Atlanta - Answers (NRN)

[Sastre Quicksilver]

No sense trying to impress, faces emotionless
Contact with others is unheard of
When you bump into me there's no apology
What is it that you're so afraid of?
You're staring straight through me

"I know about Darian."

Lily leaned back against the tree, lifting her eyes to watch Sastre carefully, waiting for his reaction. They'd come here, to a forested area just outside the city, earlier that day. They spent two or three hours jogging through the wilderness, and another couple of hours in deep meditation. Now, with the sun setting, they were taking a short rest before the long trek back to the jeep.

As she'd expected, the older hunter flinched a bit, meeting her eyes a moment before looking quickly away. In that instant, though, Lily had seen the turmoil within him, something that she'd only glimpsed in the past, now brought to the forefront of his mind. Good. It was time to get all of this aired out.

"Oh?" Sastre answered brusquely, stretching a bit in preparation for the run to come.

Lily nodded. "Yep." She pulled out a bottle of water, taking a long drink, putting on an air of calm indifference though she was secretly a bit terrified of how Sastre might react. "I know all about him." When his eyes shot up to meet hers, she met him gaze for gaze. "Everything."

"How?" he asked, his gaze narrowing into a glare.

Shrugging, Lily replied, "Does it matter? I know. That's it. And if you don't mind my saying, I sorta wish you woulda told me before I had to go find it out by myself. For Christ's sake, Quicksilver, he isn't just your problem now. I'm family too, whether you want to admit it or not. He's my mess to clean up too."

Sastre went to make a retort, but Lily interrupted him.

"No, enough of this macho, solo-flier bullshit. I am here, and I'm not going anywhere. You can tell the others whatever the hell you want, but not me. I am family, Quicksilver, blood. And I deserve to know the truth, damn it. The whole story. All of it."

Narrowing her eyes into a glare that matched his in ferocity, she finished with: "Now."

[Florian Raniari]

When will we gain back the trust we've been breaking?
How can we stop all the clocks we've been racing?
Thought that we had grown, now we're all alone
Seems that time isn't all that we're wasting

Sastre was speechless for a moment, then, surprisingly, he chuckled.

"You sound just like your mother," he said, smiling a bit. "God, she could be a spitfire at times..." Shaking his head, Sastre continued to stretch his legs and back, not saying anything else as Lily watched him, a faint smile upon her lips as well.

"You're trying to change the subject," she said, crossing her arms over her chest. "So let's try this again, alright? You're gonna tell me what I want to know, or I'm going to take you down and make you tell me, got it?"

"Is that so?" Sastre replied, still smiling. "And you think you're really up to that? I've dropped bigger, stronger things than you before."

Rather than say anything in response, Lily shot forward like lightning, dropping down to sweep Sastre's legs. The older hunter jumped aside, dodging the sweep and lifting his left arm up to block the follow-up kick that he knew was coming before Lily had even made the move. As he'd expected, his daughter assumed wrongly that her initial strike would throw him off balance, and as she spun and kicked, she grunted in disbelief as her foot struck Sastre's readied forearm.

"Done?" he asked, raising an eyebrow and grinning wryly.

Growling, Lily rushed him again, unloading a flurry of punches and kicks that Sastre easily batted aside, not once going on the offensive. In truth, it wasn't quite as easy as he made it look. Lily was fast, scary fast, and she was only holding back a little. Sastre was hard-pressed to stay on the defensive, and didn't have an opportunity to strike back until she overextended herself with jab meant for his jaw. At that moment, Sastre's hand snapped forward, delivering a slap to Lily's face that was more meant to irritate than hurt her.

"Damn it!" she shouted, taking a step back and keeping her distance as she waited for his next move. "Stop screwing around and fight me!"

"Why should I?" he asked, chuckling and lowering his guard. "You're wasting all your energy wailing away at my defenses, you know. You're going to tire out shortly, then all I have to do is run to the jeep and leave you here. Maybe a night outside, under the stars, would do you a bit of good."

"Stop trying to tell me how to fight!" Leaping forward again, Lily changed her tactics a bit, lashing out with an attack or two before withdrawing in an attempt to work Sastre into a pattern. She'd seen it happen in fights before: you lull someone into a pattern, and just when they think they know what you're going to do, you do the opposite. A few moments later, Quicksilver seemed to have fallen for just that, and Lily smiled triumphantly as she suddenly shot forward, delivering a furious knee to the older hunter's stomach.

Or, she would have, if Sastre hadn't rolled aside, coming up behind his daughter and catching her in a hold that prevented her from making any further moves. Cursing, Lily struggled agains his grip in vain, and each time she did so, Sastre tightened the hold.

"Give it up, Lily," he said calmly. "You can't win this one, not now." She growled and attempted to break the hold once more, then cried out in pain as Sastre released her and quickly delivered an open-palmed strike to her chest, knocking her to the ground. After writhing around for a bit gasping for breath, Lily finally lay still, her breathing steady and her body trembling.

"You're... a bastard," she said softly, her voice tremulous.

"Why, because I beat you?" he retorted, kneeling down beside her and offering her a hand up.

Lily ignored the proffered hand and shook her head, staggering up on her own, he legs shaking all the while. "No, you're a bastard because you won't trust me. I'm your daughter, damn it! If you can't trust me... If you won't tell me... Then I guess maybe we don't have anything after all."

Sastre scowled at this, turning his back to her, though still ready to defend himself if need be. Lily claimed to already know about their relationship with Darian, unless she was just bluffing in an attempt to get information out him. Sastre doubted that. He was pretty good at knowing when someone was lying to him, and Lily seemed to genuinely possess that knowledge, that Darian was in fact her uncle, Sastre's older brother. He didn't know how she'd discovered that, but obviously she had, somehow. If she knew that, then what would the harm be in her knowing the rest? There were some secrets, of course, that he would have to keep, but for the most part, the story of his past couldn't really do her any harm. It was as she said: she was his daughter, his family. He owed her this much...

Besides, he added silently, hiding a grin, she may not have taken me down, but she came damn close a time or two...

"You know what, forget it, its fine," Lily said, her voice harsh. "I get it. You've gotta have your secrets, and thats fine. Whatever. Let's just get the hell out of here." Picking up her backpack, Lily was just about to start off down the trail when Sastre's voice stopped her. She turned, looking at him in disbelief as he spoke softly, his voice seeming to come from far off.

"I was born fifty-three years ago in a region of rural France called le Croix de Griffon, 'Griffon's Hollow...' "

[Sastre Quicksilver]

What are you gonna do, if I try to talk to you?
Walking away won't solve your problems
Can't you be human being and show common courtesy?
A cold shoulder isn't what I'm here for
Does anybody care?

Lily leaned against a nearby tree, dropping her pack and crossing her arms over her chest as she listened.

"I was born to a family of servants," Sastre went on, his eyes locked on the ground as he knelt down, his finger drawing some shape absently in the dirt. "We had always served the great LeDuc family, something akin to French nobility, and they had always treated us not as servants, but as friends, and as family even." He paused, his brow furrowing as long buried memories came rushing to the fore.

"If its too hard..." Lily started, realizing that maybe her demands had been a bit too harsh. She knew that Sastre had come from a background of misery and loss, and she wondered if perhaps in her selfishness she had reopened old wounds best left closed.

"No, no... You're right. You deserve to know this," he reassured her. "It is hard, but..." He shrugged, looking up at her and smiling a bit. "You're family, Lily. This is your history too."

Lily nodded as he went on.

"The LeDucs had a son, named... named Julien," he stopped, smiling sadly at her. "He was your namesake, you know. Your middle name, Juliet? It comes from Julien LeDuc's name. He was the greatest man I have ever known Lily... And he was my friend--our friend, I should say, for he and I and Darian were inseparable."

Tensing a bit at the mention of Darian, Lily simply nodded again.

"The three of us ran roughshod all over the estate," Sastre continued with another faint smile. "It was a good life. We were never lacking for anything, and we were surrounded by people who loved us, and who wanted us only to be happy forever..." Suddenly his expression darkened, and he lowered his shadowed eyes, his shoulders slumping as if burdened by a great weight. "But... It wasn't to be so."

Lily could pretty much guess what came next, though she remained silent. She knew enough about Quicksilver's history to know that his family had been eradicated by vampires when he was just a child. The particulars of this incident were still unknown to her, but she had a feeling that she was about learn more than she really wanted to.

"What happened?" she asked softly, wondering if the old man needed a bit of prodding on to continue.

Sastre chuckled mirthlessly. "What happened?" he repeated, shaking his head and sighing. "What happened..." Raising his face once again, he locked gazes with Lily, a deep, well-hidden grief glimmering behind his blue-grey eyes that sent a chill down the young woman's spine.

"What happened?" he said again, softly. "They came..."

[Florian Raniari]

When will we gain back the trust we've been breaking?
How can we stop all the wars we've been waging?
If only we had known, now we're all alone
Seems that time isn't all that we're wasting...

Sastre stared off into space as he went on, his voice distant.

"I remember waking up to screams, and heat," he said, furrowing his brow a bit. "Darian was shaking me, and in the doorway I could see the silhouette of Julien outlined against a riot of red and orange flames. We didn't know what was going on, only that someone was attacking the estate, burning everything and murdering everyone.

"I staggered out of bed and, with Darian, followed Julien down the hallway, toward what we knew was a secret passageway that would lead us outside, to a bolt-hole in the woods. These passageways were all over the estate, and we used to play in them all the time, so none of us hesitated to duck into the low, dark entry and hurry along in the pitch blackness.

"When we came out the other side, we stood just inside the woodline and watched the place burn. Screams still echoed through the night, only to be violently cut off... I was crying, and so was Darian. Julien was in some sort of daze, and he just kept saying, 'Blood... they were drinking their blood...' over and over again. We sat there together for a while and just wept, before Julien's sense returned and he told us we all had to get away, and quickly.

"He told us that the ones responsible for this were enemies of his family, and that they would continue to seek us out, if they knew that we'd escaped. He said that nowhere was safe... if we were sighted, or caught and turned in, it would be over for us. So we just ran, not really knowing where to go, or what to do, but trusting in Julien. Trusting that he knew the right way, and that he'd protect us.

"We were all just children at the time, you know. God, I couldn't have been older than six, and even Julien, our 'leader' was a boy of only some twelve or so years... Darian and I trusted implicitly that Julien was right, that we couldn't go to anyone for help. That the monsters who killed our families would come for us too, if they ever were able to find us.

"So we did the only thing that we could think of: the three of us made our way slowly to Paris, and began our lives on the street..."

Sastre paused for the first time, as if it had been hard for him to stop now that the words seemed to be rushing out of him. Lily still remained silent, her mind racing with questions but knowing that now wasn't the time to ask them. For the moment, she was just glad to actually be learning something about her past, about her family.

"So... what then?" she prodded lightly, praying that the old man didn't lose his nerve and clam up again.

[Sastre Quicksilver]

Lily looked up at the sky, realizing that darkness was settling in quickly.

She had no fear of being in the woods after dark, of course. When you hunted things that dwelt typically only in peoples' nightmares, it was hard to be afraid of bears and wolves and the like. Were there even bears or wolves in these woods? She wasn't sure, but before she could really think too much about it, Sastre began to speak again.

"We lived on the streets--or I should say below the streets--the three of us, for the next two years or so. We survived the only way we really could: we stole, we picked pockets... we even begged when things got especially bad." He looked down, as if he were ashamed of this.

"Why didn't you just go to someone?" Lily asked, tilting her head a bit. "I mean... you could have been put into foster care, or something right? You wouldn't have had to starve, or live in the streets..."

Sastre chuckled.

"We were afraid," he said, shaking his head. "We didn't really know what those things were that had wiped out our families. We didn't know if they were still out there, looking for us... Looking to finish the job." The old man shrugged, looking up and taking notice of the setting sun as well. Softly, he said, "We thought that if we went to someone... If we revealed ourselves as still being alive, then they'd find us. And kill us. Or worse."

Lily nodded at that, seeing the sense behind their reasoning.

"Anyway," Quicksilver went on, running a hand absently through his hair, "we lived that way for a couple of years. One night, though, I tried to pick the wrong man's pocket." He smiled a bit, remembering his first encounter with the man who would go on to change his life forever. "Or, perhaps, I tried to pick the right man's pocket..."

Lily raised a brow at that, but kept silent, waiting for her father to go on.