rumor has it

Head tilted back against the red brick of the building, Phoebe let out a sigh.

The sun had started rising an hour before, just a faint glimmer on the horizon, gilding the trees as she’d trailed back through campus, heels held loose in one hand, the other still fixed around the neck of the champagne bottle. Each step towards her dorm seemed to be illuminated more, bright painted toenails a neon gleam against the dark, damp of the dew misted grass, the label of the bottle gleaming as she’d lifted it back to her lips again, trees lit in their silent ranks.

Reaching the front door of the dorm she could’ve stalked inside, her walk of pride visible to any of the girls who’d pulled themselves out of bed just as dawn had hit, but she’d sunk down on the low wall surrounding the neatly pruned shrubbery Whitmore seemed to use to gild the campus, like make up on a particular violent pig, all it did was offer hiding spots for things that lurked in the night and left bodies draped around like more garish decoration. Phoebe’s lips twitched faintly at the thought, a low hum whispering out between them. If this had been the village she’d have been the one trying to clear it up and stop the monsters, but she’d left that world behind. To find him.

Lawrence. The chuckle that rolled out at the thought of her brother, probably now tucked up in his own bed – solo – like a good little vampire, was low, just a little giddy in a way she couldn’t blame on the alcohol. Some part of her had believed she’d never track him down, or when she did it would just be as a name on a tombstone somewhere if she was lucky. Worn letters spelling out his name but telling her nothing of the life he’d lived after their parents had cast him out. The bastard vampire child, unable to lead the coven, their second choice tainted just the same way. Reunited finally.

That low hum sounded as Phoebe lifted the bottle to her lips again, the cool fizz of the champagne a contrast to the vague warmth of the sun on her face. It had been a celebration she supposed, another night at the club, dorm room friends staggering away as each had their fill, her and Lawrence the last ones left until she’d pushed him off home and she’d driven back – none the worse for wear thanks to that little bite that had changed the course of her life. The car abandoned in a lot that was within walking distance of the dorm at least. The trail through the woods. This last bit of the after party. All to be capped off by an exam on Virginia’s Constitutional Law that afternoon. Down to the bottom of this last bottle first though.

Footsteps crunched lightly on the path, moving towards her in a way she was able to track without even opening her eyes. Phoebe drummed her fingertips against the bottle to a tune in her head, waiting for the girl – the wolf – to reach the door. A wrinkle of her nose at the scent, the woods clinging to that musk that had become unmistakable once she’d come across her first wolf. Brown eyes opened to slits, her lips curling into that cat got the cream smile as she caught sight of the Asian girl with the eye patch she’d noticed around the place – like she ever wouldn’t have stood out that way – just a hint of something wan on her face.

Phoebe lowered one foot down so that her toes were just kissing the cold stone of the path. Forget the girl being a wolf, her eyes had focused on her with that faintly predatory look that had some gulping, pulses kicking up just a notch in their throat. ”Morning. All work or fun?” Her brows rose as she eased herself upright, swirling the bottle in the air by its neck to indicate a nebulous ‘out there’, wherever the girl had trailed in from. ”You certainly look tired enough for it to be fun. It’s Kitty right?” Something longer, Phoebe thought, but Kitty was what she’d heard whispered on some lips as looks were shot in the girl’s direction. A teenager with a pirate’s eye patch, daring enough to get chins wagging all over.

Tagged: KITANA RYO * Word Count: 734

There’d always been a streak of wild in her but for almost a century it had been sheltered, hidden away beneath expectations and the need to keep things hush-hush. Don’t make a scene and out the coven, don’t out herself as she’d lurked out in the wilderness like some modern day witch, suckering in Hansel and Gretel with the offer of some food and shelter for the night – at a price of course. Keep herself and the village safe by losing herself in that pedestrian life for a couple of decades after they’d suffered their own bloody excitement. The blanket had been thrown back over them then, that breathless anticipation hanging in the air that it could happen again. Perhaps if her own parents had considered that she wouldn’t have been there to pin on the badge, she would’ve grown old and grey, with the mantle of ruler of the coven slowly strangling her.

Freedom. Phoebe sighed happily over it now, the sun warm on cold skin, the bottle of champagne clutched in celebration. She’d paid a price for it but she had it and she had Lawrence, what more could she possibly ask for?

Oh, there was probably a list – a bucket list she supposed – marked out in her head, but most of what would end up on there for others she’d already crossed off in those intervening decades. Lawrence had been the biggest thing, the line smudged with tears of joy. For those waking up in the dorms – or outside of them … in a bush somewhere – it was likely this. The college experience.

The girl who trailed down the path towards the dorm certainly looked like she’d spent a night up to something. Wearing that badge of exhaustion in the bags under her eyes, hair wild in ebony tangles, dirt smudged, that pirate’s eye patch – oh hello. That alone would’ve had Phoebe grinning and licking the last drops of champagne from her lower lip. A predator’s look for something that was probably at the apex in this town.

She’d leaned in almost, twisting slightly on the stone wall. Smile growing until she snorted with laughter. Phoebe hummed, gesturing towards the girl with the neck of her bottle. Using it like one of those modern doodangles – laser pointers, marking your target out in lurid red or green. ”Now that’s what I like to hear. Nobody should work themselves into that state.” She lifted her chin towards the girl, knowing the observation wasn’t exactly complimentary. It was true though.

Phoebe’s light brown eyes studying Kitty’s face again. She’d seen wolves staggering back after the full moon in the village. Some a lot less clothed, wrung out by the full moon, eventually gaining a better hold on themselves with each passing month, experience and an anchor making all the difference in the world. She made a small sound in her voice, rising to her feet, inches shorter than the other girl. ”Night before,” she admitted with a cluck of her tongue. She was offering the bottle though, cleaning the mouth off with a rub of the neck against her sleeve. ”There’s no fun in dragging yourself out of bed at dawn, but the other way around … oh that’s a joy.” Her smile almost sly, Phoebe lifted her chin again, basking in the sun for a moment more before she’d dropped Kitty’s name into the conversation.

Bobbing her head, Phoebe twisted to plop back down on the wall, patting the spot next to her. She imagined Kitty wanted to skitter upstairs before anybody else saw her - anybody who would put two and two together and just see something to kill. Or take the other eye from. Curiosity would’ve had her asking but she had some tact. ”And there I was thinking I’d gotten infamous here.” Maybe if she hadn’t compelled at least a half dozen of her classmates she might have been. ”Phoebe,” she announced, immediately offering her hand. ”I don’t think we’ve seen each other around much. Are you always a night owl Kitty? If you are, there are plenty of opportunities for less work to go on…” Not that the club in town needed her touting it. The place seemed to fill every night anyway and more often than not she dragged someone there. While Lawrence was so tied to the place, so was she, holding on to her big brother in case he slipped away again.

Tagged: KITANA RYO * Word Count: 740

The village had been home for decades but it was one not entirely unlike Elk Valley. Small, sheltered, wary of outsiders – at least at first when it came to the village. The closest thing to a club either of them had was a bar and even that was the size of a postage stamp, the same people filling the stools on a daily basis. Phoebe hadn’t found herself hating it, she’d been used to the small and quiet by then, but stepping outside of it for the first time had left her feeling like she really was going through the whole college thing for the first time. It might’ve been in – or around, in the college’s case – a town just as small, but whether it was because of the students or in spite of them, there was more life here somehow. And she had basked in it.

Lawrence’s residence at the club, her group of friends from the law course, Teddy – oh dear, sweet innocent Teddy – all lures into those places where she could indulge. She had last night too. Phoebe could still feel the buzz of it in her system. Even if it wasn’t the buzz that liquor might’ve given her if she hadn’t opened the door to beasts looking for a little retribution on the coven. It sang in the electric wires of her nerves, gleamed in the whiskey brown of her eyes as she’d fixed them on Anne Bonny here. Still lit up and not quite ready to give up the night.

Her brother might’ve warned the girl if they’d been at the club, that sudden edge in her eye a warning of her interest, but Lawrence wasn’t there to drag people out of range. Right about now he’d likely have been sighing out her name like a quietly whined Phoebe had ever stopped her. Phoebe hummed her agreement, smiling sweetly. ”Add a little hair of the dog and you’ve probably got yourself the perfect recipe.” A subtle sniff proved that the girl hadn’t been out drinking though, no booze oozing from her pores.

Still, she took the bottle she offered up, another point chalked up for her in the esteem stakes. There weren’t many around the college who’d have done it without pulling a face as they sipped. The lightweights, always squealing as though it was paint stripper they were downing and not a Cosmo, or – even to just torture Lawrence when she sent them up to ask – a Sex on the Beach. ”Maybe you ought to tell my brother that,” Phoebe said with an amused cluck of her tongue to take the bottle back. ”You’d think he was about ninety with all the hand wringing he does. Anybody would think I had a history of the worst possible decisions.” Phoebe screwed her face up before she laughed. Shaking her head so the tussled locks of hair tipped down her back, she took another belt of the liquor. It had been a century of them – but few and far between, it wasn’t like she needed rescuing on a weekly basis. Instead she’d shouldered that as her job.

Strap on a cape, put a crown on her head and a torch in her hand and she could’ve been this century’s combination of the Statue of Liberty and Super Woman. Phoebe inched over as Kitty sat beside her, winging a brow as she set the bottle down between them and shook Kitt’s hand. ”A woman after my own heart,” she told her. ”We must’ve been like ships in the night. My brother works the bar, I’m there often enough to help sprout a few more grey hairs for him.” Phoebe winked as dropped her hand from Kitty’s and swiped a finger in a cross over her chest. ”Your secret’s safe with me, I won’t even let Lawrence know you’re on the sneak.” She imagined that half the people in the club were too young to be there – even if they were turned a century ago – herself and Lawrence included.

Phoebe drew a knee back up, propping her foot on the edge of the wall and her knee on her chin as she wrapped an arm around it. Perhaps she could’ve travelled further after she’d ventured out of the wilderness but until there’d been some reason she’d stayed put in each of her little landing spots. ”Can’t say I’ve ever been. Is that where you’re from?” Details she couldn’t exactly toss out herself. Sure, Elk Valley was just a picturesque little spot nobody had ever heard of but she couldn’t add another layer of ‘oh, I grew up in a coven, surprise, surprise, I’m a witch turned vampire’, not even in this town. Her eyes narrowed shrewdly again, her lips curving. ”So, last night, a good decision or a bad?” She hadn’t dug quite far enough there yet.

Tagged: KITANA RYO * Word Count: 809

After years feeding from humans and struggling to still be like them Phoebe had begun to understand at least a little why those things had done what they had to Lawrence, to the coven. Perhaps the first had been strictly out of hunger – control, even when you were old enough to have babysat Methuselah, was tricky – just stumbling across some kid it had probably been ridiculously easy to feed on. She had felt that desperation herself a time or two. Winters had been long and bitter where she’d retreated to after she’d been kicked out. When snow was practically neck deep the woods weren’t exactly teeming with people. Travelling through the snow to the nearest camps hadn’t been easy either. Her thirst had burned, desiccation starting to kick in the last winter before Josiah had found her. Practically falling on the first person who’d stumbled across her cabin afterwards had been understandable.

Perhaps stealing away any future a coven thought they had was too. An eye for an eye, a fang for a fang. The problem was that never ended. If you let all of that consume you along with your hunger you ended up in a war that would just destroy everything in its path until there was nothing left. Once upon a time she’d imagined telling her future children stories about her brother – including that dramatic warning about what happened if you didn’t nip things in the bud entirely – there was fat chance of that now. Phoebe was just as much a warning about what might happen as Lawrence was. One story exchanged for another.

As Kitty laughed over the thought of ending up with nothing but the sort of stories that would bore the grandkids to sleep, Phoebe imagined what that would’ve been like for her. The same stories the coven had passed down to them – almost all bullshit. It wasn’t like it would ever happen now though. Their direct line had been broken by her turning, vampires firing blanks, wombs entirely barren – unless, apparently, you were a Mikaelson. The liquor burned rapidly down her throat, washing away what little regret she had over that. ”Be that exciting granny instead,” she agreed, smirking. ”Flash your tattoos and tell them about the time you took a week long bender in college.” Who knew, perhaps one day she’d be aunty Phoebe, sitting and telling her stories to some kid, a tow headed little thing like Teddy’s son.

Wasn’t that more of a pang than she would’ve thought. Yikes.

That was why she needed to stick to the club. No lost puppies to adopt and take home in an attempt to sharpen up those adorable little teeth they’d spent half the night nibbling you rather pleasurably with. The club was about drinking and dancing, the music too loud for those conversations that had that little nugget of affection bubbling up like gas under your diaphragm. Phoebe swayed towards Kitty, bumping her lightly with her shoulder. ”Deal,” she said with a slow grin. ”I’ll even make sure we get the friends and family discount.” Lawrence might squawk but she was putting her own money in the pot for most of what she was drinking wasn’t she? Anyway, the time she was getting to spend with him there was vastly overdue.

There wasn’t any sort of guarantee that he felt the same way but Phoebe liked to think there’d been a hole in her brother that their reunion had filled. The family, or what remained of it, was back together and she could either use that for good or evil. For now it would be good. Phoebe winked one whiskey coloured eye and tapped her finger against her chest. Lawrence didn’t have to hear everything. The pirate’s secrets were gonna remain zipped behind her lips. She was a master of keeping secrets after all.

Only one person at the school had heard her story – stupid group project - and that was all now locked in her head. Not a word about where she’d been before Mystic Falls getting past lips compelled shut. Kitty, it seemed, wasn’t as cagey about her past. Phoebe made a low, amused noise at Phoebe’s warnings. It wasn’t arrogance or fearlessness – although once upon a time it might have been both, with some added overconfidence – it was a certainty that the wrong areas wouldn’t cause her much harm now. ”I’ll have to put it on my bucket list then,” she promised. It was a short list now that finding Lawrence was crossed off of it and if she had her way she’d have a hell of a lot of years to cross the rest of the things off of it. She dipped her head, pressing her lips together for a moment before he gaze cut sideways at Kitty. ”Originally – the middle of nowhere British Columbia.” Lately, another small town of supernaturals – not an admission to make on a campus where you just couldn’t tell.

Considering last night had been a full moon there was always a chance. Phoebe kept her gaze on Kitty, like she could bore straight through that eye patch to the truth beneath. She chuckled, her grin turning sharp as the Cheshire Cat’s. ”So the chance of another night of dicey decisions. I guess that’s a step up on didn’t bother giving him my number in the first place?” Teddy hadn’t exactly gone away with the promise of another night of passion in her dorm room. The pang that went through her gut at that had her grimacing slightly. Not her finest moment but perhaps it had been fitting in the grand scheme of his night of firsts. The first time that he’d been ghosted by the woman he’d slept with on their first – oh that certainly hadn’t been a date.

Tagged: KITANA RYO * Word Count: 966