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Jasper smiles, then, incredulity pulling at the edges of his mouth. “What?” he finally says, slowly, as if saying it out loud will make it sound any less ridiculous. “She said that I… turned her?”
But Annabelle doesn’t seem to think it’s ridiculous. She moves in even closer, shoulders set with determination, making it very clear that he will have to go through her first if he wants to get to Tara.
She’s looking at him like she thinks he might actually have done it.
And, for someone he’s only known a couple weeks, for someone whose opinion he didn’t expect to care about more than any other kindred he’s ever met, it cuts deeper than he’d have thought.
“And…” Annabelle licks her lips. Asks like she’s afraid of the answer. “You… you didn’t?”
Jasper looks at her.
He doesn’t need to take a breath, but he does. And then he takes another.
“Look,” Jasper says. Then shifts. “Look, I’m sorry. I know it’s been a crazy amount of new information for you these past few weeks, but I know you’ve had the bloodlines talk because I was, for some very strange reason, the one to give it to you.”
She just stares at him.
“We’ve talked about the reason why I look the way I do, remember?”
He pauses, waits for her to put the pieces together. But they’ve just come up to his haven via the back door, and that means they’ve come through the illogical horrors of the labyrinth only to find, well, all of this.
They’ve had a night.
Annabelle’s mouth is working. She’s trying, he can tell. She wants to fit the puzzle pieces in front of her into some picture that makes sense to her, with what she knows, what she believes. And she wants to believe in him. Annabelle wants to believe the best in everyone, even when it may not really be there to begin with.
The corners of Jasper’s mouth turn up, a mirthless smile that shows absolutely no teeth at all.
“I look like this,” he says simply, gesturing to the strange grey skin, the visible veins, to the whole horrible lot of it. “Because the person who turned me looked like this. And anyone that I turned would look like this and anyone they turned would also look like this. That’s just how this works.”
He waves a long, pale hand toward Tara, who has started to shift uneasily at the way the conversation has been trending ever since his sudden and unexpected return.
“Now, do you really think this… lovely kindred is really a Nosferatu?”
And that’s the moment it clicks for all of them, just how wild a tale Tara has been telling them.
“...Ah,” Nelli says.
“Yeah,” Jasper agrees with a roll of his head until he can pin her with a deadpan stare. “Ah. And, you know, I can forgive Annabelle for not remembering, somehow, in the moment, how all this works because,” his smile goes tight. “I know you must have had a trying evening. But honestly,” he says, looking between her and Victor, now. “The two of you have absolutely no excuse. How long have you been kindred again?”
“Now, to be fair,” Victor says, “To be fair, in our defence, I mean, some Nosferatu can look like… not you. I mean, this might not be what she actually looks like.”
And that’s a fair point, even if it’s very much not the case in this particular instance.
Jasper jerks his head to the side in acknowledgment. “That’s true.”
Annabelle shifts on her feet, staring at Tara warily now.
“Yeah,” she says, vaguely, “But. She wouldn’t have been saying all of that stuff earlier about Jasper being a monst-” she cuts off, but not before Jasper gets the idea of exactly what kind of picture Tara must have been painting of him. Nothing less than he expected, really.
“I mean,” her eyes flick up to Jasper’s in alarm.
He doesn’t say anything.
What is there to say? After all, he is a monster. A monster who keeps other monsters in cages.
“I mean, all of what Tara was saying earlier, and pretending to just be a person who was scared of… of kindred and everything. She wouldn’t have done that if she were a Nosferatu.”
Jasper tilts his head the other way to acknowledge the counterpoint.
“Either way, it doesn’t... It doesn’t make sense,” Annabelle says.
Tara is tense, now, knows she’s all but lost them. Jasper has very little time to try to contain this before she makes a move, then, and if she does, all hell will break loose.
He’d really rather avoid that, and all that it would entail, if at all possible.
“So,” he says. Smiles, very mildly. “Again, we’re all just standing here on my doorstep which.” He turns, slowly, to look at the mangled entryway. “No longer has a door. Which is just… lovely.”
Annabelle winces.
“But I’d be more than happy to continue this conversation, to continue answering any other questions, if you would all like to come inside?”