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.
The Cause
by Simon W.
Marianne carefully unpacked the boxes and boxes of books which made up the bulk of her haven. She lived surrounded by them. The only concessions she made to trying to make her home look like a normal human lived here was that the bedroom had a bed in it and she actually used the shower. The living area was filled with book shelves, a couch, and a desk and chair. The dining area held more bookshelves. The kitchen? Well she used kitchen cupboards as bookshelves.
She was putting them away on autopilot, the Dewey Decimal system doing most of the work for her, while she was lost in thought.
Everett had been an objectively terrible sire. No one who knew him could disagree and people who knew his childer only had to look at the fact that the one who had been effectively adopted was a lot more stable than the one who had drifted around on her own for decades. Marianne knew that her feelings about him were anything but objective. And still, she knew he had been a terrible sire.
He'd taught her almost nothing. He wasn't truly an Anarch so he couldn't teach her about the sect he claimed she belonged too. His opinion of the Sabbat was simply that they were there to be killed, by him preferably. Most of what she knew about actually being kindred came from what she had learned before she had met him, when she had been the Professor's ghoul. The only thing he'd really ever tried to tell her had been so garbled by his own issues that she hadn't really understood at the time.
It was shortly after they'd fled from Los Angeles. She'd had no idea what drove him eastward with such fervor at the time. All she knew was the he ran. And then, somewhere in the middle of nowhere New Mexico they'd been jumped by Sabbat. It was just three of them, which is probably what saved their lives because Everett fought them alone. He insisted Marianne stay out of the fray and she was more than willing to do so. He bloodied them up well enough so they could flee. And as they raced down the highway he tried to explain.
"The blood gets up, ya know? It's what makes us Brujah. It's what makes us... it's what makes us us. There's something that burns in all of us and when you see it you've got no choice but to stand up for it. Mine is the Sabbat, you see." He spit. "They all gotta die, you see."
Marianne did not see. And he'd never really bothered to explain. In the following decade she loved him, hated him, and left him. But she never really understood exactly what he'd been trying to get at.It had been other Brujah, later on, that she met that explained the Cause to her. And she had assumed that she'd just not really had one. It made sense given her history.
As she methodically put the books on their shelves she knew she'd been wrong all those decades ago. Because now her blood was up. Because now there was something burning in her heart that would not die. Because now she knew exactly what it was that drove her forward to eternity.
"It's not right," she said to herself. "Like playing chess with a damned pigeon. It's gonna shit all over the board, knock over all the pieces, and declare itself the winner no matter what you do. And that... that's not right. I'm not playing any of their games. I'm not joining any of their teams. I won't be corralled and emotionally manipulated. Nope, it's time to stand up and tell them 'no'. Because I don't like bullies and I don't like being forced to choose and I really, really don't like these damn Ancients!"
