(no subject)

[vampire_shield]

The problem with being a vampire, Bella thought as she surveyed the two uprooted trees and pile of kindling at her feet, was that there wasn't ever a break. Maybe the pent up anger, frustration and sadness wouldn't have been as intense if she could have just slept. Just a few hours away from it to reboot or reset herself.

She remembered Carlisle telling her once that vampires felt things more completely, that just as their vision and hearing and speed were enhanced, their emotions were, too. Considering the state she was in now, even days after meeting Adrian, she was pretty sure she knew why. There was no relief from it, just day after day, night after night of dwelling on it.

Today she'd decided to go to her forest, to run, to hunt. To see if she could find something to distract her expanded mind, to get away from seeing that face across the hotel and experiencing the same dashed hope that this time it wasn't someone else.

The run had helped a little, pummeling a few trees to kindling had, too.

But even now as she walked back to her room with twigs in her hair, she knew it probably wouldn't last.

Comments

[powerof_water]

Adam noticed the twigs first. Bella was normally perfect, never a hair out of place but now she had twigs in her hair like she'd been out in the woods practicing magic. Adam was fairly sure vampires couldn't do magic, on account of being dead, so it was curious.

"Bella? Not so coiffed today?"

[vampire_shield]

Bella didn't answer right away. She took a step, then another, before turning back around. "What? Oh, I guess not. Uprooting two trees and making a huge pile of kindling isn't good for keeping a hairstyle intact."

She smiled, a little, but it was about as fake as a three dollar bill.

[powerof_water]

"Is there a reason you're destroying forests?" It did not seem like Bella, who was normally very calm and even-keeled and Adam had a reason to be concerned. Was it bloodlust? Was she trying to tamp down her desire to kill humans by going into the woods and destroying things instead? It did not seem like Bella at all.

"Is everything okay?"

[vampire_shield]

"I'm..."

The words died on her lips. She could lie easily now. There was no blush to give her away as long as she remembered to maintain eye contact and not look down. But she didn't want to lie, and mostly, she didn't want to lie to Adam.

"No," she said instead. "No, everything's about the opposite of all right as it's ever been since I came here."

[powerof_water]

Adam frowned deeply, suddenly very concerned about Bella. While he might have had the inkling of feelings that were something more, above all, Bella was his friend and was the closest friend he had here in the hotel. He did not want to see her upset about anything and if it was anything he could help with, however small, he wanted to give it a try.

"Look, maybe we should go somewhere private? What about the greenhouse?"

[vampire_shield]

Bella nodded and, because she needed the contact, she reached out a hand to him. She was quiet for the first few minutes while they walked until she found her voice again. "There's another vampire here," she said softly, "and he looks just like Edward."

[powerof_water]

"But he's not Edward, I guess?" The idea of someone looking exactly like someone else but not being that person is foreign to Adam but he did not say anything about it. Part of who he was dictated that he did not immediately dismiss the unknown and, instead, tried to seek out answers to explain the inexplicable. Maybe this was just a test of those particular beliefs.

"Bella, I'm truly sorry. I know you miss him."

[vampire_shield]

"No, not him," Bella agreed, unwilling to say the name again. Just as it had been when he'd left her, it was easier to lock it away if she didn't say it. "I do miss him, and I miss Ness, Alice, Charlie, the rest of my family. I was doing all right with it, I'd accepted that I was here alone and it was time to find my own life here. Seeing this Adrian just shook me, more than I thought possible."

[powerof_water]

"Is there anything I can do to get your mind off it? I'll do it," he promised. Bella was the dearest friend he had here and Adam felt like he owed it to her to do something to help cheer her up if he possibly could. Then again, how would he react if he'd seen a doppelganger of Cassie? Probably not well.

[chuisle]

He understood what that was like. Even with a soul, not succumbing to his baser instincts was a daily struggle, one you grew used to but never stopped fighting. Those who had never been a vampire would likely never get how much control those of their kind who held back from acting like the monsters they were had over themselves. Emotions were heightened, but only the select two who'd spent time with a soul attached to their being could attest to the affect it had on the more positive emotions a person was capable of experiencing. Soulless, the only thing was heightened was dark and twisted, selfish to the core. The demon his former breed was known for capitalized on it.

Angel was a vampire anymore, though. He'd been demoted, rendered human because Wolfram & Hart wanted to make it as difficult as possible for him to fight back. Difficult, but not impossible. After bouncing back from quite literally bouncing off the pavement, Angel had proven that a little case of humanity wasn't going to keep him down. They could knock him around all they wanted, but he'd keep getting back up again.

The humanity was a burden, but it was his burden to bear, the price he paid for taking out the Circle of the Black Thorn. And selfishly, being human again, was worth being able to step out into the sun again. It was wonderful, even with the cloud cover. The sun and moon had both been out 24/7 in hell, making for a constant unpleasant air. The sky always felt heavy, dark where it was supposed to be light and vice versa. There hadn't been any novelty in that.

For a moment, he tipped his head back and basked in the feel of the warm rays against his pale skin, only faltering when footsteps approached from the direction of the woods.

He squinted into the light, holding a hand up over his eyes to shield them from the light. He made out the form of a girl around Dawn's age, spotting the twigs in her hair as she drew closer.

"You've still got some of the forest in your hair."

[vampire_shield]

Bella stopped statue still when she heard another voice, one she hadn't ever heard before. It wasn't like she was the only one that came though the door to her forest, and since the hotel had started to get more crowded she always hunted well away from here.

Still, it was weird to find someone new here and at his comment, she reached up to her hair. Her arm hit a stray sunbeam and threw prisms against the surrounding trees.

"Thanks," she said and carded her fingers through her hair to try and remove them.

[chuisle]

He'd stumbled upon it indirectly while looking for a way back to his own world. It's been centuries since he's stepped out into the sunlight properly and the opportunity to do so was too powerful a temptation to resist. If not for that, he would've turned back around and continued his search.

"You're... welcome."

Whatever the sunlight had just done to her skin was unlike anything he'd ever seen before. It was beautiful, and practically demanded his attention. He couldn't help but stare.

[vampire_shield]

"I'm usually a lot more put together than this when I run," Bella commented, still pulling twigs and leaves from her hair. Hmm, I guess it could have happened while I was venting." She gestured towards the two uprooted tree stumps, limbs ripped from the trunk and broken into foot-long pieces.

She noticed his stare and frowned a little. "Are you okay?"

[chuisle]

Angel wasn't so foolish as to believe that the metaphysical properties of his world were the same ones that governed others. He'd seen plenty of evidence towards the contrary during his time in Pylea. Yet, the way her skin glimmered in the sunlight and how she'd seemingly reduced those tree branches to kindling with her bare hands pointed towards her being something other than human.

He wasn't going to assume anything.

"That shimmering thing you just did, was that make up or magic?"

[vampire_shield]

"Shimmering?" Bella asked, confused for a second until she looked at her own arm and laughed a little. "Oh, you mean the sparkling thing? No, no magic. And I'm not a big fan of glitter, either. It's just something I do, or my skin does, when the sun hits it. All the vampires where I come from do this, but none of the others I've met do. Then again, most of them can't go into the sun at all, so there's that."

She zipped out of the beam's path and into full shade. "Sorry. I know it can be a little weird."

[chuisle]

Vampire. Of course. How ironic was it that of all the supernatural beings he could've encountered when he walked in here, it was a vampire? A vampire that shimmered in the sunlight, glistening like he skin was coated in a fine diamond dust. The sight of it was almost hypnotic to him, but he imagined that was something of a disadvantage that came with the advantage of being able to walk in the sun without bursting into flames.

"Can't is relative. There are ways around that, tricks and talismans... spells. Depends on what you know, what resources you have."

Like a magic ring he foolishly smashed to smithereens a few years ago. He went back and forth on whether he regretted his decision to get rid of it. Right now, while he was an ex-vampire wearing a thick coat of vampire glamour, the point was kind of moot.

[vampire_shield]

"So I've been told," Bella smiled. "We stay out of the sun around humans because it draws attention and we try to avoid that. There's another vampire here that can tolerate it and another that can't. It's one of the weird things about this place. All the rules I thought I knew tossed right out the window."

She considered the man before her. Everything in her senses told her he was human, but there was something about the way he talked. "You're not a vampire."

It wasn't a question, but it sounded like one.

[whattingawhat]

Buffy catches sight of Bella walking down the hall looking a bitrough and it spikes a bit of concern. She hasn't seen the vampire since she arrived so it's high time to catch up. She starts toward her.

"Hey, Bella, everything all right?"

[vampire_shield]

Bella stopped and turned to face the blonde. Buffy, she remembered, and found a half-smile remembering the puns they'd traded the day they'd met.

"Yes, I'm fine," she answered, sounding a like she really wasn't. "How are you settling in?"

[whattingawhat]

Bella had made that a day a lot easier on Buffy. She was grateful to her for that.

It was obvious that Bella wasn't okay, but sometimes 'I'm fine' was the only thing that held a person together so she'd let Bella have that. She shrugged at Bella's question. "I'm okay. My sister is here and I'm figuring the doors out, figuring out how this place works. I still haven't found a door home, but that might be a good thing."

[vampire_shield]

"I'm glad you've got family here," Bella said and really worked to keep the bitterness out of her voice. "It's got to be nice to have some sort of anchor to life back home. I've stopped looking for doors back to Forks," she admitted.

And that was what had brought about her sudden dive into forestry - she was here alone, she wasn't going back, and her life in Forks was over. Once she accepted that, she demolished a few trees and decided to move on to making the best of this one.

[whattingawhat]

Buffy nodded. For the most part, Bella seemed to keep the bitterness out of her voice. It didn't raise any red flags for Buffy. At the same time, she knew that Bella was here alone. "It doesn't suck," she admitted. "I've been working really hard on making friends here too so..." And she had made a couple the last few months. Once upon a time she'd been the popular girl in school, but that had changed when she'd become a slayer and now, Buffy sometimes had a hard time making actual friends. She could chat someone up all day, but real friendships took more effort.

It would serve Bella better in the long run. Buffy had spent years wishing for a life that was more normal. It was only after she'd accepted that slayerdom was her life that she'd begun to be really happy.

[vampire_shield]

"I've made some too," Bella smiled, thinking of Eric and of Adam. "it really does make all the difference, doesn't it? So much better than holing up and hoarding all the misery. With friends, you can spread it around a little."

She gave a harsh little laugh, then shrugged. "The good part is, when they're friends they don't mind it so much."

[whattingawhat]

"I'm pretty sure that's what friendship is about, spreading the misery like peanut butter. Then it sticks to the roof of everyone's mouth and they can commiserate which somehow makes it better."

She nodded a little at the assessment. "Besides, they help you make some good memories and that makes the misery a little better too."

[vampire_shield]

"And now I'm craving human food for the first time since I was changed, so thanks for that," Bella laughed. "That they do; they also don't blink twice when you turn two trees into kindling with your bare hands. Always a bonus."