(A/N): Yes, this chapter is named after the Wiggles song 'Fruit Salad'. Don't judge me.

Jo

Not only had Leo managed to get Shari walking under her own steam, he also convinced her to hunt. Well, to feed, anyway. There wasn't much hunting she could do in her current state, so Leo asked me to use my vampiric Influencing to bring a deer back for her. I probably could have just snatched the deer and carried it back, but that would have caused the poor thing unnecessary distress, and according to Leo, I needed to practice my Influencing anyway.

Leo was always doing things like that- making ordinary things a lesson, or taking the time to teach us things the older vampires didn't think we were going to need to know for years yet.

Which made me curious- if the older vampires hadn't thought to teach us how to get good at Influencing, why would they have taught Leo? When Leo and Lisbet had been discussing what they were going to do about Jerremyah's self-control issues earlier, Lisbet had asked Leo whether he had Influenced someone before, and Leo had said he had- which clearly showed that Lisbet hadn't been the one to teach him. Leo had immediately looked at Shari after he had confirmed it, with an odd look on his face. It hadn't exactly been nervous, but we had all learned over the years that Leo was surprisingly good at hiding his reactions to things when he wanted to be, so I couldn't be sure what that emotion was.

Shari had been completely out of it at the time, and Leo's expression had settled into something akin to relief- which made me think that Shari hadn't taught him either, and that he was trying to hide something. Had Nicholai showed him? I suppose if anyone was supposed to teach a new vampire to use their abilities, it was their sire, and considering that Leo had never been turned, and therefore didn't technically have a sire, I guess his father was the closest thing. He was also, y'know... his father. Parents were supposed to teach you how to be a good human being, so I guess that transfers over to being a good half-vampire as well, and god knows Leo's mother wasn't capable of teaching anyone to be a 'good' anything.

Or... It was possible that no one had taught Leo how to Influence. It wasn't like any of us could ask Nicholai, so unless he had made it clear to Shari in the past that he hadn't taught him, and wouldn't until Leo was older, there was no way any of the rest of us would be able to call Leo out on his possible lie. If anyone had been able to teach themselves to Influence on their own, I would believe Leo could, especially given what Lisbet had said about Leo mentioning that he had used 'occlumency' in order to keep his mother from finding something in his mind that he hadn't wanted her to.

I wasn't familiar with the concept of 'occlumency' or 'legilimency', but from what Lisbet had said, 'legilimency' was basically mind reading, and 'occlumency' the opposite- the ability to stop someone from being able to read your mind.

The fact that Leo had been forced to learn how to block his mother from his mind- I had no illusions that it was simply a case of wanting to maintain his privacy, which would have already been bad enough, but I had heard enough about the way Cipicia Joannis operated to know that there would inevitably be terrible consequences to her finding anything she was less than pleased by during her unwelcome expedition into Leo's mind- made me sick to my stomach.

The fact that he had been seven years old when she had kicked him out- meaning that she must have been invading Leo's brain for at least a little while before that, in order for him to have had the time to learn how to block her- made me want to vomit.

Preferably on Cipicia.

Influencing the deer was easy enough- Influencing was, of course, designed to work on humans, which were a lot more complicated mentally- and I only struggled not to eat it a little bit- which, was probably another part of Leo's test, now that I thought about it. I did end up carrying it back in the end, to save time, but the deer was calm in my arms just like I'd told it to be, so I wasn't worried about it being distressed. As I approached the three, Leo turned to face me, and I knew the second he saw me, because his face split into his customary big grin.

"Hey." He held his arms out as I got closer, and I changed direction slightly so I was walking directly to him instead of just to join the group.

"Hey." I held the deer away from my body, and Leo took it from me easily, his hand idly petting the deers' flank in a soothing manner as he cradled it to his chest.

"She didn't give you any trouble, did she?" I rolled my eyes fondly, noting that the way he phrased it absolved me of any guilt if something hadn't gone according to plan.

"She was a dream." I replied wryly, and I watched Leo's lips twist as he tried to hide his smile- I could still see the amusement twinkling in his eyes, though. He readjusted the deer in his arms, and turned to Shari.

"Hungry?" He asked, and Shari sucked in a breath, realising at the same time Herc and I did that Leo wasn't planning on letting the deer go, or even putting it on the ground. He expected her to feed from the deer while it was still in his arms- which would put her perilously close to his own throat.

Well, that was one way to test how her control was holding up- Leo really didn't hold back, did he?

"Leo-" He cut her off, hitching the deer higher, and grabbing its muzzle to make it mimic him as he spoke.

"Ohh, I'm just a little deer, but don't I look delicious? I'm so yummy, yummy!" He pitched his voice higher, not at all fazed by the rest of us looking at him like he was crazy. Funny, but crazy.

"Leo..." Shari tried again, and Leo sidled up closer to her, poking her shoulder with the deer's nose.

"Chicken." The fact that the extent of Shari's reaction to this was a glare, spoke volumes not only about how much her personality had changed since Nicholai had died, but how much we all liked Leo in order to tolerate his ribbing. Before Nicholai had died she would have punched him in the shoulder, or given him a noogie or something.

"Screw you." Leo's grin just got bigger, and Shari slipped into Sensory Alert, moving even closer to him- and the deer.

"Drink." It sounded like an order- Leo usually never gave those, but clearly it was an effective method, because Shari did as he said. She leaned forward, and I caught a glimpse of her fangs as she opened her mouth, before they pierced the deer's neck.

The scent of blood hit my nose, and I felt the resulting gnawing in my stomach as if I hadn't just recently fed. The vampire side of me had the urge to tear the deer away from Shari and take it for myself, but I forced myself to ignore it- not only would it be rude, and undermine everything I had worked for in keeping under control, but I really didn't want to rip that deer apart with my claws and fangs after Leo had anthropomorphised it by giving it a voice.

Hm... maybe that's part of why he had done it.

I could tell when Shari started to actually drink, instead of just having her fangs in the deer, because she reached out to pull the deer closer, but Leo preempted her. He moved so that the deer was flush with both of their chests, because he probably wasn't keen to have her grab the deer, lest she hurt it while not having control of her strength.

"It's okay... take your time..." Thirty seconds passed, then a minute. Finally, right as I was starting to get worried that we would have to remove her from the deer, Shari pulled away on her own. She lifted an arm to wipe away the blood around her mouth, and Leo dipped his head down, baring his fangs. I watched as the clear liquid of the venom dripped from the tip of them, directly onto the deer's wound in order to help it heal quicker. He couldn't apply the venom directly, since Shari's venom was already on the area, and- as another vampire- Shari's venom would hurt Leo to interact with, but he didn't want to leave the wound to heal on its own lest it attract predators. Vampire venom was a natural antiseptic on top of it's healing properties, so infection wasn't something we had to be worried about- not that most vampires usually gave a second thought about what happened to their prey after they finished feeding from it.

Shari was panting, and as I examined her, I realised that she hadn't pulled away because she was restraining herself- she had pulled away because she was full. Normally, for the amount of time it had been since Shari had fed, it would take two, maybe three adult deer in order to fill a vampires stomach, and Shari had only half drained one deer- one that I guessed probably wasn't quite an adult yet. Clearly, her stomach had shrank from her extended period of minimal feeding.

"How're you feeling?" Leo asked after coming out of Sensory Alert, probably so he didn't lisp the question into incomprehension, and Shari shrugged before answering.

"Full."

(A/N): Leo: 'Ohh, I'm just a little deer, but don't I look delicious? I'm so yummy, yummy!'

Everyone else: 'Weirdo (affectionate).'

Also I looked it up, and the term noogie was first used to mean 'the act of rubbing one's knuckles on a person's head so as to produce a mildly painful sensation' in 1968.