entrancelogs | [CLOSED] Acting tough with looks that kill;

Entry tags:

[CLOSED] Acting tough with looks that kill;

Who: Jo Harvelle & Elijah Mikaelson
Where: The Library
When: 10/18, evening.
Rating: PG by default, will edit if need be.
Summary: New flavors of monster means it's time for research.
The Story:

Research had always been one of Jo's strong points. She'd done a lot of it over the years, with no choice but to stay home and listen to hunting stories as the people who told them drifted in and out, picking up on rumors whenever they passed through and chasing down information so she could pass it on to someone who could do something about it while she stayed behind and waited tables. She'd gotten good at putting case files together, thorough and comprehensive, and she was hoping to put that same knack for intel-gathering and organization to use now.

She'd given the library a few passes since discovering the nature of certain new neighbors, but she hadn't had enough information about the kinds of vampires they were to narrow things down. That had changed, and the after-dinner hours find her seated at one of the large tables with a number of books stacked in front of her. She's turned her own chair to face the one beside her, leaning back and propping her feet up as she sits with an oversized book open in her lap. The topics of the rest of the material she's assembled tend to vary: a number of them are specifically focused on vampire lore, but there are others, including herbs with mystical properties and memory magic. Beside her is an open notebook, one she'll turn to and periodically make notes in, now up to her third page of bullet points to be reorganized and shared with certain other residents later, once she's confident the information itself will be useful.

She's going to need a hell of a lot more than that vervain bracelet to keep herself safe, not to mention others. She may have been caught unawares once, but like hell she's letting it happen again.

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He prefers the comfort of the library to many of the other rooms in this mansion. The books provide a sort of comfort for Elijah. They let him relax and not think about Niklaus and what he's up to. Though he claims it's simply information he's choosing to gather, but Elijah isn't sure if he can just trust that. Niklaus has done nothing, but give him half truths and snide comments. Not once has he been completely and totally honest with Elijah and it's starting to eat away at Elijah. Rebekah is the only one he feels he can actually trust. At least trust enough to give him the truth about what he missed from their home. Her and Hayley have actually given him more information than Niklaus has since he first got here. He wants to believe them when they say Niklaus has changed, but he doesn't see it. He doesn't see the man he claims to have become. He just sees the same paranoid child who locked him away in a coffin to get what he wanted.

He can smell her almost immediately upon entering the library. He doesn't know if he should approach, but they're at an uneasy truce. Especially because Niklaus still has compelled her and that isn't quite broken yet. Plus she hadn't exactly told him to stop kissing her. She had even kissed him back previously. She only seemed to grow upset and uneasy when he told Joanna how he cared for her. He didn't often express his feelings in that manner, but she made it impossible to get a word in sometimes. Often he had to blurt out what he felt before she tried to verbally steamroll him again. She wasn't a particularly easy woman to care about, but he's never been after an easy relationship. He's always followed what he felt and that's why he's in this predicament with her. He can't ignore the pull he has when he's around her.

"Brushing up on my kind?" By now he's made his way behind her quietly and taken up a post. He's skimmed what she's been reading and he finds it admirable her dedication to learning about his kind. He has no doubts that most of it is how to stop his kind and how to stop Niklaus, but it's still admirable.

She startles enough that she immediately slams the book closed, prepared to spring out of her seat and whirl around to face whoever's spoken up from behind her -- the voice, after a moment, clicks once the initial shock has subsided, and she sighs heavily before grabbing hold of the back of her chair and settling back in, having only gotten halfway to her feet before things fell into place. She looks over her shoulder and smiles grimly at him, setting the book itself on the table and sliding it away from herself for the time being.

Their last encounter had made damn sure that whenever they next crossed paths, it would be awkward. The situation with Klaus and her anger at being manipulated complicated things enough, but ten minutes in his room with the intent to talk about what had happened in private had only made things even harder for her to get her head around. She had to hand it to him: he was both decisive and persistent, things she had to admit she would have admired without any kind of hesitation if he'd been human. He'd kissed her, something that was tough to come to terms with on its own, but it was the words that followed that had stuck with her as the week work on, heavy and dramatic and far more intense than Jo knew what to do with.

She exhales slowly, regaining her composure. There was no hope of playing it off like he hadn't scared her, but she visibly relaxed a little, something she hadn't done much of since she'd found out that the incredibly pleasant first day they'd had more than a month ago had been with a vampire.

"Considering your brother already made the first move and decided to play with my memory, yes -- I'd like to be prepared to defend myself." She doesn't seem inclined to hunt Klaus down and put an end to him herself, at least -- not just yet. "Best way to protect yourself is learn as much as you can and then put it into practice. Same process any time you run into something new."

As hunters went, she considered herself to be among the well-informed. She'd had good role models. Her father had always been thorough, so had Bobby and Rufus.

"I don't like fighting blind, even if I'm aiming to play defense."

The way she startles actually makes Elijah smile, but he tries to downplay it. No need to make her get riled up. He knows that if she catches him smiling about her jumping she'll most likely choose to cause an uproar about it. He bites his tongue about commenting as well. She'll not want that. Instead he steps back from her chair just to give her the space she seems to desire. She's been through quite an ordeal. One that will take some time to recover from. He's trying to hold onto what little truce they seem to have with one another. The one that keeps allows her to ask about his well being after a fight with his brother. They're not terribly close, but he's trying to accomplish this task. It's not easy to break through the defenses of a hunter. Especially one with as much physical trauma in her background as Jo. One that centers around monsters and mayhem.

He nods at her snide remark towards Niklaus. Not unwarranted and not hated. He deserves it. He deserves much more for what he did to her. Mostly Elijah would like to be the one to give it to him. "True. You make a point." He glances at the books and then back at her. "I understand, but you won't find what you're looking for in those books, Joanna." He approaches the table finally and takes a seat besides her. "My brother and I saw to it that very little written information exists about us. We preferred word of mouth." Unless they planted text. That was only to help Niklaus break his curse though. The sun and the moon myth kept both sides looking for answers for them. Neither knew what they were even doing. They've worked hard to stay anonymous for fear of their father catching up. Though Niklaus did make it difficult.

"You could ask me if you require information." He doesn't mind answering questions. He'd done it for Dean and he'd been terribly rude the entire time. If answering these questions will make Joanna feel safer then it's something he'll happily do.

She purses her lips slightly as she considers the offer. She hadn't even begun to think about asking him, just went straight for the written word. Asking him would have been awkward; you didn't just come out and ask someone to give you a list of their brother's greatest weaknesses. The fact that they would be Elijah's weaknesses too made it seem even less plausible. On top of that, there were other reasons asking him would have been just plain awkward; she hadn't been keeping her distance all week purely by accident.

She sighs, sitting upright and lowering her feet to make room for him to sit.

"I could ask, but it feels kind of like cheating. Not to mention I'm not really sure how I feel about asking someone to betray family." She'd seen the argument, and Elijah himself had been open about the fact that he disapproved of his brother's ventures, but even for vampires, family was family, right? She'd made a conscious decision to try and view him as a person rather than a pair of fangs. If she was going to do that, then she had to consider how she would have felt if someone asked her how to get to her mother, or to Adam, or Sam and Dean. Even if she was angry with one of them -- which, if she was being honest, was often the case when it came to her relationship with Dean -- that didn't change what they were to her.

Loyalty was important.

"It doesn't mean I won't do whatever it takes to protect myself and other people from him. Somehow I don't think getting all the humans in the mansion on vervain is going to be enough, but there has to be some kind of sustainable and preferably non-violent solution." Despite the fact that it was her job to kill monsters, it didn't do a whole lot, killing them here. He'd only get back up again and she'd have a pissed-off hybrid on her hands, assuming she could do it at all, but that wasn't the way to solve this particular problem. She couldn't even say for sure if he'd done enough damage to merit that kind of retaliation, but he'd done enough on principle that she was still pissed.

"You forget that it's betraying myself as well. I'm aware of how vicious my brother can be. These people don't deserve to have his cruelty turned upon them. I believe that it's partly my duty to make sure the don't fall prey to him." He had absolutely tapping a vein when he was feeling peckish or even just bored. These people were only sheep for Niklaus to slaughter. If Joanna wanted to work towards better preparing the people of Wonderland about the dangers of his family then he couldn't really fault her. He could only offer her help and information that could keep them safe. It's not about betraying his family either. Not when Niklaus has done nothing, but betray Elijah in the past.

Elijah purses his lips when she insists that she's going to protect these people. He'll do what he can for them as well. He's not entirely sure how much many of them trust him anymore, but he's hoping they can look past what happened on the network. The moment where Elijah lost control of himself and his true face became very visible for them all to see. The way he didn't hesitate to escalate things with Niklaus into violence.

"My last memory of Niklaus was him putting a dagger into my back and locking me away in a coffin. He openly admitted to me he planned to keep me daggered for a few centuries to teach me a lesson." He tilts his head. "I hardly think me sharing a few trade secrets with you constitutes as betrayal when it comes to my brother, Joanna."

There's a lengthy pause as she considers that. While it would be wrong to say that she trusted him completely, his taking a knife while arguing with Klaus about her compulsion, however mild, had done something to prove that he was absolutely more friend than foe. It still didn't feel right, asking how to go after his kind, but it he was willing to share-- she wasn't in any position to turn away that kind of opportunity.

A frown tugs at her lips. Centuries. She can't even begin to imagine that; for a human it's absolutely unreachable. Even for a vampire, it wasn't as though a century was a drop in the bucket. They might have had more time, but a hundred years was still a hundred years, and if Klaus had been planning to keep him tucked away in a coffin for multiple centuries--

He might have been a vampire, but she's starting to become reasonably sure that he's a good person, too, or he is now. She can't say anything about what might have come before the Elijah she's been getting to know, but he's been nothing but a friend when he had no reason to be. That said a lot. Hayley had all but encouraged her to trust him. It would take time, but maybe she could do that, little by little. Carefully, so as not to get burned.

"Okay," she says finally, shifting in her chair and turning to a new page in her notebook, prepared to write down anything relevant. "Any way that I can possibly defend myself or my family against Klaus-- I need to know. Anything that you think might help." She pauses before adding, earnestly: "I'll make sure it doesn't get used against you."

Edited (typooo) 2014-11-04 04:49 (UTC)

"Against Niklaus specifically? There isn't much. The daggers that work on me and the rest of my siblings don't work on him because of his werewolf side. His negatives from both sides tend to cancel each other out." It's upsetting, but it's the truth. Steve had been very upset when he learned that Niklaus had twice the power and half the weaknesses because of that. It's a bit unfair, but Elijah has pretty much accepted the idea that life is not fair at all. He's had over a thousand years to get familiar with that concept. He's also almost accepted the fact that Niklaus is a child that will exploit all avenues to make Elijah suffer if he grows bored enough.

He sighs because this isn't the news he wants to give to her. "I believe you have no intention of directly harming me, Joanna. Vervain is still one of your best bets. Like I mentioned before. You could desiccate our kind. That will slow us for good. If our body is completely drained of blood then we become immobile. That works for Niklaus as well. It also lessens our strength. We become weaker when we don't feed. By taking away our blood and starving us of a food source you could keep him bound somewhere. But I wouldn't advise that method without my help. Overpowering him to accomplish this would be foolish and ultimately cost you your life."

His werewolf and vampire sides cancelling each other out. It was quite possibly the worse case Jo had ever seen of two wrongs making a right, as rare as that was. She nods sharply as he explains, taking quick notes by marking each item down as its own bullet point. She'd sort through it and make use of it later, but if there was one thing she'd learned about collecting information over the years, it was that everything was worth making a note of.

"Dessication," she echoes, nodding again. It was a lot more complicated than the vampires she was used to, and those were incredibly dangerous in their own right-- vicious and outclassing humans in every possible way, but a machete usually did the trick if you could get close enough. This was enough to make her miss the days when a little dead man's blood and a good blade were all you needed.

"I'm not going to go after him on my own. You don't have to worry about that. Things are-- different here. Even if someone did manage to kill him, he would just come back. A hard thing for some hunters to come to terms with, but you don't want someone that powerful pissed at you. Being able to protect people is the important part-- thank you, for that." She pauses, briefly. "And thank you for trusting me. I'm not sure I deserve it, considering I haven't trusted you a whole lot."

He does look thoroughly entertained at the way she's taking notes so enthusiastically. She's smart though. She understands the danger that Niklaus could pose if he felt inclined to stir up trouble. He could harm a great many people and he wouldn't hesitate to go after the ones that meant something to Elijah. Cause his brother pain and destroying his future happiness has always been something Niklaus took great joy in. Always afraid that they would truly abandon him for the company of others. While it would be ideal these days at some point in the past leaving him was not possible. Now? Now he's wondering when he can possibly get away.

"Well, I don't expect you to trust me right off the bat. I understand that it's hard for hunters to see beyond what we are." He's suffered at the hands of hunters in the past. It was Niklaus who was able to overcome them due to his werewolf side canceling out what the dagger did to them as vampires. He liberated them, but Elijah understood the toll that it took on Rebekah. She thought she had found true love and once again she wandered astray. He didn't blame her like Niklaus did, but it didn't mean he wasn't upset at the time. "But we didn't ask to be made into what we are. Our mother and father made that choice for us." And then they wanted to kill them for it. Wipe them out.

"Where I come from, most vampires aren't like you."

It's as plain as she can make it. Blunt, but undeniably honest. Benny had been good. He'd tried his hardest to be good, at any rate, and Dean had vouched for him. It had taken Jo a little bit of time, but she'd warmed up to him, proof enough that befriending someone who was something other than human wasn't impossible. Her friendships with Castiel and Gabriel were decent examples too -- some people would argue that angels were as bad as monsters, sometimes.

She presses her lips together as she sets her pen down, notes set aside for the time being.

"I know this place isn't home. Things are different here, but it still takes getting used to." Not to mention that Klaus himself made it obvious that vampires generally weren't to be trusted. "You've been a good friend so far. I hope you prove me wrong about everything."

About her hesitations, her concerns, her uncertainty. She wasn't counting on it, but it would be nice.

"I know that what you are-- wasn't your choice. I'm sorry that doesn't make things easier. I wish it did."

"So I've gathered. I believe the vampire lore changes from place to place."

Angel was a different sort of vampire himself. He wasn't like the ones from Elijah's home either. He doesn't believe the ones that Joanna's used to are like Angel's either. The fact that the vampire lore changes so drastically is confusing to him. Angel's vampires seem to suffer the most amount of weaknesses. Which is a shame for them. At least the vampires of his world have the opportunity to find a witch and get themselves a daylight ring. Angel's kind aren't so lucky.

"I'll do my best. You certainly don't make it easy."

That right there is some Elijah teasing and sass. Enjoy it, Joanna. It's one of the few times he's not accidentally being a condescending ass.

"Just because I am what I am--doesn't necessarily mean I'm without feeling like one might assume. Has it been explained to you how heightened things are for vampires?"

"It's not my job to make it easy," Jo retorts with a half-smile, tossing that sass right back at him. If she made it easy, she wouldn't have been a very good hunter, and she liked to think she was worth her salt. She was wary. Nothing wrong with that, now, was there?

She pauses a moment before shaking her head.

"Unless you mean senses, then no. Don't think anyone mentioned. You're my resident vampire expert, anyway." She hesitates another moment before adding: "And I never said I didn't think you could feel."

"True. I guess it's not."

Talking with her like this does make him feel better. He feels more open about things. He feels like they've maybe hit a bit of a turning point. One that doesn't have him questioning her and her trying to decide if he wants to eat her. He's happy to sit here and let some humor fill the library rather than discuss his brother's weaknesses and dash her hopes in ever being able to properly come up with a plan of defense. It's not easy to defend when you're going up against someone like Niklaus.

Elijah shakes his head quickly. "I did say one." He reminds her with a smile. Hinting that he wasn't speaking directly about her, but people in general. "When we're turned everything becomes--heightened. Emotions and bonds form quickly for us. We love fiercer than any normal person. We become attached quicker as well. When that bond is threatened or hurt in any way it can paralyze us in ways most couldn't understand." Notice how he said most this time. He said most because she lost someone and he didn't want her thinking he was making light of her loss. It all hurt.

"And believe it or not, though this place makes it a little tough sometimes, I'm good at my job." Maybe not as good as Sam or Dean, as someone who'd had years more experience than her, but she was a damn good informant and tracker and had gotten the knack for hunting pretty easily -- it wasn't lack of ability that made her mother declare her as unable to cut it.

Her wry smile fades as she listens, considering the weight of those words. She can't say she understands how it feels for sure, but a part of her feels like she does. She's felt the crushing pain of loss, the paralyzing fear of the threat of having someone taken away from her. Imagining it amplified was-- intense.

"So you feel everything that we feel, just... more?" To put it as simply as possible. "I didn't think that kind of thing could be measured."

He believes she's nothing, but good at her job. She's too dedicated. She's too focused. She's determined and that can go a long way. He imagines it's probably not easy being a female in the world of hunters. The only hunters he encountered were all men. To meet a female one that was just as dedicated if not more open minded was good in his eyes. She's far more open minded than Dean and that gives her a leg up in his opinion. There will always be situations that aren't black and white like most believe them to be. You have to learn to see the gray and so far she's doing a fine job of that.

"Yes. More." Elijah takes a moment to look at her. Long and hard. It's up to him to make sure that she doesn't just see him as a monster like Dean believes him to be. She believes that partially, but he knows she wouldn't be sitting here if she was completely afraid of him. She would build that wall back up. One brick's been removed and a lot of work lays before him, but he believes he can handle it. "You haven't wondered why I see so taken with you?"

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[CLOSED] Acting tough with looks that kill;

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