one day this will fade {open}

[Costin Dracula]

Costin gave Mordred another incredulous look. The longer he spent with this guy, the more he became convinced that he was his own particular brand of crazy, and Mordred seemed to be solidifying that opinion even further with every other sentence that came out of his mouth.

"The things you are talking about," he pointed out, lighting the cigarette, "are the exact things I hope to avoid in immortality. The physical weakness, the bruises, the broken bones. This world is so dangerous for a human being. Honestly, with the life I've lived, I'm lucky I haven't died already."

Getting a little carried away, yes, Costin could see how that would be a habit of Mordred's. He had, after all, taken up with a complete stranger after a meeting that hadn't even been especially friendly at first, and in the course of one evening had provided that stranger with things that might or might not have been legal, dragged said stranger into a bar and urged him into a fist fight with someone completely uninvolved, and now, had nearly gotten them both beaten savagely by angry casino security personnel. If that wasn't getting carried away, Costin wasn't sure what would be.

[Mordred Le Fey]

"Dangerous is right." Mordred agreed with a nod, taking a long drag on the cigarette. "But that's what makes it fun. What's the point in doing anything if there's no danger, no excitement, no thrill? I mean, if immortality is going to take all that away from you, then what's the point? What have you got to keep going for if nothing gives you that rush of adrenaline anymore?" He stuck a hand in his pocket, his fingers brushing the pill bottle still sitting in there. "Except the unnatural highs, of course, but as fun as they are, that's just not the same."

He walked a little further in silence, matching his pace with Costin's and thinking. Immortality sounded great on the surface, sure, but the more he thought about it, the more he talked with Costin, the more he wondered if it was really all it was cracked up to be. To watch everyone you know and care about grow old and die without you? To not feel the things that made you human, that made you feel alive - love, pain, hurt, sadness? To end up alone, hundreds of years from now, everyone you love gone, the world around you changed beyond recognition... Mordred didn't think he could do it. Better to live fast and wild in this life, die young but experienced, than to live as careful as Costin seemed to and watch the world disappear around you as you continued not to live, but merely to exist. It wasn't for Mordred.

He was trying to think how to articulate this to Costin when his drunk brain disappeared suddenly down another path, leaving those thoughts trailing in the dust. He stopped suddenly, and turned to Costin. "Dude, when you're immortal, are you going to have to eat people?" He asked with raised eyebrows. "Like, go all I vant to suck your bloooooood?" He raised his arms and spoke with an overly dramatic accent. "Don't eat me - ok? That would be really weird."

[Costin Dracula]

"It's not going to take everything away from me," Costin explained. "Just...you know, the fear of imminent death, of tripping on a pebble and falling into the street to be crushed by a trolley. It's not as if you need to constantly be afraid of dying to feel alive. There are so many other things to live for. I want to see the universe; there are too many places and things to visit for one lifetime. I want to be unlimited by this aging, failing mortal body." He didn't know why he was bothering to tell Mordred all of this. He wasn't going to understand, nobody was ever really going to understand.

Mordred's fears when it came to immortality were mostly the exact reasons Costin behaved the way he did. He also didn't want to love someone only to watch them grow old and die without him. He didn't want to care about people he was only going to lose. That was the entire point of his self-inflicted isolation, to avoid that sort of thing. He was about to reiterate that when suddenly Mordred opened his mouth again.

Not only did he ask another question Costin felt had a pretty obvious answer, he did it with a truly questionable version of Costin's father's accent. It wasn't quite the same as Costin's own, although he had always had more of a leaning towards Romanian than Spanish, perhaps because he felt he had to try harder on that front for the recognition and affection he never wanted to admit having.

"Are you..." He raised an eyebrow. "Are you mocking my accent?" He was more amused than anything. "I feel you're probably mocking my father's accent, not mine specifically, but..." He shook his head, suppressing a soft huff of laughter. "I'm not going to eat anyone. I'll drink blood, yes, but it very rarely results in full cannibalism. And...you know, once I'm a vampire, I probably won't be spending a great deal of time around here, so you don't really have anything to worry about."

[Mordred Le Fey]

He was right, Mordred didn't understand at all. Sometimes it felt like the only thing that kept Mordred going was the adrenaline, not knowing what was going to happen from day to day, not knowing if he was even going to wake up the next morning. Take all that away, and what did he have? What was he? That was a can of worms Mordred didn't want to open. "I don't know, man, I don't get it. What happens when you've done it all? And you're still alone?" He shrugged, sticking his hands in his pockets. "Sounds like a fucking lonely life, Costin."

He grinned at Costin. "Dude your accent is like nothing I've ever heard before, I don't think I could mock it if I tried." He raised an eyebrow at Costin's confirmation that he wasn't going to eat him. "Only rarely? So... sometimes it does mean cannibalism? That is... dark. I'm going to say it again - don't eat me."

He frowned slightly as Costin mentioned leaving. Sure, he'd only met the guy a few hours ago, but it was a long time since he'd made a friend he either hadn't grown up with or didn't have some kind of sexual tension with. "So, you'll just go? The second you're turned... poof? Huh."

[Costin Dracula]

"There really is no doing it all," Costin explained. "There are simply too many things to do, too many things in this universe to see, and Mordred, this isn't even the only universe. I am living proof of that. I do not know much of my father's counterpart in this world, but I have heard some things. I don't think he's even met my Papá here, or if he has, they are certainly not as they are in my own realm. How can you live with the knowledge that all of these things exist and you will not have even a century to discover all of them? It is too much for me to contemplate. I need to know that I will have more time. There will always be someone who will come along for parts of the journey, at least, I am sure I will not be utterly alone."

Mordred seemed fixated on the cannibal thing, and if Costin wasn't careful here, he was probably going to end up delivering another lecture on vampires, which usually ended up poorly for all parties involved.

"There are some vampires I have heard of, usually very old ones, beyond the age of any I have ever met, who are said to eat the flesh of their victims," he told Mordred, "but I would say that for nearly everyone else, it seems...wasteful, you know? Don't get me wrong, I have heard my father talk of the many people he has murdered, but on a practical level, it makes much more sense to feed on people and keep them alive. They stay alive, they replenish your food supply. If you just eat them, well, that's a perfectly good supply of blood gone to nothing just so you could...eat a steak, or however one eats a human."

Mordred's next question made him a little uneasy, though he wasn't quite sure why. That had always been the plan, that he would only be here as long as he had to be, and as soon as he got what he wanted, he would be off to join the wondrous world of the undead. So why was it hard to come out and say that?

"Yes," he said, after a moment's hesitation. "I'll probably be gone from here. It is for everyone's safety, anyway, a new vampire is no joy to be around, and quite dangerous amongst mortals."