Hold Me Down

[Penelope Blaise]

She was an idiot. Fast paced steps had her walking with haste around her own home. Aggression tore up antiques, breaking and smashing them to match the ripped painting turned litter on her floor. She accused the freshly turned vampire of being too aggressive and throwing a tantrum, but it reflected her own behavior now. Perhaps turning her had an effect on the British vampire, too.

Yet putting a matching hole in her wall did nothing to rid herself of the overwhelming frustration pumping through her veins. So she breathed, even if she didn't have to. Again, it did nothing. Oxygen wasn't needed to survive, and it definitely wasn't useful to calm herself down.

So she sat at a large reading chair, one of the few she had yet to flip over entirely. Legs crossed with a book in her lap. When she heard the sound of an opening door, she glanced towards the new vampire, but only briefly enough to look.

"You smell of a man."

[Lucy Serrano]

The entire day had been a lot to take in. Lucy couldn't remember the last time she honestly felt so overwhelmed; it was a great thing not to rely on oxygen for her very existence. Because she went home - to the place so invaded where she had been turned and subsequently taken - and nothing was as it should have been. It made her angry, and she had already been angry at the person who stuck her in this race as it was. So it called for going back.

Did that make her right? Lucy preferred not to see it that way.

When she pushed the door open with a newer kind of intensity, everything was not as it seemed here either. The once immaculate home that she had tarnished with her own brutality and her own hands was worse tenfold. She stalled in her footing as she stepped through, having trouble finding focus given everything that surrounded her now. And then there were those words, laced with a kind of disapproving poison that she'd only expect of a mother.

"Who the hell'd you get into it with here?"

[Penelope Blaise]

When her dark eyes looked up to the freshly turned vampire, emotion flooded her veins. She felt pointed teeth grow in her aggression just from looking at her. They forced their attention back down to her book, but they didn't shift through the words across the page. She couldn't focus, and she was annoyed her statement was ignored.

Though, she couldn't speak. She ignored hers.

Snapping the book shut with a little too much force, she set it aside and pushed herself up off the seat. Her palms pressed to the tight fabric wrapping her legs; even if her skirt had no wrinkles, she was determined to insure it.

"I told you not to be stupid."

[Lucy Serrano]

There was authority in the way Penny snapped that book shut. It was like a message within itself; something to learn from directly despite its indirect take. She didn't stop the steps she took towards her, but her eyes did drop to the way those hands moved.

Alright, so there was to be no answer. Lucy supposed there were a great many secrets to this girl, and the state of her home would just be another to add to the list.

She looked up again; "Was it you who decimated my bloody home?"

[Penelope Blaise]

She could see the way Lucy looked at her, but in a moment of frustration, she had no sense to think on what that might mean. It wasn't a priority, because the steps she was taking towards the new vampire held her attention much more greatly than those lingering eyes could.

Penny hadn't felt an anger like this in years. It was as refreshing as it was an entirely unwelcome emotion. She stopped short only a few inches away from her, teeth unconsciously baring in an almost animalistic nature.

"Would you call that a home?" She asked, breaking in and giving into the girl's request. "I should have burned it down and done you a favor!"

[Lucy Serrano]

Now they were nose to nose, and that was fast. Penny could clear the distance between them far better than Lucy ever could. She pressed her hands to her own hips instinctively.

And worse; were those teeth she was baring? Lucy had little idea what this one was capable of, but given the newly decorated mess that overruled prior perfection in this house, she could piece things together.

And she couldn't back down easily.

"I'm starting to get why yours is in pieces." Lucy quipped, eyebrows lowering at her own choice of words.

[Penelope Blaise]

She was so incredibly close that the smell that tainted her lips overloaded Penny's senses. There was a distinct smell to the difference in blood, and there was a reason she hadn't drank from a male in over two centuries. It was repulsive, and only drove her anger further.

"No, you don't." Penny immediately shot back, a hand pressing to Lucy's shoulder. Immediately, she squeezed it with impressive strength, threatening the idea that this girl would dare try to fight back on this. "You don't understand anything." Extending her arm out, she pushed Lucy back, like she had been the one to get too close.

"Have you not at all considered that there are repercussions for your behavior?"

[Lucy Serrano]

The last thing Lucy expected was contact. And even then, she didn't think it would he harsh. Lucy had quick memories of the way she had been the variable to her own harsh behaviour. Now it was like she was trying to fuel it.

A push to her shoulder even had her stumbling back. When she found her footing she kept the distance made.

"Yeah? Well maybe you should take your own advice." Lucy fired back. She hadn't expected a fight tonight, but she wasn't so willing to back down, "That last one was all your fault!"

[Penelope Blaise]

There was something satisfying about the connection made, and when she pushed the new vampire away she instantly missed it. So she stepped forward again, making up for the distance she had created. Though this time she practiced her willpower, fingernails curling into her palm as she clenched her fists rather than reach for her again.

"Were you always one to shift blame?" She asked, eyebrows shooting upwards like she was speaking to a child who couldn't understand. "Perhaps that's why your life lead to nothing!"

It was a harsh blow, but in her own mind every bit called for. "Do not blame me for giving you a standing chance!"

[Lucy Serrano]

Being belittled was overtly harsh. Aggression had always been high for Lucy, and now that she was so heightened, everything followed suit. Distance was breached and Lucy wasn't budging from her space. Arms were folded to keep them as they were. They were safer that way.

"I'm blaming you for ruining everything I had!" The entire contents of her home was gone. Nothing had been left; nothing had been waiting for her. "Sit up here in your ivory bloody tower that looks so bloody hollow hearted. Take me and give me no where to go cause you've got eight fucking spare rooms and no one willing to bloody well fill them!"

[Penelope Blaise]

So close they could touch, yet she refused to just yet. She wanted to; a feeling that went beyond the containment of a bond between a vampire and her sire. Lucy shot words like bullets, each determined to hit the normally stoic Brit. It was better, but Penny actually laughed at the thought of her ruining everything this girl had.

"You had nothing!" Penny fired back again, wondering how many times she would have to say it for Lucy to truly understand that she was helping her. Why, she had to start questioning given the way she behaved.

"And if you believe that I wanted anyone to fill these rooms before you, you are heavily mistaken!" She took a step back, but only to brush past the newly turned vampire entirely. "I saved everything worth saving; little as it was!" Quickened steps brought her to one of the many bedroom doors, and an aggressive push of her hand broke the lock entirely, causing the door to slam open to reveal the scattered art that had been missing from her former home. Amongst it, something that looked to be an old fashioned studio.

[Lucy Serrano]

The blanket statement for the state of her own life forced Lucy's blood to quickly grow to a boil. To say there was nothing worth salvaging in the tattered remnants of the thief's was too broad a brush to be painted by from someone who couldn't possibly know. How could she? A few encounters here and there and now she was this. Made by her to suit her needs.

She could say anything to get in some kind of better graces. How was Lucy to believe there had never been another person? This girl carried herself like she was truly other worldly. How old was she?

Lucy swung around to catch the line her steps were taking, but she was slow to follow. There was a second or so of hesitation for the obvious reason.

There was no trust here.

But she did go in the end, to catch sight of whatever was waiting for her on the other side of that door. At least it wasn't another helpless blonde for her to shamelessly destroy. A dropped jaw had Lucy brushing her tongue across her lower lip. This was sweet. Was it? Wasn't that an odd reaction to have?

"How the hell would you know what I'd deem worthy?"

[Penelope Blaise]

She shouldn't have been yelling; yelling proved that she was getting under her skin. Or worse, to inform the freshly turned vampire that she already had been there for quite some time. This girl was like a time bomb, and Penny was in range of it going off entirely, but only if she herself didn't first.

She dropped her jaw, and Penny didn't bother to look into the room set aside for the person she turned. There were supplies hard - if not normally impossible - to come by in Old Chicago. A large easel held itself in place in the center with blank canvases ready to be brought to life by someone who was technically no longer living. Sketchbooks and loose papers were already filled and resting on a table of all of her work. Some, of Penny's own face. Others were missing, particularly those of another individual Lucy seemed to favor when she went out. Lost in transition.

"Because I'm not stupid."

[Lucy Serrano]

Lucy wondered just how misunderstood she might have been. To have a very small piece of her own world transposed into this house was something most might deem a nightmare.

There was a sense of pride to the words chosen. Lucy could register it even if it didn't filter through her tone. That sense of knowing she couldn't ever shake from the one who made this choice for her. The one who made every choice for her.

Her own arms were securely folded; "But what makes you think you get to decide everything for me?"

[Penelope Blaise]

Penny's own arms dropped to their sides, dark eyes singling down on Lucy as she tried to gauge her reaction better. At the very least, the girl had stopped yelling. It put a sense of calm in Penny herself as she tilted her head a fraction to the side, studying her like she could be understood if she looked long enough.

"I'm not making every choice for you," Penny explained finally. That much seemed obvious for the fact that this girl had left - and she hadn't been stopped while she was out. It wouldn't have been hard to throw herself in the mix and prevent the girl from acting out so moronically, but she let it happen. It was her choice, even if Penny was angered by it. "But you know so little of this life. You need to learn; I cannot just let you run lose."