Hey guys, same deal, new POV, tell me if I got it right! This chapter in particular was hella hard to write, you'll see why. Everything has been crazy busy in my life atm so I'm going to keep my AN's short and focus my spare time on writing the actual story. I will respond to any new readers, questions or things that make me laugh so don't be put off! I'll even put in extra fluff for being so antisocial!
Black Heart- I totally agree, I can't wait to write some fluff from Simon's perspective, I bet he'd be really good at it! ~.^
Silver Bird- I'm reestablishing the Darkest Powers Addicts Anonymous, or DPAA. Though I'm sure Simon would be flattered to be revered on the same level as Britney!
Mina Werewolf, Jimmy's mama, Mrs. Fictional Character, Bookwyrm, Melkitty, and Lauren94- You guys have totally pumped up my writer's ego! I'm seriously glad that you like not just this story but my whole writing style, it really is super flattering. Just for that I'll throw in some extra fluffy fluff in the chapters to come!
Crazy about Converse- He decided at the end of What Binds Them that his pet name for Chloe was going to have something to do with birds so when he's grumpy or teasing her he calls her Pigeon.
I picked my way through the throng of students, finding Chloe and Derek by scent. They stood outside of an auditorium, Chloe looking excited and terrified and Derek holding her shoulders, leaning down to whisper encouragement every now and then.
I felt the familiar tightening in my stomach at the sight of him. My son. The concept still made my head reel. I'd always wanted a son and had thought that I was more than happy to have Clayton to fill that void but with an age gap of barely fourteen years and with our slowed aging process Clay felt like more of a younger brother than son.
Derek was undeniably my son though there were qualities to him that contrasted sharply with myself. I'd always felt less wolf-like than other members of my pack, ruled by reason and compassion rather than instinct. Derek on the other hand was more wolf-like than any werewolf I'd met next to Clay.
He emoted the otherness that made people nervous around us in waves, he started changing younger than any born werewolves I'd heard of and never let human selfishness interfere with his wolf's need to protect his family. Even more extraordinary, he didn't seem to care in the slightest about living with other werewolves or establishing a reputation or status for himself, a sharp contrast to the rest of the weres.
It seemed that the modifications the Edison Group had made to make werewolves less wolf-like failed in some ways and succeeded in others. I knew that Derek desired territory, but he wanted it for very human reasons. He wanted a home for his family, somewhere they could always go to and be welcome and safe like Stonehaven. He didn't want a whole state or even town to claim as territory, he would have been happy with a few dozen acres. Very unusual for our kind.
On top of that he was brilliant, gifted in ways that I would have never suspected a child of mine capable of. I was selfishly proud of being able to take credit for half of his genes even though his childhood had been difficult in the extreme and I wished that I could have done something before now to ease that. I had to content myself with trying to make up for lost time by welcoming him to Stonehaven and being proud of the man he was becoming and the extraordinary young woman he had as a partner.
Chloe balanced Derek on a level that I could only vaguely grasp. She seemed to always know what he needed even when he wasn't sure. Likewise he had a calming effect on her, even now as she looked anxious and terrified when he held her and murmured words of encouragement it would bring color back to her face for a moment... before she'd glance into the auditorium and look terrified all over again.
Knowing that she'd ripped apart a werewolf with the skeletons of bears made it hard to believe that a video premier could make her nervous.
Jaime's fingers tightened around mine and I smiled down at her. While I admired and was grateful for the depth of the connection Derek and Chloe had I was more than content with having claimed Jaime as a mate. She was a beautiful person with a gentle soul and made me happy and accepted me. That was more than I could ever ask for.
"Look! It's Simon's art!" She pulled me excitedly through the crowd to where Derek's foster brother Simon was talking with a group of official-looking people.
Jaime waved and he smiled, nodding to us before nervously continuing talking. I tuned out the sounds of the surrounding crowd to pick up his conversation.
"The Rhode Island school of Design has a very demanding curriculum, and the scholarship program is even more demanding. What do you think you could bring to the school that would set you apart from the other students?" One of the men was saying, his voice was disdainful but his eyes kept darting to the framed panels of Simon's graphic story when he thought no one was looking with a hungry gleam.
I looked over the pieces with a painter's eye. Simon had actually chosen a more difficult medium by using almost exclusively heavy ink for his drawings. He had no colors to rely on to convey dimension or depth but used silhouettes masterfully and gave the panels rich detail with fine and intricate pen lines.
"The California School of the Arts would be thrilled to have you as one of our students. We would be more than happy to be able to claim that such a talented young artist continued his education with us." This came from a middle-aged woman with an easy smile.
"I never said we didn't want you as a student-" The first man interjected.
"Oh god, would that ever stink." Jaime was working her way down the pictures and stopped at one of the few full-page drawings, a girl in a basement-type setting with a rotting body digging itself out of the ground and onto her body. Simon had kept the girl's eyes the freest from ink so the whites showed all the way around and highlights reflected off of exposed bones in the corpse's hand as it touched her cheek with the tip of one finger, drawing a fine line of blood.
Jaime shivered and I saw that she'd gone slightly green, not surprising since she was a necromancer herself and had first-hand experience with zombies.
"Chloe didn't even know she was a necromancer." She murmured, quietly enough so only I heard her. "I can't imagine… just ghosts made me wet the bed through middle school and I knew what I was." Her cheeks flushed with the memory, not in embarrassment of telling me, but in humiliation for how her mother had reacted to her daughter seeing ghosts.
I pulled her tightly to me and kissed the top of her head, rubbing the goosebumps off of her arms. Jaime's mother had been the most emotionally abusive parent I'd ever heard of next to my own father and I'd never thought anyone could be crueler than Malcolm.
"Hey guys." Simon took one look at us and his eyes widened, looking from Jaime's pale face to his drawing. "Oh man I'm sorry Jaime, I should have warned you or gotten Chloe to warn you or-"
Jaime smiled and touched his shoulder reassuringly. "It's okay Simon; I've heard the story and Chloe showed me the rough sketch. You did a spectacular job making it creepy as hell while keeping it artfully tasteful, way to go."
Simon tried for a smile but still looked worried.
"Really, I can guarantee you that any real necro who sees this would get equally freaked out, it's all of our worst fears." She looked at the picture again, color returning to her face. "It's really an incredible art piece."
I nodded. "The detail and use of light and shadows is really indicative of your growth as an artist Simon, and the subject matter is fearless, which the art world needs more of."
"I absolutely agree, I'd love to buy one of your pieces but preferably…" She grimaced theatrically. "NOT one about ghosts or corpses or graveyards."
"You know I think I have a fluffy bunny sketch lying around somewhere at home." Simon managed a smile this time.
"I love bunnies! Could you toss a rainbow and some glitter on it for me?" Jaime winked and looped her free arm through one of Simon's. "C'mon kiddo, show's about to start."
He looked at his watch and his eyes widened in surprise. "Shit! I didn't realize it'd gotten so late! Chloe's going to kill me!"
I smiled at that. It was highly entertaining to watch how tightly both Simon and Derek were wrapped around Chloe's little finger. They were the essence of the three musketeers, all of them willing to take a bullet for either of the others.
It occurred to me that it would be lonely to be part of the musketeers when two of them were a couple and I glanced over at Simon, noting a darkness in his eyes that he hid well behind his token grin. The kind of darkness that was all too familiar as my eyes, from the color to the shape, were very similar to his, and frequently held the same type of deep preoccupation.
I found Derek in the throng and he pointed to where Chloe was standing on a chair, waving her arms.
"Looks like those are our seats." Jaime said with a grin, color completely back to normal and I let out a slow breath, relieved that she'd bounced back so quickly from her triggered moment.
We made it to the row seconds before the lights flashed, signaling the start of the show. A girl was sitting at the far end, Elena next to her, chatting and laughing. I studied the girl, it was unusual for humans to react to werewolves comfortably but she was completely at ease. A human I didn't know was sitting next to Elena, subconsciously leaning away from her. Chloe sat next to him so I assumed it was her father and Derek next to her so I filed the three of us on the end, letting Simon sit by his father who was by Victoria Enright who was saving the last seat in the row.
Those three (and of course Chloe) were the strangest supernatural's I'd met, and that was really saying something. Simon and Kit were completely at ease around werewolves and Victoria treated us with the same aloof attitude that she used with everyone.
"Hello Tori, Kit. It's nice to see you again." I said, touching her shoulder lightly and shaking his hand as we passed.
They only had time to smile a greeting before an electronically magnified voice echoed over the audience and I winced. "Ladies and Gentlemen! Welcome to the Media seniors' showcase! We have a broad spectrum of talent for you today, starting with the avant-garde work of Dan Justi and concluding with a documentary collage by Chloe Saunders!"
I frowned down at the brochure someone had passed to me upon entering. There were fifteen graduating seniors but most of them had done collaborative pieces, meaning there were five projects in total. The only person who had helped Chloe was someone named Haven Smith, who was credited for editing the audio and designing the soundtrack. From the brochure it looked like most of the pieces were short, ten to fifteen minutes.
We sat through the first project in stunned silence. In it a boy ran over a squirrel with his bicycle, then dreamed about himself a friend standing in a field of cattle and drinking bottles of bleach. It was the single most strange and awful piece of cinema I had ever seen.
Thankfully none of the other pieces were nearly as odd. A girl had filmed a short interview with a bee-keeper that was interspersed with video clips of the hives and harvesting honey. Someone did a collection of Youtube (some kind of internet page) videos of people all over the world telling their favorite knock-knock jokes, and the last before Chloe's was a fairly decent piece about modern dance.
I looked over as Chloe's name was announced, she was gripping Derek's hand so hard he was actually wincing and looked absolutely terrified. Since the only other work of hers I'd seen was a video of her killing someone, I had no idea what to expect.
A title screen faded on "An Introduction to My Family by Chloe Saunders" and a boy down the row mock-yawned to the guffaws oh his friends. It opened with a violin piece that I recognized as Bach's Matthaus Passion and a shot of a graveyard with Chloe and her father standing at two gravestones, one of her mother and the other of her aunt Lauren. Chloe's voice came on over the speakers and present Chloe hid her face completely in Derek's shoulder.
"The most vibrant memory I have of my mother is when she told me cherish the people I love and to smile every day." The same boy from earlier made a loud snoring noise. "These are the people who make me smile." The music faded out and another title screen faded in. "Derek Souza, Simon and Kit Bae and Tori Enright." A sudden shift in music made those who had been shifting in their seats still, eyes flying to the screen. A fast electronic beat introduced Simon's face as he grinned at the camera and said something, then swung it down to focus on the surface of a lake at least seven meters below, then up to a cliff face that stretched up for another six or seven meters where Derek was peering over the edge, a concentrated look on his face as he calculated his jump.
The words of the song came in while the camera focused on Derek for the first time:
When I'm falling down will you pick me up again?
When the camera zoomed in and focused on Derek there were more than a few giggles and female noises of appreciation from the audience and the present Derek shifted uncomfortably as the shirtless Derek on screen frowned, then looked down at the camera, nodding.
Will you, take me out of here? When I'm staring down the barrel. When I'm blinded by the lights. When I cannot see your face...
With the music the shot zoomed back and Derek took a running start, diving off the cliff.
Take me out of here
The scene cut to a sketchpad that started filling in like Chloe had taken several shots of the picture as the artist worked on it.
Take me out of here
In the sketch Derek was caught in his dive, forever suspended in mid-air.
Take me out of here
The camera switched back and forth between Derek's actual jump and the drawing of him which was clearly Simon's work, synchronized with the chorus, ending with a bang from the music as he hit the water that made everyone jump in their seats. The bang matched with a scene switch to Derek being hit in the face with a small sandal as he climbed out of the lake and the camera swung over to see Chloe, yelling at him and threatening him with her other shoe.
Feed the fire, break your vision, throw your fists up, come on with me
Kit was laughing so hard behind her that he didn't see Simon as he crept up behind him and nailed him with a water balloon.
Feed the fire, break your vision, throw your fists up, come on with me
Simon in turn didn't see Tori as she doused Simon completely with the biggest super-soaker I had ever seen.
Feed the fire, break your vision, throw your fists up, come on with me.
I knew from Elena telling me the story of this very incident that she had been the one holding the camera at this point.
The music shifted again to a woman singing:
I am likely to miss the main event if I stop to cry or complain again
With another title screen, "Jaime Vegas" A shot of Jaime on stage,
So I will keep a deliberate pace, let the damned breeze dry my face
throwing her arms wide to an audience—this time there were more than a few male noises of appreciation.
Oh mister, wait until you see what I'm gonna be
The video cut to me asleep on the sofa at Stonehaven and Jaime creeping up behind me with a dramatic 'shush' to the camera.
I've got a plan, a demand and it just began
The audience laughed as while Jaime faced the camera I cracked one eye open and shook my head subtly with a small wry smile.
And if you're right, you'll agree
She had a can of shaving cream raised and was right above me, grinning triumphantly
Here's coming a better version of me
Without warning I shot up and grabbed her wrists, flipping the can of shaving cream around and dousing her with it.
Here's coming a better version of me
She screamed on camera and we tousled for a minute, both of us ending up covered in shaving cream.
Here's coming a better version of me
Elena walked in, took one look at us, and walked right back out, throwing her hands in the air.
Another title screen, "The Danver's and Nick Sorrentino." This scene opened up with another song, something electronic again
Whatcha gonna do when the hounds are calling?
Clay crouching in the grass with the twins, pointing at Nick as he walked past
You're a muck, that's why I had to cut you down
and miming pouncing as they both nodded seriously and army-crawled through the grass.
You run with the wolves while I hunt like a hound
Elena was on the back porch, flipping through the mutt dossiers, though you'd only know that if you knew what the folder looked like. As the twins crept towards Nick, Clay started a slow belly-crawl towards Elena.
You run with the wolves, shout it out loud
I laughed disbelievingly when I caught the lyrics of the song. The song picked up speed the twins pounced Nick, taking him by surprise as all three tumbled to the grass. Simultaneously Clay used the distraction to lunge for Elena.
Whatcha gonna do with the hounds are calling?
Without looking up at either of the attacking werewolves she shoved her chair back with lightening-speed that we had barely agreed on as being human enough to include in the video but watching the whole scene I was glad I had given in. Clay missed, already airborne and unable to check his leap. He crashed down onto the porch behind her and she flipped a page, settling back in her original position without a hair out of place.
The scene seamlessly changed to a shot of me painting in the basement, hair in my eyes and brush in between my teeth as I frowned at a painting, still the same song playing but slower. The camera swung around so the audience could see what I was working on; a landscape with several figures lounging in the moonlight beside a lake. The music changed again, back to the first song, fading in as the camera zoomed in on the landscape until it blurred and faded to black.
Just stay where you are, Let your fear subside
Then a final title screen before the credits;
"Call it a clan, call it a network, call it a pack, call it a tribe, call it a family: Whatever you call it, whoever you are, you need one. –Jane Howard."
Just stay where you are, if there's nothing to hide.
The credits started rolling with pictures beside them. Candid photographs of Chloe with her dad, Derek scowling at a blackboard covered in complex mathematical formulas with a single huge bunny sketched in the middle in chalk, Simon covered in black ink as he worked on the project that now hung on display, Clay and Elena wrestling the twins into car seats, all of the kids around a campfire while Chloe stared at her flaming marshmallow with horror, Jaime and I backstage at one of her shows, ending with a picture of Chloe and Derek at the same lake the video started at, backs to the camera and facing the sunset, Derek with his arm around Chloe and her head resting against his shoulder.
The theater was silent for a moment and I glanced down the aisle to see Chloe looking an odd shade of gray, then it erupted into applause, led by us and the same boy who had mocked the project at the beginning.
"I definitely want a copy of that." Jaime said to me with a grin, pride marking her smile as she watched Chloe smile hesitantly and disbelievingly at the audience's response.
Okay, that was the first time I've included music in a story, hope it turned out okay and not too disjointed. As usual I don't own anything, if you're wondering here's the songs I used:
Johann Sabastian Bach's Matthaus Passion
Pendulum's Watercolor
Fiona Apple's Better Version of Me
Prodigy's Run with the Wolves
And the last few lines are from Watercolor again.