and i don't want to be lonely anymore.

[vala elizabeth hartwell]

From the moment she’d arrived—which had been last night—she had felt overwhelmingly…well, she couldn’t quite fit a word to it. All she could manage was wonder; why was she here? Why had she come back? Was there some part of her that was masochistic? Was she an idiot? Maybe she really had gone insane, after all this time. Coming back had turned her into a complete mess, which combined her restlessness and that feeling in the pit of her stomach that she couldn’t put a name to. Except that those feelings weren’t supposed to exist for people (creatures) without a pulse, were they? Suddenly she felt like she was a three year old human who hadn’t killed anything (anyone), who hadn’t tasted human blood, who hadn’t experienced its seduction. Who didn’t know about war or famine or even reality TV. Who looked at the world and asked about all of it, whose curiosity was endless and whose smiles did not whisper secrets. They were real smiles, bright and toothy, that sang innocence and ignorance. Sang of hope that had not yet been dashed and untarnished realities that could never exist. And of all this wasn’t fair because she was a sixty-eight year old vampire with forever ahead of her. She could keep on like this for eternity (unlike in the movies, vampires really were a bitch to kill; a wooden stake through the heart would probably be followed by a laugh—and then, well, death). She could’ve stayed in Europe, where she was perfectly happy. Well, not perfectly. Not really happy, either. More like alive, which was how she’d prefer to stay—and “alive” shouldn’t equal this constant uncertainty hovering over her. Where she couldn’t take a single step forward without looking over her shoulder, like she was paranoid or something, which just didn’t make sense. Jesus, none of it made any sense.

What made the least amount of sense was how she was standing outside of the movie theaters, staring through the window (not seeing any of, though, and not really caring—it wasn’t like the popcorn was particularly enticing, nor the movies themselves). It wasn’t like she suddenly wanted to be one of these people (wishes like that were never sudden, after all; they had the grace of a panther and the lofty eloquence of someone who mattered). They were just people, humans who smelled of popcorn and grease and overpriced candy and fast-approaching heart attacks. They were just people, so wrapped up in their own worlds that they couldn’t begin to imagine what took place around them every day. Maybe it wasn’t a wonder they could be so blind—they were self-serving by nature. It was why there had been so many threats and so much horror and so many cries of blasphemy when the sun was declared the center of the universe. It was why humans couldn’t see that they were really just a piece of a larger puzzle—not even the last one or the first, probably not one of the obvious, crucial ones toward the center. Maybe they were just a background piece, one of the parts that couldn’t be distinguished from the one beside it, the sort that people labored over for hours in order to get it right. It was better, wasn’t it, that they were so absorbed in their own lives—because when humans did have epiphanies, they tended to just get in a way.

But right now, why did they matter? Why did she stand outside this world that would never have her and look in, like there was something to find? Why did she stand beside the ticket booth like she might actually purchase something? She hadn’t enjoyed movies when she was young and they held no interest to her now—not the passionate throes of an epic romance nor the ridiculousness of the shit people liked to call “comedy.” With humans, it was always about feelings and messages and preaching. Everyone always had to feel something, feel a certain way, find truth inside themselves. Worse were the movies that played at being profound because at least the others knew their place. But superficiality had a habit of grabbing humans and making them spend at least nine dollars on this. Nine dollars to sit down and watch people. Vala could do that here, outside the movie theater, without paying a cent. Because for a moment, she wanted to understand. She wanted to understand what it all meant, how they felt, how they thought. Because suddenly a word came to her—nervous—and it was so foreign on the edge of her lips, on the surface of her tongue, that it tasted acrid. It stung. It demanded to know why she was so different from all of these people she watched (when normally she would wander through them without a moment’s notice, without a turn of her head, because none of them mattered and she didn’t care), what set her so apart. And for some reason, for one of the very few times in her entire life, she felt at a loss. She felt at a loss amongst (apart from) these people and their little realities and escapes and superficiality. And on the one day she felt she belonged to them most, she didn’t want to (couldn’t) break the glass.

Vala Elizabeth Hartwell knew why she’d come back. She hadn’t come back to stand hopelessly outside of movie theaters and stare at the reflections of humans walking by. She hadn’t come to Forks for its world-renowned popcorn (ha) or its tales of love and loss and failure and reemergence, of growth and of hope. She didn’t care about any of that. But as she stood there in her black sunglasses and her unforgiving smile, she wondered if she didn’t deserve to be so ignorant. Wondered if that was a punishment at all or if she could understand why suddenly she knew nervousness. But all she could do was drum her hands against her jeans in a rhythm that aimed to be a song but couldn’t quite manage. All she could do was try to forget (always remember) why she’d come back. Who she’d come back for. (Why it wouldn’t matter because she was the one who’d left.) The weight of knowing pressed down hard against her and maybe if she wasn’t a vampire, it would have suffocated her. But she was not human. It could do nothing to her.

How could something ache when it didn’t even beat?

(How could Vala Hartwell turn into a puddle of cliché butterflies and foolishness when she didn’t believe in it at all?)

{ ooc; SORRY IT'S NOT MORE AWESOME. I'm kind of a failure and I know it's not great or anything. ): BUT YOU LOVE ME FOR POSTING ANYWAY RIGHT? <3 }
[/size]

[kaleigh nicole black]

out of sight, out of mind

[/i][/color]
turn your back and then you make me feel so crazy.[/color][/font]
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[/i][/color] The initial anger that had flared within her usual, relatively short temper had faded in the past week or so, though by no means did Kaleigh skip out on any chance to remind Archer that if she did the same thing again, she'd skin the younger girl alive. But that, of course, wasn't the only thing; since when had everyone changed so much in just two years? It was just two, after all. Two years, twenty four months, seven hundred thirty days. Maybe it was more than she had originally thought. Her brother, at the very least, if not taller - remained the same quirks per usual and his odd fascination with comic book characters. The new faces, too, had arrived in both Forks and La Push, the ones she couldn't recognize if her life should have ever depended on it; it was an entirely different story that she hadn't bothered to introduce herself or wanted to get to know them, either. What was the point, when she didn't even know if the slightest whisper of added stress would cause her to flee again? Of course, she had the excuse - the same one hiding underneath one of her still unpacked suitcases - the plain but slightly heavy letter containing something one would deem acceptance. Entryway far away, to California of all places; her lips pursed, knowing her light tan would blend in well among the sunny residents. Yes, she'd be like anyone else near the city - human, barely into her twenties, eager for life starting, struggling (well not struggling, she would think; she cared more for studying than any parties any state could hope to offer) in her studies, welcoming an entire change.

"Change,"[/color] she whispered then, almost sardonically to herself; no in the theater had minded or probably even overheard her, too engrossed in the cheap drama that would undoubtedly end happily as most films did that deserved more show on the Lifetime channel than a movie theater. As it went, she paid no mind to it, either, unable to escape the trails her thoughts were inching her to, unwilling as always. Change was a funny word. Things had morphed when Sp - she wouldn't let herself think the name - when she died, as they had earlier when she first phased, first started high school, etc. Life had definitely changed when she packed up and moved to New York for two years, but the funny thing about change was that it never seemed to warp anything so much that the past was forgotten. Running never made her tracks disappear from where she originally came from, closing her eyes only did so much to leave the imprint left of a once, well not happy, but completely content seventeen year old girl, with a family, friends... no complicated relations with vampires, for one. Even if said bloodsuckers (the word brought back familiar vice and rooted childhood hatred) made her feel different, too different, and almost as soon as up and fled the god damn country. But she couldn't blame her, not for the fact it was her, but the fact she was just as guilty of escaping. But what had she to run from? Had Kaleigh been that unnerving, that horrible, that worth running away from?

She bit her lip, the answer written on her tongue but never slipping out; yes, they had definitely been. Kaleigh still wasn't altogether too sure what vampire/werewolf relations were now after two years, but she had doubted they had changed much, enough to eradicate centuries of only the desire of bloodlust, of hatred. Which was right, given the fact natural enemies, of course, were meant to hate each other to the point of war. Her nose wrinkled in the mixed scents of the theater: she couldn't deal what was in here recently, given the fact the cinema housed species of all kinds whether or not they knew it, to come and go and leave disgusting scents past. They were mixed and jumbled all together that it gave her a slight headache to even try to decipher individual smells among the vast many of unknowns, some of them woodsy and natural, wolves she gathered, very faint traces of sickly sweet that caused her nose to tingle and burn slightly, bloodsuckers, the varying scents of humans, and some... different, ones? Even different from Dakota, who was a half-breed, but they were clearly not originating from wolf or vampire. But what else was there of the supernatural world? Her mind couldn't go back far enough to trace any other legends that would strike understanding, but she did remember what one of her packmates had mentioned to her at her homecoming 'party' of sorts. Even more of the supernatural had moved into the Washington area lately, many of them for unknown reasonings, some for ones that couldn't be explained even if they tried. And some of them, they had told her lowly, were far from the regular animosity belonging to werewolves and vampires, and their in-betweens. They had odd, bright eyes with slits for pupils, or held arrogance with a remarkably ironic addition of complete confusion of human traditions. Her jaw tightened, and Kaleigh stood up suddenly and crossed the row to the aisle, exiting as quickly as possible. On her way she accidentally stumbled over a redhead's leg, who looked at her strangely with impossibly blue eyes, before Kaleigh mumbled an apology and left the theater.

The unknown could bring danger, and it could not, but the risk was too much for her to take; she didn't trust these new arrivals, new species or old, and the fact they were here somewhere unnerved her to no end. Kaleigh liked tradition, liked the familiarity of things not shifting her world out of focus and thrusting her into the great beyond where her views were in comparison to a child's eyes seeing the world for the first time. She wasn't a child, she was twenty fucking years old, and as she leaned against a pillar of the theater lobby, her breaths came out short and erratic. Shutting her eyes and willing herself to calm down, Kaleigh told herself there was nothing here that could hurt her... nothing that she couldn't run away from if she really wanted to. All it would take was a plane ticket, or a phasing that would stretch her limbs as she would bound off into distances that would surpass her memory, far, where no one could reach her. No one but the voices in her head that told her there was some things, some people, that she would never be able to outrun.[/size]
[/ul]

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APPAREL cliiick.
MUSIC something - escape the fate
WITH vala hartwell, and a small cameo by parker. x]
SETTING the cinemaaaa.
NOTES angstangstangst<3