Cold Comfort

This is fan created fiction about a character in a Vampire: The Masquerade live action role playing game run by Mind's Eye Society. If you are a fellow player, please remember that anything you read here is considered out of character knowledge. If you are a lawyer, please don't sue me; I'm not making any money off of this and it's just for fun.

Cold Comfort
by Simon W

Marianne stared at the note. It was written in a spare hand, as though the writer were more used to taking research notes than penning long letters. Or maybe she only thought it looked that way because she knew who wrote it. It occurred to her that it had been several decades since she had seen this handwriting. So much of the communication in recent nights was typed that hand written notes happened rarely. She wasn't old enough to really miss such things and moan for a past that no longer existed like some Elders she knew. It was just an observation.

It was also a lie.

Well... maybe not.

Right now she wasn't thinking about the past that no longer existed so much as she was thinking about a past and future that might have been had things not gone very, very differently.

The noise was absolutely horrific. Acolyte Dashwood hadn't even realized that the wards could be that loud. But then, she'd also never experienced a bunch of angry Kindred trying to break into the Chantry before. From the reactions of everyone around her, this was entirely unexpected. Something crashed behind her and she could feel some sort of magical discharge. She ducked instinctively, not wanting to get hit by whatever it was. She'd learned the hard way that magic discharge from careless Apprentices hurt, a lot. 

She headed to the lab to make sure the Professor wasn't still there. She didn't think he'd be foolish enough to not leave but one never knew how much he was paying attention to the outside world when he was in the middle of his research. Granted, could anyone NOT pay attention to these terrible sounds? Above the screeching of the wards now there was a giant, nearly feral sounding yelling. The crowd of Kindred had breached the walls and they were angry.

No one was in the lab, thank goodness! Acolyte Dashwood wondered where to go next. Nothing was orderly or sensible right now. There was an evacuation plan, of course, but no one was actually following it that she could see. As she made her way through the chaos she finally found the Professor. A tall man with a blonde crew cut and a scar on the back of his neck was advancing on him.

"Hey!" shouted Marianne. "Hey, blondie!" That caught his attention. He turned around. Marianne casually raised her middle finger in an insulting way. He took the bait, and started coming toward her. "Run, Professor," she shouted as she ran away from the Kindred now chasing her. 

And thus Marianne's life as a Brujah instead of a Tremere began. She had had many decades to try and reconcile herself to the fact that this was the case and she had even found things to value about her clan. If she were very honest her personality was more suited to who she was than to who she could have been. But it was still a sore spot.

And the letter writer knew that! So sending her a note to A. Dashwood was hurtful, cruel, vindictive, and rude. She'd cried over that note for the better part of the evening.

Toward dawn a thought occurred to her. Why would he want to hurt her feelings so much? Maybe... just maybe... he wasn't as immune to emotions as she believed.

It was cold comfort but for now she would take it.