Blood Lies

Occ:

I need a very special writer to play Rutledge. I've tried this on another board and it seems either no one cares for my ideas or no one feels up to the challenge.

Rutledge is not a black or white character. He is a very flawed but loving character. At first he is spoiled and arrogant but to Valdis he is charming and caring not to mention hot as hell. He is a visionary with a cause too.

Later he is dead and feels betrayed by Valdis. He is very angry at her and yet she is his anchor to this world.

Imagine watching your woman turn into a monster and drink blood. Would you feel lied to?

Imagine watching her seduce men to drink from them, would that make you angry?

Would it twist your soul to see these things? Would it make you learn to hate her even when you loved her?

If she could find a way to make you flesh again after 200 years of this, when you were both convinced, wrongly, that your death was her fault, what would you do?

Which is stronger? Love or hate?

Because you do love her. You can't help it. She is childlike at times. Tough as nails other times. Each night she bleeds for you as a gift that keeps her weaker than she has to be. She takes your verbal abuse. Is it because she has to? Or because she loves you that much? Maybe it's simply that you are right and she is wrong?

Who thinks they can play this complex man?

We will start with the meeting on the river boat.

We will play out their happy days, their struggle and Rutledge's death. Then we will play out him coming to her, watching her, talking to her and how very much she wishes she could touch him.

There will be times they work together and times they are at odds.

PM me if you think you are up for the challenge.

Thanks,

Fury

Valdis and Rutledge

The year was 1904. Valdis Inger, as she was known back then, was on a steam ship, in Africa. Not many were aboard and she was hard pressed to hide her true nature during the damn voyage. At the time, she was in service to a powerful elder, who had sent her to this place. She didn’t mind going. In fact she loved the idea really, of seeing the animals and the plants there. She knew it would be an incredible adventure. Her job was to gather information about a local Prince and his people, then bring it back to her current master.

At the Captain’s table the first night of this small voyage she set eyes on Sir Rutledge Sexsmith for the very first time. There was something about him that sang to her something that hummed in her blood when she was around him. It may have been something in his voice. Maybe it was the musky scent of him that appealed to her. It could have just been his fine boned English face that drew her to him but there was so much more to him than that. He had impeccable manners and he was so smart. She was fascinated by him. He was also very passionate and outspoken about something very dear to her heart but rarely considered in 1904, animal rights.

Sir Sexsmith seemed to be interested in Valdis also. They talked long into the night. Conversing together about so many things, it was like they had known each other or been looking for each other, forever. Before the trip was done, Valdis and Rutledge were lovers and the love they made back in 1904 was well, shocking, really. It’s seems that the noble line of Sexsmith’s had not taken their name lightly. They had handed down many fine and unusual techniques in their long lineage. Rutledge had studied a great deal on this subject on his own as well. Valdis, of course, had been around for a while, experiencing much sexually, through all those long years. Yes, they were very compatible in bed. The sex was incredible but it was even more than that.

They really liked each other. They felt almost complete together. For the first time in a long time Valdis didn’t feel alone. Something in Valdis made Rutledge feel warm. At dusk when she came around him, he felt more hopeful about life than he ever had before. He knew she’d never fit in to his life or society but he didn’t want to think about that. He just wanted to enjoy this while he could.

So while they had the time they talked, laughed and enjoyed each other most all night before sneaking back to their cabins so a little decorum would be maintained. They had two weeks of glorious nights. Those were wonderful times in which they sometimes felt like they were the only two people in the world.

When the ship docked, Rutledge went out into the bush while Valdis stayed in town. He had his mission, she had hers. It pained them both, but they were dedicated and stubborn. It was clear they had to be separated to accomplish their goals.

Valdis began by presenting herself to the Prince. She got a very frosty welcome to say the least. Rutledge began making waves with poachers and their rich clients. Valdis continued to work at ingratiating herself and slowly gained acceptance, confidences, and status within local kindred society. She was not xenophobic like many of her ilk and so she also managed to become acquainted with a few shifters and with some mortals too. She began to hear about some plans to take out an animal rights activist. Her heart seemed to both stutter to life then die in dread when she heard of this.

During this time she received some letters from Rutledge. They were wonderful scent drenched letters that came from the bush. Well, perhaps they were only scent drenched to Valdis’s senses, for they smelled of Rutledge all manly, and so real, as if he had worked hard before writing her but not taken a shower or bathed before penning each note. She loved the scent alone but the words, oh they were so fine. They were words of love and devotion. Each missive was so thrilling; they were almost more than she could bear, because the two of them were apart and she ached for him..

She treasured those letters. Valdis kept them for years. She held onto them wherever she went until the ink had faded and the onionskin fallen apart. Even then she kept the pieces in a sachet tied inside her clothes but eventually it all fell away to nothing. Like everything Valdis had ever loved, they were suddenly just gone, forever. Despite her long efforts to keep them close forever.

That was later though. At the time she was still getting these precious letters, she became aware of danger to her love. She made up her mind to go to Rutledge when she heard about the plot to kill him. She had the information she needed for her liege. Valdis believed she could wait before returning and giving it to her Prince.

So Valdis hired some men to take her into the bush. She found Rutledge. She began a campaign immediately, begging him to leave and come back with her on the next ship. Valdis told him she knew of plots in place against him. She kissed him, pleaded, and touched him. She demanded tried everything in her considerable arsenal to convince him. It did no good. She thought she would stay with him then. Her plan was to try to protect him in spite of his refusals. Valdis only hoped the attack would come at night. Cowards usually attack at night. She thought she had a good chance of saving her love.

So began her siege. She’d sleep in the dirt during the day, then steal into his camp at night. Valdis would love him then in ways that most men would never even think of but if given the chance would enjoy. She would cajole him. Always she would try to protect him, from himself even, if need be.

Rutledge began to get short tempered with Valdis. He saw her efforts as a lack of faith in his ability. He knew he was strong and strong willed but he felt these were good things needed for a man in his position.. He was in fact, willful and spoiled in many ways though He and Valdis never recognized it. Rutledge felt his strength, security; money, fame, title and just plain intelligence would keep him safe absolutely.

On their last night together he was a bit cruel to her in bed. She didn’t blame him and didn’t mind at all really for she liked that sort of thing at times. She knew and understood that a man needs to feel strong. She got a bit of a thrill from his mistreatment, as she also needed to feel like a softer thing than she normally was in her job. She wanted to feel like a woman. Valdis was loyal to those she cared about. She planned to make sure she got him to safety no matter what.

Then she was summoned. There was nothing she could to do resist it. Though she tried. She had tried so hard to fight the summons but that eventually was something she could no longer do.

She told Rutledge she had to go. He seemed not to care at the time. Indeed he seemed glad to be rid of her at that moment, not liking her constant state of anxiousness for him or what he had resorted to with her the night before in anger. Rutledge did believe that she could be happy with what he had done to her, it made him sick to think about. So she went alone, pleading once more with him to come too. Promising to return as soon as she could. She was, of course not able to explain to him fully why she had to go. To tell a mortal about Kindred business meant certain death if found out to the mortal and possibly to you, no matter how value you were thought to be.

She could not risk his death by her own complicity. Her plan was to hurry home, then find a way to be given leave so she could come back and stay with him until he returned to England. After that she knew he would return to his life. There she would have no place. She was not a fine lady. Indeed she was not even human. Still, she would try to make sure he was safe. He was such a wonderful man, fighting for animal rights at a time that was considered nothing short of ridiculous. How she loved him for that alone. Then again there were so many things she loved him for.

She never made it back to rescue him. He was tortured and killed two weeks later. For some reason his spirit didn’t go where it was supposed to. Instead he appeared to Valdis at the moment of his demise exactly as he had appeared in death. It was a horrible and violent aspect of her beloved that appeared to her as she rose from her day slumber.

His horrible visage was terrifying to her. He was quite angry with her as well. It was he felt, as though she had caused his death by all her worry and talk of plots against him. Her lack of faith in him was his undoing or so he felt at that time.

She cried blood tears and he was fascinated, this seemed proof to him that she was in fact evil and dangerous. His sweet Valdis who had appeared so good before in his eyes, now he found was secretly a demon of unknowable evil. He felt he had been taken in, lied too, and manipulated. So he determined he would stay there, watching, and learning her secrets. Appearing before her each night as she awoke he was now exhorting her about her sins and his death. Valdis thought she was losing her mind. She never was sure if this was real or not. She felt such guilt. She wanted him to be safe. She wanted to make him happy. He wanted her dead like him. He was full of fury.

(continued)

The news broke in Europe of Sir Rutledge Sexsmith’s death. Valdis had so hoped that she was just being overly excitable, though she never had been given to such hallucinations or visions before. Now she knew he really was dead and her heart broke. Her plans to return to Africa fell apart. She continued in service for her Prince until she was no longer needed. The spark of fun, and of hope had gone out of her. She was nothing now, just a drudge.

Eventually she was freed from service and she roamed, always thinking that she needed to keep moving. Always wishing for him, as he had been, not angry like now. Never knowing for sure if it was her own mind or his shade so angry with her. She began to believe in earnest that she had caused his downfall.

After all if she had only heard one more piece of information, been more loving or persuasive, been a little stronger in pushing the summons aside, then perhaps she could have saved him. She didn’t. She let him die. Everyone she had loved as far back as she could remember was dead. She had not been able to save them either. Rutledge pointed this out and much more.

She began to make a nightly token of her repentance to him cutting herself, bleeding just enough of her guilty pain out that she could stand to just be, that night, and that seemed to make him happy. It was her token to him too. He liked the gesture his nightly blood token, very much. He liked it even more when he realized it weakened her a little to bleed herself so.

He enjoyed watching her intricate cold silver knife slice sharply into her creamy white thighs. They would heal all too quickly but he knew from her swift intake of breath that she felt the pain of her sins for just a moment.

She took his name as she moved around. Valdis had a problem with her memory and she knew that. So she thought if she adopted his last name it would help her sometimes-unreliable memory. She wanted so very much to remember those wonderful nights together as nothing else before or after had touched her so much or made her feel so nearly alive.

Never would she have expected to keep seeing him each night. His bloody, tortured countenance was there almost always with her. He was mostly angry with her for over two hundred years.

There were times she slept. It shouldn’t have happened. She could never remember or understand why it did. Valdis would nonetheless sleep for a decade or more then awaked starving and mad. Rutledge would watch her then a true demon from hell, sucking and killing till satisfied. Where he went at the times of her extended sleep, he would not tell her.

He was there most of the time. He was furious with her most of the time but when he wasn’t around it scared her and she missed him.

Rutledge also helped her occasionally, pointing out spirits and those attuned to them. He was able to see things she couldn’t. He would let her know of poachers sometimes. They both shared a hate of that kind, for he had been killed by them.

He spoke to her too, almost seeming to stroke her hair, though she could feel no touch from him. She wanted to feel that touch so much. There were times when animals were killed and Rutledge would tell Valdis about helping the animal spirits move on. Yet he still remained with her almost always. Each time she met someone she could like or care for he’d warn her, that she would ruin them, hurt them and let them die. Often his warnings seemed to be borne out.

The society she lived in was very violent. They were supposed to be immortal but that was only the case if your fellows were not plotting to put knives in your back. In their highly political world of Byzantine games every one was a pawn and absolutely everyone was expendable. When one is old and bored the games become more deadly than mere chess. If the werewolves, mages and other non mortals were to find out about you, your existence could become forfeit.. Even mortals could be your final death if they became wise to your proclivities.

He was angry about many things but Valdis’s obsession with sex and love, perhaps, most of all made him furious. In this one area he could not stop her, no matter what he did. He wanted to, for he felt she belonged to him alone. That is what he thought and felt in his ghostly heart. She had been the death of him and he would be the death of her. It was only fitting.

Yet at times he loved her too. He even saved her life a few times. She could be so childlike, so happy and almost human. That was a true magic that he loved about her. He would laugh then and shake his head at her antics.

She learned all the latest jargon, learned to cook, and so much more. She seemed to love little moments of illusion in which she could almost believe she was alive and normal again. Rutledge loved her then too, in those rare, but precious moments.

She began to seek punishment when things went wrong. She always took all blame upon herself. Rutledge loved that. He hated anyone else touching her, but loved that she sought that out and felt the guilt she should. He loved watching it, never focusing on those she got to help her, only on her and the punishments themselves.

Valdis thought she saw things very clearly now. Rutledge was her one great love, her soul mate and she would do just about anything to go back, change things or remake them. There was of course nothing she could do, he was lost to her she was still wondering if his shade were real or just her imagination.

Until one night she made a deal with a creepy vampire. She would give up the secrets to her clans powers to this woman and her kinsman if they would make Rutledge flesh once more. The questions now were would they Giovanni kin be able to do that? Make Rutledge healthy and flesh once more, able to lead a normal life again? Or did they lie about what they could and could not do?

What would Rutledge say when she told him about the deal? He seemed to never be around when the Giovanni were, why was that? There must be a reason.

He had in fact been gone several nights and she was missing him. Where was he and why? Anxiously she waited hoping for his return to her, fearing he was finally gone forever.

You will feel me in your dreams
In the shower as the spray hits your body
On the air when the breeze flows across your lips
You will feel me.

You may want to or you may not
It doesn’t matter in the end, I will always be there
I will haunt you every night make you feel shame
You will feel me.

I will drive you to your destruction
Make you see where you have erred
Watch you cut yourself and bleed for me
You will feel me.

What you are, the lies you tell?
That can’t save you now
I will cling to you and ride your skin
You will feel me digging in.

I will laugh when you hurt.
Tease you into dark despair
Tell you again all your sins whisper them against your hair
You will feel me.

Yet still you want more of me
How foolish and strong your “love” can be
You plot to make me flesh thinking I don’t know?
Oh you will feel me.

You think we share a great love?
Those spare moments when you made me smile
Or when I helped you track and kill?
Yes, you feel me.

Go ahead with your necromantic plans dear
Bring me back to life, suck on me
Make me scream hand me a torch and a knife.
Then you will feel me.