Camp Darkness

Pick Your Poison

A secret is only as good as the person who keeps it. The moment the person who holds the secret opens their mouth, the liklihood of discovery grows exponentially. Watching her kids drag their feet through the rest of the week, Gideon knew that her faith in them had been misplaced. Someone in this group, her Snowflakes, had been preying on the others in the Camp, and was likely behind the brutal attack on Luna.

To say that realization hurt Gideon's pride would be a lie, her pride didn't care about being right or wrong. Instead, to the Fury's surprise, it hurt her heart to know that someone she was responsible for was so full of hate that they couldn't function around others without being a threat. She hurt for that person because she knew exactly what that was like, had been there herself, and knew that the climb back up from that dark pit was neigh impossible. Even with a track record of four years killing free, Gideon was still held under heavy suspicion and treated like a homicidal maniac armed with a rocket launcher and an uzi. The fact that if Gideon were to lose her cool completely, she would be far more dangerous than even that offered no comfort whatsoever.

Some of the funk lingering in the air was Gideon's unease over her conversation with Ebony this morning. The vampire was emotionally traumatized beyond a simple fear of fire. Yes it had been horrific and terrifying, but this wasn't the first time the girl had gotten burned. She was healing, but there was something else damaging her mentally. She bore some kind of weight that hadn't been explained to the Fury's satisfaction.

"You need to tell me what the hell is going on." Gideon had cornered the vampire and demanded.

The girl's head was ducked low and she was refusing to meet the Councillor's eyes. "I don't know what you're talking about." her voice was low and lacked the emphasis necessary to have any power of belief behind it.

"Bullshit. Let's skip past the whole threaten and cajole you into compliance and you just tell me the big dark secret that's eating you alive." Gideon didn't need to use her body to cage the girl in, the vampire held herself immobile. It was little signs like this that screamed that the vampire was in desperate need of help. She wanted someone to get the answers from her but she was too conflicted to come in herself.

"I....I can't." Ebony mumbled, hands stuffed into her pockets.

Gideon narrowed her eyes, letting her Fury half step closer to the surface so they could assess the girl in concert. She's not lying. Her Fury half confirmed and Gideon nodded, feeling her normally turbulent darker half step back without a struggle. It confused her how easily her system accepted this new growth spurt, in the past they had usually caused the worst of her behaviours. "Someone has compelled you into not telling." Gideon stated calmly and Ebony shot a startled look up at her. The girl's frank astonishement that Gideon had guessed correctly just confirmed Gideon's suspicion. "Doctor Cyr is able to break any compulsion and even most geis. It will be painless and is your choice. I think you need to tell us this secret as much as we need to hear it." Gideon suggested, leaving it to the girl's choice. As much as she wanted to compell the vampire, it would do more damage to the girl than good to the Camp. Sometimes having a conscience sucks.

She hadn't been bothered by the vampire's new timidity, although it was worrisome, her main focus had been on the fact that someone had placed a compulsion on the girl. Although it wasn't Black Magic in classification, this kind of thing was normally only done to low sentience animals and problematic children. A compulsion made the undesired action physically repellant for hte person compelled. So in this case, Ebony could not physically communicate her secret in anyway and trying to force her to would just cause the girl dicomfort and pain. Best to let hte vampire seek Doctor Cyr's help on her own, but the mere presence of the compulsiomn gave Gideon a few more clues than she had had. Still no definitive proof but now she knew her gut instinct was leading her on the right path.

Gideon took in a deep breath of the sunset air, letting the comforting shadows wrap around her and settle into her skin. It had been a long summer and they still had a couple of weeks left of it after this. All the Councillors were showing signs of strain, be it a growing dependancy on caffiene to shortened tempers and a distinct lack of patience. All the kids were showing their anger and resentment; and no one blamed them. Everyday their Houses were searched, and so were their persons. There was still no sign of the missing items and it was getting to the point where even if there were no more thefts, they needed to find the culprit. The atmosphere of the Camp had been poisoned and it was a struggle everyday for the Councillors to try and rebalance the groups.

Her Fury side was restless under the surface suddenly and Gideon opened her eyes to see Virgil watching her from the shadows on the otherside of the Mess and Meet. He was just far enough away that she hadn't felt him coming towards her yet, and still her Fury side had been aware of him. It unsettled Gideon how much her Fury side wanted to get into interesting trouble with the convict and it was rousing all kinds of instincts that thus far Gideon hadn't become accustomed to suppressing. This was the excuse she clung to when the man stepped closer to her and she not only didn't back away or warn him off, but allowed him close enough to kiss her. Virgil wrapped his arms around her waist while he gently kissed her, and with a sudden ripping sensation, Gideon found them no longer outside the Mess and Meet. When she realized they had somehow jumped to the middle of the forest, her instincts went a little crazy.

The air rushed out of Virgil's lungs in a grunt as she swept his legs out from under him and followed his body to the ground. Her teeth were gently locked around the pulse in his neck and her hands fisted in the front of his shirt before the convict could utter another sound but his words stopped Gideon's amorous assault. "As much as I want to do this right now, I brought you out here for another reason."

Gideon knelt back, moving so there was space between her and the convict. She knew by the way his eyes racked over her that she had the darkness in her eyes and veins, but his gaze held no fear or disgust. She stayed quiet, waiting for the man to speak and offer an explanation. He in turn watched her to make sure that she hadn't become a bigger threat. The back of Gideon's mind was filled with an encyclopedia's worth of Portentum creatures and she was trying to catalogue all the ones that had temporal/spatial skip ability and it was a short list. The rest of her attention was honed on Virgil and the next words that he would say.

The convict sighed and his body language went from relaxed to a little bit more tense as he fumbled with the tree and dragged out a small bag. The moment Gideon saw the bag, her mood went from playful and aggressive to flat out pissed off aggressive. This time when Virgil found himself pressed against the ground with a Fury pressed against him, it was for a far less fun reason than an illicit romp in the woods. That bag was full of the stolen items from the Camp and Gideon had truly believed him to be innocent. She had a powerful zap building up under her skin, the intensity only magnified since she had been suppressing it while they kissed.

"I didn't steal them." Virgil spat the words out in a rush, sensing the impeding pain and doom that revealing the loot had caused. He shuddered softly when he saw the air around Gideon crackle and shimmer with the strength of the zap she held back and it was an impressive sight. Anyone else being that powerful and that pissed off would have lost it by now, after four and a half weeks of nonstop stress and conflict, it would be forgivable. But Gideon held on and waited, seeming to be beyond words, but patient for his explanation. He locked eyes with hers and couldn't look away, a sensation he was completely alien to thus far in his life. "It was the witch." he confessed, astonished  with the compelling intensity in Gideon's eyes.

The Fury felt her primal side filling in all the empty spaces in her head and heart as she heard the convicts words, processed them and accepted them within microseconds. He wasn't the target, but for reasons unknown he had sheltered the target and that made him suspect too. Gideon pressed her hand against Virgil's chest, just below his neck and felt him swallow. Leaving only the merest breath between her lips and his, Gideon kept their eyes locked as she whispered, "Take me to her," and kissed Virgil. He shuddered under the bite of her barely restrained zap and the ripping sensation surrounded them both as he jumped the enraged Fury to her prey's location.