notes: so earlier i was craving rose/sydney femslash, but i couldn't find any, so i wrote it myself. unbeta'd, like all my work, so apologies for any glaring mistakes. also, i've only completed the va series up to blood promise, and i'm like a fifth of the way through spirit bound, and i haven't read any of bloodlines at all, so most of what i know about sydney is from spoilers and conjecture.
warnings: references to gore-mostly not explicit, some blood, hinting at eating disorders, femslash, crackship
Rose pulled back and studied her handiwork, her racing pulse slowly settling. She didn't have a silver stake, but she did have a semi-automatic, a switchblade, and a working knowledge of the human anatomy, and that was just as good, at least in terms of Strigoi elimination.
Now, there was someone she was supposed to call in situations like this (that is, dead Strigoi situations), and she hoped their number was saved in her contacts, because she sure didn't remember the number, and having to call her father to find that out would be just embarrassing. She was supposed to be on top of little things like these, even if she never thought she'd be standing alone over a beheaded Strigoi at three-fifteen A.M. in Saint Petersburg's slums.
She rubbed the small splatters of blood on her fingers until they were spread too thin to be slippery, and pulled out her phone. To her relief, it didn't take much scrolling through her contacts to find 'Alchemist - Saint Petersburg' (right between 'Alchemist - Rybinsk' and 'Alchemist - Salt Lake City').
She fidgeted in place as she waited for the call to go through, unaccountably nervous. Sure, it was the first time she'd ever called an Alchemist for her own needs, but she'd called Alchemists before for other people (whose hands were too bloody to properly work a phone–Rose made her kills with much more class, thank you very much).
The sound of the call connecting came with a vaguely irritated, "Zdravstvuyte?"
Rose dropped back to flat-footed, snapping to attention as though the woman on the phone could see her. "Zdravstvuyte! Is this the Alchemist for Saint Petersburg?"
"Yes." Shortly.
"Is this a bad time?" Teasingly.
"No." Unamused.
Rose grinned. "I'm calling in to report a kill on…" She walked quickly to the edge of the alley and squinted at the traffic signal in the distance. "Komsomolskaya, just down from Lanskoe Shosse."
"I'll be there in fifteen minutes," the woman on the phone sighed.
Rose sang, "Thank you," hung up, and settled in for the wait.
Sydney hung up and swung her legs over the side of the bed, bones aching in exhaustion. She wasn't looking forward to dealing with yet another monster this evening, no matter how sweet the girl (woman?) on the phone sounded.
She picked up her satchel from where she'd dumped it by the door just a few hours earlier, when she'd come in from dealing with a group of guardians and their litter of Strigoi corpses. Sydney couldn't remember feeling more outnumbered in her life than when she'd had to walk through their ranks to dispel the Strigoi, feeling their glittering eyes watching her every move and wishing she could just take up less space.
She left her cramped and barren little apartment for her cramped and barren little Toyota and puttered noisily down to the true slums.
Arriving at the designated place, Sydney wondered if this was some kind of prank. There was no way the glamorous woman (girl? She actually looked about Sydney's age…) leaning against a lamppost and playing with her phone was a guardian. With her light tan, heavy makeup, tailored clothing, and bright jewelry, she looked like she'd just stepped off the runway of a pirate fashion show, not out of a seedy alleyway. Sydney kind of hated her and her waistline on principle.
Hearing her approach (like everyone else in a three-mile radius) the girl looked up and squinted against the shadows outside the bowl of light she stood in.
Sydney obligingly stepped into view.
The girl's dark eyes land on her mark before they met Sydney's own, and a smile tugged at her full, red mouth. "Hello," she said, in soft, smoky tones. There was a stress on the second syllable that Sydney could almost mistake for flirty, if she didn't know any better. Pirate Fashionista offered her hand.
"Yeah. Hi," Sydney stuttered, taking the girl's (unscarred, uncalloused, manicured, bejeweled) hand, surprised into manners she usually had to call up to hide her disgust. "The body?"
"All business, aren't you?" Pirate Fashionista said lightly, but still obligingly tilted her head to indicate the alley, incidentally showing off a small fortune in gold dangling from her ears.
Sydney dragged her tired feet over to the alley. Best get this over with. Maybe she could skip dinner and continue her nap once she got home.
As promised, there was a dead Strigoi lying behind a few trashcans, head laid neatly on it's stomach. Sydney unceremoniously dumped the dissolver over the corpse, trying not to look to hard at it's bloody stump of a neck.
Pirate Fashionista whistled lowly behind her. "That's still impressive, no matter how many times I see it."
Sydney jumped. If there was one thing she hated about vampires, it was how quiet they could be when they wanted to. "Thanks," she said, for lack of anything better to say. It actually was a little flattering, though, that she could do something that impressed someone so ridiculously (beautiful) put-together.
Then she kicked herself for forgetting that she was talking to a vampire, and flattery should be the last thing Pirate Fashionista inspired.
Pirate Fashionista didn't appear to notice her self-recrimination. "Thank you so much for the help, really."
Sydney blinked. There was no sarcasm in her tone, no mockery in her face. She just cocked her head and fixed her earnestly wide eyes on Sydney's.
"Uh," Sydney stuttered, feeling her face start to warm. She was cut off before she could get farther than that.
"I owe you a big one-"
"-It's just my job-"
"-and if you ever need help-"
"-No, I-"
"-you should definitely call me." Pirate Fashionista finished with an entreating smile, effectively steamrolling Sydney's deflections. "You have my number, right?"
In her work phone history, yes. Sydney told herself she was not considering entering the number on her private phone. She refused to become texting buddies with a creature of the night. Refused. That was a line that simply shouldn't be crossed.
Taking a little step back (when had she- the vampire gotten so close?), Sydney's stomach chose that moment to growl. She sighed internally. No sleeping before she ate something tonight, it seemed. "Is that all, then?" she asked, nodding at the small pile of ash that was once a vampire.
Pirate Fashionista hummed. "One more thing."
Sydney was tired, hungry, and sick to death of dealing with vampires. "What is it?" If what Pirate Fashionista wanted was half as ridiculous as her general existence seemed to be, Sydney was turning around and leaving, job be damned.
Pirate Fashionista very nearly batted her eyelashes. "Could you smile, please? It's much too dark out here."
Sydney choked. "Er, um, that is- I-" she spluttered, feeling like her face had been stuck in an oven. Even she couldn't mistake that for anything but a tried and true pickup line.
Pirate Fashionista was most definitely flirting now, light, easy grin on her lips and hip cocked almost in invitation. "No? Then could you call an ambulance? I think I've been shot by Cupid."
"Ah," Sydney squeaked, stomach fluttering in what could only be fear, really, because even if she wasn't used to being hit on, it was a vampire that was hitting on her, and that wasn't attractive at all.
Really.
"Include me in your schedule for tonight? I know of a lovely place near here…"
The thought of food had Sydney's stomach rumbled again, louder this time.
Loud enough for Pirate Fashionista to hear, apparently, because the delighted look on her face told Sydney she'd accepted it as an answer.
She allowed herself to be ushered back to her car.
Pirate Fashionista chattered slightly rushed directions to one of the higher quality diners Sydney hadn't had the chance to check out yet, and finished off with, "…and I'm Rose."
Sydney's lagging brain took three seconds to catch up with the rapid-fire stream of information, and when it had, she said, "Sydney. Sydney Sage," and got a smile that could light up the whole city.
When Rose had finally sashayed off to her own ride, Sydney rested her forehead on the steering wheel and examined every life choice that lead to this moment with something not unlike despair.
(The dinner date wasn't the source of the despair so much as her lack of despair at the dinner date caused her despair… or something like that.)
She'd been planning to eat something out anyway, she tried to rationalize. If Rose's owed favor involved paying for Sydney's meal, more the better.
Rose was a little bit in love.
Sydney was absolutely adorable. She didn't seem to like vampires much, but with Rose's coaxing she slowly opened up.
Over the course of dinner, Rose had learned that she was an intern for the head of the Saint Petersburg Alchemist team, she loved cars, and that she'd had piano lessons when she was five. She'd been forced to leave her best friend when she took this assignment, she wanted to go to college, and she loved cheeseburgers. She never had much of an appetite (even when she was dead hungry), she smiled rarely (a shame), and she was very religious (which explained the vampire thing). She'd grown up in Utah and planned to go back as soon as she could.
The one, small honest laugh Rose had earned that night was a sound she planned to treasure for a very long time, and Sydney blushed a soft shade of fuchsia and spluttered when Rose kissed her knuckles in farewell.
Rose wondered what her father would say to her becoming a professional Strigoi hunter of Saint Petersburg.
…Probably ground her until she saw sense, or something equally silly and annoying. Maybe she could ask to run their operations around here or something instead.
She touched her lips where they were still tingling from their brief contact with Sydney's hand and spun around in place, feeling like a giddy schoolgirl with infatuation bubbling under her skin and wind under her soles.
Today was a good day to be Rose Mazur.