maskormenacelogs | The while on thee they gaze in simple truth, / Hues more exalted, 'a refined Form,'

Now that he had the option, Charles had thrown himself into the workaholic lifestyle with gusto. That said, a man still needed the odd day here and there to at least do laundry.

Today was laundry day.

It merely meant that he'd worked from his home in Nonah but at least he hadn't ported up to De Chima or anywhere else for that matter. He'd actually gone to the grocery store and just seen to the chores and mundane task of living life for the day.

He'd been folding laundry, when Toby had contacted him. Normally Charles would have simply invited the vampire over to his home but the small house was in a state, with laundry everywhere; not proper to a house guests. Instead, since the weather was nice in the evenings, he gave Toby directions to a park that wasn't too far from the base where the porter was located.

There wasn't anything overly special about the park but it had good walkways (an important matter for Charles) and benches overlooking small lakes that were starting to collect baby ducks and geese as spring moved into early summer. Charles might have also been after an Italian ice from a local food truck that was known for frequenting the park.

It was this truck he told Toby to look for, it was easy enough to spot or if Toby had to ask anyone in the area they could direct him easily enough. Charles would be, as promised, at the truck, studying the offerings on the advert board.

As spring gives way to summer, the sun sets later and later with each passing day.

Toby woke up a little dawn-ish for a creature of the night as himself. Couldn't get back to sleep (or maybe didn't really want to) afterward, so he got ready to head out to meet Charles. Normally, Toby would think it too risky to even attempt going out while the sun's out. But after that episode the following night? It seems no more dangerous than simply existing.

So he arrives in the park in a ridiculous outfit. A dark brown spring jacket with a large hood, the most gigantic sunglasses he could possibly find, an ugly pattered scarf wrapped around the rest of his face and neck, cheap white gloves on his hands, dark denims, socks, and... really nice Italian leather shoes. As it becomes darker, Toby should be able to safely shed some of his more nonsensical accessories, but for the time being...

"Oh, hello Charles? It's Toby. Thanks for meeting with me on such short notice." He extends a gloved hand for a shake. "But it's a pleasure to meet you in person."

Would it be shameful to admit that accept for the white gloves, that's an outfit Charles would actually choose to wear? Well in the sixties at least, the seventies were more about paisley. Regardless, he's not judging Toby's fashion sense, particularly as his own screams 'laundry day'.

Turning the chair back slightly so he could look back towards Toby, Charles smiled warmly and reached for the extended hand. He took it in a grip that was firm, without being overly aggressive.

"Hello, Toby. It's my pleasure, I was glad to hear from you. I hope the hour is late enough?"

His mind was scrambling to remember what he'd read about vampires, as written as supernatural creatures, rather than falling into the trap of his own science.

Hardly a terrible admission, even if Charles hasn't seen Toby's shirt yet. Usually Dorian will dress him if he has to dress to impress. Besides, Toby knows he looks great no matter what he wears, fashion disaster or otherwise. But that's not really why they're here now, is it?

"A little on the early side, but that's how I wanted it. The hour isn't so much the problem as much as the sun is: exposure burns me, gradually turning me to ashes." He had died that way once, but of his own volition. "Again, I didn't mean to trouble you, but I felt it somewhat urgent in light of something very recent."

Edited (wtf whoops) 2016-05-09 02:07 (UTC)

Charles had started to react to the danger Toby had placed himself in, to insist that they could have met later and he may have glanced at the sky with a concerned look. But then, Toby redirected his attention with the comment about urgency.

Suddenly the icie didn't seem so important.

"Of course, and please it's no trouble, Toby." Glancing around, he motioned towards a bench that was out of the way yet close enough to the walk paths that Charles could maneuver his chair without risk of getting stuck.

"Shall we sit down and you can tell me what's happened?"

"Yes, thanks." So then he and Charles go to the bench, where Toby takes a seat and settles down with a deep breath. Inwardly, he recounts the incident...

A strange pain that came from within and felt physical, but it wasn't. He'd never felt anything like it before and panicked, turning to the network for help instead of auto-dialing his fiance. In the span of seconds, the pain spread throughout his body, so he tried to get help. Then there was another sort of pain—this time, it wasn't physical, but it felt like something was being torn or broken.

"Last night, I put out a call for help on the network when I was experiencing a sort of pain that I had never felt before. Being a vampire has always had a way of negating human sickness and disease and so on. Though I'm not so sure what happened was really anything like that. Anyway, it was over in two or three minutes, maybe less.

Naturally, there were quite a few concerned responses on the network, and I had plenty questions of my own since that terrifying and painful experience isn't one that I'm familiar with."

After a beat or two, Toby both wonders and asks, "Is that... too vague? Should I go into more detail?"

As they got situated, Charles positioned his chair at a slight angle, so he could look Toby in the eye without either of them having to crane their necks. He wasn't actively trying to search the vampire's mind but the strength of that inward memory was rather ... bright, in a psychic sense.

Words flashed at him pain | physical | but wasn't | never anything like it | network for help. In the end, Charles couldn't completely ignore it and he lowered his shields to read from In the span of .... to the end.

He drew back to himself when Toby began to verbalize his thoughts, dark brows draw together in a concerned, attentive expression.

"I'm afraid, I don't have a great deal of experience with actual vampire physiology. You say you aren't usually susceptible to injury or illness? And you had no lingering affects from this? Any other symptoms?"

"Typically, I can withstand some degree of injury and recover quickly after feeding. But normally, I'm not susceptible to illness or disease," Toby answers. "Someone came over to check up on me, but everything seemed just about in the right place..."

Still, he remembers what he'd expressed to Dorian.

Frowning as he continues, "I can't think of any other symptoms or lingering effects other than a strange feeling of loss."

Leaning his elbow on the arm of his chair, Charles set his chin against his folded knuckles and watched Toby with a thoughtful expression for a moment. After a couple of breaths he made a decision and straightened a little.

"Toby, would you be willing to share the exact memory of what you experienced?" He asked, lifting his hand to flutter his fingers at the side of his temple.

"All right." Unaware of Charles' powers, Toby conjures the memory once again whilst expanding on the incident.

"It was a normal evening at home, on my own. I wasn't doing anything out of the ordinary, just some tidying up and light cleaning. Thought maybe I could do a little bit of work, too. That's when the pain started, somewhere inside me." Although the pain had affected Toby physically, it wasn't actual physical pain. Given that he hasn't experienced something like this before, he can't really make that distinction.

The effect is much like stabbing at first, but as it radiates outward to the rest of his body, it becomes more like ripping.

"Soon, it began to spread out, as if something were being ripped from my body." Upon closer scrutiny and examination, Charles might find that's exactly what happened. A part of Toby, or perhaps something related to him had died, and whatever had connected them was severed.

"I tried to call for help, but I didn't really have time, so I posted to the network." By then, the pain was enough that Toby collapsed to the floor and lay there wondering if sudden death felt that way. Afterward, he dragged himself off the floor and dusted himself off.

"It was over just as soon as it had started, and I had no idea how or why that could've been." Slight panting and shortness of breath namely came with the shock of something like this. In the end, that loss Toby feels is from the severed connection he doesn't really believe in.

"...I guess that's about it."

Whoops.

Should have been a little more specific. Still, Toby launches in to the memory before Charles can specify what he means and rather than stop him, the professor merely leans his elbow on the arm of his chair, fingers lightly pressed against the side of his temple.

At a distance, he listened to the words while his mind brushed lightly across Toby's seeking out the nuances of the experience. He quickly zeroed in on that rendered sensation, as it seemed to be the bit of trauma still ... present for lack of a better term. The one bit of genuine damage in what presented as an otherwise psychosomatic response.

Catching one of the ragged edges, Charles tried to trace it back to a source. Perhaps a power or an ability, something subconscious that had been attacked and resulted in a physical response, even though there was no physical damage? This was his first trip into the mind of a vampire, it took a bit of doing to sort through the subtle differences. At least the weight of age wasn't a shock; not after Logan's mind.

But still...

Charles slipped a little deeper as he tried to backtrack that bit of ragged tear, whispers of something, not fully formed (or perhaps realized) tickling at the edges of his own consciousness. Like having a word just at the tip of your tongue but being unable to recall it completely. Psychically speaking, Charles winged upwards a little higher, trying to get a broader view/sense of the wisps of sensation until he could piece it together.

There was a pause, hopefully not too awkward, once Toby stopped talking and before Charles asked.

"Toby, do you have any sort of a psychic bond with a friend or loved one perhaps?"

Any other time, Toby might have thought the pause was a little awkward. But as things are now, he pays it no mind since Charles probably needs some time to process that recollection.

"Psychic bond?" He hums while thinking on it some moments. "I don't know... I mean, the one who changed me had said once that he felt our bond break when I... disappeared in the eighties."

That was when Toby killed himself by sitting on the beach and watching the sun rise, turning to ash in his lover's arms. Ivor also said he felt the bond return when Toby came back, and he knew to find Dorian by seeking Toby out.

"But I didn't think to believe him." Because he felt betrayed after Ivor abandoned him, and later when Ivor tried to feed Dorian to the Siren. "We weren't really close for most of the time we've known each other."

Sitting back Charles mind worked quickly with the information he had at his fingertips. He rifled through what he'd read about vampires (some fiction, as well as the theories) but he pushed it all aside as simply conjecture and the fanciful nature of an author's mind.

Instead, he touched at those frayed edges and considered what he knew and had experienced himself. It was hard, that last bit, because he had to force himself back to the beach near Cuba, back to the moment of Erik's initial betrayal and that damn coin.

He could feel the phantom ache start just behind his eyes as he dredged up the memory of holding Shaw's mind as Erik drilled the coin through flesh, bone and ultimately grey matter. Charles winced but he was after one specific split instance in that event, the moment where Shaw had died.

Though Charles had been prepared for it, he'd never been in such close contact with someone as they died. He'd touched the mind of the Russian barge captain in the last seconds before he'd passed but he hadn't been as deeply entangled as he was with Shaw. He'd been holding Shaw on every level, physical and mental, had lived through every second of his pain until it had all fallen away ripping away.

The jagged edges of the connection had been a quick fix, after all he wasn't bonded to Shaw for longer than those five minutes but they had been similar to what he saw in Toby's mind now.

Taking that evidence, Charles bumped it up against what Toby was telling him about his sire (that was the word?) and his own reluctance to believe it.

"It's understandable to believe that closeness would be a key component to a psychic bond, but depending upon the circumstances and power involved, it might not be the case."

After all, he wasn't particularly close to Shaw!

"Toby, do you ... I'm not sure how to delicately put this but have you changed anyone?"

"You mean here?" Immediately, Toby averts his gaze, dropping it to some unremarkable spot on the ground. Of course, Charles means here, in this place and time, this world. He sighs before looking back up at the other man. "I did. It was back when I'd first arrived and was acclimatising to how different things are..."

Looking at the file when he first arrived, there wasn't any way to know his power of vampirism worked differently from back home. Here, it doesn't come with a powerful memory-wiping hypnosis; instead, it turns every native he feeds on. Toby hadn't specified the difference to Dorian, who suggested they both lie about it to get others to sympathise.

"...I changed four of them in the first month."

Though Toby never felt any real attachment to his fledgelings, he does feel some degree of regret for changing them. For getting caught trying to kill the first one because that would've been the right answer back home. For the way his powers permanently uprooted their lives, involuntarily changed them into creatures like him. For all the trouble that followed afterward and drove him to self-incarceration. For Dorian's frustration when his power was nullified and essentially made him human. For the way Kanaya Maryam will never accept or acknowledge his attempts to reform.

Speaking of which... "Now that I think about it, someone accused me of killing one of them just last night."

Could those things really be connected? Was that pain really because of a bond between him and the fledgelings?

Edited 2016-05-25 00:07 (UTC)

Charles sat and listened quietly and without any sense of judgement. Not that he was particularly judgmental to begin with but in this particular situation he simply had no true concept of what it meant to be a vampire. Regardless, he read Toby's body language and tone as genuine regret and would go with that assessment unless or until something changed to make him believe otherwise.

At the last comment, he sat forward.

"Was that before or after you experienced your symptoms?" He asked, before taking a breath and continuing to speak.

"Toby, I have no experience with vampires, you're the first I've ever met. But I have experienced the sudden rendering of a psychic connection through a sudden and violent death."

He lifted a hand and motioned towards Toby's head.

"What I could feel in your mind is very similar to that sort of ... tear, for lack of a better term."

Errr, if Toby hadn't realized that Charles had gone taking a look well ... he did now?

Between Charles' words and the gesture with his hand, Toby finally realises Charles' power and... First, he gasps in surprise and some degree of embarrassment. Then, he exhales in relief and understanding.

A small smile tugs at his lips before he lets out a little chuckle, saying, "Now I feel a little silly for not noticing earlier. I can't help wondering if that was common knowledge or not."

Toby doesn't recognise any broader or deeper implications of Charles' powers, but that's probably better discussed at another time and place.

"Anyway, to answer your question, she made her accusations some hours after my experience," he continues. "Initially said it was a psychosomatic expression of my guilt, and I had no idea what she was insinuating this time."

"I don't exactly advertise it," Charles admitted with a small twitch of lips. He didn't add that even when he did speak about it, he rarely discussed the full scope of his powers. Just never seemed good conversational material.

"So she accused you of committing a crime and then expressing physical manifestation of guilt as a result?" Charles basically repeated what Toby had just said, though his eyebrows arched a little incredulously. "That is a bit of a stretch."

He could understand the mind playing tricks on a person to a certain degree, but now that they were talking, he could recall the message Toby had sent over the network the other night. There had been an intensity to it that -to Charles at least- spoke of legitimate panic.

"I am going to be making an assumption of my own here, Toby but I believe you experienced the pain and death of the individual you were bonded too. I've never encountered the bond between a vampire and those they have changed but from what you've said so far, I suspect that is what occurred, in the moments before the psychic bond was severed."

As Charles quickly clarifies on his powers, Toby notices that small twitch and simply nods. He knows what it's like, not wanting to reveal or elaborate on one's own powers. In fact, he'd have continued trying to hide his vampirism if that hadn't caused so many problems in the first place. Of course, that doesn't mean he's been completely honest or forthright about them.

It's also good to know Charles thinks Kanaya's allegations are rather far-fetched, but only because Toby's still holding a grudge against her since she refuses to acknowledge his attempts to change for the better since his arrival.

But moving on from that, Toby listens intently to Charles' conjecture and really considers this bond he may actually have had with the fledgeling. The bond he still has with at least three others, which means he's likely to feel the pain again of any of them are targeted. He doesn't want to believe it, he hadn't wanted to believe when Ivor said he felt the bond break when Toby died back in the eighties, but there really might be something to it.

For some moments, he's quiet.

"...So what you're saying is that I may indeed have a connection, a bond to those natives I had changed?" He says it a little less like a question and more like a statement, only he still wants confirmation. "Is it still psychic if we can't, I don't know, hear each other's minds or feelings or thoughts? I mean, I know I was once bonded to a werewolf imPort for a few months before the Porter suddenly whisked him away..."

Charles waited patiently, giving Toby all the time he might need to work through his thoughts. When the vampire asked his question, Charles also took time himself to consider his response before he spoke.

"There are no hard and fast rules of what counts as a psychic connection and what doesn't." Charles explained. "Do you have any sense of them? Like right this moment, if you concentrate on it?"

He caught the comment about the werewolf and the Porter sending this werewolf away. For the moment, Charles tucked that tidbit aside for later consideration.

A little hesitant, Toby answers, "Well, I'll try..."

He thinks back to the fledgelings, tries to envision what they look like, what they were like when he met them... and it's hard because he didn't really get to know most of them before turning them. And for all of Toby's attempts to concentrate, he can't help the other questions popping up in the back of his mind.

If he could actually sense the fledgelings, does that mean Ivor could've sensed him the whole time? Was the Siren's hold on Ivor so strong that he couldn't visit Toby?

After some time of focusing and refocusing, Toby answers, "I don't know... that I could really feel where they are. I mean, I know where they are already—they're in Heropa. But anything more specific?" He shakes his head. "I'm not sure, I don't think so."

Charles sat forward, watching Toby with openly curious eyes. It was tempting to peek within the other's mind, to try to track what he was doing but Charles didn't want to interfere with the vampire's concentration or risk intruding upon what he might find.

While the ultimate result was not surprising, it was a little disappointing. Though Charles merely nodded with understanding and smiled gently.

"That's alright," he said, though really he had no room to suggest otherwise. "What you felt, when the bond was placed under intense strain, it was probably a result of that intensity and I'm not going to suggest we recreate those circumstances."

Though if it happened again, there was the risk that Toby would be vulnerable. That thought had Charles sitting back and frowning, pensively.

Toby had worried that being unable to sense the fledgelings would prove disappointing, but Charles' soft smile gives him some measure of reassurance. In response, he lets out a small sigh. "I see... Thank you."

Then he's thoughtful for some moments, pondering on Charles' words before suddenly starting, "—Wait, presumably it happened when the fledgeling Terry was murdered... and you're saying this might happen again if someone attacks any of the others?"

Unsure of whether or not Toby intended to dismiss the conversation, Charles looked up at the question.

He took a moment, to consider his answer before he gave a nod; his expression was solemn.

"I believe it would, yes. Do you have any idea what happened with the one who was killed?"

Honestly, not even Toby is completely certain whether the conversation is over or not. They probably won't learn anything new unless another one of the fledgelings is killed again, but that just seems... terrible, really.

"I'm told he turned to a pile of ash..." For a moment, he lets that trail off because it's honestly a terrible thought. And it reminds him of that fateful day on the beach, when he watched the sunset and died in Dorian's arms. "When I first heard it, I'd wondered if he had done himself in. Turns out the windows were totally boarded up, and there weren't any signs of weapons. Beyond that..."

He shakes his head. "I don't really know much else, I'm afraid."

"Hmmm," he had meant if Toby was aware if the death had been homicide and if so if there were any leads. Toby sort of answered that with the news about no visible weapon, though it wouldn't have taken much for the killer to just take the weapon.

Did vampires who were turning to ask bleed?

Giving his head a slight shake, Charles set aside all the unknowns, as well as firmly telling himself this was a matter for the proper authorities. However, that didn't keep him from look at Toby kindly before inquiring.

"Is there something, specific I can do for you, Toby?"

For a moment or so, Toby hums as he thinks. It was good—helpful, really—that Charles confirmed that the bond is real. Or, at least, is more likely than not so. And beyond, he's honestly a more than a little curious about vampirism as a kind of mutation, about scientific explanations for things supernatural and magical alike. He might even divulge in his actual powers, the ones he had back home that the Porter had changed for some reason.

"With regards to the fledgelings and the incident last night...? Probably not. But maybe we can talk about powers and mutations and those sorts of things? Not right now, of course. I don't want to take up too much of your time..."

The while on thee they gaze in simple truth, / Hues more exalted, 'a refined Form,'

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lmk if you need more details or clarifications

Will do! And also never fear to poke me if I need to edit something

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