If Yesterday Should Speak

[Josée's Note: Okay, a little quicker than I had intended. This is a 4,800 word fanfic involving two characters and an NPC from my "London By Night" Vampire: the Requiem game. Helena is a Ventrue NPC who was treated badly by her sire and former domitor, Deveraux. She was rescued by two PCs (Merris and Czaka), and has become Merris' partner, and an adoptive mother to his also-embraced daughter, Lucy (who is a knife obsessed 14-year-old). Merris is an ex-smuggler who left his wife and newborn daughter to keep them out of harm's way. He found his way to London and has since been embraced into the Gangrel clan and has become Seneschal of London. Czaka was a Polish art forger, embraced by the Mekhet. She met an unfortunate end in a botched 'rescue' attempt after Merris was found to have erased parts of his memory to aid an enemy of the Fief. Prince Emily, I should note, IS the same Emily as listed in other froth on this blog, but this is an alternate universe version who shares a similar, but not the same, background.]

Song List:

Human – Christina Perri

Cups – Anna Kendrick

Say Something – Kurt Schneider

Let Me Go – Avril Lavigne

Hope/Xavier’s Theme – John Ottman [This when moving the urn is HORRIBLY bittersweet]

Perfect (Acoustic) – P!nk

Who Knew (Acoustic) – P!nk [This fits so well near the end]

Bridge Over Troubled Water – Hayley Westenra

If Yesterday Should Speak

Dedicated to Ryan (Merris) and Jak (Czaka).

Emily Richards [Live Vampire: the Requiem] : AU "A Nighttime Stroll"

[Josée's Note: On the livegame LiveJournal community, there were often monthly challenges posted up. August 2011's challenge was "Write about your character meeting you." And so I did. Behold Emily meeting 19-year-old Josée. For anyone not in Norfolk, the UEA is the University of East Anglia, in Norwich, which I lived close to and was where our game ran.]

Emily strolled down to the lake at the UEA. She had been told it was particularly quiet and a nice place to reflect. She'd hopped on a bus and had decided to take it easy, wandering around the huge concrete buildings in both awe and slight...disdain? She had to admit, it was truly beautiful over at the lake, the leaves moving in the breeze. She had always loved the evenings...ever since she was a child...and coming to a place like this just reminded her of the beauty she saw back home in Kent.

Her musings were quickly interrupted though.

A rather harrassed young woman, barely older than herself (she guessed), was almost striding along the path, and Emily figured she'd eventually walk into her.

Emily Richards [Live Vampire: the Requiem] : "Invictus?"

[Josée's Note: This was the second part of Emily's pre-game canon, once again posted on the livegame's LiveJournal community originally. This was posted in August 2011, with the subtitle "Emily recovers from her run-in with the "mysterious man"."]

"Invictus."

That was all the knowledge she had been left with - a tiny scrap of paper that the man had thrown behind him as he left her in the street. He hadn't even looked back...hadn't the time nor inclination to take a final glance at the young woman he had left in his wake, the one standing in a torn black jumper, and jeans covered in dirt and mud...her face stony, and body bruised and battered.

"Invictus."

She shoved the scrap into her jeans pocket. What was she meant to do with that? She didn't even know where to start! And even if she had...would she have wanted to? For all she knew, it could be some kind of place used to keep trophies...prizes. Besides...Invictus...didn't that mean "victory" or something in some other language? Was he simply sneering at her...his victory...her loss?

Emily Richards [Live Vampire: the Requiem] : "In Unfamiliar Territory"

[Josée's Note: This was originally posted to the livegame's LiveJournal community in April 2011. These are "Emily's first moments in Norwich".]

In Unfamiliar Territory

Her blue eyes opened and blinked furiously as she tried to get accustomed to the darkness. She became aware of a coldness running down the right hand side of her body, and realised she was laying on the floor...cobblestone, by the looks of it. She tried to push herself up, but something resisted her...she didn't know if it was simply a lack of strength or something more. She tried to stretch, but again, that same force pushed against her movement.

There was a gruff laugh from above her, and it was then that her mind seemed to kickstart.

Emily Richards [Live Vampire: the Requiem] : Backstory

[Josée's Note: Emily Richards was my first livegame character and I was 17 at the time of her creation. This was her background. For those who are interested, Emily was a Ventrue Invictus character.]

Emily was descended on her father’s side from a long line of vampire hunters from Kent, each of her predecessors passing their skills on to their eldest child.  When Emily reached the age of ten, her father began filling her in on stories of the dead not staying dead...the vampires of the horror movies actually existing and the need to protect the innocents from their ways and from potentially being their prey or their childer. Emily always felt both frightened of her father and his job (what if he never returned?) and excited by the way she was one day going to become involved in this whole side of living no-one else really knew existed.