Not the Right Shade

Calm

"Demetri!" Sybil called cheerfully, worming her way between the twins and running up to hug the new visitor.

Demetri returned the embrace, and a victorious grin was shot to the twins. Jane returned to a relaxed stance but Alec had yet to stands down completely. His glare never left Sybil's form, carefully checking her for injuries while she stood in the trackers arms.

The dark haired girl breathed in deeply, looking for the woodsy scent of the guard she held. The scent was found, along with another.

It was familiar, in a sense. It was rich and sharp, mixed with the smell of old ashes and burnt wood. But Sybil couldn't place were she knew it from. It wasn't the twins, or any other guards she knew (Chelsea smelled like flowers and something masculine and comforting. Felix smelled like metal and sand and dried blood.) she racked her brain for the others she met. The Delani's like snow and fur, the Romanians' smelled like lush forest and blood, the coven from Belgium, the Cornflower coven, smelled like wheat and apples, but Sybil couldn't place where and who smelled like brewery on fire.

"Who were you with?" She asked innocently. The the question was met with the three guards freezing up and looking at each other in concern.

"We had a trial. That's why we had to leave." Jane explained after a tense second.

"I manned the execution." Demetri added, holding the fragile girl at arms length away.

Sybil nodded and sat back down, gesturing for the tracker to join the younger vampires at the table. "We were talking about insanity and Shakespeare."

"Ah yes, those two go hand in hand more often than not." He said pleasantly, sitting down in a chair a ways from the trio.

Sybil smiled and picked back on the conversation, the guards giving their opinion every so often, but mostly allowed the girl to prattle on happily. The subject would jump from one to another, and soon the Bard was forgotten.

"... which is interesting because it's a byproduct of both succinylcholine and embalming fluid with prolonged body exposure, so, like, it completely screwed up the investigation." Sybil explained, describing a television program she remembers seeing when she was younger.

Demetri held in a chuckle at the girls enthusiasm. Jane was impressed by the girl's morbid knowledge, Alec was a little horrified. It was hard for him to come to grasps with Sybil's total lack of innocence, he had to remind himself that she too is a killer.

The small group would have talked well into the night if Sybil had not yawned. The three esteemed guards looked at her with varying degrees of horror. The yawn seems to remind each of them about the horrible truth.

Sybil was weak for a reason. She was weak from drinking blood that could kill her. Kill this girl, who decided to speak against a lawbreaker, who was used and abused and abandoned by her female creator, who could quote poetry and chemical equations within the same conversation, who breaks easy and heals fast and still tries to hide her wounds, who refuses to part with a jacket because a friend got it for her. Sybil was on borrowed time. And there was really no way to gauge how much time she had left.

---

Once Sybil was asleep in her room (by Jane's insistence), Alec returned to his own and proceeded to destroy the clock. Jane stood behind him, watching quietly and he fulfilled his endeavor.

The sister sighed. "Brother-"

"It's not fair." He hissed as he bended and snapped off a tooth on a gear. "She had gone through so much, and to die? To die because she was used by that- that-"

"Alec." Jane soothed, hugging her brother around his shoulders from behind. "She should have died a long time ago. Who says she'll die now?"

Alec huffed and rubbed his eyes. "I just- I don't know. Maybe I'll go and harass the Russian bastard."