First Impression
OS about Scarlett Harker/Van Helsing, may she rest in peace, and her oh-so-not-love-at-first-sight for Axel Miller, which I totally support because when there's a vampire apocalypse and you meet a vampire, it's entirely normal to start off menacing each other.
tags: Scarlett Harker|Van Helsing & Axel Miller, Vanessa Van Helsing, first impressions, suicidal intent I guess, Episode: s02e06 Veritas Vincit, Episode: s02e07 Everything Changes, Van Helsing (TV) quotes
The suicide attempt is really...mentioned, I guess, so, you know...
Scarlett didn't care enough about vampires to bother with first impressions when it came to them.
Still, when one still does make a first impression, it leaves a mark.
The first time it happened, Scarlett had just found the one woman she'd been tracking for a while now. Barely started speaking with her – sure, it had been going about as well as you could expect in a post-apocalyptic, vampiric world where strangers were no friends until proved otherwise – to get answers about what was going on, why here, why the dreams, why... – Scarlett wasn't exactly sure what, at this point, but something was going on, and this "Vanessa" was somehow at the center of it all.
The first time it happened, a vampire jumped her – and that, that was hardly the first time it happened. The words she heard at that moment – a male voice, so not "Vanessa", whoever she was – on the other hand, were a first: when feeders tried to get at you, they generally didn't speak, except to tell you how you smelled good, how they were going to drink your blood, and generally speaking the one hundred and twenty-two ways they'd kill you. They also growled, or hissed, a lot.
They did not say things like a warning, especially not towards humans – if that was what she was – like "Vanessa".
Because the words were that: "Vanessa, run!".
And not as taunt towards the woman.
Still.
Vampire.
As Scarlett would tell "Vanessa" a few moments later, she didn't care about their relationship. Sometimes vampires weren't completely inhuman, sometimes they gave a fuck about a few of the people they were close with before, but they didn't especially care about anything else, including those people's point of view on what was right or not. Ergo, they were still a threat, if not to those people, then to everyone else, and as it happened, that was what truly mattered here.
Great, that one still cared just one bit.
He still needed to be taken care of.
Now, Scarlett and "Vanessa" seemed quite evenly matched, probably a bit on the up side for the other woman, so she couldn't just go and try to off the vampire – literally, because the woman would probably stop her.
She guessed she'd take the next opportunity, especially because at some point, the vampire would try and do something, because that was what they did. Maybe – maybe – he cared about "Vanessa", but that didn't change the fact he needed to feed, and probably didn't give a fuck about who he killed to do that.
oOo
The second time it happened, Scarlett was taken by surprise, her grenade stolen and launched at the enemy – through a well, anyway, and down there were the enemies, so.
Except, her grenade was stolen, used, taken for the good fight... by a fucking vampire.
And, by the way. Her stuff.
"Hey. Don't touch my shit again."
Against the other vampires. It just... It was probably because he didn't want to take orders or some shit like that, on top of caring about Vanessa. Not so much because it was the right thing to do, or because he believed in it.
oOo
When it really happened, though...
"You bite me now or I'm done. I can't be this thing. End of discussion."
The third time it happened was the one time it truly mattered, actually. The one time, because that, that was something Scarlett had never seen before.
A vampire with a gun to their own head, begin for death if there was no salvation.
She'd seen humans who asked others to kill them if they got bitten, because they didn't want to be vampires. She'd seen turning people who still begged to be taken care of before it was too late. She'd even seen some strong enough to kill themselves while they still had some of their humanity left.
What she'd never seen was a fully-turned vampire – more so, one who'd been so for at least a few weeks – refuse their condition. Even people who hadn't wanted to be that during the turning always just changed their mind, only caring about themselves and their thirst for blood, once they actually were vampires. That was how it worked – and it meant the guy, Axel, was it? had only gone on as a vampire for the certainty of a cure.
Vampires... Vampires didn't do that.
They just didn't.
They didn't kill themselves. They didn't care about what was right and what wasn't. They didn't fight for humans. They couldn't, not anymore.
Yet this one had.