tampered | Log; Ongoing

Current Mood: drunk
Current Location: Building 3; apt. 127

Log; Ongoing

When; September 10th, evening (backdated)
Rating; PG [Use of alcohol; may go up due to language]
Characters; Yumie Takagi [

sister_samurai] & Doris Lang [

hunterborn]
Summary; After a long weekend of false motherhood rubs salt in a few wounds and rekindles a few sorrows, the solution obviously lies in drowning them. ~~AKA, "Let's write drunken idiocy."~~
Log;

Yumie didn't really know Doris Lang. She knew of her, knew several facts about her from what the other woman posted to the network, yet the two had never actually spoken before this last weekend. And maybe, were Yumie to spend any length of time around anyone at the moment, it was better that it was someone she didn't really know. Doris may have stayed with Hellsing, may have come from one version of their world, but she was from a very different time, and in Yumie's mind that created an acceptable distance from the events and people that troubled her.

The two hours she had instructed Doris to wait before coming over had nearly passed, time spent on a trip to the Underground, to cut and kill and scream wordless rage into the gloom when she had run out of profanities, and Yumie felt better for it. Not good, certainly, but better and able to play hostess in this proposed excercise in commiseration and friendly alcohol comsumption.

Setting bottle and glasses upon the coffee table, Yumie told herself she wouldn't drink too much. She had promised to help build a church in the morning.

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Doris moved up the stairs to Sister Takagi's quarters, carrying a bag with several different flavors of bottled juices in it. She had never been one for drinking, but in light of the previous week's events it seemed like a good idea. Why this person to drink with? Probably because she offered.

Besides that, she wanted to spend time with someone who had been as equally disillusioned as herself the last three days. Rage flared in the back of her mind thinking of what she would do if one fool said a word to her about her "baby". She was particularly glad that D's parasite seemed to have the good sense to keep its wormy little tongue to itself. She was sure it had plenty of mean spirited things to say to her after the weekend.

Of course... that Evey woman had hacked her network journal. More than likely half the flat did as well. She shook her head to avoid getting emotional again. Tears weren't going to help this. She reached up and knocked on the nun's door. Tears wouldn't help, but maybe getting completely sloshed the first time in her life would.

She gave her head a good shake to keep from getting emotional again before knocking on the nun's door.

Yumie straightened at the knock and moved to the door, checking the peephole before undoing the locks, for a little basic caution hurt nothing in the mad City.

"Well, hello," Yumie greeted Doris, offering a small smile as she opened the door and held out her arm in a gesture to echo her next words. "Come in."

Doris smiled and walked in. "I'm not too early am I?"

"No," answered Yumie with a shake of the head, shutting and relocking the door behind her guest once she had cleared the threshold. "You're right on time."

The sound of another human voice in the apartment was welcome, as was the total silencing of the ticking that otherwise only softened. "Things are set up in the living room," the sister explained, walking forward, ahead of Doris, to the named destination, where the whiskey bottle waited on the coffee table alongside two shot glasses, two regular glasses, and a pitcher of water. It was a lot more production than Yumie would have put into drinking back in her world, where the activity had usually consisted of passing a bottle back and forth to Heinkel after a mission had especially well, or especially poorly. But this wasn't Heinkel.

Doris nodded and followed Yumie. She was surprised at the preparations--albeit not extensive--that the other woman had done for her. It was the same when she'd visited Charlotte Elbourne. Maybe this meant she was just a bad hostess?

She sat the bag down and pulled out the different juices. "I wasn't sure what you liked, so I got several."

"Thanks," Yumie said, settling into a chair that stood at right angle to the sofa in the room's seating arrangement around the low table. She eyed Doris assessingly as the woman took out her contribution, noting her youth; not that age mattered greatly to Yumie, who had made her first kill before taking her first legal drink. "I'm not very picky."

"Neither am I," she answered, taking a seat across from Yumie. She sighed deeply. "So how has the day been treating you?" Straight into the tough topic. It's why they were drinking after all--and Doris wanted to talk. She'd spent a year in solitude on the farm, the other villagers shunning her to the point that Dan had to do all the supply runs by himself. She definitely wanted to talk, but not to D or anyone else in the Hellsing flat. Just... someone...

And Yumie had invited her, so she won the prize.

Hands paused their reach for the pitcher and a tall glass.

"... About as well as it's been treating many other people, I think," Yumie replied slowly as she resumed her actions, pouring one glass of water, then another. One gloveless hand raked through dark hair, still damp from the shower after she'd returned from the Underground, as the other brought a glass to her lips. "How about you?"

"About the same. Maybe a bit worse on some of the emotional bits..." A small smirk lifted the corner of her mouth. "No one down stairs has said anything yet--I was expecting at least a couple barbs from the parasite, but I'm guessing D's threatened him with the jar."

Yumie snickered slightly at the mental image, then frowned behind her glass as she drank, and said, "No one's said anything to me yet, either. Perhaps I got my share during the curse."

Doris smiled slightly, reaching forward and taking the whiskey and pouring herself a little less than a shot into one of the small glasses. "Everyone around me played along--and I'm sure everyone but D was laughing their asses off. The 'father' of your sock was the Archbishop I was chained to here a month or so ago, right? He doesn't seem the type to put up with such things..." She lifted the small glass to her lips, then thought better of it, sat it back down and poured herself half a glass of juice.

"Right, that's him," Yumie answered, still frowning, leaning forward to set down her water and pour herself a shot. If Enrico was coming into the conversation, she would need one. "He isn't. We had the network version of a shouting match the first day of the curse and haven't spoken since."

Doris took her shot glass and took a generous sip of the amber liquid, quickly following it with a sip of juice. "I can imagine."

Doris looked up, frowning slightly. "Hey, this is probably going to sound really stupid because I'm sure everyone in your world knows, but why does everyone call you 'sister' and him 'father'?"

"They're our titles," Yumie said. "Well, technically, an archbishop should only be addressed as 'Archbishop', or, 'Your Grace', which is more formal. Father is the title of a priest lower in the church hierarchy, like as Father Anderson, and 'Sister' is the title for a woman avowed to religious life."

She knocked back her first shot, winced a bit, and refilled the glass with juice, downing it before continuing. "I take it you're not familiar with the Catholic church."

"I'm not familiar with anything religious. It confuses the holy hell out of me," she said before taking the rest of her first shot, followed by the juice, then pointed to the cross hanging from Yumie's neck. "Like that. A... 'crucifix' is it? It's supposed to be able to ward off the nobility. I'd never heard of it before." She felt heat already bridge her nose from the spirits. "I asked D about it. He said that the nobility caused this in us--made it so we can't remember their weaknesses..."

"Nobility?" Yumie asked, confused, before frowning deeply as realization set in. "Vampires?" There was no hiding the contempt in her voice; the very thought of the abominations ruling over mankind completely disgusted Yumie. "Cowardly creatures."

She fingered the large cross, thumb stroking silver to calm herself. "It's a cross. You can call it a crucifx as well, though that tends to denote one with a figure of the crucified Christ on it."

"Right," she frowned. "You can say that again." She grabbed the whiskey and poured another shot.

"I'll try not to ask too many questions," she said, downing half the shot and breathing out. "From what I've gathered I'll just forget everything the moment it's confirmed," she said slightly strangled before taking a sip of juice. "Although it seems the City is allowing me to remember things longer..."

She smiled bitterly remembering how Luna Lovegood had told her garlic was one of a vampire's weaknesses. Well... it certainly didn't seem to affect Alucard or D at all, so that one must have been wrong.

"Maybe, maybe not. Many people do forget their stays in the City, but others remember everything. It's a crapshoot," Yumie said, twitching at the memory all the comings and goings of the other Iscariots, the memories they lacked, the differences in timeline. "It's a capricious place." And a cruel one, but Yumie doubted there was any need to state so as she leaned into her chair and drank from her water again.

"Ask questions if you want."

Doris' brows knit thinking over what Yumie just said. "Do we remember anything of the City when we're sent back to our worlds? I mean... while we're there?" She ran her thumb over the edge of the half filled shot glass. She thought of her one night with D. She did not want to forget that, especially considering what, if any, sort of sexual experiences awaited her when she returned.

"Some do," Yumie replied, resting against the chair and dangled one hand over the arm. "There are a lot who leave and return, unable to remember the first thing about the City, but this isn't always so. Sir Integral went back to our world for little while last year and forgot nothing."

Something nudged against her dangling hand, and Yumie's brooding expression lightened slightly, glancing down to the thing she had to thank for the softer ticking when alone. The kitten mewed, then purred as its owner scratched at its head before walking over to investigate the apartment's visitor. "That's Penguin."

Doris smiled at the kitten and reached out for it to smell her hand, making a clucking noise with her tongue. She smiled slightly. "Is this the one that was after your 'son'?"

The kitten sniffed at the offered hand, then butted its dark head against it.

"One in the same. The cat must have been so confused." Among other indviduals, thought Yumie as she moved forward again to pour another shot.

Doris rubbed the kittens head and scratched behind the ears. "God I miss my animals," she mumbled before downing the rest of her second shot, definitely starting to feel a buzz. She looked up at Yumie. "How do you feel about the curse?"

The cat rumbled contentedly as Yumie swallowed half a shot before replying.

"Angry." Always the dominant place. "The curses I most hate are the ones that mess with my mind. I'd rather something affect the City or even my body before something affects my mind like that."

She swirled the remaining whiskey around the small glass, watching light play on the liquid as if in meditation. Her voice lowered. "Those are the ones that get me in trouble."

Doris nodded. She was pretty damn angry herself. She sat back in her seat, taking a sip of juice. "Same here... but... I mean about this curse in particular..." she said before adding in a small voice, "I'm trying figure out how others feel... to kind of sort out my own feelings I guess..."

The sister looked away from her glass to stare at Doris for a moment before answering, brows furrowing as she looked away again. "I was never supposed to have children. Am never. One of the vows we take is that of celibacy," she said, letting the full meaning sink in as she took back the second half of her drink, not reaching for juice right away after, letting it burn.

"I was glad when the curse was over. Glad I didn't have to worry about raising someone strong enough, glad I didn't have to raise him without a father, who's already dead in the timeline I come from." Yumie reached for the juice now while she continued, a sweet one, to ease up an increasingly choked throat, poured it in the shotglass. "And I was glad about no longer having to worry, because he was conceived and born here, about whether he'd still be with me if I went back to my world."

The warmth spreading into her body was welcome as she leaned back again, half-reclining in the chair. "I don't remember my birth parents. I got lucky that the church took me in, became my family, and I don't complain. But I wanted something else for my child, and I was afraid I wouldn't be able to give it to him." She sighed, quieted, and sipped her juice.

Doris nodded to the nun's first comments about celibacy. To be honest she couldn't understand the gravity of emotional hurt there was to that broken vow. She did not share the same sort of spiritual belief that the sister had and essentially had no concept of religion thanks to the vampires' modeling of the human race. But she could understand the rest in a very real way, although through the three days of motherhood, she was completely overwhelmed by the fact that she actually had a child. She hadn't calmed down enough to start worrying yet.

"I... " she started a while after Yumie stopped talking. "Well... obviously I'm not in the same situation..." She reached forward and filled her third shot. She lifted it, but just ran her fingers over the edge of the glass. "I had pretty much given up hope of ever having children..." She thought a moment before setting the glass down and reaching up to the wide choker she'd been wearing every day since Count Lee's attack. She hesitated, reminded herself that this woman was not from the frontier, and unlatched it, taking the piece of cloth into her lap. She turned her head slightly to show off the scars.

"This probably isn't a terribly big deal for people in your world... but in mine... it's turned me into an outcast and essentially guaranteed that I'll never marry." Without thinking about it she grabbed the shot glass and knocked back the entire thing, wincing as it burned its way down.

"I've been dealing with it pretty well since it happened," she said, her speech starting slur a minute bit, "but having that 'baby' has me all torn up again… I’ve always wanted to be a mother…” She scowled at the empty glass. “I think I would have preferred to remain in the dark as far as how it felt to have a child… it makes the fact that I won’t ever have a family outside of my brother that much more painful…”

On impulse, Yumie set down the depleted glass and pulled her hair to one side while yanking down the high neck of her habit, angling her throat to reveal faint scars very like those Doris bore. "This happened while I was here. My alter," by which Yumie meant Yumiko, but didn't explain, Doris could ask if she wished to know, "was awake at the time, so I don't remember it. I won't turn, but I've sometimes wondered what sort of reaction they'll receive if anyone in my order sees them back home."

She released her collar and took the whiskey again, pouring shot number three while continuing. "Normally, if one of us is bitten, we have another kill us before we can change. It happens fast, but living with Hellsing, I'm sure you've heard all about what vampires are like where I come from." Yumie wasn't sure exactly why she'd displayed the scars. Perhaps she wanted Doris to know that while she didn't know the enormity of Doris's experience, she did have an inkling of the violation of an attack, the feeling of taint. She knew it better than the marks could show, but the scars from the other attack, the one she did remember, time spent in a demon's control after a botched exorcism in March, weren't visible.

"I say a lot that the City likes to give you things so that it can take them away later. And it also," Yumie said, bitter, haunted, a little slurred herself, "likes to give you tastes of what you won't know otherwise. Especially it knows you'll like 'em. People say it feeds on strong emotions." She gave a mirthless half-smile, "Guess we're feeding it right now, huh?"

The sister seemed to ponder her whiskey. As she was about to bring it to her lips, she said, "Drink some water, too. Your head will thank you in the morning."

Doris didn’t know what what her face looked like when Yumie lowered her colar to reveal the marks—but she felt the reaction that had been ingrained in her from birth to anything to do with the nobility rise in her. Fear and revultion clouded her mind; her eye widened, her face blanched and bile rose in the back of her throat. She swallowed hard, pushing back her natural reactions, finding her way through the buzz of her mind in time to hear the last part of her statement about her not turning. Once the revultion was beaten down she felt something new that she couldn’t quite define. She was sitting in the same room with a woman in almost the same situation as herself. Someone who understood the stigma behind being a survivor. In an odd way, she was happy to be sitting there with the nun.

Her color had begun to return when she made to respond on their normal routine for the bitten. “Tha’s pretty much what most of us do on the Frontier—although normally just being bitten doesn’t do it… but then again most of us don’ care... If it wouldn’t have been for my li’l brother I probably would have killed myself rather than giving the bastard the chance to change me…”

Anger rose in her slightly at Yumie’s view of the City and its curses. “Heh, well they must be having a riot over me with my damn temper... When I ‘woke up’ with that garlic strand I got so made that I flung it out my window. I hope the damn City gets indigestion.” She took the sister’s suggestion and filled her waterglass before adding quietly, “I hope I didn’t hit anyone outside with that thing…”

"I had to kill somethin' underground before anyone came over," Yumie said nonchalantly and half her glass later, firmly feeling the buzz from the others she had. "Then I gave the sock to Father Anderson. He'd asked to borrow it, so."

She followed her own advice, drinking more water, then chuckling, for the next sentance struck her as somehow funny. "I'm supposed to share everything with other members of my order, you know."

Doris laughed in response, reaching to pour another shot. "I don't think anyone wanted to share the garlic--God knows the whole flat smelled like it." She brought the whiskey to her lips and sipped, before snorting into the glass. "You know, there is this odd little girl here that keeps trying to tell me that garlic is a vampire's weakness. I'd say the last couple of days debunked that one."

"Mm. Maybe in her world," replied Yumie, making a pointing gesture at nothing whatsoever. "The specifics seem to change wherever people come from."

The kitten jumped onto the table, sniffed the open bottle, and bristled. "Now, now," her owner chided the fluffball as she left her seat to move her, "you're a bit young for that."

Yumie set the cat on the couch and sat back down unsteadily, looking to Doris once more. "I've heard about the garlic thing back in my world, but no one I know has ever tested it. The mental image kinda makes me laugh, personally. Can you imagine some hunter seriously going up to a vampire and shoving a braid of the stuff in their face?"

She snorted into her glass again, nearly slopping the remain contents into her lap, picturing D doing just that.

"No, no not really," she mumbled before throwing back the rest of the shot. "Although there are plenty of morons in my world that would probably try it."

She giggled, picturing Greco Roman waving a strand of garlic about. "That fucking prat probably would do it," she muttered, reaching for the whiskey bottle again, fumbling it slightly before she got a good hold. "Or at least he would if his dumb ass wasn't dead..."

"Eh?" Yumie asked while pouring some juice after finishing off her glass. She noted Doris's obvious amusment and smirked while guessing, "Some dumbass prat you don't miss, I take it."

She poured another shot, but decided to drink some more water first. "Nope," she answered. "Don't miss 'im at all. Not glad he's dead or anythin'... but he ain't missed, that's for damn sure." she poured some water and continued muttering to herself, "If I had a dalla for every time the bastard tried to get in my pants I'd 'ave enough to pay off the farm..." She clumsily filled the glass half full and sat back in her seat.

"Got any experience with werewolves?" she said out of the blue.

Shaking her head, which made her a little dizzy, Yumie answered, "Not really. Until I found out the Nazi bastards have one, I always heard they were extinct back home."

Sinking back into the chair with her juice, she asked, "What about you? They got 'em where you're from?"

She nodded, sipping her water. "Do we have werewolves..." she snickered into the glass. "Frontier's crawling with monsters and mutants, includin' werewolves. My father was a werewolf hunter himself. S'how he died. Was tracking one that was prayin' on a nearby town. Only problem was there was more than one..." She finished the water and shook the ice in the base of the glass. "Don really know why I brought that up..." Oh yes, she was definitely drunk now. She could feel the flush on her cheeks, not to mention the gallons of water that seemed to have taken up residence in her head.

"You said you don' remember your birth parents... how young were you when... the church took you in?" She leaned forward, careful not to fall out of her chair as she placed the water glass on the table and took up the shot glass, agreeing with herself that this was her last shot for the night. Either that, or she would be passing out in the nun's sitting room.

"Sorry 'bout that," Yumie said with genuine sympathy. "Father Anderson -- he did a lot of my raising -- he died fighting." A shadow crossed her face as she emptied her juice and leaned forward to take the whiskey bottle in hand again. "Happened minutes before I got here. He fought Alucard, wanted to destroy him. Went all out."

She seemed to watch the liquid pour into the glass with great intensity. "My partner and me and our brothers -- uh, not blood ones -- we backed him up. Helped him get to the front when Alucard threw his soul slaves at him." A wavering hand caused the whiskey to dribble over the fingers holding the glass in place. Yumie licked them clean without thinking. "Told us to go home, but we wouldn't leave 'im."

A long exhale left the sister's lungs before she took back that fourth shot in one gulp. Eyes closed in a subtle wince, she answered, "I got in the system when I was four."

Doris' visage darkened considerably hearing the news of Father Anderson. She had seen him on the network. Didn't realize he was dead. And most definitely didn't realize that Alucard was the one who killed him. "I'm sorry," she whispered.

Her brows knit as she considered who exactly she was living with. Alucard. Dracula. The Sacred Ancestor. She was living in the same flat as the Sacred fucking Ancestor. As much as she hated the frontier, especially hearing about others' worlds--she was living with the person who molded it--or eventually would--to what it currently was.

She raised the shot glass to her lips and sipped. Maybe this wouldn't be her last one after all.

The thoughts of her questionable living situation still mulling in the back of her mind, she continued to speak. "Mum died when I was 11. Don' know what from... she was really sick... When I died during the plague curse... it was just the same... An' Dad died when I was 13, 'bout a week b'fore my 14th birthday. Dan was 5..." She pulled the whiskey to her lips again and finished the shot, her mind spinning between the alcohol and the unpleasant thoughts. "What happened to your birth parents?"

More juice, Yumie thought to herself, refilling her glass with it. No more whiskey. There was still the church in the morning. She'd promised.

"'m really sorry," the sister said softly after Doris spoke of her losses. She just didn't know what else to say to such things. "Repeating myself. But I mean it."

Gazing into the distance at something that wasn't there, she replied, "Don't remember. Probably says in my file, but I never asked." And she never had. Whatever would fill that hole in her memory was another piece of a life she would never have, had left behind. "If I don't remember, then maybe there's a reason. 'sides, if I don't remember, it's not like I can miss them."

"Good way to look at it," she said before leaning forward to put the shot glass on the table, before quite literally sliding right off her seat and banging her knees into the nun's table.

"Oh shit," she mumbled, catching an open carton of juice before it dumped over. "Ok... I'm done," she slurred, setting her shot glass on the table top and, after two and a half tries, pulling herself back into her chair.

"Always thought so mysel--"

The sentence was cut off at Doris's fumble. Yumie giggled without really meaning to at the other woman's declaration of reaching her limit and said, "Yeah, you look done."

After a long swallow of juice, she shot a little lopsided smile in Doris's direction and asked, "You gonna be okay to get back downstairs when you go?"

After she finally got back in the chair she leaned back a bit and put her hand over her eyes. "Um... I think so?"

"If ya think so," Yumie said, leaning down to pet the cat that had taken to butting its head against her shins. "There's another bedroom no one's usin' if ya can't."

She swayed while looking back up, the world gone fuzzy. "Remember 'bout the water."

"Water... waterwaterwater," she mumbled, sitting back up to attempt to pour another glass, managing to get less than a third of it on the table.

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Log; Ongoing

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