It's a foggy night; unpleasant smells linger in the air, and the streetlamps overhead glow like sullen yellow moons.

A shadow steps out of the fog, grabs her around the waist, and spins her away into an alley, graceful as a dancer. Before she has time to draw breath, she's pinned against the crumbling bricks with a hand over her mouth and fangs in her throat, held high enough that her feet don't even touch the ground.

Being eaten by a vampire hurts. There's the fangs, of course, that part won't come as a surprise; but there's something else beneath that, a deep piercing pain like nothing she's ever felt before, like the very essence of her life is being torn open and drained away.

She makes an indignant sort of squeaking noise at being snatched, muffled by the hand. The pain is intense, but in an unfamiliar sort of way. Not something like pricking her hand, or spraining an ankle, but more intimate, more violating. She's been carefully nurturing her own life's essence since she was a child. It's hers, hers because it is her and hers because she took care of it, and now suddenly something bites her and it's all being drained away. The terror and panic at actually being attacked by a vampire is beaten, absurdly, by her temper. Fuck this vampire, he doesn't get to eat her. She has had a long and painful day, and he can fuck right off.

He may be draining her life away, but he doesn't have all of it yet. There's still something available that she can use without killing herself. She can just see about setting him on fire, how about that -

And then it—doesn't hurt. Or rather, it still does, his teeth are still buried in her neck, her life still flows out of her with every heartbeat... but he's draining her slowly and carefully, now, the way you'd eat ice cream on a warm summer day, and it feels less like being devoured and more like being caressed. Her blood runs quick and hot, and the sensations of her body are magnified until the feeling of his mouth on her throat is the greatest pleasure she's ever known.

This is distracting enough - unexpected enough - to interrupt her attempt to set him on fire. The power slips out of her grasp like sand slipping through her open fingers. For a few seconds she's just - lost. Lost to self recrimination at her own failure to defend herself, lost to despair at the thought of trying to work with even less resources if trying again, and if she's honest, lost to the intoxicating pleasure. She makes a little whine that's half an expression of her frustration, and half an expression of, well. A woman who has just been confronted with the greatest pleasure she's ever known.

Now the terror wins out. Draining her life away is one thing, but making her enjoy it is - well, it's quite another. And she does enjoy it, almost as much as she hates enjoying it. The feeling of being pinned while he plays with her body to make it sing, the intimacy of draining her life away with the care of a lover, the way she can't make herself stop trembling - it's very clear that she is utterly at his mercy. It's very clear that she doesn't entirely mind. Some part of her wants this, enjoys this, doesn't want him to stop until he's taken what he wants and left her exhausted and helpless and aching. She hates what he's done to her, hates being turned against herself, hates herself for liking anything about her own assault.

Whimpering and writhing against him, she scrabbles desperately for some way to end this confusing ecstasy. She fumbles a hand to tangle in his hair, in a vain attempt to directly pull him off. This works about as well as expected, in that it doesn't. He's stronger than she is. She tries again to set him on fire, but her skill with magic must be as shaky as the hand in his hair, because she can't seem to keep a hold on what little power she has left. Perhaps she just doesn't have enough left to work with anymore, she's not in any state to make judgments like that. She squirms, bites the hand at her mouth, kicks at him, but even such acts of defiance feels hollow. They only serve to highlight the power disparity. She's not getting away.

He ignores her struggles with careless ease, as though stopping her from biting him wouldn't even be worth the bother.

She reaches a third time for magic, but finds that she has nothing to grab hold of. Whatever hope she had to set him on fire, it's definitely out of her reach now. She just doesn't have enough power to work with. Maybe if she were a better witch she could manage it, but a better witch wouldn't be in the middle of being assaulted in an alleyway by a vampire. A better witch wouldn't be enjoying being assaulted in an alleyway by a vampire. With another whine of frustration (and something else) she bucks against him, in some impotent final attempt to get him off of her. It doesn't work.

He's won, he has her. She's just another witch that got eaten by a vampire. Her eyes fill with tears and she attempts to stifle a sob in some attempt to preserve her dignity. She manages it for the first, but not for the second. Soon enough she's abandoned all attempts at subtlety in favor of quietly crying. She offers him no further resistance; there would be no point. There's nothing else to hold onto but him, so she does, hating him and herself all the while. She doesn't begrudge herself whatever comfort she can take in this awful, awful end.

The pleasure rises as he drinks her down, until her pulse slows to a crawl and her life hangs by a thread, just a sip away from death—and he holds her there, taking nothing more, holds her with his fangs buried in her neck and strokes the last shivering remnant of her essence, drowning her senses in sweet piercing pleasure.

The moment stretches.

He could kill her whenever he wanted, could claim the last of her and drop her lifeless bleeding body in the street, but he doesn't. He holds her in helpless ecstasy for a long, long time, and then - when she's too exhausted to move, almost too exhausted to see straight - he takes his fangs out of her, heals the mark they left, kisses the spot with lips as cool as mist, and picks her up to carry her away.

Avethana's muffled by his hand over her mouth and her own dogmatic desire for dignity, but despite both, she makes some very undignified sounds. After long enough at his mercy, she stops caring about decorum and just whines for him. Trembling, sobbing, wanting it all to end, wanting it to never end, she whimpers and trembles and desperately clings to him like the lifeline that he is. She's terrified that he'll kill her. She's terrified that he won't, that he'll just keep her like this until all of her's unraveled and all that's left is a pretty pet for him to do anything he likes with. She's terrified of how good that prospect sounds. It's so awful, it's so humiliating, it's so violating, but most of all it's so amazing. It feels wondrous, better than she could ever possibly hope to describe, she couldn't have imagined something this magnificent. She wants it, she wants it so badly, but she wants him to stop stop stop because she hates that he's doing this to her. This is amazing, and it's being forced upon her, and she loves it anyway and she hates that she loves it. Writhing helplessly against him, she cries until she runs out of tears, not sure if she's sobbing from fear or pleasure or shame. When those run out all that's left are the hoarse, muffled little whimpers that she can't seem to stop herself from making.

By the end she's half delirious, too weak to do anything but whine and tremble like a leaf. If her fingers weren't tangled in his hair and in his clothes she wouldn't still be clinging to him, but they are. She doesn't have the strength to extricate them and she's not even sure if she'd want to. If asked, she'd have trouble recounting her own name. Let it end, let it end, she almost doesn't care how it happens just so long as it stops - she can't take it she can't take it there's so much please -

Then at last he releases her, and she manages a hoarse little whimper of gratitude. She tries, tries, tries to stave off unconsciousness, though for what reason she doesn't know. Maybe to ask him one of the many available questions, or to thank him for leaving her alive, or maybe to swear eternal devotion. Whichever it is, it doesn't really matter, because she doesn't manage it. The last thing she recalls are his cool lips kissing her unblemished throat, and then she falls into unconsciousness.

She wakes the next morning lying in her own bed, still wearing the same dress from last night. Her lifeforce is still very weak, but already well on its way to recovering.

For a few blissful seconds, she wonders if she dreamed it up. If she was just - so exhausted that she immediately flopped into bed and had a really really intense dream.

But no, that doesn't make sense. She wouldn't feel this exhausted and weak if it were just a dream. She wouldn't still be in the dress, wouldn't remember everything with such clarity - and her imagination isn't good enough for - for that. So, she got assaulted by a vampire in a - distinctly sexual fashion, and for some reason he left her alive. And somehow got past her wards to put her back in her bed, which he knew the location of. That's. Sure a thing that happened that she has no idea how to deal with right now. How about she put that on hold in favor of dealing with literally everything else first. That thing sounds like it'll be a doozy.

Okay, so. First order of business. Does she have work today? ... Yes, she does. She doesn't have to go right now, it's not yet the hour that the doctor will be expecting her. Well, there's no way she's going to that. She's not even sure she could manage to make it down to the office to tell the doctor that's hired her as his assistant that she is not in any condition to assist him right now. Actually doing any of the grueling and mentally challenging work involved with helping sick people sounds quite outside of her range of abilities. She qualifies as a sick person that could use some help, though unlike the rest of them she doesn't really need it. She'll recover, given time and rest.

She makes the attempt to look presentable. Or, well. More presentably like a sick person, instead of like a lady who spent the night being - assaulted - in an alleyway. Being sick gets her sympathy, being a victim of an - an assault gets her - well. A lot of things she doesn't really want to deal with right now. They'd assume things about her, her reputation would probably end up being a mess, and what would she even say? 'Oh, officer, you don't understand, he bit me with his magic sex fangs.' And if she said that she was assaulted in a - a different manner, well. That's differently bad, but still pretty bad. So - she is sick.

Fortunately, she is pale and shaky enough that looking presentably ill isn't even hard. She just needs to not be in last night's dress and put her hair in a cap and she's good to go. Then she writes an explanatory letter to the doctor, gathers up any notes of hers that he might need, and pays the neighbor across the hall's nine year old boy to go deliver it and her explanation. She looks suitably ill for him - his mother coos over her and says that it's probably all of that work with the doctor, a lady's stamina isn't built for that sort of thing, you know - and no one mentions how she got carried home late at night by a strange man. So she's probably fine and doesn't have to desperately come up with a suitable cover story that will prevent her reputation from being ripped to shreds.

Then she has a large breakfast, drinks a lot of water, and collapses in her bed to stare at the ceiling.

So uh. Last night sure was a thing that happened.

She can't, she can't seem to - her mind seems to be having some trouble wrapping itself around this fact. And also she's shaking now? That's sure a thing that's happening too. Maybe she's cold. (She does not think she's cold.) She wraps herself in blankets anyway. It - it helps. A little. At least until she thinks about the way his fangs felt and what he did to her, and then nope it is not blanket time it is vomiting and crying time. Despite her exhaustion, she has good enough reflexes to make it to a bucket instead of making a mess of her bed, so that's nice, at least. She brought a blanket with her in her haste, which is also nice. She can just have it with her while she (quietly) sobs in a heap on the floor. It wouldn't do for her to sob loudly enough for the neighbors to hear her, then they might ask what was wrong, and what could she say?

The crying makes her think of the last time she was crying and oh look, now she's hyperventilating! That's sure a thing, haha, how fun. She can diagnose what this is, she knows how to deal with it, she's a doctor's assistant, she's not a failure in all things! She holds her breath and counts to ten and releases it and promptly vomits again. Then it's back to crying. Oh, good. Comfortable familiarity. That's nice. As an intellectual exercise, let's see if she can find anything else to like in the world. She's alive, that's something. She doesn't feel super grateful that she's alive right now, not while she's sobbing brokenly in a heap on the floor next to a bucket of her own vomit, but she's pretty sure she'll be happy about that when she puts herself back together. Yay. Her mistakes haven't killed her. Yet.

What did it? She'd - she'd thought she was being careful. Obviously not careful enough. It's very clear that the vampire was, was aware of her, specifically, knew where she lived and could get into her home and oh look she has to put this line of thought on hold to stifle her own sobs so as not to attracted any attention. Ha, that's funny, she'd been plenty loud when his fangs were in her neck - no, that's not a useful line of thought. Or maybe it is, maybe she should just get all of the self hatred and self recrimination out of the way right now, so she can have space to think -

Okay, sure. She can get the self hatred out of the way now. Let's see, what horrible things does she think about herself?

She's a failure. She's a horrible, awful, arrogant waste of a person who didn't listen to her mother's warning about vampires and everything is ruined and it's all her fault. It'd be better if she never came here, better if she stayed with her parents, better if she never learned how to train her lifeforce to do magic because then she'd be safe and this wouldn't have happened to her. She would have been fine to come here if she were smarter, if she were more clever or more careful or resisted using her magic when it wasn't strictly necessary. And now she is not fine. She is distinctly not fine. She's broken, he broke her and violated her and she will not get better and it would have been better if he'd just killed her in that alleyway, she wouldn't be such a mess now, would she? Useless, stupid little witch, thinking she can dance with death and make it out alive, and look where that got her, in a heap on the floor crying.

She was already wrong and broken and horrible, because she liked it. She deserved it, she's a slut. While he had her she might as well have been his whore. That's all she'll ever be now, she's the witch that he bit, and now she's his forever, or if she's not she might as well have his fangs on her neck for all eternity. He bit her and she liked it and that means she's awful, she doesn't deserve happiness. Every single miserable moment that comes after is deserved, it's good that she's sobbing in a heap on the floor, that's what pathetic wanton little whores like her should do.

...

There. Is that all? All out now? Nothing else in that vein? Good, that was getting tiresome.

First of all, she's not a failure. She could have done better, sure, she maybe made some missteps, but it would not have been better if she'd never become a witch. It would not have been better if she'd never come here. She has personally saved many lives - she figured out that cholera spreads by water (not that she has any way to prove that, what with her having figured out with magic) and then she made it so that it doesn't spread through the main water sources of the city anymore. Frankly, if she got fangily assaulted to do that, all she can possibly think is worth it. She wrote her parents explaining her findings, too, it's not even like the knowledge of how to fix this thing dies with her. Her dad will be figuring out how to prove her findings without magic, so that other cities don't need a witch to come by and fix their pumps so they're not drinking their own shit.

Second of all, she would not be better off dead. Everything is a bit terrible right now, but terrible times don't make life not worth living. She's a mess and maybe he's going to bite her again (she has to take a brief vomit break for that thought) but that does not automatically make her better off dead. She is worth more than that, and she knows it.

Third: Fuck society, fuck her self recrimination, fuck whatever twisted logic disagrees with the following assertion: this was not her fault. It is not a man's fault if he is mugged, it is not her fault if she is bitten by a vampire. The fault lies with the criminal. That's it. None of this shit about it being her fault for learning magic at all, no, it's the vampire's fault for chomping on her.

Fourth: She is not a whore for being assaulted in a decidedly sexual manner. He did a horrible thing to her, she has confusing feelings about it, she maybe enjoyed a lot of her own assault, but whatever her reaction was to his unwanted bite, it was unwanted. She did not at any point say 'Yes please bite me with your magic sex fangs, I'm into it,' and she sure as hell wanted him to stop. She isn't wrong for not being able to fight him off, she didn't consent to anything, and see point three, it isn't her fault. There is nothing wrong with her.

All points driven home? Good and burned into her brain? Excellent, then she can move on.

Okay, on to practicalities. So the vampire knew about her, and also he left her alive.

The first probably happened because, well. She kept healing people. She'd known it was a little risky, but she'd went and twisted herself into thinking it would be safe to quietly make sure that the doctor's patients kept recovering. Instead of leaving them to die. This impulse is not bad, her actions were not bad, she saved a lot of lives, but these actions also led to her getting caught by a vampire. Probably, anyway.

As to the second, well. If she had to hazard a guess as to why, she'd say that he wants her reusable. It's what she'd do, if she were amoral and a vampire and for some reason at all interested in how delicious people are. He was very clearly enjoying himself, or he wouldn't have been... playing... with her like that. She's magically delicious, he's immortal and bored, he probably wants to keep her around to have another sip. This does not seem like a one time affair, not when he went to the trouble of figuring out where she lived and putting her back, instead of leaving her to the mercy of whatever might come across her in an alley.

Excellent. What a wonderful revelation. Now that that's settled, she's going to go throw up again. Yep, she sure is just dry heaving and occasionally throwing up bile because her stomach is very empty, that's sure neat. And she's shaking uncontrollably, that's sure a thing that's happening. Oh, and more crying. Can't forget the classics. Hooray.

She waits for this latest crying session to ebb, then calls a brief recess. First order of business: drink more water. With all of the vomiting and crying she's been losing kind of a lot. Second order of business: wow that vomit bucket is starting to smell, or possibly it has been smelling for a while and she only really got her head in order to notice it recently. How about she goes and makes that - not. Yes, good. That's better. She washes her face while she's at it, tearstained faces are just painful after a while. Then, she nibbles on some bread out of principle, drinking more water as she slowly eats. Maybe this time she'll be able to keep it all down, but she's not very hopeful. Magic sex fangs: they incite all kinds of unwanted reactions.

Okay, all taken care of? Back to work. She retrieves the blanket and wraps herself in it, and arranges to have one (1) vomit bucket at hand, and one (1) cup of water available. That will help with this next part.

So. The toughest question of them all. What is she going to do now?

She has a vampire probably-stalker that will be wanting her later. At least for her delicious witchy life essence, if not for - for other things. That a vampire of the male persuasion might want with a young woman. Considering the decidedly sexual direction his bite took. (She manages not to throw up again, but she does need to take a little while to sob herself calm.)

Since he isn't keeping her in a dungeon and biting her regularly to drain her lifeforce enough to keep her magic away from her, he's either not worried about her potentially surprising him with magic, or he hasn't thought through this endeavor of his. Somehow she doesn't think it's the latter. When he... had her... he definitely seemed like he knew what he was doing. She doesn't think that rules out that she could maybe out maneuver him and catch him off guard in some way, but. Well. It does mean that she's probably dealing with someone that has done this kind of thing before. And she has decidedly not done this kind of thing before. She's not going to bet on being able to beat him in a direct confrontation.

Maybe she could try running. Not back home, he would probably be able to find her parents, but - somewhere. Vampires are weakened by sunlight and according to her mother don't like going out in it, she could maybe just - get away. Sail to the mainland, or something. Get away from the vampire and make a new life elsewhere and hope he never ever comes after her ever... But he would be able to find her parents if he had motivation, and seeing as how she's a witch that knows about vampires - she had to get that information from somewhere. She very much doesn't want this person doing to her mother what he did to her. Maybe they all could run off to the mainland together, but that doesn't sound like the kind of thing that she could sneak under a vampire's nose very easily. Just by herself, she's not confident she could actually outrun a vampire that thinks she's delicious. It doesn't sound like a pleasant way to live her life. That'll be her backup, then. Try to solve the vampire problem first, then try running away.

So, without running away or fighting him, how does she solve the vampire problem?

... Uh.

She'd like to talk to him? Well, not really, she sort of wants to crawl in a hole and never ever see him again, but if she doesn't get that, then she'd like to talk to him. So she can at all know what he wants besides, demonstrably, to eat her. Once she has that, she can try to figure it out from there. So how does she get him to talk to her?

Okay. If she were a bloodthirsty creature of the night that wanted to have delicious, delicious witchblood, what would she find annoying? ... Stalking the witch containing it. That'd get really old really quickly. But he needs to stalk her, because her hours are often unpredictable, and he doesn't know when he'll have a good opening. If she - if she spares him an annoying bit about being a vampire, makes it so that he doesn't feel rushed to get right to the, the biting, then maybe he won't skip straight to that. Maybe he'll go, 'Why aren't you running away, silly witch?'

Which would be a foot in the proverbial door and maybe get her something more to work with than 'I have an all powerful vampiric stalker out to drain me of my fluids.' It's - something. She doesn't like it, but she likes it more than 'wait for him to ambush her again.' By a small margin. ... Very small.

Her apartment has a balcony. She doesn't tend to use it, it's pretty small and she doesn't much like the smell of the city, but she has one. So she can just - go out onto the balcony and sit out there for an hour at a regular time. Every night. At - uh - she's usually home by nine. Nine to ten, then. Like clockwork. Okay. She. She can do that. Theoretically.

She writes a letter to her parents. She explains some of the situation, leaving out the parts about - what he did to her besides not killing her.

She returns to work, pale and exhausted and with a sore throat from the crying and vomiting. No one thinks anything of her 'illness.' She's a bit more quiet than usual, but this is blamed on the sore throat.

She looks up possible escape routes to the mainland to get away from the vampire. None of them look promising for getting her away on short notice; she'll have to plan ahead carefully.

And then, every night at nine o'clock, she drags herself out onto her balcony to be vampire bait. The first time she does this, she only manages to force herself to stay out there for fifteen minutes, in favor of hyperventilating and shivering under a blanket. Turns out: forcing yourself to be in a place where the vampire will ambush you is harder than it looks. The second time, she brings a book and a cup of tea and spends the time humming lullabies to herself and trying very hard not to cry, and not really succeeding on the second part. She makes it the entire hour, though. The third time, she manages not to break down crying even once. During the hour, anyway.

(She starts getting her ability to do magic back, and quietly starts trying to figure out how to make sunlight with magic in her spare time. During the day.)

Eventually, she can sit out on the balcony every night, and almost not feel like she wants to sink into the ground and quietly expire. It helps if she pretends that it has nothing to do with the vampire. She has a vain hope that maybe she can just completely forget about him and he'll do the same.

And then, one night, he appears. Suddenly and without warning. One moment there's nothing there but fog and shadows; then she blinks, and there's a vampire standing at the other end of the balcony, leaning on the railing and looking at her expectantly.

She makes an undignified squeaking sound and jumps a little when she sees him.

"Do you have," she hisses indignantly, "an entrance that is less creepy?!"

"Where would be the fun in that?"

"I don't know, reduced stress of those around you, likelier chance of getting invited to dinner parties, friends?"

...he giggles.

She huffs and marks her place in her book, putting it down on the balcony.

"... Hi," she says, after an awkward pause. She's not looking at him, in favor of inspecting her fingernails for stray bits of dirt.

"So, this is a new one. I've had 'went about her life like it was all a dream', 'fled the city the next morning', 'killed herself', 'refused to leave the house again'... but until now I've never had 'set up a meeting time and stuck to it grimly until I showed'. If you weren't so obviously miserable about the whole business, I'd almost think you liked the first taste and wanted another."

"Well it was either that or wait for you to pick a time. I - didn't expect you had any other reason to leave me alive, if you -" something in her voice cracks a little, and she closes her eyes and takes a steadying breath. "If you weren't planning on a second meeting. And I wanted to see about talking to you instead of just. 'Hi neck, meet fangs' without so much as a 'how do you do.'"

"Well. Here I am, talking to you."