acontritemess | A temporary Home

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character: luther rieben

A temporary Home

Freya was thankful to the owner of the club. She had limited exposure to vampires in the past but he seemed like a solid guy. If he hadn't shown up she would have just run; she was very good at running.

As the night came to an end, bouncers began to push people towards the doors. She had cleared off the last table bringing the glasses over to Inka who seemed to be in a good mood. It was most likely due to the visitors that night. Freya found it hard to believe that the pair she'd seen was really the Creator and the Druid; not that she knew what she was expecting. Luther, the guy who owned the club, seemed to know them both really well and Freya can't help but wonder what the story was. She wasn't always an overly curious person when it came to the super natural community because people protected their secrets but Luther was nice enough that she figured she could at least ask.

With her shift pretty much over she plucked her back from behind the counter and climbed the steps to Luther's office. Her knuckles rapped at the door though she was sure that a vampire would already smell that she was there.

"Hey. I wanted to take up that staying offer but I don't know where to go." She wasn't opposed to sleeping on the floor but she didn't really want to be in the way either. Once the sun was up she'd be on her own in this strange club and she wasn't really looking forward to that. At least Inka would be there; he was cool.

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He shakes his head at the suggestion, his expression suggesting she's missed a vital point. "To quote a very wise man, vampires and human civilizations have a few things in common. We tend to fight when we encounter one another, we live for several centuries and usually end up killing ourselves from the inside out, usually from boredom, and we don't like change."

He makes a motion as though indicating something or someone who isn't there. "There's been no recorded Creator for nearly a thousand years. That same thousand years has seen the rise and fall of several human civilizations, but they all followed a course without the intervention of a Creator. What do we do now there that is one again? A human nation would either A) want to use it, or B) want to destroy it so they could carry on. So, apparently, would vampires, save a select few. If you suddenly realized you have far many enemies than your previous assumption of zero, would you be excited?"

Freya didn't much care for mind games, though she was decent enough at solving puzzles. She listened carefully to Luther before releasing a breath of air that had been trapped in her lungs.

"I don't know what it's like not to have enemies." At least not anymore, she can understand running and when he phrases it like that... well? she can understand why Airy might not have been so excited. Not that Freya imagined what it was like to be a normal, oblivious, human but she can imagine the shock.

"So where do you fall in this?"

Luther watches her evenly for a moment, standing and moving around his desk to take a seat at the chairs in the sitting area, with her. "I suppose we have that in common." He was born into war, he'd never known anything aside from what they were fighting. He found himself curious about this wolf, and what her story was.

"Airy ran away from home, and just so happened to end up in our laps. My father had been looking for the Creators, or some link to them, for three hundred years. He built a...stronghold, under the streets of Queens, a lot like this place. It's home to a lot of people like us, but, unlike here, there, they stand on the forefront of the War. I'm sure you've heard of it."

Freya watched him curiously, her shoulders tensing only slightly as he sits across from her. Not that she knows many vampires, but she wasn't expecting it. He's far more personable than she thought vampires would be. It's interesting and she wonders what his father was like. It'd be interesting to meet him.

"I have and it's one of the reasons I've avoided it." He still hadn't told her his relation to the Creator. "So after Airy fell in your lap. What happened?"

She repeated his phrasing without meaning anything by it.

He nodded his understanding, leaning back in his chair and folding his hands in front of him. "It's one of the reasons I came here, and built this place. Wars take a lot more than they give, and it's usually the innocent bystanders who suffer the most. The homeless, the orphaned, and the displaced needed a place to call home, too, and without an army threatening to beat down their doors."

For the last, he didn't respond immediately, his mind flitting back across all the countless things that had happened. "She was distant for a while, but I found her fascinating. On Valentine's Day, I asked her to be my Valentine, and she was for a while. I was a lonely, angry little boy who's father died fighting a way it seemed we were doomed to lose. She was...hope in that darkness. I selfishly clung to her. I used her." He looks back over to Freya. "Does that suffice?"

For a moment Freya was at a loss for words. She watched Luther, seemingly unaffected by his story and then nodded her head. "Yeah. Unless you feel like telling me more." She didn't think he would but she found it interesting. A relationship between the Creator and a vampire? She wondered if that would work though she hadn't found any text on creators. She thought they were tied to their creations and in turn the planet before other.

Then again, that was just guess work on her part. Extrapolated from books she had read countless times for information on the subject.

She let out a slow breath, her gaze flicking to her backpack which rested at the side of her ankle. "Making this place..." She gestured around with a hand. "Is repentance then?" She assumed that it was a safe question to ask.

By all appearances, Luther is clearly finished with explaining his relationship with the Creator, at least with a stranger. He looks around at the place, glancing toward the window of his office that overlooks the now-closed club, then back to the wolf.

"In a way, I suppose it is, yes."

Freya placed her palms on her knees, her lips curling into an easy practiced smile.

"If it means anything at all." She began in a lighter tone. "I think you're pretty cool." He had come to her aid at least. "So you're doing something right."

She doubted it would make him feel better. She wasn't used to the whole 'dating' thing since she was a were. She flirted a lot and has made out with a few people but werewolves mate for life and it wasn't as easy to get over. Her mother said that females can, that nature made them that way so that werewolves wouldn't die out but not many are able to forget their mates.

Maybe Luther and Airy will make up though she didn't know how life spans worked into that equation either. At the very least, she's keeping her thoughts to herself; most of them anyway.

"It's interesting that a creator shows up now." Not that this war was new but it was certainly becoming more intense. "Maybe it's by some design. I can't help but wonder how." As much as she's studied, she's never really figured out a lot about the Shapers.

It wasn't a far subject change, but it was better than continuing to talk about Airy. As far as Luther was concerned, there would be a part of himself that always loved her, no matter how much time passed, and that same part of him dreaded watching her age and die before his eyes. Maybe this was why his mother always cautioned him about falling in love with a human.

"Well, I'm honored you think I'm cool." He smiled at her, though it was still a little sad. "And the problem is there's very little still known about the Creators. My father looked for information on them for 300 years and barely found anything."

Freya's eyebrow rose, her eyes noting the sad curl just at the edge of his cute smile. She didn't know what it was like to lose someone you loved to another, but she knew what it was like to lose her family, so on that much she can relate.

"You should be." She grinned easily while relaxing in the chair. "I don't think everyone is cool."

Freya hummed thoughtfully before reaching into her bag and pulling out a tattered book. It was written by Luther's father, not that she knows that. It's small and worn and to anyone normal looking at it, it looks like a children's book filled with fairy tales. "We know that they created the were's ...among other things."

"Then I suppose the honor's mine." The sadness in his smile disappeared for a moment, hidden behind a vale of amusement, then the smile disappeared completely as his keen gaze found the book she pulled from her bag.

He leaned forward, though he didn't rise from his chair, immediately much more interested. "Yes. That's common enough knowledge. Where did you get that book?"

Freya looked up at Luther with a measured gaze. "A library. I study a lot." She didn't intent to dive into that phrase since it was rather self explanatory. She attended classes and would have several degrees if she were to legally have gone to college.

"No one knew what it was so I just swiped it." It wasn't as if they were going to read it.

"It doesn't say all that much." She's read it from front to back.

"Why would that book be in a library?" He's not familiar with the tome, and more than anything he wants to read it only to hear his father's voice speak new words. He is a bit curious about the folklore it contains, though.

"That was written by Charles Rieben."

"Because that's where you find books." She replied with a slightly sarcastic tone before relinquishing and continuing to explain. "A lot of people don't know what they have. I go to used book stores a lot too and find some pretty interesting things."

When he named the author she nodded. "Yeah, it is."

"Charles Rieben was my father." His voice was quiet. Even after four years, it was difficult to think of his father as deceased. Vampires don't waste time teaching their children to deal with loss, it happens too infrequently for it to be warranted. Looking back, he wished that practice were different. His father's death had made him do terrible things to people he cared very deeply for.

Freya looked down at the book in her hand for a moment. She supposed it made sense that he was a vampire, only a vampire would be spastic enough to write all this stuff down. Stormy gray eyes look up at Luther, squint and then hold out the book for him to see.

"I want it back." She declared shortly. "But~" Her lips curl into a smile.

"You can read through it if you want. It's a short book."

Luther takes the offered book with reverence. There's a small part of him that's angry that a piece of his father has been traveling around in some werewolf's carry-on like some sort of tourist's souvenir, but he doesn't voice the emotion, knowing it's only the whining of a wounded boy who could stomach losing his father.

He allowed a slight smile to tease the corners of his mouth, instead. "I'm not sure you can steal from a thief, but I'll be sure to return it."

He looked down that the tattered cover and worn title with fondness. It was at it had appeared, a collection of folklore of the Hidden, but written as children's stories. His father had written a book for children, sometime in the early 20th century, not long after he'd met his mother. Had they started trying to have a child then? His mother never spoke of his father. It was impossible to know.

Freya shrugged at his comment with a gesture that suggested she didn't care. Being a thief was one of the was she survived, that and being cute. She didn't have money and it was difficult to hold a job considering how often she traveled. She mostly ended up tagging along with assorted groups, usually the younger or starstruck crowd, to get from place to place.

She flicked her tongue in her mouth before speaking.

"If it bothers you that I have it, you can keep it." She had the stories in there memorized and while he didn't say much about his father it was clear that it was someone important to him.

She still missed her father, hell, she missed her whole family and she'd give anything for a piece of them. Yet the only state she couldn't return to was Montana. She couldn't let anyone know she was alive lest the dark shadow return to finish what they started.

Luther shook his head at her comment, making a gesture as he carefully turned open the book. "It doesn't bother me. My father had a particular affinity for weres, wolves in particular." After read his father's journals, he understood where the affection came from, but he wasn't going to share that information with a stranger.

Maybe later. "What do you make of these stories?"

Freya stretched her arms out in front of her as she spoke. "It sounded like a book meant for a child but instead of random fairy tails its a collection of history's about different hiders." She didn't know what Luther was implying except that maybe the book had been written with him in mind when he was a child.

"It has a lot of basic information about things in it but it's written in a fun way." It was written as if to be entertaining which was one of the reasons that Freya liked it. It was obviously written with great care.

Her stormy gray eyes looked back at Luther curiously. She wanted to know what his father felt was so fascinating about werewolves though she didn't want to push her luck and ask. At the very least she had some tact.

He smiled fondly as he carefully leafed through the pages. The voice in the printed words was familiar, the same tone his father had used when telling him things. He didn't say anything to the werewolf for a moment, simply let his eyes move over the pages, some of them illustrated, and a slow smile spread across his face.

Finally, he looked up to her. "My father had a way with words, and everything about the world was a passion to him. 'We're all a part of the same world', he used to say. I never really understood what he meant until he was gone. A pack of werewolves saved him in Transylvania back in the 1700s, even though they didn't how him anything. He had a fascination with them ever since."

"Sounds like he was lucky." She didn't know many vampires but if they were all like Luther she'd probably help them out too. She didn't think that was a werewolf thing though, that was just a 'not being a shitty person thing'

"Do you have anything else he's written? It's hard to find things like this."

Not that she'd take them or anything but she'd love to flip through them or find the chance to read them.

Luther nodded at the wolf's question. "I have several things he's written." He smiles. It was refreshing, meeting someone has excited about learning, and history, as he was. And, if he was honest, it was rare to find it in a werewolf.

"He wrote an entire thesis on the social structures of weres."

Freya's gray eyes glitter as if the sun was peeking through stormy clouds. It sounded amazing and she'd love to be able to read them, maybe, since he was telling her about them he'd let her read them too.

"Could I see? At least skim through them?" Her eyes grew brighter at his next comment. "Really? I wonder how well he got it? If he likes werewolves it's probably amazing." She might be star struck.

"Do you know if it had anything about other were's?"

He nodded again. He'd read it so many times he could quote it from memory. "Yes. Some about lions, tigers. Bears." And he smirked.

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