FINN DE LA SALLE
Phoenix
Posts: 266
Age:
651
Occupation:
French Teacher/Mercenary
Status:
Widowed
Played by:
ANGE
Last seen Oct 20, 2024 15:21:40 GMT
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Post by FINN DE LA SALLE on Jun 28, 2019 17:33:54 GMT
The last time he had pushed past the front doors of the Grill and the seemingly ever present crowd of students he had been carrying a stack of homework big enough to induce a headache from the weight alone. Three hours at the bar in the end, partially entertained by one of the young waitresses and Finn had finally reached the bottom of it. From the start of the new job marking had been the most odorous ordeal. By the time he’d trailed back out, eyes gritty, the alcohol he’d consumed to manage it all buzzing faintly in his system Finn had almost been ready to hand in his resignation. There were a dozen other jobs he could’ve chosen in Mystic Falls to act as a smokescreen for a life that had been lived in battle rather than behind white picket fences, ones that didn’t require him to nod cordially to the students as he passed or suppress cringes as he saw just how badly those students could mangle a language he’d spoken in its various incantations for over six centuries. A part of him wondered if that was how he had sounded as a three year old, trying to imitate the words that had fallen from his father’s mouth. Then his own tongue had been Old Prussian, a tongue left extinct in the region that had once been his home. Now Finn imagined he was the only one alive who could speak it fluently.
To the ears of the blonde behind the bar now, the one who had been friendly upon his very first trip here the day he had arrived in town, Old Prussian would probably sound alien. Then again, the thought that her customer had spent almost six hundred and fifty years wandering the earth would seem just as alien. Finn De La Salle was the immortal child, the one pulled from the ashes and seemingly impervious to any harm this world would throw at him. Yet, none of this felt like a miracle. Those around him he had allowed close died, often through fire and violence. His father, his adoptive father, was the only one who had slipped away from old age, the rest, Joan, Bridget, Alec, they were all consumed. Even those he had stood shoulder to shoulder with on battle fields the world over were gone, or likely to go if they continued to wield guns and bombs against those who threatened the world or knowingly remain in a town where the things inside of them were sure to lead them to doom. While those wars raged on, he had retreated to a place that only seemed to threaten war. Mystic Falls felt like a place on the brink of violence, but as of yet, Finn had found no sign of it himself beyond hunters and the hellhound hoarding bodies, only the strange, plodding peace enjoyed by the majority of the town’s residents.
He nodded to the blonde as he sat, half listening to her chirpy greeting and offer of the French beer he’d been ordering from her on that first trip. Dark eyes rose to meet hers as he gave a brief nod. She turned away, still talking despite his lack of response. Finn tapped the menu against the fingertips of one hand, dropping his gaze to study it. He had never developed a taste for cooking for himself. Circumstances had forced him to learn as he’d broken away from the constant travel of war to settle in the Highlands but it hadn’t been long before Bridget had taken over and then he had been sent on the road once more. Domesticity simply wasn’t needed, not until now. The fridge in the apartment might have been lightly stocked but when the choice had come between cooking for himself tonight and ordering from someone else’s hand, the latter had been the preference. ”I’ll take a chicken Caesar salad, please,” Finn murmured as she turned back and set the glass on the bar in front of him. Manners had been ingrained in him at his father’s side at the French court, had remained through the centuries despite the things he’d lived through. At first he thought it was the word please that had the blonde’s eyes sparkling but then Finn realised she was looking over his shoulder. ”Is there something…” Finn let his words trail off as he turned on his seat and scanned the crowd behind him. A family had just come in, a woman behind them. Finn narrowed his eyes faintly as the woman approached. This town it seemed was a mecca for the unusual.
Multiple tattoos barely seemed to raise eyebrows in bigger cities now. The self-expression barely registering a second glance, but here in a town where the population barely hit five figures, people had a tendency to stare just a moment too long. Clea’s reaction hadn’t been one of shock or disgust but the woman had caught her eye and a second look now was catching his, making it linger. ”Màthair naomh Dia, tha thu dìreach mar a bha.” The ache in his chest caught him unaware, a hard wrench, setting his heart to throbbing and the pit of his stomach to dropping away like an elevator out of control. Two hundred and fifty years and he could still remember the way Bridget’s ashy hair had tumbled down her back, the curls wild when he methodically picked all the pins from them. Those cool grey eyes that could warm like a stormy sky flashing up at him with all the life he’d seen in her. The cast to a mouth that had always been able to draw a smile from him. Christ. Finn’s throat bobbed as he met the woman’s eye and then pulled himself together. ”I apologise, I wasn’t staring. Not in the way you might think at least,” he said honestly. ”Sorry.” He looked back at the bar as Clea nudged his beer a little closer to him on the bar. ”Please get her whatever she wants on my tab. Apology.” Finn raised his voice, casting a skittering look in her direction before he turned back to his beer and the burning thirst that was suddenly desperate to burn that stark memory from his mind.
Translation: Holy mother of God, you’re just like her.
Tagged: @delphine * Word Count: 1047
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FINN DE LA SALLE
Phoenix
Posts: 266
Age:
651
Occupation:
French Teacher/Mercenary
Status:
Widowed
Played by:
ANGE
Last seen Oct 20, 2024 15:21:40 GMT
|
Post by FINN DE LA SALLE on Jul 8, 2019 18:23:12 GMT
Almost six and a half centuries of life. There wasn’t likely a soul in the Grill who could truly empathise with that. Vampires had been known to live that long, kitsunes, the occasional witch but they were truly few and far between. So few knew what it was like to see literally millions of faces pass before your eyes, to spend decades in war, to die what must’ve been fifty times like now. The latter two had left him exhausted at times, although even that was less likely to happen for a man who was near impervious to harm, it was the former that he would’ve called his biggest suffering. To have lost those he had loved most, in Gadifer’s case, watching the once strong and virile man who had plucked him literally from the ashes grow old and frail, to see Joan burn, to have been hundreds of miles away while Bridget and Alec had suffered the same fate. With them all he had seen them afterwards, a glimpse of long ashen hair in a crowd, a pair of quick silver eyes meeting his across a crowded room, he had ever heard Bridget’s voice in the woods, a crocotta’s taunt that Finn knew he never could have resisted.
Never had he found himself pinned by it in the way he had the woman. Like a butterfly on a board, fixed in place, undoubtedly with its wings fluttering against the pins holding it in place. He’d gawped, trapped there between centuries, between the two women. She had looked away first, her eyes going to a family. Just the sight of them had Finn’s throat working. There was nothing of Bridget or what he had imagined Alec to be but with Bridget’s face still overlaid on the woman’s it was hard not to feel the pang of what might have been. Embarrassingly his gaze was back on her before hers was on him. Finn felt the shame rising to his face in a hot wave as she swept fingertips over her skin, undoubtedly in search of what it was he had fixated on. Telling her that it had been a dead woman wasn’t what anybody wanted to hear.
Apology was all that he could manage and that was only after she had sat down bar from him, those mercurial eyes rolling before his words had him blinking at him. Whose chance was it to gawp now?
Finn nodded as she shot him a confused look, that bafflement obvious in her voice. It was the least he could do for being the sort of creep Gadifer had not brought him up to be. Dark eyes cut aside as she plumped for a beer and not one of these American glass bottles of foam and bitterness. Swallowing a mouthful of his own he shook his head. ”I wasn’t trying to pick you up,” he told her, his lips twitching at her straightforwardness, so like Bridget, ”and I was not offering charity. I’ve given you the wrong impression. You reminded me of somebody.” Shifting in his seat Finn tried to stop his shoulders from stiffening. That was certainly not the first thought that had entered his mind but others, closeted, blinkered to anything but a reflection of themselves, had undoubtedly equated her look to something approaching the overtly sexual in the past.
It wasn’t the comment that had his brows drawing together, rather the huff of words that came under her breath instead. French and grouchy enough in its pronunciation to have his smile growing. Finn didn’t answer her question, lifting his beer to his lips instead. It was a notion his brain had echoed at times, most usually now when his class erupted and the desire to run himself through with his own sword grew almost too great to resist. He could not move on yet though, he still didn’t understand enough of what was happening in this town or feel like the pressure cooker beneath the surface had yet bled off its steam.
Brows hitching again, Finn glanced aside. He peeled his fingers off his own glass, waving her gratitude off. Another hint of French, the accent perfect enough that it was almost unmistakable. ”You’re welcome,” he murmured. Lifting his glass, Finn studied the beer through its crystal clear side. ”It was a surprise the first time I saw it on offer too. Few places here offer it. I think perhaps the first time was a mistake but the bartender has a steel trap mind. I think she orders it in specially now. You’ve spent time there?” He shifted on his stool, hooking a brow up in question as he took in her profile. ”France, je veux dire. Vous le parlez plus naturellement que la plupart de mes étudiants.” Of course, that wasn’t difficult but it was an extra punch to the gut when he already felt off balance.
Translation: France, I mean. You speak it more naturally than most of my students.
Tagged: @delphine * Word Count: 817
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FINN DE LA SALLE
Phoenix
Posts: 266
Age:
651
Occupation:
French Teacher/Mercenary
Status:
Widowed
Played by:
ANGE
Last seen Oct 20, 2024 15:21:40 GMT
|
Post by FINN DE LA SALLE on Jul 19, 2019 20:32:06 GMT
Had this been one of the taverns that they’d so often lurked in over the centuries, planning war, hiding from those on the opposite side, he might have been more likely to believe that there was something more lascivious about the woman before him but this was another century and a world away from such things. You didn’t pick women up in that manner anymore, not that he ever had done as the well bred son of a highly respected Knight. Civility had slowly crept in over the centuries and as hard as he’d tried to adapt to it Finn had clung on to all that the court had taught him, except for his ability to keep his eyes to himself and his mouth clamped shut. That he thought as suspicion crept his way, had been the fault of his surprise. Seeing so much of Bridget in somebody after all this time had robbed him of his ability to filter what had run through his head.
On the wrong feet immediately he’d tiptoed back, tried to dance through the rest of that minefield as he explained what had happened. Finn knew she wasn’t believing him, the fact that she didn’t ask who or even brush off his apology verbally made that very much clear. She probably thought he was still bordering on the edge of creepiness. Perhaps he was, he thought, glancing down at his beer, swiping the pad of one thumb over the damp glass. It hadn’t been an instant bolt of lust for Bridget, no lightning strike, instead she’d slowly worked on him, wearing down his assurance that he just wanted to live alone and farm her father’s land. A shrewd mind had lived behind those quicksilver eyes though, the sort he could see in the girl who was arching a brow at him now. There was no explanation that would make any more sense to her than the one he’d already awkwardly given. Mystic Falls was filled with the supernatural but none of his own kind, there never were.
Except for one and their paths had diverged not long after they had encountered one another. It seemed ill luck for the two of them to be in one place when they were the most universally distrusted among the other beasts that wandered the earth. Up until Scotland he had never lingered anywhere for long and what had happened there was proof why. He would not have another die for him, never again.
But while he was here he would have a taste of home. Finn had lost himself in the amber glow of the beer for a moment, watching the bubbles rise through the liquid like he had through time, slipping through other lives untouched physically by those years. Would he finally reach a pinnacle and burst like those bubbles? Doubtful. There was no escape from what he had seen but in those brief heartbeats where his thoughts were turned outwards. The grin that tugged at her mouth at his question now did just that, their attention seeming to draw to one another, to catch as she shifted down the bar towards him. A faint huff of amusement whispered from his lips at her response. ”That makes two of us. It has been an age since I walked through the woods of home.” Almost a century now, his time there during the second world war hardly as peaceful as his childhood had once been. Those woods had ended up filled with the bodies of those he was serving with, scars carved deep into the landscape.
Tilting the forearm that rested on the bar, Finn studied his unmarked skin. A shot had almost taken his arm there, the machine gun tearing at flesh. He’d woken in a trench then, under the bodies of the men that had been either side of him, flames rising, life again filling his body. Drawn from the thought, Finn’s brows drew together for a moment before he snapped back to that faint smile. ”There are few here in this country. It seems like Spanish is understandably more popular here.” Tracing a tongue over the inner moist border of his lip Finn nodded, gesturing in the direction of the high school with his glass. ”If you can call it that. At the High School. What they speak … a butchering of the language. Did you learn here?” There, he thought more likely, the accent too smooth, too natural for her to have been the sort lured to the country by the romance of a High School French class.
Drawing in a breath, Finn shifted on his seat as he calculated, dark eyes narrowing as they fixed on her in the mirror that lined the bar. Too long would have been his knee jerk reaction but the truth was the months had slipped away rapidly. There was still no sign of war but that had been the last thing on his mind at times. ”I began last summer,” he explained, not bothering with the tail he’d told the school board about him transferring from a school in France. ”A late career change in life.” Very late and brief. Just like that stop in Scotland. Soon enough the war here would either erupt or bubble away and he would be back in uniform. Dark eyes narrowed faintly as she tapped herself, one dark brow rising before his mouth twisted again. ”Not so rude, I assure you.” His hand was out, his own name on his lips before it stuck in his throat. De La Salle. Realisation dawning at how he had been played Finn cleared his throat, took her hand to shake it. ”Finn,” he told her, pronouncing it the way his father once had. ”A French surname, it should be no surprise. An old one at that, from Burgundy if I’m not mistaken. Tattoo parlor, not surprising.” The smile was tighter than it had been as he looked at her. Then there was a crack, just a trace as his throat bobbed.
Tagged: @delphine * Word Count: 1007
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FINN DE LA SALLE
Phoenix
Posts: 266
Age:
651
Occupation:
French Teacher/Mercenary
Status:
Widowed
Played by:
ANGE
Last seen Oct 20, 2024 15:21:40 GMT
|
Post by FINN DE LA SALLE on Sept 21, 2019 17:32:48 GMT
It had always been like cracking an oyster shell to get him to talk about himself. Most wanted that sense of a connection to those whose lives brushed up against their own. If your had only stretched out a couple of decades it was a simple matter but with a half dozen lifetimes under your belt how did you empathise with those whose lives were so ephemeral. It was a question Finn had found himself never able to answer before, he kept his shields up instead, only offering up as much as was necessary, letting others believe that they’d plumbed the entirety of his depths. He was doing the same with the girl now but some part of him wanted to crack open, to reveal something more than the fact that he’d been teaching at the High School for all of five minutes. Tiny threads of it had worked their way through his words, his mention of home, the memories of those long walks away from the castle, almost always under his father’s watchful eye in one way or another.
The woods here were a different matter, the thought of finding Jordan out amongst them, burning, subsumed by the thing that had taken up residence inside of him. Pushing it from his mind, from what he was, Finn came back to himself in the bar. Spanish had become almost as natural a tongue for him as French or English over the centuries but it didn’t come to him as his own language did now. Finn snorted with laughter at her teasing, his brows drawing together as he feigned a momentary hurt. ”Probably not,” he told her honestly. ”But it is my cross to bear for the moment. If any of them ever start to be able to conjugate a verb properly I might just cast it down and call it a job well done.” More likely than not something else would happen in this town that would require him to take his sword back up. As he’d done before he would throw himself back into the fray, leaving his momentary peace behind him.
His throat bobbed as he enquired about her origins. A tiny, reedy voice mocked him in the back of his mind, telling him that he already knew but Finn mentally swatted at him. The world was a strange place but it wasn’t full of miracles of resurrection, especially not for a man as damned as he was. The barbed wire tightened around his throat as he stared at her. ”Raised in France but born in Scotland?” he enquired, warning himself not to see anything in that. There had been ties between the two countries for centuries. It was why the Bonnie Prince had languished there before his aborted attempt to take the crown, it was why he’d gone there in the first place himself. Lifting his glass, he took long pulls at the cold beer, having to force it down past the knot in his throat. Finn ducked his head over the glass, managing a halting chuckle. ”I guess experience shows,” he agreed. He’d never been much of anything except a soldier. Not much of a farmer, not much of a husband in the end.
Feeling the grip of her hand Finn tried to ignore the flicker of Bridget’s face over the girl’s but it was impossible. De La Salle. An impossibility, although in this town there were honestly no such things. His old personal torturer – fate – was back to take another swipe at him, the cost of trying to settle down again for a time. He let out a shuddery breath as she looked away from him, her pale eyes fixing on the bottles below the counter. There was a tremor in his fingers as he reached for the beer in front of him. The long draws of it had nearly drained the alcohol. Not enough, he thought, there weren’t enough bottles in this bar tonight for this. Finn fixed his gaze on her in the mirror behind those bottles, her features almost a kaleidoscope now. ”It’s from the Burdundy region,” he said hoarsely. ”There was a Gadifer de la Salle, a favourite knight of both the Duke of Burgundy and the Duke of Berry. At least I imagine that’s where your origins may have lain.” He shifted again, long legs feeling stiff at the change in angle as he looked at her. ”By people in France?”
It was none of his business. His own line had died those two hundred and fifty years ago and this was just wishful thinking. A husband and father still grieving seeing those he had lost in a girl who’d done nothing more than accept the attentions of a stranger who should’ve continued keeping to himself. That sad smile tugged at something painful in him as she ordered them another round though. Perhaps Bridget was not the only one echoed in her. Finn reached out as she offered him her card, taking it with fingers that still weren’t entirely steady. He stared down at it, the name still a kick to the gut. ”I’ve reached a ripe old age without marking my skin but perhaps it’s time,” he offered hollowly. ”Art at least is something I can confess an interest in.” He’d sat in galleries worldwide, studying what were now considered the work of masters. The faces he had now painted in bold strokes while his own life had gone on unnoticed. Finn cleared his throat as he tucked the card in his pocket. ”Taught. I fought,” he told her honestly, wincing faintly at the unintentional rhyme. ”I was a soldier.” Was being the operative word for the moment. Drawing in a long breath, Finn swallowed a mouthful of beer. Perhaps he should be returning to uniform sooner rather than later.
Tagged: @delphine * Word Count: 971
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FINN DE LA SALLE
Phoenix
Posts: 266
Age:
651
Occupation:
French Teacher/Mercenary
Status:
Widowed
Played by:
ANGE
Last seen Oct 20, 2024 15:21:40 GMT
|
Post by FINN DE LA SALLE on Oct 2, 2019 19:29:12 GMT
Worse. So much worse. The words wanted to roll from his throat but something was still squeezed almost painfully tight around it. Hearing his language so mangled had left his heart aching at first but in comparison to this? Being taunted with a past that had never played out in the way it should’ve done thanks to his once father-in-law, it had been a hang-nail. Fin tried to swallow past it, his head bobbing to the beat of his heart in his temples. ”The worst you can imagine and more,” he promised. But only in regards to the language and in the grand scheme of things, that seemed to mean less and less as time rolled on. Six hundred years drifting away from that one moment in time and it had grown blurred in some ways, soft around the edges. Time did that to everything but then you found yourself caught in that one second where everything slammed back with a sort of sudden clarity. Finn tipped his head, peeling one finger from his glass to wag it slightly. ”Not as odd as you might think,” he told her, feeling as though he were falling back into the teacher mindset. ”There have been ties between France and Scotland for centuries. Those claiming Scotland’s throne hid there for years before they attempted to take the crown back.” Charlie’s fool-hardy attempt had done more than damn the Scots to a far more brutal rule for years. It had cost him his family, the one he was reminded of so painfully now despite her light hearted tone.
The opposite of his own life, a reflection just as sharp and clean as the one in her distant eyes. The next best thing to being born in France, raised there before he had gone to Scotland to find some part of him dying again before he woke to suck that air into his lungs like fresh, bloody agony. Finn could feel it again now, that burn under his breastbone, threatening to steal his breath as shock registered on her features. The stutter filled her words, leaving him blinking. A sucked in breath, a miniscule shift of those familiar dark eyes in the mirror as they met hers in the reflection. ”De La Salle is famed in the area,” he lied, knowing that the only place his father lived on were in dusty history books and his own memory. ”My roots are in the area, my family line going back a long way.” Stretching halfway across the world now. The line should’ve grown thin but it was thick enough to close around his throat like a garotte now.
Snap. The thin wire of his past yanked tight with her admission that her father found her in Scotland. If she’d been a boy there’d not have been room to breath, no way of avoiding staring his past in the face but this woman wasn’t Alec and no amount of wishful thinking was going to put his son there in her place. She had been some other father’s child, taken in by one who had cared for her. There had been nothing to stop another de le Salle fathering her, or taking her in. Her father. A de la Salle. That was all. Numb lips pressed together still, as bloodless as the fingertips that bit into the cold glass he held. ”And he took you home,” he said hoarsely. Back to the place of her namesakes at least.
Perhaps it was time he did the same. He’d been here too long. Finn had known that there was something wrong with the town long before he’d come here but he hadn’t anticipated this. A chance to use his sword, to save lives perhaps, but not this. The grief, the sadness that he’d buried with constant battle wasn’t supposed to have risen at the sight of a girl who had no idea where her roots lay, whether they sprouted from the same well as his own father’s or not. The velveteen eyes narrowed slightly with concern as he saw the shiver run through her but still he didn’t slip off of the seat feigning a place to be. His chin dipped an inch, rising back up slower. ”I may just do that. Something to commemorate perhaps.” A moment etched in time upon his skin, an epitaph to those who had been snatched away. With the card in his pocket, Finn raised his hand, fingertips digging into his chest for a moment, willing the feeling of them back below.
The correction of the word had slipped out easily enough, a knee jerk before the truth followed it up. Finn had winced his way through the explanation, his smile almost rictus as she chuckled at it. The safe path through this conversation had grown treacherous, each word picked over the moment it had left his lips. Each a mistake in his eyes, the last the worst. Whatever it was Delphine heard in them it had rattled her. He shifted uneasily on his stool, regret rising, twisting in his throat as she glanced around. Did she expect a battalion to burst in through the door and rain down violence upon her? As they had Bridget and Alec. Setting his own glass down he began to raise a hand in surrender before she asked questions he knew were marked with more than an accent. She was still playing for normality but he had lived long enough to read through the lines. Finn nudged his glass away, fumbling in his pocket for his wallet. ”Just as I said,” he told her gruffly. ”A soldier turned teacher. I’m sorry if something in what I’ve said has upset you but trust me, Ms de la Salle, there is nothing more here than what you are seeing.” But there was…
He froze, fingers tight enough around the twenty dollar bill to have the cottony paper tearing like tissue. Fire in her eyes, that mirror no longer a reflection of her but him. ”Mon dieu.” A hoarse whisper as a prayer, a plea almost for things to go back to the way they had been. A murky painful past that only those brief moments of death would let him escape. Please God, let all of this disappear the same way.
Tagged: @delphine * Word Count: 1051
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FINN DE LA SALLE
Phoenix
Posts: 266
Age:
651
Occupation:
French Teacher/Mercenary
Status:
Widowed
Played by:
ANGE
Last seen Oct 20, 2024 15:21:40 GMT
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Post by FINN DE LA SALLE on Oct 16, 2019 19:36:58 GMT
The only way he could’ve felt more like a mirror had been held up to his own life than if he’d looked in the mirror behind the bar and found two crystal clear images of his own face staring back at him. Over the years there had been echoes, those brief glimpses of Bridget’s in a crowd, the sight of a little cottage nestled in rolling hills, a gleam of a blade in battle or the feel of his own heartbeat slowing in his chest. Each time the sensation had been a kick to the chest but that was all it had been, that brief, hard kick that was gone almost as soon as it had arrived. Talking to the girl at the bar, hearing her story and the name that could so easily have been tied to his own, the kick wasn’t fading.
Finn knew he wasn’t helping himself but some masochistic part of him wanted to hear more from the girl, to feel a connection with somebody whose ancestors had perhaps tied back to the same court centuries ago. The wiser part already had hands over his ears metaphorically, trying to drown out all those little details with the pessimistic little hum that told him his connections had died long ago. There was nobody tying him to this town other than friends and acquaintances he would soon outlive. Still he lingered though, feeling his stomach wrench and that invisible wire snap tight around his throat, stealing away words of that connection that would have been foolish. The girl wasn’t a phoenix, she hadn’t been born to parents who were both destined to burn. That had been Alec’s destiny perhaps but his son had died alongside his wife, turned to ash by the very people he’d once fought for.
His throat working, Finn saw the mute bob of her head in the glass’ reflection. It was muddied by the foamy depths but the motion was enough to confirm that the man she would be raised by had found her, had taken her in. Hundreds of miles away, strangely back where her name’s roots had begun. ”You have my sympathies,” he managed, one thumb swiping at the glass so that the moisture would clear and reveal her achingly familiar face again. ”To be the only survivor is never easy.” And yet he had done it time and time again, unable to figure out a way to stop the cycle and follow one of them into whatever was beyond. What was it they said now? Stop the ride and get off? How many times had he actually prayed for it to a God he’d come to believe did not exist. Finn wasn’t sure if it would’ve been better if someone had listened. He’d have railed against them for not being there for those who didn’t deserve their end. Maybe he would’ve thanked them if someone like this girl’s father had stumbled across those he had been forced to leave behind and had taken care of them. ”He sounds like a good man. One with a good heart at least.” Had it been the 18th century and in the time of war Scotland had been caught up in there were few that would have had the resources to care.
Starvation had been rife as the English had pressed back, the hospitality he had found before the war gone as he’d plodded north, half starved, desperate to find his wife and child. Not even a crust of bread and a mug of ale most days. Without the strength he possessed, his bones would have grown brittle, his starvation literally etching itself into his body. Instead, he was still unmarked. Finn returned the girl’s grin with a brittle one of his own. ”Watch out for me,” he told her honestly. Only to wish to take back the words just moments later. Something in what he’d said had changed the conversation, leaving the girl anxious and snapping, like a frightened dog bearing its teeth to warn away a possibly violent hand.
Rattled himself, determined not to launch into an explanation this girl didn’t need, one she shouldn’t have to bear, Finn pulled the wallet from his pocket and prepared to run. Distance. He needed distance from her so that whatever this was could dissipate for both of them. Mumbling his explanation again Finn pulled the leather free, fingers already dipping inside as the plea rose from her. The sound of it had him pausing, her hand a restraint he should have been able to break free from so easily. Finn’s chest rose and fell slowly, his gaze locked on the burning eyes he had seen in the mirror oh so often. His head shook slowly as he dropped the bill anyway. ”There’s no need,” he told her, the voice in his head still shrieking for him to run. An inch at a time, Finn sank back down on the stool, waving off the bartender as she approached to take the bill. ”There is no offence,” he assured her. ”We were speaking at cross-purposes, that was all.” His eyes drifted back to the mirror as she turned, glancing at him from the corner of her eyes, her now humanly blue eyes. ”Was it the talk of being a soldier?” It wouldn’t have been the strangest reaction he’d had to that but the fire fear had brought to the girl’s eyes said it was so much more. Phoenix, she was a phoenix bearing his name.
Tagged: @delphine * Word Count: 918
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FINN DE LA SALLE
Phoenix
Posts: 266
Age:
651
Occupation:
French Teacher/Mercenary
Status:
Widowed
Played by:
ANGE
Last seen Oct 20, 2024 15:21:40 GMT
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Post by FINN DE LA SALLE on Nov 6, 2019 22:21:32 GMT
It was amazing the power a single word could have. In French, in English, in Latin or Old Prussian, the meaning was still the same. And for him, the meaning of the word survivor was certainly the most damning. Finn’s throat worked around a mouthful of the fresh beer. The foam was bitter, threatening to choke him as it slid past the fist squeezing like a noose. He had survived for hundreds of years, watching others fall around him. Some would have called it a blessing, a chance for him to continue to do good as though being what he was made him a saint instead of damnation personified. Watching Joan burn, powerless against the overwhelming forces. Finding the house where he had last left Bridget and Alec, burned to nothing but ash. Each time he had lived, he had been the one to go on, to remember but at what cost. Not death, never death, but something that was a far bigger torment.
Ducking his head for a second Finn drew in a deep breath and then glanced at the girl beside him. Were the tattoos that swirled over her skin her testament to the past she had survived? A memorial to her history, an autobiography or a design for a life yet to be lived. Finn turned his own hand over, studying the unmarred skin. No matter how many times he had been killed there was never any sign of it when he awoke. The proverbial phoenix from the ashes, miraculously healed time and time again.
Brown eyes narrowed faintly at her musing on the word, a breath sucked in through thinned lips as he warned himself not to see anything more in the expression than was truly there. ”It’s not a word to be ashamed of,” he cautioned huskily. Although, he was, wasn’t he? Somehow ashamed of how many times he had walked that high road, above the suffering of all others. Finn made a low sound in his throat, half disagreement as she told him no sympathies were needed, that time had passed in great measure. As though it were capable of healing anything. The wounds inside never scabbed over, never dulled or stopped singing, they were the keen edge of a blade whenever he turned his thoughts to them. ”They lie,” he told her, slipping to English for a moment before going back into his native tongue. ”Some wounds time cannot touch. You just carry them with you. Reminders you cannot shed.” For him at least.
If only they would burn in the way his flesh did, flames that he could turn inside of himself, charring all of that from his heart, from his mind. As though he could taste them on his tongue again, Finn swallowed hard. At least the girl had somebody there, someone to watch out for her when her own parents could or would not. He had hoped so anyway until her cackle had him pausing, shifting in the seat uncomfortably. ”A man of ambition and greed and yet he took in a child that wasn’t his own to raise. It sounds to me like that’s not all he was.” Relationships were always complex though. Hadn’t his own father taken him in from a country he’d travelled to hell bent on stamping out the old ways, to bring supposed enlightenment to the heathens on the Duke’s orders? Gadifer had redeemed himself in a way, raising an orphan boy as his own.
Abandoning him when death had come to call, leaving him to live on for centuries, cursed with eternal lucidity. It struck as he told her to watch out for him at her tattoo parlour, the colour draining from her face impossible to miss. She laughed it off but it was too late, Finn thought, mentally cursing himself, she hadn’t been able to school her expression in the way she had her laughter. Then the paling was merely the prelude, his speech, his manner leaving her throwing accusations that were not so far from the truth. Relief seemed to set in afterwards but Finn remained on his guard, only sitting back in his seat warily, as though he were sitting next to a frightened animal not the confident woman she had been only moments before. It was not the first spooked person he’d had to calm, not the first he had been the one to startle.
But she was the first one of his own kind he had seen in centuries. Finn drew in slow breaths, looking up to meet the bartender’s eye as the man drifted back towards them. ”I think we need something stronger,” he told him, his lips tilting up in a brittle smile that didn’t reach his eyes. ”Two brandies, if you will.” As he slipped away he settled back into his seat, querying just what he had said that had shocked the girl. The past hadn’t needed to be torn up but he had been honest with her. An apology burned in his dark eyes as her gaze finally met his. Finn shook his head slowly. In his experience it had never been the soldiers instigating the violence, only those who hid behind them. ”In my experience soldiers have only ever been the tools. We don’t choose where to go, who to fight. We’re only bound to do it for others. They send us in with no thought of the consequences, not caring what we may be leaving behind, only what we can do for them.” For Bridget’s father it had been a matter of two birds in one hand, an opportunity to rid himself of the son-in-law he had never wanted and a strong sword arm for a cause he had believed in to the last.
Staring down at the hand he had burned the man with Finn closed it into a fist. For Bridget he would’ve thought, for their child he would’ve walked away from the battle without a second thought.
At the catch in her voice Finn looked back up, shifting uncomfortably. She wasn’t looking at him, not really but he felt stripped bare all the same. His past and present suddenly overlaying one another with no room for the blur that had been there only a moment before. ”There have been people looking to find you,” he said, feeling that knot slide from his throat to the pit of his stomach. Their kind had been painted with a target the moment it was discovered that they were the one thing that could kill Eve. Hanging his head slightly, Finn reached out to tap a finger against his beer glass. ”It is one of the tragedies of the world that there are those who seek and those who are left to run. At least here there is safety. A haven of sorts amongst those who are willing to protect those … like yourself.” Gadifer would have scolded him for his lack of diplomacy but his father had never known quite who he had raised. How could you be diplomatic about the fact that you were face to face with what might have been?
Tagged: @delphine * Word Count: 1190
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FINN DE LA SALLE
Phoenix
Posts: 266
Age:
651
Occupation:
French Teacher/Mercenary
Status:
Widowed
Played by:
ANGE
Last seen Oct 20, 2024 15:21:40 GMT
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Post by FINN DE LA SALLE on Dec 10, 2019 20:41:45 GMT
Could you be truly ashamed of the one thing you had proven yourself to be time and time again? Finn couldn’t believe so. You could hate it, could curse yourself every time you awoke again to find that you had not followed those you loved into the embrace of death but no amount of resurrection had ever convinced him to look at that part of himself with shame. He had not made himself what he was, he had merely been left to suffer through it time and time again.
Standing over the grave of his wife, of his child, the soil in front of it freshly dug and dark against the lush green hills where he’d seen Bridget at her happiness, Finn had prayed to be taken with them but with the taste of his father in laws ashes on his tongue he had turned away in the end. There had to be some good that came from the fact that his body refused to lie down and rot. What that was he still wasn’t sure of but while he had the strength of body and mind he’d keep fighting to find it. Others might have found themselves standing in that same spot, hoping to find some answer as to why they had come through it when their loved ones hadn’t but it didn’t mean the strength continued to echo in their bones. Some would crumble, joining that ash in their minds.
Glancing at the girl beside him Finn didn’t think he could see that ash blowing away, leaving only an ephemeral outline of who she had been beyond. A leaf left skeletal to scatter in the wind, tossed around in a way that left her no control, no hold on her life. She wasn’t that far gone, there was still the opportunity to heal and at least partially come back from whatever had left her so wounded and bitter. Some scars would remain, he knew that all too well. The cynicism over there was certainly in the scoff that fell from her lips. A faint smile, acerbic at its edges pulled at his lips as she began to ramble, the sharpness back in her words. ”Some would say that it’s those moments that prevent those wounds from becoming mortal. They might fester but they won’t take you entirely. It’s a blessing and a curse to live forever with those scars cutting deeper.” He could’ve cut himself off, said his words were nothing but a metaphor, but even in a place like Mystic Falls few read that deep between words.
His own wounds had long since hardened at the edges at least, the centre might still be bloody and deep, able to open with a single thought but tonight they had been held at bay for a time at least. The girl had begun to lance them again though, drawing not only images of Bridget and Alec from him but so much more on top, forcing him to think in ways he hadn’t for years.
Fatherhood had never been something he had expected but when Bridget had announced that she was with child some part of him had desperately wanted to see a part of him grow. He’d watched Bridget’s stomach swell, had felt the life within through his own palm but fatherhood had been snatched in a brutal moment of violence. Would he have drawn an expression like Delphine’s from his son one day or would Alec have looked up to him the way he had to Gadifer? Who knew. Finn’s stomach twisted at the expression now though, as if somehow things would have been different if he’d been the one to find the girl. ”Then you have my sympathies,” Finn said honestly. ”Every child deserves more.” But most didn’t get it. In many ways adults did the worst things while trying to do their best.
Undoubtedly had Gadifer taken him in now it wouldn’t have been war he had sent his son to but they had been different times with fewer choices. The voice in the back of his mind told him that he could’ve walked away a thousand times before but eventually he always returned to the one thing he knew, the one thing he believed could make a difference. On the other side of the dividing line of her their opinions the girl was vehement, snatching up the brandy he ordered, hissing at the swing she took. Jaw firm, Finn gave a single shake of his head. ”If an order is immoral he has as much of a duty to stand against it as he did to take up his sword in the first place. Being willing to fight for your country doesn’t mean abandoning your own morals or committing crimes.” For most that was easier said than done but as a man who could stand up after being shot for cowardice or dereliction of duty Finn knew he could walk that fine line.
Six hundred years of war and he was an expert in every way of justifying it. Clinging on to his own moral code was what had left him sane and his pockets full. If a battle, especially now, went with his way of thinking he would fight it, even if it was just over alcohol in this town. Muscles stood out in tight relief in his jaw as Finn clenched his fingers around the neck of the glass. ”Poor indeed. They continue their life that way because they’ve been abandoned by those who broke them in the first place. There’s an obligation of those you fight for to take care of you. When they don’t, when there’s abandonment, that’s when the trouble starts.” He’d seen it a thousand times over, good men lost to the horrors they had seen. Clearing his throat, Finn inclined his head. ”Not many are able to see it from each perspective,” he agreed. Living through his scars he simply had no other way of seeing it.
So many of those dented and scarred by what they had seen turned against what they had faced. Men who’d once worn uniform turned against the evil in their own society, their experiences colouring everything they saw. Finn had intended to reassure when he had said there was safety for those … like herself, but he had mis-stepped again. Sighing, Finn kept his eyes on her. ”A poor choice of words,” he corrected. ”What I should’ve said was that this town offers an opportunity for all who try and find a new start in it.” He raised his glass, tipping it in the direction of hers as though toasting the notion. ”My opportunity calls for me to teach my students the error of their Google search tomorrow morning. I should not linger.” He should not put his foot in it again. Finn lifted his glass, tipping it back to swallow the heated depths of the brandy whole.
Tagged: @delphine * Word Count: 1156
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FINN DE LA SALLE
Phoenix
Posts: 266
Age:
651
Occupation:
French Teacher/Mercenary
Status:
Widowed
Played by:
ANGE
Last seen Oct 20, 2024 15:21:40 GMT
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Post by FINN DE LA SALLE on Jan 14, 2020 20:01:51 GMT
That had been his cycle for six hundred years. Blessing, curse, blessing, curse. Around and around without an end. At least when mortals considered their lives a rollercoaster ride there was a beginning and end to it, the understanding that eventually, no matter how much you suffered, you were likely to find yourself somewhere better afterwards. They clung to that belief, found relief in it in their final moments. It might’ve been a complete lie, they might have damned themselves a thousand times over while they lived but it was the belief that mattered. The moment he began to suspect what he was Finn had begun to see that no matter how hard he tried to believe in it, it would never be the same for him. No end to the ride, just that same, painful sweeping circle time and time again. With each cycle he picked himself back up, dusted himself off and tried to climb back up to one of those peaks. It might take decades, a century but each time he had reached that peak again and then found himself tumbling down off of the cliff. Finn knew he wasn’t the only one caught up in it but each circle was faced alone, the highs and lows only rarely shared.
Finn’s throat worked at the low musing from the girl, her gaze seeming to drift through the ages in a way he recognized all too well. He certainly wasn’t the only one.
Ancient or not he suspected her life had taken those slow painful turns. Her ‘father’ finding her might have been a high, maybe a low, but her time with him had certainly gone through both. Turning the glass around on the bar Finn pictured his life, her life, the one that stretched out to perhaps brush against his own, following the sweep of the base of it on the scarred wood of the bar. Echoes of their lives in one another, children plucked from the ashes, raised by parents they weren’t biologically theirs. Only they deviated there. Gadifer had done his best with the child he had taken as his, Delphine’s father, it seemed, had done his worse. Finn felt his fingers bite into his glass, the muscle in his jaw jumping as Delphine drew a line between her suffering and her family. His family. She bore his name, more than likely his blood. He shook his head, his jaw ticking back and forth until dark eyes rose to hers. ”No child should bear that either. The sins of the father should remain just that.” Only they didn’t, he was proof of that. Damned time and time again, watching as others were committed to the ashes he couldn’t join them in.
All he could do was carry on doing what he knew. His duty. Bearing his sword to try and keep some order to the world in a way that would have made his father proud. Finn had never done it blindly, although the girl might have thought that he had, the uniform a blindfold to what was right. His chin held high he kept his gaze on her, flinty, unwilling to back down from what had truly been the only belief he’d managed to hold onto for his entire existence. Maybe the mention of the sword had been too much but in his passion for the subject he’d brought it up and she’d paused. Finn swallowed, the trace of the burn still there in the delicate tissues of his throat. Her eventual acquiescence had the corner of his mouth kicking up. ”I always have a point,” he told her honestly, slipping back into English. It was just a matter of whether or not anybody was interested in listening to it, in standing for it alongside him.
His teeth gritting, his heart twisting in his chest at the thought of those he had killed with the fire that burned in his veins, Finn shook his head at her words. It didn’t excuse them, it didn’t excuse him extinguishing them either. All of them ash, those innocents taken, the men who had drawn their blood. Finn stared down at his hands, picturing that heat flooding through them. It burned in her too. He had seen it in her eyes, that flash of heat that had burned in his own blood from over 600 years. There was panic right alongside it, not just once, but twice from his words. Trying to draw her attention away from his admittedly poor choice of words Finn had tried to slip away first but she was already standing, taking his polite withdrawal as the chance for her own. Finn set the glass down on the bar, his eyes rising to her smile, an echoing one on her lips. ”Absolutely,” he said with a nod of his head. There were nerves again, her gaze darting even as polite words were on her lips. ”You too,” he promised numbly. ”Delphine.” Finn slumped as she left, shaking fingers rising to settle over his mouth as he sucked in a breath. There was an interest, a burning need, but not for the ink.
For her. For a connection he had not felt with anybody in almost three hundred years.
”I’ll take another,” Finn called out as the bartender slipped back to take the bills the young woman had left. ”And make it a triple.”
Tagged: @delphine (Finis) * Word Count: 899
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hope to see you in the discord! 
