• This section is for roleplays only.
    ALL interest checks/recruiting threads must go in the Recruit Here section.

    Please remember to credit artists when using works not your own.

Realistic or Modern Transformation

He’d expected to feel her hand in his, had been prepared to step back and help pull Rita into a standing position, but his hand remained empty. He finally retracted it after she started to stand on her own and his brow creased as she stepped closer to him. Why hadn’t she let him help her? His confusion grew when she told him she was okay, then turned from him. He’d heard her, Jason had hurt her, but whatever pain she’d felt that’d left her on the ground rubbing her shoulder didn’t seem to affect her ability to perform push-ups.

Leon watched her, his mouth a worried line despite her assurances, until he caught movement in his peripheral and looked up to see Jason finish crossing his arms over his chest. The ex-Enforcer looked on impassively as Rita continued her push-ups, and didn’t even spare him a glance when Leon scoffed quietly and walked away.

She’d been gentle, but Leon still felt the sting of being shooed off. She hadn’t wanted him there. Hadn’t wanted his help. Hadn’t wanted him. Rather than go back to the tree, Leon went to the porch and opened the back door that led into the kitchen but hesitated before he stepped over the threshold. She might not have needed his help to get off the ground, but if her understating what training looked like was any sign, he should stay close. He trusted Rita — trusted that she knew her limits, but he didn’t trust Jason. If anything went awry, then by God, he’d be there.

Leon shut the door again and turned back to sit on the steps, so he could have a view of them unhindered by the railing that wrapped almost the entirety of the porch.

He remained in the same spot as the rest of the crew trickled in; first Becca and Nate, then Orvar. He didn’t take his eyes from Rita, didn’t accept the offer Becca made of a drink or something to eat, and no, he didn’t want to talk about all the cool moves Rita could do. She stopped trying to engage him in conversation after Orvar pulled her attention by mentioning the wars he’d participated in back when he’d been human. Becca, who was always excited to hear about Orvar’s past (she’d known he’d come from Sweden well before he had), listened attentively as he talked about the weapons and tactics they used in the sixteenth century.

“I was quite proficient with a pistol,” he admitted, and took a sip from his wine glass.

The conversation lulled as it came to everyone’s attention that Rita and Jason were wrapping things up — or would be, once Rita passed whatever stupid test he’d arranged for her.

She’d pushed herself further than he would’ve thought possible. He was still sore from his fight with Jason yesterday and he had werewolf healing on his side. Rita had been going for hours and she looked bone-weary, but she seemed to gather up strength from some reserve she had and ran towards Jason. His mouth was ajar as she climbed onto Jason’s back, and he sucked in a breath of air as she was thrown to the ground. She’d hit hard enough that he’d heard it on the porch, and there was nothing that’d keep him from her, especially when she didn’t immediately move.

He stood and jogged towards her, but came to an abrupt stop when she lifted the gun and pointed it at Jason.

She'd bested Jason. She’d passed the test.

Leon closed the distance left between them and after a moment’s hesitation, cleared his throat and smiled. “Want some help? Or you just need a minute?”

This time, he'd ask first.

Just behind him, Orvar exclaimed and marched off the porch and into the yard, wine glass still in hand. He kept walking past them, eyes intent on something in the distance. “Is that a rope in my oak tree?”
 
Last edited:
And so ends day one.

At Jason’s words, Rita dropped the gun and flopped back down onto the ground. Her breaths were labored and her chest rose and fell with all the energy she could manage. Everything was on fire – every muscle, every inch of skin on her body – it cried out as she shifted to look up at Leon who had approached her with a bit of hesitation, but still offered her a warm, loving smile. She’d hated brushing him off early, but this was something she had to do. She had to get stronger, else situations like Catherine might happen again and Rita had no intentions of becoming a damsel.

“Please,” she breathed out rather pathetically as she reached for his hand and helped hoist herself up. The moment she was back on her feet, her knees gave out and clutched onto Leon for support as she tried to figure her balance back out. She’d been pushing her muscles for so long that a moment’s rest seemed to be all the excuse they needed to give up for the night. “Let’s go sit before my entire body gives out,” she laughed as they moved slowly but surely towards the porch where Becca had already scooted over a chair to give her a place to sit.

When she’d offered food, Rita asked for a glass of wine instead. After all that, she deserved it.

“Sorry,” she called out sheepishly after Orvar, “We had to work with what we had.”

“I’ve got it,” Jason muttered as he moved without struggle towards the tree and scaled it to start untying the rope from the branch. The sight made Rita shake her head and reach for her glass of wine to take a deep sip.

“You sure you don’t want to climb another tree?” Nate poked at Rita with a grin and she shook her head, “He’s a show off. Not to mention, I didn’t see you volunteering to climb.”

“We werewolves are a ground people,” he said with pride.

Rita sank deeper into her chair and lulled her head to the side to take a look at Leon. She reached for his hand and intertwined their fingers before settling her head back in exhaustion. Everything seemed like hell – waking, climbing stairs, changing her clothes, showering – maybe she could just fall asleep in the chair and no one would have the heart to wake her. Then, she remembered, that Nate existed and that plan went immediately out the window.

“We could probably move down in the basement to train, but take it from someone who gets laid out constantly,” Rita admitted, “when it comes to grass versus concrete, I’ll take the grass anyday.”
 
Orvar supervised the rope retrieval, calling out for Jason to be careful because the tree had only recently recovered from disease, and was it really necessary to climb the tree again? He had perfectly good ladders. Even after Jason hopped out of the tree, rope in hand, the vampire chided the ex-Enforcer while gently stroking the tree’s trunk. He really did take his role as caretaker seriously, didn’t he? Even the trees had his protection.

At the same time Orvar started back towards the porch, Rita took his hand, bringing his attention to her fully. He lifted her hand to his lips and kissed the back, careful of her raw knuckles. She deserved another soak in the tub after the day’s practice, but he didn’t think he’d get her out of her chair anytime soon given the way she’d puddled into it. But she had wine and a place to relax, so it was a start.

He shifted in his chair, angling himself so he could see both Rita’s exhausted profile and the rest of the group. Becca looked apologetic when Orvar returned, but the vampire shook his head and held his hand up when she started to move from his old seat and she sat back down again. From his central location at the bottom of the steps, Orvar cleared his throat to garner everyone’s attention.

“To spare the yard from further damage, I’ve decided to equip the basement with a gym.” Orvar turned and glanced at Jason, who stood back a distance from the porch. Good. He’d fucked off like he should’ve. He wasn’t part of their family. He was a temporary feature in their lives, only there for as long as they needed him. Orvar would get his information and Rita would get her training, then he could go back to wherever he’d come from.

As if the vampire could sense the hostile turn of Leon’s thoughts, he turned back around to stare at him. Leon stared right back.

Eventually, Orvar broke eye contact and continued his announcement, “Any equipment you need is yours, just say the word.” He paused for a moment, brought his glass to his lips but lowered it again before taking a sip. “Taylor is still confined to her room downstairs, but it’s soundproofed and inescapable, so she won’t be a concern.”

“So you’re just going to leave her there?” Leon asked, some of the hostility he’d felt towards Jason leaking into his question and turning it into an accusation.

“Yes, I am,” Orvar answered sharply. “Until she learns control. Unless you would like me to release her now and see how quickly she attacks the nearest human?”

Leon broke eye contact first this time. Of course he didn’t want anyone to get hurt, but he also didn’t want some girl locked away, cut off from everyone and everything. She didn’t deserve that. No matter how nicely the room was furnished, it was still a prison if she couldn't leave of her own free will.

“She hasn’t taken to the change as poorly as Catherine insinuated, but she does struggle,” Orvar admitted, “and I am working with her.”
 
Last edited:
There was quite a bit of hostility in the air, enough that Rita picked up on it without hesitation. While she knew Leon’s frustrations were directed towards Jason, it seemed that whenever he got territorial it oozed out of him and affected those around him. Even Orvar had taken to speaking sharply in order to punctuate his point and the importance of what was going on here. It might have made more sense if Orvar told them what exactly they were training for and what Jason was needed for – but until he spoke freely, they were all in the dark. Rita couldn’t help but feel like there was something looming on the horizon, something none of them were quite ready for.

“It takes time,” Rita said after Orvar made mention of Taylor, “I can’t even imagine how overwhelming it would be to step into a world of humans with instincts that are out of control.” Rita didn’t like that she was trapped away either but she was dangerous – both to herself and to others – and if their meeting showed Rita anything, it was that Taylor wanted to be able to control herself. It wasn’t an easy task, though. Control came with practice and unfortunately the human world outside posed too much of a distraction for that kind of necessary practice.

“But the basement would be perfect,” Rita smiled tiredly at Orvar, “Thank you, Orvar.”

He made good on his promise, too. Less than a week later, Orvar’s entire open basement was turned into a home gym. There were mats and a climbing rope, weights and plenty of space for them to spread out. Rita had managed work just barely the last few days between workouts and was burnt out, but Jason had insisted on upping their game if Rita was ever going to stand a chance. Each session had gotten harder, too. At first it was just sparring but Jason started introducing other weapons that Enforcers could carry and it made each and every session more painful. It had gotten to a point where no one, Rita included, really left her alone to train with Jason. Nothing ever happened but the risks were more dangerous now.

“Alright,” Jason said after some weightlifting as the two made their way out to spar for the afternoon, “So you obviously know the basics.” He started unloading weapons from his belt – a gun, a knife, a taser – and he picked up the latter to give the button a press. The crackle of electricity set her nerves on high alert as her green eyes flickered up to him. “Yeah,” he breathed out, “Figured you knew that sound a bit too well by now.”

“I’ll leave the gun out today, but we’ve gotta get you used to fighting fully equipped Enforcers. So I’m going to keep the knife and taser. Your job? Try not to die. Got it?”

“Got it.”

It was everything they’d practiced. Rita was quicker now, stronger, and she had no problem keeping up with Jason as he moved with the knife. Swipe after swipe, he missed and Rita dodged until she could get him to take a stronger shot, at which time she twisted the blade from his grip and tossed it away from the both of them. Better no weapons than for him to regain control of the knife by swiping it in the same manner she did. Rita didn’t need weapons, anyway. She was powerful in her own right and kept her breath steady as their fighting picked up. She could read him now, her instincts were clearer and she felt like her old self. She ached, but there was a strength in her that she hadn’t felt in some time.

That is, until the taser crackled and she felt herself blink hard enough a few times that she was discombobulated. She tried to focus on Jason, but all she could see was blood, all she could feel was the burn of ropes against her skin and the pain radiating through her. “Come on, Mason!” Jason’s voice shook her from her thoughts and she came to just quickly enough to evade the taser but he sent her flying back with his leg as he sent a kick to her abdomen. Rita crashed against the wall and let out a heave of air that forcibly expelled from her lungs.

“What? Are you afraid of taking a taser?” Jason chided, “I saw you take more than one hit back at the facility. Over and over and over. Where’s that Mason?”

“I’m not,” she breathed out hard, “afraid.”

“No?” he raised an eyebrow, “Then prove it to me.”

The taser crackled again in his hand and despite it’s distance from her, Rita felt the ghost of pain radiate through her. Her shoulder that once held a carved T ached and throbbed so entirely that she had to grasp at it before moving in on Jason. She tried to evade it, tried to move around him but the sell of burning and blood filled her nostrils though nothing in the room had changed. “Come on, Mason! Get your head in the fucking game!”

Rita kept trying to blink away the imagines in her mind but the melded with the present and she hardly saw it coming when Jason took her to the ground. Her back hitting the mat was the only thing that pulled her out of her thoughts and she looked up at Jason who was intent on her eyes. It was like he saw something he recognized, but it only lasted a moment before the taser crackled again and she was lost again.

“Mason,” he called her name out but she thrashed against his grip with no rhyme or reason, just anything to get away from the memories that filled her mind, “Rita! Look at me!”
 
Leon stood in his usual spot in the corner of the room, arms crossed over his chest and one shoulder leaned against the wall. He stayed out of their way, and would remain in the same spot unless someone sailed his direction, but he always went back as soon as they moved again. Throughout all Rita’s workouts, he remained just as vigilant as the first session he’d sat in on: his phone never left his pocket unless it buzzed a notification, and even then, he’d glance at it long enough to determine it wasn’t an emergency before tucking it away again. He was a silent observer, and would only speak to or touch Rita as he walked with her from the gym.

The first and last time he’d interfered with one of their lessons had been when he’d tried to help Rita up after Jason had pinned and wrenched her arm, but she’d made it abundantly clear she needed to be able to stand and fall on her own. Watching her struggle and not being able to help was the hardest thing he’d ever done — it went against everything he was, but she was right. He couldn’t always be there to protect her. She needed to be able to stand and fight on her own again. Fortunately for him, Rita never struggled for long. Everything Jason threw at her, she mastered, and throughout, he saw her approach each new challenge with increased confidence and determination.

He didn’t like Jason’s methods and he sure as fuck didn’t like Jason, but he couldn’t deny the results.

There was a hint of a smile on his lips as Jason and Rita shifted to the sparring segment of the session and he wondered what Jason would try to stump her with this time, but the smile disappeared when he registered the taser. Leon pushed himself from the wall and his arms fell to his side as he looked on, stricken by the device’s appearance.

He’d sat with Rita in the tub after they’d escaped from the facility, he’d carefully washed her battered body and he’d asked her about the small circular burn marks scattered across her body. Taser burns. Enforcers had tied her to a chair and they’d taken a fucking taser to her. Repeatedly. They’d tortured her. His hands became fists, but he fought the urge to step in. Jason — goddamn him — was right. Fully equipped Enforcers would have tasers. They’d have knives. They’d have guns. She needed to know how to fight it all, with or without weapons of her own. They wouldn’t give a shit about her past. They’d only want to kill her.

With every muscle taut, Leon watched as Jason lunged and Rita dodged. It wasn’t just him, either. He could feel the wolf at the back of his head, alert to every move the two made as they fought. He’d need to go for a run after this one. He sucked in a deep breath and expelled it in a sigh, trying to release some of the tension, but Rita started losing ground and Jason, as he typically did, taunted her. Saw you take more than one hit at the facility. Leon’s mouth became an ugly snarl. He’d been there. He knew. He fucking knew what they’d done. Had he used a taser on her before? Had he waited in line for his turn?

Leon’s revelation alone would’ve been enough for him to break his promise of not interfering, then Rita hit the ground and there was panic on her face, but Jason didn’t let up. Couldn’t he see? She couldn’t tap out, she wasn’t there.

One second, Leon was in the corner, the next he shoved Jason with both hands.

“Back the fuck up,” he growled when Jason didn’t give way. Heedless of the taser that might be used against him, he pushed Jason again and when he finally moved, Leon took his place over Rita.

“Rita,” he said, reaching down to hold her face in his hands, cupping her cheeks and trying to get her to fix on his face. “Rita, baby, it’s me. I’m here. It’s okay. You’re okay.”
 
Rita couldn’t see anything but red.

She could hear Leon but all she could remember was the way his body cracked against the ground and the subsequent crack of each of his broken bones as Jenny plucked them apart one by one like flower petals. She felt sick, her stomach was twisted up and in her throat, strangling her lungs so they couldn’t manage more than quick, ragged breaths. Rita. That was her, right? That was her name. Rita Marie Mason. Daughter of Frank and Angela. Fiancé of Leon Alvarez. She wasn’t at the facility, she was in New Orleans. New Orleans, Louisiana and they lived in a beautiful red home with an iron gate. She was there.

She was in Orvar’s basement, right?

As her mind tried to settle, the anxiety still welled and her panic attack raged on until it could ride itself out. Her hands were shaking, she was shaking, and her green eyes found Leon’s for a moment before she had to blink hard over and over again.

New Orleans. Leon. Home.

“God, you’ve got to be fucking kidding me here,” Jason growled as he moved to shove the seemingly unmovable Leon away from Rita and pull him up to his feet so the two were eye to eye, “I was so fucking close and you fucked that up. I told you to stay the hell out of it, but no, you’ve gotta play the hero, huh?”

“You want to hear the hard fucking truth, dog? That? You can’t pull her from that. I’m trying to make it so you have a wife to fucking come home to at the end of this. None of those Enforcers give a fuck about her trauma, and that’s what it is. And you would know that if you saw or cared to fucking see what I saw.”

“No, no, even fucking better,” he growled, “How about I tell you? Is that what you want? You wanna be involved in figuring this shit out? I saw every single damn minute of it. That T they carved into her, you should have heard her scream, but she stayed conscious. Every second she nearly slipped they’d bring her back. You could smell it in the room, the burn of the tasers. And then they took shot after shot at her. One after another, after another, and she couldn’t do anything but look up and take it. Every scream. Each one followed by the crack of her ribs, the jolt of a taser, the point of a knife sinking into her flesh. Oh, and she didn’t just survive that for a few minutes.”

“She was tortured for two fucking days. No sleep, no food or water, just pain. Over and over and over. It’s a strange combination, huh? The floral shampoo and scent of blood? I know you can still smell it.”

“You want to tell me to back the fuck up?” Jason got in his face, “How about you fucking make me? Because one of us is going to ensure your fiancé survives and given your track record, I sure as hell doubt it’s going to be you.”
 
Leon had never experienced a panic attack before — he’d never witnessed one, either. All he knew was that Rita still wasn’t there. When she’d looked at him he thought she’d come back to him, but she’d lost sight again and went somewhere he couldn’t reach. He moved one of his hands from her cheek to smooth back her hair from her sweaty brow, then ran his palm down her arm to her trembling hand and had only just found her fingers with his when Jason dragged him to his feet.

The change was so abrupt that for a moment all he could do was blink at Jason as he launched into his tirade. When he finally realized what’d happened, he pushed at Jason and craned to look at Rita still senseless on the floor, but he turned back and stared hard at Jason as he began to detail what exactly had happened to Rita when they’d been captured by the Enforcers three years ago.

She’d never been evasive when answering his questions about what’d happened, but she’d never gone into detail, either. Why would she tell him how she’d screamed? How she’d hovered on the edge of consciousness only to be dragged back and tortured more? For two days. Lorelei had sent him an illusion of Rita, made him watch her die to Enforcer bullets, but she’d been there the whole time, watching him mourn her. He’d thought she’d died, but she’d been hanging on just as stubbornly as she always did, watching his pain while experiencing her own.

Jason stepped close, settling in nearly nose to nose, but Leon didn’t give ground. He stood firm, anger twisting his face as Jason launched his final accusation at him. His track record? The one where he supported Rita to the best of his ability? Where he held her while she dealt with her demons at her own pace? Jason thought he could do better? By what, holding her down and making her drown in her demons?

“Fuck you,” he spat. Combined with his anger, the bit of supernatural strength and speed he kept in human form meant that when he shoved Jason, he was forced back a step, and when he swung his fist at his face, it made contact with his nose with a satisfying crunch. Yes, he remembered the scent of floral shampoo and blood. It was all he could smell, and all he could hear was the buzz of the fluorescent lights above them. Leon clenched his teeth together, fighting the wolf back; it wanted to lunge and rend and tear, rip flesh and break bones, finish what he’d started.

Blood glistened on Jason’s hand as he pulled it away from his face.

“What, are you mad?” he asked, looking from his hand to Leon.

Leon stopped fighting.

The wolf surged forward and the sound of cracking bones echoed in the room as Leon’s body rearranged itself. Once, he’d felt crippling pain when he shifted, but now the only thing he felt was anger and it fueled his transformation, making the time between gaining fangs and lunging at Jason short enough that he believed he saw surprise on the man’s face.

It didn’t last long. The ex-Enforcer ducked and went for the gun he’d put aside. Snarling, Leon went after him. He’d tear his fucking face off, he’d bash his head against the concrete wall until his head burst like an overripe melon. He was a step away from reaching him, from being able to grab him and do what he’d set out to do, when Jason dove and rolled, came to his feet and leveled his gun at him. Leon didn’t stop, though. He knew the pain of silver, he knew its burn, it didn’t frighten him.

With a rumbling growl, he continued towards Jason, but something slammed hard into his side that sent him staggering into a wall, then he was held there immobile by two hands: one on his shoulder and the other on his neck.

Leon snarled and clawed and tried to snap at the hand, but it shifted to grab and smash the side of his face against the wall and his sounds of anger and frustration tapered off into a high-pitched whine. That hurt.

“Enough,” Orvar said. Still pinning Leon against the wall, he turned to Jason. “Put your gun down, now.”
 
Last edited:
Rita used to have panic attacks quite a bit. They were mostly brought on by stress for her during high school, between the track meets and pageant events, her mother and her father, she had felt pushed to the edge time and time again – but those were always the same. A bit of a rapid heartbeat, shaky breathing, usually coupled by crying and dry heaving in the bathroom. Her mother would come in and leave her some water and press a kiss to the top of her head as if panic was just a part of life. It took Rita sometime away from home to realize how abnormal that was and she worked to manage her stress. Fear, she had decided, was useless until the very moment you were going to do something that scared you. Getting worked up didn’t help, it didn’t make anything easier, so she pushed herself to allow fear to become natural and then she moved passed it.

But this time, she couldn’t move past it.

It didn’t feel like fear. It felt like she was back there, like her worst nightmare had come true. What if she had never made it back to Leon? What if these three years were a dream created by her own mind to keep holding her head above the water? She saw the facility, but she blinked hard over and over and then it was the basement but she could smell the blood, the burn of skin, the sound of laughter and jeering in her ears. She felt phantom hands on her skin and it made goosebumps rise. She wrapped her arms around herself but it brought no safety. Her palms shot to her eyes as she rubbed at them to try and clear the image.

She was with Leon, at Orvar’s house, training with Jason in the basement.

Her breaths were coming so rapidly now she could feel her heart beat in her ears as she tried to overcome the images. She curled in on herself, tears streaming down her face though she didn’t sob. Her hands were balled so deeply into fists that her nails dug and drew little pinpricks of blood from her hands.

“Make me,” Jason growled.

But then Orvar repeated himself with a tone that had matched Catherine’s compulsive one and Jason found himself lowering his gun without much choice in the matter. “Fine,” he spat, “You better control your puppy, Orvar. Because if I can’t train Mason, there’s no way she’s surviving this shit. I am trying to do my fucking job.”

Jason wiped at the blood from his nose and paid it no mind. He’d endured worse than a punch from a werewolf before. Though all the while Jason spoke, he never once looked over at Rita. Never once acknowledged her shaking or crying, as if it was just normal and this were just a job. “Or maybe you should just let him take another shot at me,” Jason chided, “See if this time how many limbs I can break at once.”
 
Last edited:
Leon renewed his struggle, throwing all his strength into pushing Orvar away enough that he could try to wriggle free. He wasn’t some pet to be controlled, and he’d like to see Jason break any of his limbs if he got loose. He’d rip his arms off first. How could he break anything if he didn’t have arms? He got a foot beneath him and tried to twist in Orvar’s arms and push.

Without looking away from Jason, the vampire grabbed Leon’s shoulder and shoved him so his back was against the wall then braced his forearm against his chest. He stretched his hand out over his face and exerted enough pressure that it felt like his skull might crack if he pressed it any harder into the wall.

“Be still,” Orvar hissed, but it wasn’t like Leon could do anything else.

The best he could do was to aim his one eye not shoved into concrete Jason’s way and watch when, after another compulsion-infused command from Orvar, he began to walk away. Orvar didn’t ease his hold on him until the ex-Enforcer had left the the room and closed the door behind him as he’d been instructed. Even then, the vampire only pried his fingers loose from Leon’s head. He snorted and worked his mouth, opening and closing it until he determined Orvar hadn’t broken his jaw.

Leon looked to Rita where she remained trembling on the floor in a fetal position and a lump clogged his throat. He needed to be there. His eyes remained on her as he tried to step forward, but Orvar leaned into the arm he had braced against his chest.

“Look at me, Leon,” Orvar said, and when he didn’t the vampire brought his other hand up to steer Leon’s eyes to his by his muzzle. The vampire’s expression softened marginally, but his words remained steely, “Listen carefully. I will release you and you will go to Rita. You will not leave this room to go after Jason, do you understand?”

Leon nodded.

“Very good.”

Orvar stepped back and Leon didn’t hesitate: he went to Rita’s side and began shifting back to his human form.

“I will find clothes for you,” Orvar said quietly as he walked past the tattered remains of Leon’s outfit on the ground.

The door closed and he went to his knees next to Rita, then lowered himself to curl up on his side facing her. Leon reached over and gently ran his hand over her dark hair, tucking loose strands behind her ear before he touched her wet cheek. He scooted closer so he could trace the curve of her shoulder and the length of her arm until he found her hand and laced their fingers together. Her hand still trembled, and he held it all the tighter because of it.

He was reminded of the time he’d gone to her on the rooftop all those years ago — before they’d fled together to New Orleans and built a life on the back of too many moments like this one. He hadn’t known for sure what to do to help then, either, but one fact remained:

“I’m here,” he told her, then chuckled. Barely. He’d lost himself for a bit, but he was back. "You here, too?"
 
Last edited:
Rita’s eyes blinked sleepily as she felt herself coming back to reality. She could see the basement now, though it felt like her skin was charged with the faintest bit of electricity. Panic had turned rather quickly into exhaustion which allowed her a few moments to just lie there on the cold concrete floor and let her breaths fall back into slow and simple pattern. Jason was gone, she couldn’t bear the effort to look up but she could hear Orvar. Words were muddled in her ears, like she was submerged, but she recognized the timbre of his voice and then Leon’s growling. They were both there.

Orvar, Leon, the basement, New Orleans.

The facility was gone, she reminded herself over and over again, but it was so much easier to believe those thoughts far away from the suffocating grasp of panic. It was just Jason with a taser. He was training her and something in her had snapped entirely out of control. She remembered one moment stumbling back and the next she was here – the attack had come on so quickly she didn’t have time to brace for it. Her mind chugged along as it struggled to catch up with the events that had transpired, but she was pulled from those thoughts as Leon settled down next to her and brushed her hair back.

Her hands were shaking, but his were steady and strong.

“I’m here, too,” Rita breathed out a tired sound, “I’m sorry I don’t—“ She stopped herself and sniffled, brushing away the words she thought she needed to say. Of course she didn’t know what came over her and of course there were aspects of their last fight with the facility that she didn’t quite deal with. Instead of making excuses, she let her trembling hand close around Leon’s and she was anchored to him. She watched the gentle rise and fall of his chest and she mimicked it until she felt strength return to her lungs.

After a moment, Rita was able to actually register the fact that she’d heard Leon growling earlier. He was naked in front of her, curled in the same position she was, and she realized what happened. “You transformed?” she asked quietly, “Are you okay? Did Jason hurt you?”

“If he hurt you, I’ll kill him.”
 
Last edited:
Leon chuckled and leaned in to kiss Rita's lips. “Good thing he didn’t hurt me,” he said, grinning. “Think Orvar still needs information from him.” He joked, but he didn’t doubt that she would’ve marched her ass out after Jason to set him straight if she thought she needed to.

After he settled back onto the padded mat, he began to recount everything she’d missed out on while he continued to hold her hand and occasionally reached out to touch her face, stroke her cheek or comb his fingers through her hair. They were calming, soothing gestures meant just as much for her as they were for him. She was alright; she’d come back, and every touch reaffirmed that for him.

“Jason was there. He was at the facility when we were. He knew everything that’d happened and he still pushed you like he did.” Anger rose again as he pictured Jason over her, taser still in hand, while she flailed and panicked beneath him. Leon knew without a doubt he would’ve kept at it if he hadn’t intervened. “He wouldn’t stop with the fucking taser, so I made him stop, then I don’t know— he started running his mouth again, and I got pissed and punched him. In the face. Think I might’ve broken his nose. Hope I did, to be honest. Then uh… Yeah, I transformed. Went after him.”

Violence wasn’t always the answer (it was why he’d tried to keep from transforming in the first place, because the wolf didn’t know that), but it’d been cathartic to stop fighting the urge to hit the ex-Enforcer— almost as much as it’d been to let the beast come forward and have its turn at him. Even now, he felt calmer than he had in a while. Jason had goaded him endlessly, and there was something about going after him in a form that actually stood a chance against the ex-Enforcer that’d really done it for him.

“Orvar came in before anything could happen.” He reached up to rub the side of his face that Orvar had pressed his hand into when he’d shoved his head against the concrete wall, and winced when he felt what would probably soon be a bruise. The almost human way the vampire carried himself sometimes made it hard to remember how goddamned strong vampires became as they aged, and Orvar was a little over six centuries old. It was a good thing Orvar considered him family and generally tended towards not popping werewolf heads like overripe fruit when they upset him.

“If you wanna talk to someone about hurting me, then talk to Orvar. I wasn't really seeing sense at the time and he had to knock it into me. Just— wait until he brings me some clothes?”
 
Rita exhaled a breath she didn’t realize she was holding. So Jason hadn’t hurt him, thank god. She had felt the inkling of panic tickling in the pit of her stomach at the thought and his kisses and gentle touches eased it. It was hard to bring herself to do anything but blink sleepily at Leon through her red rimmed eyes and let her head fall sort of useless against the mat with her hair splayed out. There was one thing that brought a smile to her face, though, and that was the mention of Jason’s possibly broken nose.

“You managed to break his nose?” Rita smiled gently and chuckled, “You are the perfect husband to-be.”

Jason was difficult. He was cold and calculating, not such a far cry from Jackson, but there was one core difference between the two. Jackson was cruel and blinded by his anger, but Jason was just smart and committed. When they had trained all those years ago, he had pushed her similarly but Rita had been so empty that there was nothing to ignite. She had been shattered down to shard of who she used to be back then, but now her fears and trauma held weight in her life because she was happy. It was a strange concept to mull over but she was so entirely happy that even the darkness seemed manageable. Rita should have known better, though. She should have known that throwing herself back into the fight would mean facing demons she thought locked away with her firearms and ammunition.

She hesitated a moment while Leon recounted memories of what happened while she was slipping in and out of her own mind. “I remember,” she breathed out, “I mean, I remember seeing him. It was just a flash, though, and then everything is blurry after. It’s hard to remember sometimes, but when he turned on that taser it was like being back there and I remembered everything. Every single little thing. Like this was the dream and being at the facility was still my reality. That’s never happened to me before.”

She blinked a few times and tried to shake the cobwebs from her mind. It was exhausting – so much so that getting up actually felt impossible. She could hardly lift her hand but she slowly brought her fingertips to his cheek to drag them gently against the skin where a bruise was sure to rise. “I’ll be sure to give him a piece of my mind,” she smiled gently, “I’m just glad he was there to make sure nothing else happened. So I won’t beat him up, just a few choice words. You know, to remind him what a big tough human I am.”
 
Leon hadn't had panic attacks, but he'd had flashbacks. They were typically triggered by seeing something similar to a past event. The most recent one had been in the woods when they'd first encountered Jason and the ex-Enforcer had thrown Rita to the ground. He'd seen Jackson over her instead, but it was just a superimposed image that he was able to shake off. It wasn't anything like what Rita talked about, where the memory felt more real than reality. That sounded like hell.

His lips thinned as he watched all her long blinks and listened to her syrup-thick words. She was exhausted, and was it any wonder? She'd busted her ass on training every spare moment she had – and when she didn't have a spare moment, she carved one out anyway – then to have whatever had happened to her with the taser-induced panic attack?

He tried to move closer to her, but the plastic covering of the mat stuck to his exposed skin and he grunted, then peeled himself up section by section so he could wiggle and then flop himself all of an inch closer to her. He pressed their foreheads and tips of their noses together. “In hindsight, I realize I made a mistake,” he said, frowning as he slid his arm over her middle, “by lying down here with no clothes on.”

Shortly after, the door to the basement opened and before he could fully peel himself from the mat again, Orvar stood over them with an armful of clothes.

“These are for you.” The vampire leaned down to place the neatly folded and organized stack at Leon's head.

“I would have a word with you both once you're dressed and you're both ready,” he said, looking at Leon and Rita respectively. “I'll be in the sitting room.”

With that, he left, and Leon sat up the rest of the way to pull his clothes on. There was a dark t-shirt, jeans, and even boxers that all fit damn near perfectly but they weren't anything he remembered leaving behind. After he stood, he looked down at himself, bewildered. Had Orvar gone shopping for him? How had he known his size? Were any stores even open? But then he caught a whiff of a familiar masculine human scent beneath that of detergent.

“Oh goddammit, these are Jason's clothes. His boxers, too. Fuck.” His face was twisted sullenly as he held his hand out for Rita to help her to her feet. “You've got to beat Orvar up now. You don't have a choice.”
 
Last edited:
The feeling of Leon against her forehead and his arm around her middle made her feel safe. It was silly considering there was nothing left in that basement to hurt her, but the electricity in her fingertips seemed to ebb at his touch and the nauseating tug of her stomach eased just enough to give her clarity. It was really over. The attack had ended and she was finally able to get her bearings together as best she could. She chuckled gently at the sound of his flesh peeling off the mat, but the basement door silenced her once again and she feared it was Jason again.

Her heart began to beat rapidly again in her chest and Rita realized that for the rest of that evening, the panic would never be too far just waiting for a moment to rear its ugly head.

Rita blinked slowly and registered Orvar standing over them with clothes in hand. Usually Rita could read him well, but there was an expression on his face she could not discern. Maybe she was just tired, but she couldn’t help but feel a bit guilty for the entire ordeal. She had pushed herself, true, but not for a single moment did she believe she would have an attack like that or that it would ignite such animosity between Leon and Jason. Rita nodded slowly as he made his way out and a lump formed in her throat. She swallowed it back but the feeling remained.

Orvar had never been mad at her before.

She shook it off and attributed the feeling to the guilt she was conditioned to feel when she upset her own mother, but it lingered ever so slightly in the back of her mind as Leon reached down to help her to her feet. It was a slow pull but Rita managed to get up to her feet considering Leon took on most of her weight. Her legs felt like Jell-O, her arms like lead and a headache that radiated in her skull with such a pressure she thought the bone would crack. Though the tears had stopped as well, Rita still instinctually reached up to wipe at her eyes with the palm of her hand.

“I don’t know if I can beat anyone up right now,” she laughed and thudded her head against his bicep and held onto his arm as they walked slowly, “I feel pretty beat up.”
 
As they walked, he covered her hand with his where it rested on his arm and leaned over to kiss the top of her head. “Orvar won’t know that,” he insisted, “just gotta tell him your fiancé has been disrespected and you’re there to make him pay the price. Bet he won’t even want to fight you." Leon grinned.

When Orvar had originally left the basement room in search of clothes for him, he’d hadn’t seemed any more disappointed in him than he usually was when he did something he didn’t approve of, so he’d anticipated the talk would be something about how he’d need to show better judgement in the future and learn to walk away — the usual.

When they entered the sitting room, Orvar was in his big plush chair, leg crossed over his knee at the ankle, and hand hooked on his shin. He stared off into the distance in that vacant way he sometimes did, and Leon’s face fell when he stirred to life and remained expressionless as he looked at him and Rita in turn. Wordlessly, he gestured to the love seat they normally took and as he sat down, Leon noted the coffee table was absent of the tea he always put out. This was where Orvar would usually frown and start lecturing him, but he remained silent and impossible to read.

The silence stretched long enough that Leon shifted in his seat and unconsciously reached for and clasped Rita’s hand in his.

“I see the clothes fit well,” Orvar said, finally, drawing a startled look from Leon. The vampire was smirking at him.

Leon scoffed. Son of a bitch had probably heard him whining about wearing Jason’s clothes all the way up here. Had he bet on that happening? And here he’d thought it was beyond the vampire to be petty.

Orvar released his leg and eased his foot to the ground, then settled back in his chair. As he regarded them, he smiled in the gentle manner Leon had come to expect from the vampire. Instantly, Leon relaxed.

“I apologize for being distracted when you arrived, but I was considering how best to broach the subject of the remaining facilities,” said Orvar.

While Leon wanted to relax even further because it didn’t seem like Orvar planned on scolding him (for now, at least), he became tense. Talk of the facilities wasn’t just a reminder of the hell they’d gone through at the one they’d been held at after they’d been captured, it was a reminder that more remained. The one they’d been at had been focused on experimenting on werewolves, to figure out how to give them the ability shift outside of the full moon, but the other two big ones, as they’d found out, focused on other supernatural creatures — namely vampires and witches.

Orvar plucked at his bottom lip in a thoughtful manner before he eventually lowered his hand and began to speak in measured tones.

“After the fall of the werewolf facility, the Enforcers began not only fortifying their other bases, but they also started a massive recruiting drive. I’d feared that might be the case but required an internal source to confirm my suspicions. Jason was as close to that as I’d been in months, so that is why I sent you after him.”

He exhaled noisily.

“We poked the hornet’s nest and we are ill prepared to deal with it. We need to do our own recruiting, our own training and preparing. I would like it if you both helped me in this endeavor. Before I go any further detailing my plans to you, however, I want you to understand that this won’t be over quickly, and the strain,” he glanced at Rita almost too quickly to register, but Leon caught it and frowned, “will likely be great.”
 
Last edited:
Rita didn’t need to see Orvar’s glance to understand what he meant by his final words. The strain will likely be great. She had anticipated a scolding from him, but she was surprised and hurt to hear the doubt that hung near silent in the air but still suffocated her. One panic attack and suddenly she was unreliable, a liability, and like hell Rita was going to let anyone believe that about her. Even if it was true, even if she was the weakest link now, she would not be. She would train harder, do more, whatever it took to get them where they needed to be. It had been a wonderful three years of living a normal, average life – but these facilities were hurting so many people and Rita had no intention of letting them do this without her.

Part of her, honestly, couldn’t believe that was in question.

“I think we all understood how our actions at the facility would have consequences,” Rita said evenly, though she felt an uneasy tingle in the very pit of her stomach, “you don’t just erase an entire secret organization. I think we all hoped that it would end but hope does change the fact that Enforcers were killed or that I decapitated Jenny. It only makes sense they’re beginning to mobilize now. They’re probably more radicalized as ever, too. If Jason defected, that means that there’s something going on here that goes beyond following orders. Something we only got a taste of at the werewolf facility.”

“If the question is whether or not you think I can handle it,” she added after a moment of contemplating whether or not to address the elephant in the room. After losing Chase, the abuse as an Enforcer, the torture as an ex-Enforcer – how could he still doubt her? “Yes,” she decided simply, “I can handle it. I would hope my track record means more than a single panic attack.”

There was no reason to explain herself further. They all knew what happened to her at the facility, they all saw her afterwards, tended to her wounds. Hell, Orvar knew better than anyone because he had felt it. She’d taken his blood and he understood intimately what she was enduring in the days following. Whether it was worry or doubt, Rita honestly couldn’t tell but it felt like doubt. It felt like one panic attack had negated weeks of intensive, brilliant combat that she had picked up again and conquered. She had beaten Jason on more than one occasion and it was becoming more and more frequent that she could over power him. Him, the best the damn facilities had to offer.

She remembered her mother telling her once as a little girl to stop crying because it would become expected. She had urged Rita to always smile, to keep her face even and pleasant, because once someone saw weakness it was impossible to not see. She’d taken it to heart too after her first competitive track meet where she’d hurt her ankle and for the rest of the season she was considered the girl with the “bad ankles.”

“So how many other facilities are we looking at, officially?”
 
Leon, who had been listening quietly to Rita as she spoke, inhaled sharply and tensed when she shifted to talking about the thing he’d hoped she hadn’t picked up on, but she didn’t miss shit. His gaze bounced back and forth between her and Orvar as he tried to gauge the vampire’s reaction, but he’d gone from smiling to staring at Rita without a trace of emotion on his angular face — none that Leon could read, anyway.

It still felt like Orvar was making some judgment call, though, and all Leon could do was rankle about what bullshit that was.

Rita didn’t have the advantage of being a werewolf or vampire with instincts that lent themselves to fighting. He’d been able to jump right back into the fray where she’d had to kill herself to get back into the swing of things. He knew. He’d been there at nearly every practice, had made sure she ate and bathed afterward even though she was often too exhausted to bother. He’d even insisted on rubbing her down most nights, just to ease some of the tightness of her muscles.

But he’d also watched her improve from session to session. Jason often threw things at Rita that Leon thought would be impossible to counter, but if she didn’t get it on the first, second, or even third try, she’d get it on the fourth. Then she repeated it until she got it on the first try every try after that. She’d had a hiccup tonight with the taser, but that’d been on Jason. She hadn’t been able to adjust before he went at her again because he never stopped to begin with. While Leon agreed she needed to work through what the Enforcers had done to her so she could face them in the future, holding her nose in it like a dog with a mess it’d made wasn’t the way to do it.

In Leon’s opinion, there was a problem with Jason’s tactics, not with her ability to handle the strain.

“Very well,” the vampire finally said, and before Leon could fully register that he’d left, Orvar was back and unrolling a map on the table. The vampire grabbed a few nearby coasters and placed them at the corners of the map to keep it from rolling up again.

It was the United States, and two points had been circled in red on either coast. Orvar briefly touched each with the tips of two fingers. “These are the two remaining facilities. The witches are primarily on the West Coast, while the vampires are held and studied on the East.” There were dozens of smaller circles dotting the map, scattered in no clear pattern that Orvar ran his hand over in a broad, sweeping gesture. “These are their other bases that I know of. They’re primarily used to hold supernaturals until they can be transferred to the larger facilities.”

Leon was familiar with those. He’d been taken to one in Texas after he’d been attacked by a werewolf — they’d stitched his arm back together there. That had also been where they’d told him his old life was over, and that if he mentioned a word of what'd happened to anyone, they’d kill them. It’d looked like any other office building in the area, unremarkable and gray. He’d passed it every day going to work and not known what was housed within or who used it. He’d never given it a second thought.

He released Rita’s hand to lean forward to rest his elbows on the tops of his legs so he could peer closer at the map. “How are we supposed clear all these out? We don’t have enough people, do we? And even if we did, how would we hit all of them before they knew what we were up to?” Leon asked.

“We’re not. Not directly.” Orvar began detailing his plan to them. He wanted to transform the business Leon had started: instead of working individual contracts for supernaturals, he’d work one for Orvar where he tracked defectors. “Once they’re located, that is when your expertise would come into play,” he said, looking at Rita. “You would talk with them, convince them as you did Jason that we’re here to help. Convince them to join us.”

Orvar retracted his hand from the map and settled one more upon his big plush chair. He pinched the bridge of his nose and breathed a sigh, then dropped his hand to look at them both with a weary expression.

“As you assumed, they’ve become more extreme in their methods. The accounts I’ve heard—“ Orvar broke off and his mouth became a grim line. “Situations like yours, Rita, have become more commonplace. They regularly take those who speak out and torture them until they either conform or die. They've started to alienate some of their people, and I want to exploit that. However, I'm..." He chuckled and shook his head. "I'm not quite sure how. I've been in wars and I've maintained peace, but I've never stirred a revolution."
 
Last edited:
“You start by being on the right side.”

Rita shifted to lean forward and run her fingers over the map, slowly but with purpose tracking the distance and patterns between facilities and holding areas. They were on the right side, there was no doubt about that. The Enforcers were exploiting supernaturals, killing those who did not follow their protocol, and it was only a matter of time before they started gaining ground and that put her entire family at risk. Rita was not about to let that happen, whether Orvar doubted her ability to cope or not. She had already fought to drag them all back from the brink once, she never wanted to have to do it again.

Leon broken from the sight of her death, Nate struggling against silver and memories of his mother, Becca alone, and Orvar burned down to a shell of himself by bullets – it would never happen again. Not this time. Not when there was so much they could do. So many people who would help them and stand with them. They weren’t alone anymore now that supernaturals were coming out of the woodwork day after day and seeking them out. “You’re right, we start with defectors,” Rita nodded, “We find whoever we can get, bring them in, bring them over to our side, and get them set up in the city. I’ve got plenty of connections through real estate and big companies to get people set up with actual lives here.

“We have to play their game, though. The facility, they use fear and pain – they break people into fearing what’s outside of that life or what would happen to them if they left. That means we need to have a countermove and ensure what we are offering them is honest and real. Not all of them are like me and Leon. We had each other to keep one another going, but it’s a long way to run from either coast. If the facilities are threatening death, we need to offer life.”

“And if you’re looking for a way to exploit it, find a way to show them that. Word of mouth is effective, not nearly as effective as advertisement. I’m not sure exactly how to go about that and keep our location secret, but it might be worth looking into. If this is something akin to a war, a revolution, then we need to use propaganda better than the Enforcers do.”

“But first and foremost,” Rita sat back a bit, though her muscles cried out, “We need to get to these defectors before the Enforcers do. I don’t doubt the moment the faculties catch wind of us, they’ll stop torturing and just start killing. When they tortured me, it was a way of establishing unity and instilling fear in anyone who doubted. If they knew the torture was just fueling defectors, they’d start slaughtering them one by one. Like you said, we kicked the hornet’s nest here.”

“No matter what happened to me, what the facility did,” Rita breathed out, “Not every Enforcer is the same and those who defect need to be protected. Otherwise, we’re no better than they are.”
 
Orvar straightened in his chair and looked at the map as Rita touched it, then at her. The vampire continued to stare at her, his eyes bright and every line of his body speaking of the attention he paid to her words. Sometimes it boggled Leon that a vampire over half a millennium old not only asked for Rita’s opinions but listened to her when she gave them. One of her strengths was in making and executing plans, and while that in itself impressed Leon, the fact that Orvar — who himself was a tactician — would defer to her, made him the same sort of proud he got when she kicked Jason’s ass.

The more ways Rita suggested to exploit the Enforcers’ weaknesses, the more rapt Orvar became, so that by the end of her talk, he sat on the edge of his seat with a smile that made it difficult to remember he’d worn a frown when Rita started talking.

“Yes,” Orvar said, “I concur. Even if the only thing a person who sees injustice can do is separate themselves from the source, they deserve our protection. And perhaps, once they’re surrounded by others who share their opinion, they’ll grow bolder.”

Despite both Orvar’s and Rita’s insistence that not all Enforcers were the same, Leon grappled with the fact that Jason wasn’t much different than most of the other assholes he’d encountered at the facility. The people there who’d shown him a shred of human decency had been an exception, not the rule. Johanna, the old nurse, had been gruff with him on the exterior, but she’d gently cleaned his wounds and sometimes sat with him after his sessions with Lorelei left him practically comatose. Alice, Rita’s old partner, had been kind to him, too. She’d accompanied him to Rita on the rooftop during a time he’d been treated more animal than man and had needed an escort when he was out of his containment unit. Then, there was Rita. It’d take him all night and a good chunk of the morning to think on each kindness she’d shown him when he’d been held captive at the facility.

Three people: it wasn’t much, but they’d made a difference for him, hadn’t they? Each of them, in their own way, had kept him going — kept him alive.

He sighed loudly and Orvar looked over at him with raised eyebrows.

“Well,” Leon shifted and cleared his throat, “seems like we oughta get to work then.”

“Indeed,” said Orvar, smiling.

They spent more time discussing plans to tailor his business to tracking and extracting defectors, but when it became a struggle for him and Rita to string together coherent sentences or keep their eyes open, Orvar sent them home.

When they next returned to Orvar’s house and basement gym, it was for another practice. Leon didn’t go to the corner like he typically did. He went straight for Jason, his dark eyes intent on the ex-Enforcer. To Leon’s credit, he managed to keep his expression limited to only a fraction of the disgust he felt that in spite of everything that’d happened the last practice, Rita needed to train, and the only way for her to get that was through Jason.

“I need you to answer something for me,” Leon said in low tones after he came to a stop in front of Jason. “You use that taser on Rita back at the facility? Did you hurt her?”

Rita hadn't been able to tell him with any certainty when he'd asked her. She'd been in and out, she said, and though she couldn't remember Jason putting a hand on her, she also couldn't be sure.

Leon had to know whether or not he needed to punch Jason again, that was all.
 
Last edited:
The next day proved nearly impossible for Rita. Everything in her ached and moved with the speed of molasses. Between the late night, the panic attack and the training, her body had near given up on her in the stress of it all but she pulled on her clothes and slipped on a pair of heels to make her way into work. She’d already taken a day off that week and considering it was Friday and a free weekend was upon her, she managed to find the strength to endure. The heels, however, did not even make it home and she elected to walk barefoot along the sidewalk back to the house after a day of phone calls and paperwork. It was almost a godsend when she had the chance to change into workout clothes and pulled her hair up off her neck.

It was her favorite moment of training, really. The moment she pulled on a pair of leggings, a sports bra, and noticed the strength returning to her body. Even only after a few weeks of training, there was an unbelievable difference and Rita certainly thought she looked better now than she ever did. College track had nothing on survival workouts. She slipped on one of Leon’s zip up sweatshirts and made her way to the car so they could head to another session.

Jason’s nose looked terrible. It was a deep black and blue that spread a bit under his eyes but his posture was unmoved by the painful injury. Whether Leon had actually broken it, or just bruised it, she didn’t know but she couldn’t help but feel a little amused and very proud that it was her man that put a bruise like that on Jason’s face. Almost immediately, she was shooed off by Jason to go take off her sweatshirt and wrap her knuckles for some intense sparring, leaving Leon and Jason standing toe to toe too far away for her to hear.

“Did I hurt her?” Jason replied to Leon, voice low enough that it stayed between the two of them. There was a beat of silence before Jason looked at him, “No. I didn’t hurt her. But I sure as hell didn’t do anything to stop the people that did.”

He exhaled and glanced to see Rita with her back to them, wrapping tape around her knuckles. He beckoned Leon a bit closer with his hand and spoke in low tones. “Listen, you’re right. I need to change tactics because that fiancé of yours refuses to face any of her own shit. So what I’m about to do, I need you to just stand there and look like you want to rip my fucking head off, got it?”

He eyed Leon’s expression and chuckled, “Perfect. Just like that, big guy.”

“Let’s go, Mason!” Jason called out loud enough that it echoed in the basement and Rita moved immediately to bring herself to the mats. She had almost come to enjoy this – the time spent actually doing something to better herself for the sake of others. The aches were terrible, so were the bloody knuckles and bruises, and she certainly wasn’t proud of how many times that Leon had to carry her from the bath to the bedroom because her knees couldn’t withstand the weight of her body – but it felt purposeful. Every day she got better, got stronger, and after yesterday she wasn’t going to let anything stand in her way.

No one was going to doubt her.

“We’re gonna try something a little different,” Jason pulled the taser from his back pocket and held it out before pressing down and letting the crackle of electricity surge through it. Immediately, Rita felt herself instinctually step back and instead of moving towards her, Jason took a step towards Leon. “Every time this goes off and you move away from me, I get closer to him. Either you can face this taser, or he can. Consider it payment for my fucking nose.”

“Jason, I’m not playing this shit—“ Rita huffed as she took two steps back, losing her stance and bringing her hands up to push the hair back from her face, “Just face me.”

“You’re the one,” the fucking taser crackled again, “moving away from me. You want me to face you? You have to show up to the fight, Mason.”

There was a beat of silence before she watched Jason sigh and push off on his hind leg to make a run for Leon, taser crackling all the while and Rita reacted instinctually. She crossed the same distance in half the time, her body moving fast enough that by the time the taser came mere inches from Leon, Rita could get a foot between them and send Jason backwards a few steps until he skidded to a stop. Rita stood in front of Leon, nothing in her eyes but the ferocity of a woman protecting the man she loved, and she moved in a few steps towards Jason.

“That’s it,” he smirked, “There she is.”

The taser crackled again and Rita slowed in her steps. “Well, there she was,” Jason sighed, but a single look beyond her towards Leon set something in her aflame and she moved in to land a few his to his jaw, kicking back against his chest as he lunged back forward at her. The taser came dangerously close to her skin with every kick and punch. One after another until the smile on Jason’s face was apparent at the way she fought through every single ache she had to be feeling and the panic attack her heart had to be edging at that point. With a quick return of a punch, Rita moved in close enough that the taser clipped her shoulder and her muscles seized up. She let out a yelp of pain, closed her fists instinctually on whatever part of Jason she could manage, and felt familiar bile rise in her throat along with memories in her mind.

The smell of burning flesh filled her nostrils and she was back there.

She tried to pull away from Jason but he held her there tight and grabbed her face with one hand as the current faded, but it still ghosted in her veins long after. “Look at me, look at me,” Jason growled, “You give into it, who’s gonna protect Leon, huh? What about that other little werewolf or his witch girlfriend? Orvar? Your parents? These enforcers and supernaturals running away from facilities that want to kill them? Torture them just like they tortured you?”

“Jenny said you powerful because you had nothing to lose, but the woman I saw in that facility – the woman I saw survive that torture – she had everything to lose. You are powerful on your own, Rita, you know that, but you are god damn near unstoppable when you’re fighting to protect what you cannot afford to lose. Show me that woman. Show me the woman I watched take taser after taser and still manage to talk back. Where’s that Rita?”

“Or do I have to pull my gun right now and bury four silver bullets into your fiancé for you to get the fucking point?”

Something in Rita snapped, but it was not the same as before. This was not panic, instead Rita’s body filled with a sheer force of will and she removed his hand from her face before disarming the taser and sending him flying backwards. He hardly had enough time to pull the knife from his pocket before Rita was on top of him and twisted it out his grip, ducking and evading punches until he managed to get under her hips and send her flipping over his own head. She did not stumble, instead she landed crouched and moved to block each of his blows. One after the other, no matter how fast he went, and there was power. All the while all Rita could think about was what he’d mentioned.

Who was going to protect them?

As she moved in, Jason pulled a second taser and buried into her shoulder again but she didn’t do anything more than flinch. She twisted in his hold until her back was against his chest and she twisted his forearm to disarm the second taser and spin to land a kick to the side of his head. The moment he hit the ground, Rita stepped over him, crouched down and pulled his gun from his holster without much of a fight. With a few swift motions, the magazine was removed and the pieces tossed away.

When she finally looked down at Jason, she realized that she hadn’t just beaten one of his trials. She’d beaten him. The best the fucking facility had to offer.

“Hey lover boy,” Jason called out over the quiet of the room, accompanied by nothing other than the sound of Rita’s heavy breathing, “You wanna know how your future wife survived? That is how.”

He looked up at her with a smirk, “Great job, kid.”
 
“Would you stop fucking calling me that?” Leon growled on his way to Rita. Between that and referring to Rita as ‘kid’ when he was barely five years older than her, Jason really needed to reevaluate his nicknames for them. They were so far off the mark that perhaps the point was just to annoy them, though, and he’d just revealed it worked. If he were Jason, there wasn’t a chance in hell he’d let it go now, not after finding out it could rile him up.

Upon reaching Rita, he immediately caught her in a hug and pecked a kiss on her lips. She was sweaty with exertion and smelled strongly of adrenaline, but it didn’t faze him. He’d been proud of her before for all the progress she’d made with Jason’s practices, but she’d just pushed past whatever lingering issues she had with tasers to trounce his ass.

When he stepped back from Rita, he was grinning. He ran his palms down her arms to gather her hands in his and continued smiling until he caught sight of the burn marks Jason had made. He remembered her crying out, had felt the hand that wrapped around his heart and tightened any time he heard her in pain. If she’d crumpled and gone into another panic attack, he wouldn’t have hesitated to go to her again, but she’d kept going so he’d made himself stay still.

Leon looked down at Jason. “Hey, you don’t get to just sit there after tasing her. Why don’t you go get some ice and the first aid kit?”

Jason complied — not without rolling his eyes, but he stood to go search for something to help with Rita’s burns.

“Huh, didn’t think he actually would,” Leon remarked, blinking after him as he left the room. Once he was gone, Leon returned his attention to Rita and squeezed her hands in his. “You did good,” he said, tugging her closer to him and relinquishing his hold on her hands to slide his arms around her and step in close so that this time when he kissed her, it could be slow and tender. She’d taken a big step in defeating her demons. He couldn’t ask for more for her.

“I uh… Need to tell you something though,” he said quietly after he pulled away, but only enough that he could see her eyes. “I was in on it. He didn’t tell me he’d fucking tase you, or threaten to tase me for that matter, just that I needed to stand there and look pissed off at him. In hindsight, I probably should’ve asked him for more details before agreeing.”
 
Last edited:
Rita quite literally melted into Leon’s embrace. The adrenaline was still coursing through her system when he’d approached and Jason had started to push himself off the ground. It was to be expected, though. While Rita wasn’t a werewolf, there was a point in her psyche where if she was push hard enough that she hit what she considered to be autopilot. Nothing hurt, nothing ached, and instead she moved with all the reserves of energy she could manage to deplete until she was left after the fact panting and with a racing heartbeat. It was strange that in the three years her and Leon had stayed out of the fight that she missed the adrenaline. They never really talked about it, honestly.

After the facility, after nearly losing her life twice, she didn’t think it fair to bring up and she really wanted to try to make normal work for them. She was slowly starting to understand now that they could have normal aspects of their life – their love, family, marriage, and home – but there would always be something supernatural about them. After all, he was a werewolf at the end of the day. Their family made up of unsuspecting human parents and grandparent, a vampire, a witch and a werewolf. They never stood a chance hiding from who they were.

It had been a long time since Rita sat and thought of Chase, but losing him had broken something in her that she knew would never be reconciled. She had to accept that this woman who had emerged from that pain and heartbreak was who she was now. She was still changing, still finding her own peace, but this was her life and she had built it with her own two hands. There was something to be said for that, too.

“Thanks,” Rita breathed out, not because she didn’t have more to say, but because her breath came in short, quick burst and she struggled to catch it. His admittance, however, pulled her eyes up from their kiss to find his, comforting and warm as always, and a small smirk played at her lips. Her hands squeezed his and she pushed up on her toes to catch him in another kiss, soft and slow. “I needed the push, you don’t have to apologize. I know you, Leon, if he had gone too far you would have been there no matter what you agreed to. But thank you – thank you for trusting me enough to do this.”

“I sort of missed it,” she chuckled and shook her head almost in disbelief, “Not the tasers or the near death – but doing something with my own two hands. I missed that rush, you know? Feeling like I was doing something genuinely worthwhile.”
 
Leon hadn’t given it as much thought as he should’ve before he’d agreed to Jason’s plan, but he understood how Rita might’ve been offended by what he’d done. They’d made her think he was in danger to bring out her protective side and help her fight past her issues with the taser — and it’d been a ruse. A lie. Sort of. As he thought back on how things had gone down, he could picture Jason actually hitting him with the taser, or even loading him up with the four bullets he’d promised if he’d needed to.

The ex-Enforcer might have brought him in to help with his new tactic, but that didn’t make them buddies. When it came down to it, he knew he’d been expendable to Jason. He’d been a tool to help Rita improve, that was all. Hell, even Rita was probably seen as nothing more than a weapon to hone and weapons could be replaced. He’d spent too long in the military and too long with the Enforcers for it to be any different.

“You don’t have to thank me,” Leon said, smiling lopsidedly in the aftermath of her gratitude. The kiss, paired with the words that followed, didn’t leave him any room to doubt her earnestness but he wasn’t sure he deserved it. He’d only done what he’d felt was best. She would've done the same for him. “If we’re going to do this thing, I wanna do it right. I want you to be safe. I need you to be safe.” The other side of his mouth joined the first and he grinned widely at her. “‘Cause I’ve missed it, too. A lot. I’ve been bored out of my goddamn mind. All that research? Sitting in a car waiting for someone to show up at some shitty motel?”

He grimaced. “It’s bad. Really bad.”

Given the fact he had to watch and wait for the arrival of the people he needed to photograph, he’d never been able to do anything like play games on his phone or read a book. It meant he'd done some pretty dumb things trying to stave off the boredom, like narrating what people did as they passed through the motel parking lot in a robot voice and linking together dozens of paperclips and pretending it was a fishing line and his dash was the pond.

“I still get to shift and run every two weeks, but it’s not the same as it was when we went after Jason. I had a good reason to be there. I was tracking a person that we needed to help with Orvar’s big plans, not a deer. Haven't felt that satisfied after any of my other cases.” He shook his head, mirroring Rita’s disbelieving expression. “I wanna say this is what we're meant to do, but we're just crazy, aren’t we? Adrenaline junkies? Maybe we should look into skydiving or bungee jumping. It’d probably be safer.”
 
Last edited:
“I get it, I write proposals all day and spend time planning charity balls and organizing fundraisers,” Rita shook her head with a bit of a laugh, “I don’t spend too much time behind a desk, but I just felt really stuck, I guess. You know, that feeling when you’ve got so much more to give and no one needs it? No one in the charity world needs someone who can shoot a gun or jump into the fire – just to make lists and get the lists done. I’m good at it, but it’s just not what I want.”

“I thought I could just go back – the whole public service thing – but I’m not the same anymore, that’s not enough for me.”

Much like Leon, Rita had grown so tired of her existence outside of him and their little family. Charity work was noble, but Rita never got the same thrill from it that she got from helping those who had no one to help them. Other than Orvar, there was no group of billionaires willing to provide funds for relocation and supernatural aid. There were no charity balls or silent auctions or schmoozing in fancy restaurants with older men who had nothing better to do with their day than let their wives drag them along in pursuit of some nobility. No, that wasn’t what Rita wanted.

This job that Orvar spoke of? Where she got to work hand in hand with displaced supernaturals, aid them in their transition and help them establish lives? That was the kind of work she wanted to be doing. That and she didn’t hate being in-shape and useful. In the past few weeks, she had managed to get herself into better shape than she was when Leon met her and though she still suffered from the aches and pains of training – it was all worth it to know that she could help and protect those who could not help or protect themselves.

“That and I can’t remember the last time I had abs like these,” Rita chuckled as she looked down at her sports bra clad torso and noted the strong lines that had been cultivated over exhausting workouts. As her breathing calmed a bit, she felt the pain of the taser on her shoulder, the very same that had once held a carved T, and reached up to place her hand on it to soothe the pain. It didn’t do anything, but she looked forward to the ice. “I don’t miss the tasers, though. If that wasn’t apparent.”
 
She understood the boredom more intimately than he thought she’d be able to, but it made sense. Rita was stuck in offices and fancy restaurants wining and dining rich folk when she worked. At least he’d been able to shift into his werewolf form and go for runs. Granted, he went every two weeks as prescribed, else he’d lose his mind to the wolf and try to kill everyone. If he started spiraling and lost himself to the wolf, it was hard to come back out of it. Even Rita had struggled to help him the last time it’d happened (though, to be fair, she’d been recovering from a gunshot wound). It’d taken Orvar dragging him outside and pushing him to run before he’d been able to pull the wolf back enough to take full control of himself.

Things had been easier since the sister witches and Becca had smoothed out some of the rough edges Lorelei had left behind when she’d originally broken his curse’s seal, but he still had to be careful. He still shared his mind with what felt like another entity.

He’d been stuck in his thoughts in the lull between Rita initially speaking and her looking down, but he followed her gaze and leaned back to eye her appreciatively. She had never been a soft woman: he’d known that about her the first time he put an arm around her shoulder to steady himself after he’d been shot. Their lives had been so full that when he thought about their first meeting it seemed like forever ago, but it’d only been three and half years. She was right. Since he’d known her, she’d never looked like she did now.

He leaned back from her a bit to take in more of her and sucked in a breath to release it in a low whistle. “You’re not kidding. I’m gonna have to hit the gym to keep up,” he said laughingly. All her training with Jason had shaped her into an Amazonian warrior, beautiful and deadly. Before he’d been turned into a werewolf, Leon had gone to the gym frequently to maintain muscle mass, but he hadn’t lifted a single weight since then. Something about the curse left him lean without any of the work. Almost as much as Rita.

Leon loosened his hands from hers to run his fingers down her sides, his thumbs ticking over each line of her abdomen. It was equal parts intimidating and provocative to know that the woman before him, his Rita, could easily toss him onto the ground and kick his ass if she had the inclination.

Without giving it much thought, he pressed his lips to hers again, but instead of the soft and gentle kisses he’d given her minutes earlier, they were deep and searching. He wrapped his arms around Rita, the woman he was to marry, his partner and lover, and lost himself in the scent, taste, and feel of her.

He’d completely forgotten he’d sent Jason off to retrieve ice and a first-aid kit.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.

Users who are viewing this thread

Total: 2 (members: 0, guests: 2)

Similar threads

BloodWolfRising
Fantasy Twisted Fates RP(TexanxBloodWolf)
Replies
1
Views
104
Texangamer
Texangamer
Vimi
Realistic or Modern Tinted Mirrors
magical girls
Replies
0
Views
19
Vimi
Vimi
TukataPrija
Fantasy The Hunter
Replies
5
Views
58
jarjingbing
jarjingbing
mother of sorrows
Fantasy the shallows' dip
Replies
0
Views
17
mother of sorrows
mother of sorrows
decadent-rider
Fantasy Capitalise This
2 3 4 5 angel clubbing
Replies
117
Views
543
Forever6A7X
Forever6A7X
Back
Top