, she thought, immensely powerful and yet thoroughly gentle. Now it turned out her wore another form. Somehow she felt she should have guessed it sooner. Yet she could hardly blame herself for failing to consider such a wild possibility. The beast had not eaten last night. Was that why he seemed so haggard now?

“D-d-did I hurt you?”

She gave him a flat stare. Hurt her? Ha. Hardly likely. But after a moment her gaze softened and she shook her head. It wasn't wrong of him to ask, she supposed. It was even kind, in its way. He seemed to be uncomfortable. Perhaps he was in pain? He hadn't mentioned it. The thought made something in her turn- in a way she couldn't quite place, but not an unpleasant one. The turn of a screw, but one that was good and right to tighten.

He certainly looked miserable. Cold, sweating, trembling beneath the half-dawn light. She might have marked him for a victim of the influenza. Her eyes moved to the side. It was a bit of a walk back to the campsite, and a bit longer to the place he had first transformed. She looked at him again, saw the trembling. There must be pain of some sort. She was quite close to him now.

The part of her mind dedicated to such things began to whisper that perhaps she was quite close enough. She stopped moving. She was staring, her face expressionless.

Well. This was very interesting, but it was not, truly, her problem. This man was not her responsibility, whatever body he might prowl about in. His vehicle was somewhat nearby; he could reach it and return home. Her home was close enough she could run there in a few minutes. One turn and he would be out of her life forever. She had made a foolish mistake, but it need not come up again. She was free to go, was she not?

She thought back on the walk to the campsite and the walk from there to the vehicle. How long was it, exactly? It seemed to be longer than she had thought a moment before. She looked at Alistair, saw him shiver again, and suddenly she realized what had turned in her mind when he had asked if he had hurt her. It was that he had asked about her first when he was clearly in pain and had not mentioned about himself.

A crossroads. The feeling of looking over a precipice, then- a decision. She pulled out her phone, typed, and held it so that he could read.

You are ill. You must return to your vehicle. I will carry you.

She took a step forward- and she paused, because it would mean his skin against hers, his bare skin, his sweat and remnants of unpleasant memories trying to cling to her and drag her into the abyss again- and then she set her jaw, seized him at the chest and thighs, and started back towards the campsite.

Alistair Lane

[Deleted]

[attr="class","ohlove"]

[attr="class","lacking"]

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

※ wearing: N/A

✉ notes: Plan B.

both were silent.

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

At first he was horrified from her flat expression that there was something she was shocked he'd forgotten, as if he'd done something so large it'd be impossible not to recollect. What images he could pull from the short night were blurry at best, but quiet. At least now he could try and recount them, whereas at first his transformations just seemed blank. Then, her head shook and she stepped closer. Alistair lifted his hands up barely above his own chest in surrender, fingers visibly trembling in the air. That was when he'd caught sight of her trousers. It wasn't as if he'd meant to look, but it was natural when seeing something out of the ordinary in your peripheral. Most would be confused or even slightly uncomfortable, but the first thought that came to mind was how horrified he must have made her. Even though he was sure there was bound to be some kind of arrest from the woman, the guilt sank in his stomach like a rock. She was waiting, thinking, looking at the area around them. "A-are you..." he swallowed, breathing heavily, "FBI? Or..?" Somehow she'd known. "I-I haven't hurt anyone, I swear, I-." 

But that was only a matter of time, wasn't it?

His eyes fell, as did his hands - slowly - and an air of the admittance of defeat drenched him from head to toe. He accepted it. His career, his students, what would happen to them? Lifting the heavy weight of his head to the extended object before him, he looked to it with an inevitability until he realized what it said. Deeply confusing. In fact, he probably couldn't count on his hands how many questions it brought up, but the first about his size versus hers was pretty relevant. "Wait, I'm n-," and up he went. It moved so fast that the light-headedness he'd just felt moments prior sent him spinning into a foggy in-and-out state. Practically a half-conscious rag doll, it must've been a visual spectacle to see someone his size carried by, well... her.

When he'd come-to enough, this would bring up even more questions. But for now, when he saw the Jeep nearing them, he pulled himself enough awake to mumble and point with loose fingers towards the trunk where the unlabeled emergency shots were located; unmistakable once found with bright orange caps not unlike an Epipen. "Th-trunk... in th-blue bag," his voice was sleepy, grumbled, and his body started to naturally resist whatever hold he was in from the tiny arms beneath him, reaching out to the vehicle and rolling out of her arms with a huff once he fell to the ground. Still, he rolled to his side and propped an elbow up to try and at least get himself onto a knee. Hopefully Senri's medical magic would be right again.

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[CBE-177/"Anna"]

He asked two questions. She gave him one shake of the head for both. Actually, the idea of being mistaken for the FBI was somewhat offensive to her, but she was more and more seeing a man in a trying situation and she restrained herself from making a matter of it. The notion of being an agent of any government made her angry, really, and then there was the fact that in Soviet stories the FBI had always been evil and her reaction to them was still negative by default. She had never (well, not for a long while) been sold on the goodness of her home nation, but that didn't mean the US was any better. Before coming here she would have said she supposed it was worse. Even now she was not quite sure she could trust anyone who worked for a government in a science capacity.

She saw him reaching for the trunk and set him down while he muttered something about a blue bag. She used the keys she still had to open it and found the blue bag quickly enough. Inside... she frowned, not understanding at first, but there were instructions on the side and she...

...hesitated, fingers lingering over the injectors, staring, half remembering, half fearing to remember...

...before she realized that it was stupid of her to get hung up on old pains, that these were perfectly ordinary devices with no nefarious purpose whatsoever and she should stop being an idiot about it all, and quickly returned to Alistair and poked him in the thigh.

She stood over him, arms crossed again, staring.

She hoped he would recover enough to drive, because she didn't know how and calling someone else to drive her somewhere was how they'd ended here in the first place.

Plus the fact that he was in his underwear. She'd... prefer not to have to answer questions about that.

There were two parallel scars on his chest, the only blemish on his otherwise excellent figure. Parallel, on the left pectoral. Surgical scars? She frowned, leaning slightly downward to stare at them. There seemed no point in offering him the phone in his present condition, so she didn't. Hand language was far more convenient, truth be told, but too few people knew it.

Alistair Lane

[Deleted]

[attr="class","ohlove"]

[attr="class","lacking"]

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

※ wearing: N/A

✉ notes: Escape route.

both were silent.

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

No. Not FBI. In fact, the shake of her head made it seem like she was far from it and almost upset that he'd come to that kind of conclusion. How could he not? She'd known. Somehow, she'd known. Now she was somehow carrying a grown man easily over one hundred pounds her own weight and over a full foot taller. So many questions, but no energy to think on them. Instead he found himself with his back on the pavement looking up at the gray-blue sky as the sun had only just begun to rise. His chest rose and fell with sharp breaths at first, but now they'd become shallow and shaky. Most things were too fuzzy now to focus on; light, sound, movement. Until he felt the pinch in the side of his leg and something began to sizzle through his veins.

From his thigh, the tingling energy grew out in a spider's web through his bloodstream and color quickly returned to him like a sheet of pink and reds beneath the skin. First his stomach, then his chest, his calves, his face, his feet, his hands. With a gasp as if he'd been held under water, he sat up quickly and instinctively put a hand to his chest. Everything was so clear now. Clear and FAST. Loud, bright, sudden like an explosion. Adrenaline shot through his system to fuel the time it'd take the rest of the booster - mixes of heavy proteins, calcium, and iron - to sink in. She wasn't the first thing he looked at. Hardly. His head turned every which way to see any dangers or witnesses nearby them, scrambling to his feet and stumbling for a second from moving too quickly. No one. It was still too early in the morning, but it wouldn't be that way for long. He breathed by panting for the moment, but not for a lack of energy. Instead, his heart felt like it was running a million miles an hour.

Finally he snapped his head to her, then the syringe in her hand, down at himself, and then his SUV. "We have to go," he breathed out in quick succession, moving hastily to the trunk to pull the key from the lock, shut it, and run around to the driver's side. Once he was in, he kept the door open and looked to her with panicked, energetic eyes. "You don't live here, do you?" the small betrayal was plain on his face, but there were more immediate things that needed dealt with. "Get in? Please," he pleaded, at the mercy of her personal publicity. "I won't hurt you. I promise. We just-... Please, we can't stay here. I can't stay here."

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[CBE-177/"Anna"]

The effect of the injection was instant, and noticeable. A shiver went down her spine. She had been tested once, she thought with a drug like that, something to make her faster... the memories were fuzzy. By the end she had mostly been given horse tranquilizers. She wondered what was in the needle, and how long it would last. It seemed to give him purpose, or least enough of one to want to flee. She pursed her lips, not quite understanding his hurry, and shook her head when he asked if she lived there.

His look of betrayal seemed to stab her. She found herself immediately justifying her lie of the previous night; she had been working under an illusion, attempting to avenge the innocent. That had been the right decision, she told herself, even if it seemed ridiculous in retrospect. It was his innocence, she thought, his transparency, his guilelessness. Somehow, without quite realizing it, she had come to see him as a man who did not tell lies- perhaps one who by his simplicity was incapable of them. It was a strange thing to realize she believed. Hiding oneself, for her, came as naturally as breathing. Jack and Cory had been the same. This one was not like that; he was- and this thought surprised her again- like the beast she had met at first, without a second face he kept hidden from the world.

She had trusted that impression when it had been of a predatory animal. She mistrusted it now that it was of a human male.

He asked her to get in. He wanted to leave; that much was clear. Well, perhaps he wanted to dress himself, she thought wryly. At any rate it would be easier than walking. I won't hurt you. What an odd thing to keep repeating. Had he not noticed how she had felled him the previous night? Did he not remember how she had carried him just moments before? Surely he must have guessed there was more to her than met the eye. Did she still look so weak to him, so vulnerable that she had to be reassured?

She pursed her lips again and held up a single finger, then dashed off into the trees. A minute later she was back with the sleeping bag she had left at their makeshift camp in one hand and a dead squirrel in the other.

What? She was starting to feel the need for her morning blood, and the squirrel had been near at hand. A leap, a grasping, a wrung neck- it had been no trouble at all. She tossed the sleeping bag into the back and sat down on the passenger side and shut the door. Her nails began to peel back the skin of the squirrel, teeth finding an artery. Blood, tangy and fresh.

Alistair Lane

[Deleted]

[attr="class","ohlove"]

[attr="class","lacking"]

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

※ wearing: N/A

✉ notes: Unplanned.

both were silent.

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

Did she just... hold up a finger? "Wait"? Wait for what, they had to leave before someone woke and left for work, or returned from a night shift, anything! It wasn't like she'd left him a choice once she flashed with incredible speed back to the small treeline along the apartment complex's border boundary. All he could bring himself to do was shut his door and grip the steering wheel with white knuckles from the massive amount of energy pounding through his system. They had to leave, they had to leave, they had to leave now.

She was back, thank Go- "Ahhh-," What. His expression with mouth ajar and eyes frozen in absolute disgust and horror at her in the passenger's seat did a decent enough job to display exactly how he felt about the meal she'd decided to bring into the car. She was meta, it was easily discernible with the crazy strength and speed, but this was-... highly unnecessary and incredibly unsanitary! "What are you-!? Oh my God, oh my ghnnn..." he put a single hand over his mouth to keep anything that would come out, in. There were so many problems stabbing at his brain he was finding it difficult to pick which stressor would be the one to give him a heart attack first.

He was half-naked.
He had been discovered as this... thing.
He'd possibly been spotted by someone that wasn't her.
The entire incident had the potential to destroy his career.
His chest felt like it was going to explode from the adrenaline.
There was a woman devouring a harmless tree squirrel that had just seconds ago been breathing.
-with her teeth.
-in his car.
-there was so much blood he could smell it.

With the booster shot and the fear of being discovered by another pair of eyes, he thankfully didn't have enough space left in his head to react as he normally would've, instead letting his back wretch forward one more time before shoving the gear into drive and fleeing the parking lot with one hand placed firmly at the side of his eyes to avoid seeing the terror scene unfolding beside him. He drove like that without a word for miles, legs bouncing uncontrollably at every stop, hand clinging to the wheel for dear life, and eventually ended up in a very calm, plain, quiet neighborhood where he was able to lift a remote garage door before parking within it hidden from sight and frantically exiting.a

"Pleasedon'tbringthatinthehouse!" he half-called back to her, wasting no time unlocking the door adjoining his home and - for the first time since moving in - refraining from closing it behind him. A plain t-shirt was first from a top drawer in his room before he had made his way to the kitchen in less than a minute to start chugging straight from a carton of milk. He hated the feeling of the soggy cardboard-paper, he needed a glass! No, no, he was too hungry to stop.

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[CBE-177/"Anna"]

Anna was actually a very clean eater when she wasn't under the effects of a blood rage. She pulled the squirrel apart very neatly and licked up the mess as it occurred and finished by licking her fingers clean. On the whole it was a very civilized affair, and she felt proud of herself for managing it.

The man-who-had-been-a-lion seemed to have a less sanguine view of the whole affair, if his nervous breath and somewhat erratic driving were any indication. He seemed too embarrassed to speak, which was too bad, but she supposed she was the last person who could criticize that. In all honesty, she had begun to find the whole affair rather amusing. His frenzied concern, verging on panic, had the air of a man who was trying to bail water out of a sieve: a noble attempt, but ultimately futile.

Still, perhaps she should try to have some more empathy. The whole thing seemed to be a great shock to him and she was well familiar with how an ability could affect your state of mind. She thought it odd that he seemed so concerned about the blood, though. He'd eaten bloodier himself, and she'd been there to see it. Well, perhaps he was still coming to terms with himself. She understood that. Coming to see that you were something unlike other people, something new, different, that was a hard thing. Perhaps he was even as she had been in the long-ago days, unaware that there were others, unaware that there was any word for what he was other than monster. The thought made her glance at him again. Yes... now that she looked, she could see the outline of real fear in him. This was not humorous, not to him. She had been free with her own abilities because she had thought, on some level, that seeing them would give him a measure of comfort; now she began to wonder if she had only thrust him into a more confusing world.

As they turned into the driveway her face had become more thoughtful and she watched her host with a contemplative expression as he rushed into the house with a blurted word of instruction towards her. Shaking her head, she exited the car and locked the vehicle behind her and buried the squirrel in a shallow hole beside the driveway before making her way to the front door.

It was a nice house. Orderly, and very clean. It smelled nice as well, and the couches looked comfortable. A slight glugging sound greeted her ears and she followed into a room where she was greeted by the sight of a half-naked man taking milk directly from the carton in massive, noisy gulps.

She couldn't help it. She laughed. No sound came out, of course, aside from a slight hissing, but a smile broke across her face and she covered her mouth and looked away with obvious mirth. It was probably horrible and would leave him terribly upset, but the image was simply too ridiculous. After a moment of laughter she straightened, crossed the kitchen floor in a few strides, and hopped onto the counter. She tried a cabinet- luck was with her. Taking a glass from it, she hopped down and came close to him, glass extended, eyebrow raised.

Alistair Lane

[Deleted]

[attr="class","ohlove"]

[attr="class","lacking"]

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

※ wearing: N/A

✉ notes: Unplanned.

both were silent.

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

She was inside. Without the squirrel, good. It would've been easy to tell with the strong scent, but thankfully nothing else entered the house with her. Bad smells and chugging milk didn't exactly go hand-in-hand for a good outcome, not to mention how many things he'd have to clean and disinfect. He might as well quarantine anything and everything she was around if the deceased, mangled animal made it into the home. The side of his vision caught her in the kitchen but he failed to pull himself away from the milk long enough to say anything about not hopping on top of the surface he prepped food on.

It made him pause finally, just for a second, and he swallowed the mouthful that he had before opening his mouth to speak up only to be stopped short by her turning about and offering him a glass. Oh. For some reason, that took priority in his mind over climbing over his kitchen, so he took a hold of it with a quick, breathy "Thanks," and was no sooner chugging glass after glass until the entirety of the carton was gone. Alistair took a couple of steps to set the glass in the sink and catch his breath from the long stretches of drinking, letting water from the faucet pour into it so that no rings built up on the glass surface before he washed it. Then a thought hit him and he visibly froze.

His head turned to her, eyes wide. "Did you wash your hands?" He knew the answer. Why no, no she did not. The hands that had just recently mangled a squirrel and eaten it handed him a glass that he drank out of. A lot. A groan of defeat had him sinking towards the faucet with a lowly bent pair of shoulders and dipped head. It wasn't that he was particularly a crazed germaphobe, but these kinds of germs in places where things are ingested weren't particularly known for being anything other than dangerous and disgusting.

Briefly, he caught the idea that it'd feel better to reach for the dish soap and scrub furiously at his hands, then wetting and rubbing his face before finally drying it off with a nearby towel hanging from a cabinet door. Taking a step back he held the soap in one hand and extended it to her to offer giving her a few dabs. "Would... you mind? It's just- those things carry a lot of diseases," his lips formed a firm line, equally as concerned of offending as he was of the potential rabies.

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[CBE-177/"Anna"]

She stood by and watched him gulp down milk, vaguely in awe of how much he was able to drink at once. Was that part of his transformation? Was it like her dependence on blood? That seemed odd, but she supposed it was no less odd than her own quirk. Less convenient perhaps, in some ways. As he drank, she glanced around the kitchen, observing in more detail the crisp, clean counters, the scrubbed floors, the gleaming metal of the sink. It was far cleaner than she expected for a man living alone. The drive to keep a space clean had always struck her as a womanly urge. The thought made her somehow uncomfortable and she pushed it away, going back to watching him.

She found herself studying his body again, the way his Adam's apple bobbed up and down as he drank, the muscles in his forearms, the shape of his seat-end as he bent over the sink. A very slight pink crept into her cheeks when she realized she was looking and she quickly jerked her gaze away. Not that it was anything to be ashamed of, of course. It was perfectly natural to notice things. Still, perhaps this was better noticed later, even if her interest was purely academic.

He turned towards her suddenly, terror written on his face. Did she... wash her hands? No... of course she hadn't. Why would that matter? She raised an eyebrow to meet his gaze for a moment, then carefully brought her hand to her mouth and licked her fingers to demonstrate how she had cleaned them. She had done quite a good job. She was not one to leave the least drop of blood on her hands.

Apparently it didn't satisfy him. He held out... soap? She didn't know if she should feel insulted. The situation seemed balanced on a knife's edge between humor and horror. There was fear in Ali's eyes, but a strange kind... something almost comical. Carefully, never removing her eyes from his gaze, she accepted the soap and very deliberately washed her hands in the sink. That took a minute. When she was done she stood staring at him with dripped hands, trying to take his measure. Trying to understand what was going on his mind that made him behave this way.

There was a towel by the sink. She dried her hands on it. Her gaze never left him. She kept staring as she took her phone from her pocket, moving her eyes only to glance at the screen before handing the phone to him.

Why do you fear blood so? I have seen you eat far worse, as your other self.

Alistair Lane

[Deleted]

[attr="class","ohlove"]

[attr="class","lacking"]

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

※ wearing: N/A

✉ notes: Unplanned.

both were silent.

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

The way she took the soap seemed so obviously offended to him that he couldn't help but take a step back to shy away from the tension he felt being nearer to her, eyes ducking down and off somewhere to the side apologetically until she was finished washing. He looked back up to her only to see her blatantly - really blatantly - staring at him while drying her hands on the towel that rested by the sink. Suddenly he felt very exposed and self-conscious, his breath hitching a few times in his chest with uncertainty. "I-. Why are you-. What are you doing?" he asked as politely and softly as he was able, uncomfortable and uncertain. Then she pulled out her phone, but still remained staring.

Though he desperately wanted to either get out of her line of sight or speak up again, all he could do was stand frozen in place waiting for her verdict. The two of them stood in the most awkwardly tense silence as possible until she was finished typing and extended it to him. He grabbed it carefully, almost hesitant, but turned it about to read what she'd written. It wasn't exactly something he'd wanted to know. Of course he'd assumed, and even sometimes remembered glimpses, that he'd found other means of sustenance during his times on all fours. He could tell when he hadn't eaten after changing back; feeling insatiably weak and starved from the energy it'd taken running on empty.

At first he looked sickened at the message, queasy at the thought of himself feasting on some wild animal alive. But then something dawned on him. Something changed. A strange, abstract memory came to the forefront of his mind not unlike an instance of deja vu. His eyes blankly stared past the message on the phone and his face relaxed from sickness instead to realization. Colors and sounds, blurry images that became clearer. Her face in heavy contrast and vibrant color, the smell of fresh, metallic food which was surprisingly not off-putting. The phone remained in his hand and his eyes lifted over to her with disbelief. The words that followed were nearly a whisper. Alistair felt almost frightened of admitting them. "I know you."

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[CBE-177/"Anna"]

He was not exactly a confident man, she was coming to realize. The sort who wilted under a confident gaze, who took the constant implication he was doing something wrong. A man who was never quite comfortable in his own skin, always glancing over his shoulder in concern for what might go wrong. Understanding this, certain other things about him began to fall into place. The playful, nervous monster of a lion who hated to kill, who covered his eyes in fear at loud noises. She had dismissed this as a womanish spirit on his part, before. Yet it occurred to her now, knowing he had the power of transformation, that it might be more than weakness. If you were naturally a kind and gentle man-

(-the words, “kind and gentle man” rolled back and forth in her mind as she thought them, not linking to anything she had held in her mind before, impossible to simply dismiss, nothing she had ever suspected she might find, a “kind and gentle man”-)

-if you were naturally a kind and gentle man, then you might be concerned that if you transformed in the wrong place or at the wrong time, you might hurt someone, and it might weigh on you, and you might seem nervous and discomfited as you tried to keep the beast inside. She understood that, at least a little. The need for control. To hide the inner brutality. And it softened her towards him, at least a little, making her see better how those two disparate halves she had seen could be united in one person. Perhaps there was not a hard break. Perhaps to a person who had lived with power that brought the necessity of caution, such hesitation was required. The would be a life far different from the one she had lived. She could only imagine it, but it seemed... pleasant.

Then the dawning realization across his face. Some barrier broke, and he came face to face with what he had been. He placed her face in memory, and his voice came out as a whisper. She couldn't explain it. Fear- but of what? Of himself? Of her? Of being exposed? Suddenly she felt a wave a sympathy breaking over her. He really didn't understand this thing he was, did he? He really was concerned. He really was afraid of hurting her. And it was such a novel realization, such a strange thing to feel from a man, that for a moment she, too, had to pause in her response. What an odd thing to realize, in this moment. To have lived with defenses always up for so long, to have forgotten what it was to be relaxed and at peace. The last time she had felt this had been in the presence of his animal self. Now she was catching a glimpse of it from the human side.

A smile pulled at her lips. She tried to suppress it, mostly out of habit, but the edges of her lips still curved, just slightly. She typed.

We met in the woods, a day or two drive from here. You were dressed in fur. We ran and we hunted together. Those were lively times.

Alistair Lane

[Deleted]

[attr="class","ohlove"]

[attr="class","lacking"]

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

※ wearing: N/A

✉ notes: Recognition.

both were silent.

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

She'd taken the phone from his hand, but it remained frozen in place like the rest of him. He stared past her, somewhere beyond where the walls ended without focus. There was a part of him that could see it all now; the tall grass, the rocky crags of the far outskirts in Bear Gulch where he'd gone camping for the weekend. Senri had suggested it, suggested that he go somewhere remote and safe and let what would happen, happen. He hadn't remembered anything at the time, but the more he focused on the scent, the rhythm of breathing, just her in general, the more connected he felt instead of recalling memories he never remembered living out.

Alistair took a brief look back down at the screen he hadn't realized she'd been holding out to him until a few odd seconds had passed, slowly shaking his head at the words. It was strange, as surprising and different as this new connection was it wasn't making him panic. On the contrary, much of this felt so familiar now. "No, it's not just-," he mumbled off into nothing, feet carrying him out of the kitchen until he gradually came to a seat on the edge of his living room couch. It was more than remembering her. It was knowing. "Hard to explain, I guess," he breathed, eyes settling somewhere along the coffee table in front of him.

It felt entirely different now. The presence of her had triggered something in him, something that had already labelled her as trustworthy. An instinct. She'd been there, at the gulch, and it was there that he'd felt her intentions. Honest, true, harmless. Something about her scent, the airy way she 'laughed', it was bringing it all back now. It was the first time he and-... and the other him had seen eye-to-eye. The first time they'd connected. "So, you're-," Alistair swallowed shallowly to clear his throat, his voice quieter now that his heart rate had significantly calmed, "-you're one of them, then? Someone with-? You know..." his eyes lifted, head turning slightly to give her an innocently exhausted expression. "I guess I already knew that. Just... didn't recall," his jaw tensed with uncertainty, looking back to the blank coffee table.

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