"Fairmont." One of the guards called across the near-empty cell block as if the hungry legacy didn't already know they were coming to collect her.
"Humm. Is it my yard time already?" Elinor sighed in her usual dull rasping. It wasn't like the human-run place catered too much to the supernaturally inclined other than purifying the silver content of their cells and shackles.
"Hilarious." The rough-spoken human woman scoffs, ignoring the blonde's low hiss as the silver-laced handcuffs were snapped over her wrists and ankles. "Your sister wants to see you."
"Come to gloat, has she?" Elinor wonders aloud. "Was wondering when she'd get around to it, actually." She sighed over the burning sting of the silver, even with the separation of the pulled-down sleeve of the hideous prison attire they'd forced her to wear.
"Go easy on the girl. She seems really cut up about something." The suddenly sympathetic officer snaps back pulling the now curious vampire out of her cell and towards the more visitor accommodating room of the small Savannah prison.
"What are you talking about?" Elinor asks
She doesn't get an answer other than a chin jerking in the direction the two were already walking.
Then she hears it.
A low, watery, sniveling sound as the door to the room she was being shepherded towards was opened by another guard.
Then she sees her.
Her younger sister was huddled and shattered looking on the other side of the room's small table.
Not that Juliette looks up at Elinor's entry. If anything, Jules seems to curl that more into herself. Her head bowed even lower as more weakened sobs slipped from between her trembling lips.
"Juliette?"
Again, her younger sister doesn't look up at her as Elinor takes her seat at the table. As per the place's regulations, her wrists are shackled to the small ring welded to the tabletop.
"Jules," Elinor tries again.
Again, only low, heartbroken sobs answer her before Juliette finally manages to compose herself enough to lift her head just enough to meet her elder sister's eyes.
"Are you happy now? Seeing me suffer like this?" Juliette asks in a broken breath. "Was it worth it? Killing him like he was nothing?"
"He was nothing." Elinor scoffs
"He was her brother," Juliette growls as more tears spill from her eyes at the words.
"Correction, sister, mine. He was a hunter that was trying to kill me." Elinor amends, "It was them or me."
"Kill or be killed? Really, El?"
"Yes." Elinor nods.
"Look, I didn't come here to argue with you," Juliette says, running a tired hand through her hair. Then she hisses in agitation when the chaffing of her shirt sleeve pulls at some fresh wound decorating her wrist yet hidden by the long sleeve of her shirt.
"then why have you-" Elinor begins to ask.
"I've come to say goodbye." Her younger sister answers, not bothering to let her finish the asking.
"Oh, don't tell me you and that hunter girl think you two can just drive off into…." Elinor gags. The council won't allow you two to be together, not to mention that hunter Guild."
"Let them do their worst to me." Juliette shrugs, sagging more than truly sitting back in her chair as she speaks. "Not like I have anything left to lose anymore, thanks to you." She adds with a heavy, coughed breath of an accusation.
"Are you really here to scold me for defending myself?" Elinor scoffs until her eyes catch the burned skin visible beneath Juliette's shirt. The scaring press of something clearly silver-tipped is an easy identifier for the blood-hungry elder legacy. She hates that it takes seeing the marks of the thing to realize the stink of healing, but the burned skin she now picks up mingles with the stink of the place as she truly looks at her younger sister.
Noticing Elinor's glaring gaze, Juliette pitifully tugs at her shirt until the mark of the attack is covered once again.
"Was that the hunter's doing?" Elinor demands, knowing all too well her sister was too lost in that stomach-turning mess of 'first love' infatuation with the hunter girl to consider such harm on herself.
"You took away her brother."
"Then she can take mine in replacement. I don't give a dame what happens to Oliver; it's you I worry about."
Juliette rolls her eyes at this as she pushes back her chair, signaling the end of the visit. "Goodbye, Elinor." She says, getting up on weakened legs as the first of several hard coughs rumble through her tiny frame.
"Juliette."
The bite of the silver handcuffs pulling even deeper against her skin brings out her fangs, but Elinor ignores the burning as she holds onto what she'd managed to grip on her retreating sibling's shirt sleeve.
"If that hunter thinks for one second, I'm letting her torture you like this…"
"Cal didn't cause this." Juliette defends her own fangs poking from her upper jaws now despite her visible struggle to remain standing even with the aid of the table between them. "Well, she did leave me with this parting reminder." The youngest Fairmont legacy corrections, giving a pained whimper of a hiss when she rubbed a shaking hand against the angry red welts of the silver burn against her clammy seeming skin. "if anything, I'd take that pain any day and be glad of it considering that right after she pressed that spearhead into my chest, she told me flat out the next time she saw me she would have found a way to destroy what she'd already killed when she broke up with me."
"Finally, one of you came to your senses." Elinor sighed until that deeper breath of satisfaction carried something else buried in the stinking mess of blended flavors.
Something deadly sweet in the air. Ancient in its origins but noticeable only to those who would know what to look for.
Juliette's small, confirming smile was all Elinor needed to put the final pieces together. Her shaking sibling gave another ragged cough before dropping with a pained groan back into her chair, lest her legs give out completely as she'd struggled to remain standing.
"Tell me you haven't…."
It wasn't hard to pick out the signs of possibility now that she was actively looking for them with another deeper breath of the air around them. And even stripped of her title as Keeper in waiting Elinor had still been a student of that most guarded of old-world secrets.
"Why not?" Juliette asks with a shrug of her shoulders as she pulls herself free of her sister's grip. "What do I have without her?"
"Oh, come on, Sweet Little, so what if one worthless…." Elinor counters.
Juliette's chilly, trembling hand closes with surprising tightness around Elinor's throat at the start of the argument. "She was my first love. do you understand that?" Juliette growls, "My first love, and she doesn't want me anymore."
"but doesn't have to be your last…." Elinor argues around the tightening hold at her neck.
Juliette growls again at this, the tremors in her hands worsening by the second. "I'll only ever want to be with her." The younger legacy argues back. "but thanks to you, I'll never get the chance."
"Kid, you okay?" the guard asks when Juliette's ragged coughing grows loud enough for those soft-eared humans to notice something is wrong with the shuddering teenager.
"She needs a hospital." Elinor cuts in
"I'm fine," Juliette argues.
"The mother you are." Elinor curses, "Get her to the infirmary. Pump her stomach, get her on fluids or whatever you humans do to flush out toxins." The blonde barked towards the guard standing useless to her beside the door.
"What are you talking about?" the guard asks.
"Goodbye, Elinor," Juliette says again as the room starts spinning violently. "Hope you enjoy your victory." Juliette groans and then drops to the ground, dark sludge-like blood seeping from her lips now as Elinor looks on in genuine horror.
"Remind me again why I'm helping you when you just broke up with my best friend?" Ben asks, splitting his focus from the road to the nervously twitching hunter in the passenger seat.
"Because it's Juliette, and I've already promised that once we find her, I'll let you kick my ass for hurting her." Cal reminds, drumming her fingers against her tightly crossed arms.
"Like Letty would let me even try." Ben sighs, then pauses when the warning buzzing of a breaking news alert comes from the jeep's low volume radio.
"Last seen escaping local police custody... all residents be advised this suspect should be considered armed and extremely dangerous..."
"You don't think..."
"Definitely, Elinor. We have to guess she's going after Jules too... she was the one that ratted her out." Cal reminds
"Oh, I don't think it's my baby sister you need to worry about."
Ben gives a panicked half shout of fear and shock when the passenger door of his jeep is suddenly ripped away like tissue paper, sending his car rocking dangerously beside the crossing stop sign as Cal was dragged too gently from her seat.
Oliver, his fangs flashing in warning, smiles at the frightened teenager at the wheel. "Oh, don't worry, Benny. I'm not here for you," the legacy man soothes. You were one of the only ones truly good to her, and for that, I'm grateful enough to let you live a little longer."
Cal didn't bother fighting him. If anything, she was more than a little grateful he'd come for her. If he was this upset with her that must mean he knew what she'd said and foolishly done to his little sister. "Where's Juliette?"
"You think I know the answer to that?" Oliver asks, making Cal's blooming hope just as quickly fade in her chest at the question. "She's why I'm here. With Elinor loose, Jules is going to need all the help..."
"If you don't know where she is, stop wasting my time." Cal coughs around his tightened grip at her neck.
"What are you talking about?" Oliver asks, genuinely puzzled as he starts to lower her back to the ground. "Aren't you two joined at the..."
Cal's shaking and coughing of regained breath drowned out most of his words until the hunter had taken in enough of the night air to attempt speech. "We fought earlier. Things were said. I need to find her. Apologies... if she'll let me."
"Oh, now you want to apologize?"
The heartbreaking undertone in the asking cuts deep as all three look as one to Elinor's slow approach. Her blonde hair was flecked with freshly spilled blood as even more of the sticky redness coated most of t the unflattering prison wear she'd yet to change out of
"Merciful Mother," Oliver begged. He was the first of the watching trio to notice the limp outline hug jealously close against the escapee's chest as she stalked closer. "Tell me she hasn't..." he begged, looking between his sisters with growing unease.
"Isn't it obvious?" Elinor asks, hugging her sister closer as her twin approaches. "Call your witch. We'll need to hurry if we want a chance to stop this."
Oliver, for once, obeys the asking, almost breaking his phone with the speed of fishing it from his pocket.
"What the hell did you do to..." Ben asks, finally seeming to want to join in the unfolding scene as he slammed the only remaining door of his mutilated jeep and climbed out onto the roadway with the others after catching a familiar splashing of colors in the dimmed glow of his headlights.
"I didn't do anything. If you want to be mad at someone, blame the hunter." Elinor snarls, her fangs bloodied as they snap in angered, warning at Cal's attempted approach.