GRIND..house (Open to all)

[Anastazja Romanov]

Anna chewed on her bottom lip lightly as she heard him. She hadn't meant to be so annoyingly curious, but for the first time, she had someone who knew what she was going through, someone who knew what was supposed to be going on. "Oh, I know, Devon.. I'm just.. a little excited, is all." She admitted. "I didn't mean to lay all my baggage out on you."

She backed up a bit from him. She too, realized that she had become dependent on him. She hadn't meant for that to happen, and gazed out the window. "It's been five years since I had anyone to talk to, had anyone I could trust enough to speak to." She murmured. "In life, I was never alone, and I longed for even a moment of solitude, and now that I have it.." She shrugged. "I don't want it anymore."

Anna turned back to where she was sitting previously, and swallowed down the lump that had formed in her throat. She wouldn't cry. She wouldn't.

"The life, the love I had was all a fantasy, Devon. The man I was to marry.. He started seeing a woman just days after I was presumed dead.. I believe he was seeing her all along, but I have no proof, and it doesn't matter. My mother died, my father moved on. I've been forgotten." She felt her hands shake, so she stooped down to pick up the pieces of the table. "My child would have been the one thing that would need me, and love me as much as I needed and loved her." She revealed, then shook her head.

Once all the pieces had been picked up, she deposited them into the trash bin she had noticed in the kitchen. "You're right. Grudges are grudges." She was thankful for the change in subject, even if she had brought it up. It was something to get her mind off her past.

Anna moved back to him, as she mentioned the line about him being her Savior. She looked into his eyes, her comment was sincere, though she was certain that he felt a bit out of place by the comment. He had offered many of her kind only death and finality to their lives, but to her, he offered her hope for self-reliance, and hope for a better life than what she was living in the roach infested hotel room.

Anna stared at him for a moment after he said that he was getting something out of it. "What is it, Devon? What do you get from helping me? I doubt it's anything as trivial as having a worthy opponent on that last day. What could I possibly offer you?" She watched as he moved away from her and to the window.

Anna's eyes widened, and she backed away quickly. "I.. I.." She had nothing to say to that. She didn't even know that there were some who could be born a vampire. "Just because you don't know, doesn't mean you can't learn, Devon. They aren't just human perspectives. Animals, Beasts.. they form friendships, companionship, and they understand one another. I don't know how to be a vampire, and yet you're willing to teach me how. You just have to be willing to learn, Devon. Willing to look passed what society thinks of you, willing to look passed your past, and look forward to something more, to a future, to living."

Anna fell silent again. "I'm already a killer, Devon. You're teaching me how to survive, how to make sure I don't get my ass blown off."

Anna watched him again, she felt a pain in her chest when she looked into his eyes. She believed him. She believed he knew what it was like to be lost and abandoned, just like she did. She stepped closer to him, and then wrapped her arms around him a bit. "You're not alone anymore, Devon. And I won't leave, until you physically throw me out of your life. I promise."

Anna stepped back a few paces, and bit her lip. What was she doing? Why? She had spent five years alone, and he had spent decades alone. How dare she presume to know how he felt, the solitude he must know?

Anna turned back to look at him. "I didn't know that. I just don't want to see others like us be turned into something worse..." Perhaps she was a bit optimistic, but she was given a shread of hope for a better life, and it made her just a little bit happier.

[Devon Parker]

Devon watched Anna in silence for a while. "You are a vampire, Anna. To be one is to be alone. Even when surrounded by others of our kind, their is a barrier more present than there was if we were ever human," he explained. She had to understand. She could not become attached to him, for he would never end her loneliness except to replace it with misery. "They may not remember you, Anna, when all their bones have turned to dust, but you must never forget them. If you don't want to lose yourself, you must hold on to those memories that bring you happiness, fantasy or otherwise."

He blinked at her, thinking it had been obvious. "If there's someone else out there killing as much as I am, then it means I have less work to do. It takes that smidgen of weight off my shoulders to know that there might be someone else accomplishing my goals."

The older vampire squared his shoulders as she spoke, fighting down the outburst of rage. She was getting to him, this one. It was why he normally didn't keep anyone around. It meant talking, explaining... eighty-four years of life was a lot of story to tell. He had sworn long ago he never would.

"Whether I can experience it or not is irrelevant," he said dully. "I won't. You can't teach emotion, and even if you could, I have no want of those things. Society is a larger animal than me; it will never see me as anything but a monster, anything but what I am. I cannot forget a past that hunts me everyday, and a past that will one day very soon become my future. I am a lost cause, Anna." He stiffened visibly as she wrapped her arms around him. No, he thought, Get away from me. I bring death. You are too human. Devon remained hunched and stiff by the window, glad that the chill of her skin against his was gone. It reminded him of too much.

"I am alone whether you stay with me or not," he said quietly. "It is what I am, and what I have done. You don't know me. I don't know you. Besides," he said, turning to look at her again, more softly this time. "How are we even to find anyone like us? We can't exactly go asking around, posting flyers and rubbish like that. You need to think, Anna. What we do is a death sentence. No matter what action we take, it is kill or be killed. When it comes to the end, we will all die. There is no life waiting for me at the end of this road."