Almost Lost Memories

[Saccharin]

She watched William in return, her body as still as a rabbit\'s might be after sensing a passing shadow. It would be easiest to accept his words as truth,  but the past could not be erased. If he\'d truly cared about her well-being, he wouldn\'t have abandoned her when she\'d needed him the most.

Anna had followed her remaining clan nearly eight-hundred miles and lived on the outskirts of their reservation for over a century, never interacting with them directly, but making certain they remained safe by night. Only after she\'d been assured they numbered enough to avoid extinction did she follow the pull that\'d led her to the city. That, in her opinion, was caring. William hadn\'t even cared enough to stay by her side after one argument. What would\'ve made him change in the time they\'d been apart? Was it even possible?

She remained silent as she retrieved a large, flat brush from the nightstand next to the bed. The mattress squeaked in complaint as she sat on its edge. With practiced movements, she pulled her long hair over her shoulder and worked the brush through it, starting from the bottom.

"The owner will not be returning," she finally said. "And money? What do I need money for? I take what I need." She looked at him. Her eyes had been filled with either annoyance or anger since he\'d come to her, but now they were bright with curiosity. "You think I should have more? More money? More things? Why?"

[pinkroses]

“Because as easy it is to simply take for us, sometimes it nice to have other people look at you with respect, to give you things, to treat you like the princess you could be,” William said, not looking at Anna as he spoke, wandering around the room aimlessly, examining the tiny details.

“I know you don’t care what people think. You don’t want to be in the middle of society, and perhaps that is one of the worst things of me leaving you. You’ve stayed that way, an outcast. And you love it.” William gave a shrug. “If I’d stayed with you, this would have been different.”

William moved towards Anna, sitting beside her on the bed, his leg pressed against her as he gazed at her, his grey eyes shining with enthusiasm.

“We had fun, Ahinawake. You remember the fun we had when I was teaching you. You trusted me completely. I never did anything that would warrant losing that trust. I never lied to you.”

Well, not much.

“Now let’s go have fun. If you’re going to stay in the city, you have to see more than this little cabin. And you’re hungry. I know you are.”

[Saccharin]

Her fingers tightened around the brush in her hand. The cheap plastic cracked as she applied her full strength to it.

"I still trust you completely. I trust if things grow difficult between us, you will leave again." She looked as if she wanted to whap William on the head with her brush, but she instead leaned forward to return it to the nightstand.

"But I wouldn\'t be devastated as I was before if you chose to leave," she admitted. In fact, she\'d be downright delighted, but it didn\'t appear William would let her have peace yet. If she was going to be stuck with him hovering about (and that seemed very likely), she may as well get out and enjoy herself as he proposed.

"Show me your city if you must. And we will feed." She nudged his leg with her own, and smiled for the first time since they\'d been reunited. "Perhaps we will even have fun again."

[pinkroses]

William smiled at the look of annoyance she gave him, then raised an eyebrow slightly at her comment about not being upset if he left her.

He stood up and moved slowly towards the door as he waited for Anna to be ready, slipping his hands into his pockets as he mulled over where to take her, only half thinking about it as his mind was playing on other things, one of them being part of the reason why he had never gone back to her. He had left, but she had never tried to find him. It would have been easy when they were still so close. If she had been so devastated, she should have followed, embraced her new life and new family.

“Do you want to go to a club? Or see some of the more civilised parts of the city?” he asked. If she was going to stay here, and he wasn’t planning on going anywhere, then there was plenty of time to do lots of things - exploring the city with a new pair of eyes was always fun. He and Indiana had been just about everywhere, and as much as he enjoyed hanging out with his housemate, it sometimes got a little dull.

[Saccharin]

Truthfully, she\'d never spent much time in cities, choosing to skirt around rather than go through them. In no way was she prepared for visiting the city she\'d been inexplicably drawn to, because living on an Indian Reservation was more like living in a third world country than in America itself.

The places tourists visited were nice enough, especially if there was a casino set up on the land, but beyond that - where her people actually lived... It was more a gathering of deteriorating shacks than proper homes. She would be hard-pressed to even call it a village. They weren\'t even gathered properly; they were lined up like ants making their way to a rotten apple.

"A club," she repeated, nodding. She hadn\'t the slightest what a club was, but it\'d been William\'s first suggestion, so it had to be the better one.

She busied herself with pulling on a pair of obviously unwashed socks (if their grungy appearance didn\'t give it away, their smell would), and then leaned down to retrieve her hiking boots from beneath the bed. They were scuffed, with a hole beginning to wear into one side, but she pulled them on almost reverently, carefully tying the frayed shoelaces.

"Now we go," she stated, standing and then stomping her feet onto the ground to make sure her heels were at the bottom of her boots.

[pinkroses]

William turned to look over Anna, raising an eyebrow at the sight before him. The woman would look good with a dead animal draped over her, but it wouldn’t be suitable for most occasions. He wondered whether she was being intentionally awkward or if she really didn’t know what she should wear to a club.

For a few moments William considered demanding they went to a store first so that he could dress her properly, but he knew that would go down like a ton of bricks. And perhaps there were better ways for her to learn if it was the case that she simply didn’t know and wouldn’t listen.

“I hope those are comfortable for dancing,” William said, holding out a hand to gesture for her to go first. “I came on foot. I assume you don’t have any sort of vehicle. So let’s hurry along. It’s a beautiful night,” the vampire said with a grin which showed off his fangs as he gazed at her. If she showed up at Risk like that she would look completely out of place. William wondered whether she would notice, or care. It would be interesting to watch either way.

[Saccharin]

Continued in Sensory Overload.