and it's all in my head

He fiddled absentmindedly with his watch, stepping through the darkened streets. If he was in any shape to appreciate Wenlock Rue at night, he'd find it rather beautiful.

But there were more important things on his mind than architecture.

His incessant fiddling moving to the chain around his neck, he ran his tongue over his teeth, glancing over his shoulder every few moments.

Sometimes he really disliked being Marked. Every emotion Karma felt coursed right through him.

Letting out a little sigh, Julian leaned against the closest building, rubbing at his eyes. The fight or fly instinct was going to drive him crazy. On one hand, Julian Rousseau didn't run away from things. But on the other hand, there wasn't anything to fight.

Cracking his knuckles, the Prideux frowned. Still, he didn't feel like moving. Not just yet.

"What's your problem, Rousseau?"

She stopped beside the boy, arched eyebrow highlighted by the glowing street lights. Ninette took in her friends appearance as Toby wiggled his way around her feet, liking her ankles before jumping up Julian's leg to investigate the stranger as well. Normally Ninette would be hiding out in the underground somewhere, or perhaps Zander convinced her out somewhere, but no, tonight Toby decided he needed to go for a walk.

She supposed she could use the exercise.

"What are you even doing out here anyway? Shouldn't you be off convincing some girl she wants to spend time with you?"

Glancing over at the blonde, his hands moving behind his head, the boy took the time to mull over his response with an air of thoughtfulness, smiling down at Toby before looking back up at the dog's owner.

"My problem? It's the same one it's always been. Come on Nine, I thought you knew me by now." Tsking, he shook his head, standing up straight.

Why was he here? The annoying feeling of paranoia would be easier to manage if he was safely at home, but instead he'd left and came here. "I did that yesterday," he said simply, shrugging. "I need to spice up my life. Can't do the same thing every night."

"That's you're you?" Ninette quipped, always so generous to her friends, a smirk playing on her lips. In truth, the harsher she was, the more fondness behind it. That was the simple truth of her life. Respect came in a form that looked anything but.

The dog, running a few feet away from them let out a excited yip, wagging his little tail before running back to the pair, worming between their legs, before beginning to gnaw on the side of Julian's shoe.

"Toby! Get that out of your mouth," she clicked her tongue at the animal, "God knows where its been. Probably contaminated." She just rolled her eyes as the dog pouted his wide eyes at her. "Fine die of Rousseau disease, see if I mourn you."

Snorting, she arched an eyebrow, "Ah, ran out of girls that would spend time with you? Look at it this way, at least you got what, one or maybe two? It was more than most of use were banking on."

He snorted, rolling his eyes. Though he was sure that some of his problems came from just being him, he was also sure that at this moment that had nothing to do with it. "Surprisingly, I don't think that's it."

Giving his head a little shake as he watched Toby, a tiny smile flitted across the prefect's face. Though he'd always prefer cats, he couldn't help but find the dog adorable. At least, when he wasn't burning Nine.

Frowning ever so slightly as his shoe became a chewtoy, he shuffled his feet away from Nine's pet. "My shoes are not contaminated, thank you very much," he huffed, crossing his arms. "I just bought them." Shaking his head at her, he smirked at the thought of a Rousseau disease. Them, diseased? Though they weren't the happiest family, diseased felt like a stretch.

"Please, I've probably gotten more girls than you've probably gotten guys." Julian smirked slightly, though there was nothing about that that made him the slightest bit happy. No matter how many girls he'd been with, he could still feel Monique against his skin. "They just can't get enough of me."

Ninette just raised her eyebrow, an unspoken invitation for him to share what exactly he did think the problem was. Her defences and demeanour would not allow her to ask again - for risk she sounded as if she cared too much, but there was always curiosity. And the fact that part of her did actually care, she just did not want to show it.

"Just mere contact with you is enough to contaminate them for life." She smirked her favourite little smirk, before catching site of the dog again, rolling her eyes she got fed up with his wandering and reached down to scoop him up, knowing that his wiggling would stop shortly enough, if she kept holding him.

Her face froze for a moment as an odd thought, an unwanted thought came at his comment, she had to take a deep breath through her nose, Toby let out a soft yelp as she held him just a little too tight, before she had forced herself back into relaxing and gave her usual snort, "You keep dreaming Rousseau." That was where she had meant to leave it - and assuming the other boy wasn't focusing, or listening all that hard, it was where it would stay. The words that were followed were muttered quietly enough that most people in most situations would indeed miss it, "Its a nightmare anyway."

He glanced up at her, debating telling her or not. On one hand, it wasn't all that important to him. This wasn't the first time he'd been influenced by the vampire's emotions, and this wouldn't be the last. But on the other hand, he wasn't all that sure Ninette cared. But what did he have to lose? "Karma Black," he said simply, "is paranoid." He tapped the side of his head, grimacing. "I can feel it."

The boy raised an eyebrow, smirking. "Is that so?" He pushed himself off the wall, taking a step towards her. "Then how contaminated are you? We must have touched sometime over the last six -almost seven now - years."

Julian gazed at Nine, tilting his head slightly as he took in the very subtle changes in her behaviour. By now, he liked to think that he knew her well enough to know when something was wrong. And it was for that reason that he payed close attention to her, managing to catch her words.

"Don't like all the attention?" he asked, his voice uncharacteristically soft. He took another step towards her, meeting her gaze with slightly raised eyebrows.

"A yes, your charming vampire friend," Ninette's grin seemed to widen slightly. Her concern weakening in the face that it was not even his own emotions, and amusement at the mere fact that Rousseau had managed to get himself in such a situation. "Well, you need to learn to compartmentalize your emotions more Rousseau. " She nodded her head knowingly, as if she had the answers to the whole world

In truth, she had the answers for nothing at all.

"Oh, I've built up an immunity; only a few rare people can do such things," she managed a smirk, almost appearing her usual self with her own usual childish barbs, "It was touch and go for a couple of days in first year, though."

She looked back at him blankly for a long moment; she tried to figure out what he was actually asking. Their friendship was branching into uncommon territory. And Ninette was certainly not eager to share at the moment.

She shrugged her shoulders, "You can say something like that."

"I would, but they're not my emotions to compartmentalize." The Prideux shrugged, rubbing at his head. What was even the point of him being able to feel her emotions and pain? The other way around he understood; so she could save his life if and when he got into trouble. But it wasn't as if he'd ever be able to save her.

An amused smirk flitted across his face and he rolled his eyes. "I think I would've noticed people dropping dead from my presence, but fine. I'll take your word for it."

He looked back at her, each moment that the silence stretched out his expression growing more and more concerned. There was something wrong, he was sure of it. But their friendship had never been one in which they could just tell each other everything.

"And what would that something be?" Julian asked.

"Then they should be easier to ignore." Ninette shrugged her shoulders. It seemed simple enough to her, but then again, Ninette had been dealing with not dealing with her own emotions for a very long time - and she had never had to deal with anyone else.

"I never said you'd die from such things," Ninette quipped easily enough, "Its something far, far worse - those inflicted actually believe they like you. Horrible, I know."

She watched his expression slowly, calculating as she watched something that she assumed might actually be concern, and wondering just what she was supposed to do with that.

She let out a snort, though it was soft, weak. It wasn't as much of a defence as it usually was. "Do you really care what something is?"

He shrugged a shoulder. When her emotions were muted, then it was fine. But when she really felt something - joy, anger, fear, whatever - it was then that they were almost impossible to tell from his own and ignore.

"How do they possibly survive?" he murmured sarcastically, though the boy grinned. Though there were moments in which he could hardly understand what it was that his friends saw in him, they were far and few between.

Just because he didn't see it sometimes didn't mean they didn't. If they stayed, he had to be something right.

Julian raised an eyebrow. "I haven't stuck around this long for nothing, Nine. It seems that somehow, you've grown on me. So yes, I do care." He nodded once to emphasize his words.

She was still silent as she appraised him. Her expression was blank, though her hands had slowly begun to rub against the side of her shorts. If one were to look at the action, it would almost look like she was trying to get something off of them. As always, she never really noticed she was doing it.

Let people in. That's what Zander had told her to do - in a way that had been what Basil wanted her to do too. Everyone wanted her to do it, they thought she could, so why couldn't she?

Telling Julian wasn't that big a deal, all things considered. He was like her, in many ways. He wouldn't get too close, not if she didn't want to. She could tell him and then, then.

"Don't get your panties in a wad or anything," she grumbled slowly, "Its not- whatever you're going to do, its not that big of a deal." Julian had known her longer than Zander, if he actually cared like he said, that should mean a similar reaction. Ninette didn't want to deal with a similar reaction.

"Do you remember Aldric Moreau? He was a few years older than us. Lisette and I both were crazy about him first year. Everyone was really. Do you have any recollection of him at all?"

Silence. It'd always been something he'd had to deal with but he'd never liked. When his award-winning parents had seen it fit to lock him up in tiny rooms for something he couldn't control, silence had been his one companion.

And oh, how he'd hated it. He'd taken to talking to himself because the oppressing and damning silence would have driven him insane if he hadn't. There were moments when he couldn't help but wonder if it might still have had. Brushing a hand through his hair, he mentally slappd himself. This wasn't about him.

He had his issues, sure. But now, they really didn't matter. Right now, it was Ninette who did.

"Who says I'm going to do anything?" He raised an eyebrow, rolling his shoulders back. "That would take effort. A lot of it." And at the moment, he didn't see why he'd have to.

Groaning softly at the mention of the older boy's name, he frowned. "I never liked Moreau. What was so great about him that everyone was falling head over heels?" There was also the fact that as Julian had gotten older, he'd felt the need to - well, he'd had to - compete with the boy for attention from the school's female populace. He shook his head. "I was so glad to see him go." He tilted his head slightly at Ninette, his blue eyes clouded with confusion. "But what does he have to do with anything now?"

"Well, just - remember that in a few minutes. All that effort, you wouldn't want to waste."

Her fingers had balled into fists, nails digging ever so slightly into her palms, but she couldn't stop them from rubbing. There was still something in her that propelled her to keep doing it.

What did Moreau have to do with anything? How Ninette wished she could just say nothing at all - she wished the name could be nothing more than a memory, something to make her laugh at what a pathetic child she had been. But now even those memories were stained forever. Her whole life was squewed, marred and ruined by one face, one name, one person.

Maybe the more times she said it, the better she'd feel. Though she'd doubt it. It was her heavy weight to carry. Telling other people just let them know she had it, nothing else.

"That's the thing. He's everything to do with this." She flashed him a bitter little grin, and swallowed passed the quiver she had inside, "One night, a little over a year and a half ago, I went to a party. I pretended he wasn't the reason I was there, but he was. We 'ran into' each other, I suggested we find some where more private, he agreed and when things turned a little more heated than I wanted, I said no." She frowned, her gaze going anywhere but her friend. Toby wiggling her in arms let out a whimper and licked at her face, almost as if he could sense that there was something wrong with her, with the words she was saying. "But. He... didn't listen."

"Alright..." he said slowly, a frown beginning to mar his face as he watched her. It didn't take a genius to figure out that something was wrong, but for the life of him he couldn't figure it out. If the whole Moreau incident had been years ago, then why was it becoming relavant now?

At least for him, the entire debacle with Monique had been something he'd never managed to let go of.

Listening to her words, his gaze flitting from her to Toby, his expression blanked, the colour disappearing from his face. And in the light from the streetlamps above, Julian looked almost eerie. He'd - Moreau had -

He couldn't wrap his head around the concept. The ideas and the words were almost a different language, taking his brain an extra moment longer to decipher it. And when it did, the thought that came to mind were the ugly words she hadn't said: Aldric Moreau had raped Ninette.

Whatever emotions of Karma's he'd been feeling were all blocked out by his own. The prevaling one wasn't anger. Though part of him wanted to find Moreau and rip him to shreds, it was mostly nausea he felt. That someone would actually do that made him feel sick to his stomach.

His hands wrapping around his stomach at the familiar lurch, he let out the breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding. Julian continued to stare at her, at a complete loss for anything to say. Sorry wouldn't even begin to suffice.

"He raped you," the seventeen year old finally said, his tone and expression somewhere between disgust and rage. He reached out to her as if he was going to pull her into his arms and hug her, but after blinking down at his hands, he allowed them to fall to his sides.

Swearing under his breath as the true magnitude of what had happened hit, he looked at her, really looked at her. His gaze swept over her again and again, each time searching for something that he couldn't define. "Are you - no, of course you're not okay. How can anyone be?"

Julian shook his head, annoyed with his own voice and words. Why was it that when it really mattered, coming up with the right words became impossible?

Her jaw clenched and her head twitched ever so slightly. Although he was in fact repeating back what she had said to him, there was that word, that word that she just couldn't process.

"He did not-" she stopped not only because it was in fact true, and a part of her knew it, but because she couldn't say the word, not even to deny it. She couldn't even think it, and her tongue definitely would not move to say it.

The warmth of her pet in her arm, his little tail beating against her arm as it wagged was the only thing holding her to reality. Her other hand, the one not wrapped around the dog was still trying to irrationally clean itself. After a moment she looked down and actually noticed. She only had the effort to stop it for a moment.

"Its- well its not fine but really. It was a year ago, and he's gotten what he deserves anyway." She met his gaze for a moment before looking away, shoulders tensed, "So stop making that face, will you."

His expression only softened as he continued to take the girl in front of him in. He could never claim to understand what she was going through, but he understood what it felt like to be hurt by someone else.

"He did," Julian said softly, his hands shoved into his pockets. "Just because you can't admit it to yourself doesn't mean he didn't." He knew that from experience. He wouldn't - couldn't - classify what his parents did to him as that word. But it was still true.

He followed her gaze down to her hands, his blue eyes somehow managing to fill with even more concern. "Hey," he murmured, extending his hands towards her Toby. "You'll be alright. If I can be alright, then you'll be. You've always been stronger than me."

Julian raised an eyebrow, shaking his head. "That doesn't make it better. The guy who beat me up within a half inch of my life last summer probably still has panther claw marks on him, but that doesn't make what he did less terrible." It doesn't help that he's my dad either. "I'll stop making this face when you feel better."

Her expression stayed tense, her eyes glancing towards the boy in frustration as he seemed to be forcing her to know what she already knew - just didn't want to admit. It didn't matter if he was saying it was alright for her not to say it, he was still forcing it upon her.

Shaking her head she gave a snort, "Why does everyone seem to think I'm all that strong." Ninette heard it from everyone, and she wasn't all that sure it was true. She supposed it was a good thing she let her fascade fool so many people. After all, it was what she wanted, wasn't it.

"Maybe you're different. But knowing that, that he's hurting somewhere too, makes me feel like I can handle it; makes me hurt just a little less," makes her happy. It did, it did make her happy, and she didn't care. "It would really make me feel better, if you took that look off your face."

He simply raised an eyebrow at her. She didn't want to hear it and he couldn't blame her. But one of these days she'd have to accept it.

"Remember? I wanted to be you when we were kids." Somehow, he managed the beginnings of a smile. Merlin, when they'd been young everything had been so much simpler. They hadn't had all of these issues to deal with. "You've always been the strongest out of all of us."

Julian shrugged slightly. "If it works for you, it works." He couldn't fault her for it. On some level, he wanted to make the man pay, but that was purely for his satisfaction. "Fine," he sighed, rolling his eyes. Giving his head a little shake, he allowed his expression to solidify into one more neutral. "Happy?"

She rolled her eyes. Brushing her cheek against the top of Toby's head for a moment, Ninette snuggled her pet before she let the squirming creature out of her arms, allowing him to wander around the pair freely. He'd come back when she called, he always did. "How could I forget. You always were mentally unstable; I was never one to envy."

Out of all the things she did not understand, that one beat them all. Part of her brain could always grasp on some level how someone might want to befriend her, but to want to be her was just ridiculous.

"Perfectly delighted," she drawled as she watched her face morph back into something that she was use to. It did, in fact, make her feel more comfortable. She couldn't deal with people's sympathy. She just didn't want it.

Looking away from her to glance at the dog as he ran off, he flitted his gaze back to her. A tiny smile crossing his face, he shrugged a shoulder. "Look what you've done. You've discovered my big, bad secret." Tsking, he shook his head.

He rubbed his hands together for a moment, taking a deep breath. He still couldn't wrap his head around how he'd completely missed all the signs for an entire year. Had he really been that wrapped up in his own problems? Of course he had. The answer to that question was instantaneous.

He'd spent far too long in his own little world.

"Good," he murmured, nodding once. "I don't have the slightest idea what you're going through." He was surprising himself with his own words. "But..." he paused, frowning. What had happened between him and Monique wasn't even comparable, but it was the only thing he had. But the question was whether or not he could even say it.

Julian shrugged a shoulder. "I have no idea how you manage."

"And you seem so heartbroken about it."

With both hands free now, it was in fact taking a conscious effort not to start rubbing both of them. She didn't really fancy repeating last time, though at the moment she didn't think she was close enough to desiring to claw at her own skin. The dirty feeling had been kept mostly at bay since that first night, only resurrecting in tiny little habits. Her hands were brushing against the side of her clothes more out of comfort now, than an actual thought that she needed to clean something.

"I don't. Manage that is. I just let Zander tell me its not my fault, and pretend it never happened." She glanced at him for a moment, "I think those are the best options for you to take too. Preferably the latter, though the former does not get horribly irksome."

"What's the point of sobbing over it?" He shrugged a shoulder. "It was only a matter of time before someone figured it out." The boy sighed dramatically, shaking his head.

Julian glanced down at her hands, a frown beginning to form across his face. Had she always done this? Wracking his brains and coming up empty, his frown only deepened. Looking back up into her eyes, he opened his mouth to comment but instead snapped it closed. What was the point? He'd gotten one secret from her tonight; he didn't expect another.

"Why would you think it was your fault?" he asked slowly, frowning as he tried to wrap his head around her logic. "Moreau's a monster, probably always has been. You can only blame him for what happened." He paused, shrugging his shoulders. "You could probably blame yourself for being at the wrong place at the wrong time, but other than that..." he trailed off, shrugging again.

The wizard met her gaze, raising an eyebrow. "Now, why would I need to do that?" His gaze didn't waver, as if he was daring her to contradict him.

"What's the point of sobbing over anything? It just gets your things wet."

Rolling her eyes, she started to walk, slowly in the direction that Toby had taken off in. She figured if Julian wished to continue to speak with her, than he would follow. If she had given him more than enough information for one night, than she wouldn't be offended either. She almost might prefer the later option.

The the thought of being alone again was a little disheartening.

"I didn't stop him, by any means. There were moments I could have stopped him. I'm not usually a push over Julian. You've said it yourself, I'm the 'strongest of us all'; I could have, should have stuck up for myself," her voice was level, if bleak. It was probably not what he wanted to hear, not the answer he was expecting - he had most likely not expected an answer at all. But he had asked a question that she knew the answer to. Why wouldn't she give it to him? "He was right, in many ways. I did, appear, to want something of that nature - I think I may have thought... He shouldn't have done what he did, but I was not helpless either." It was still, in part, her fault.

She looked back at him raising her own eyebrow, "Because you don't know what I'm going through, and I asked."

He let out a snort of laughter at her comment, shaking his head, a grin managing to worm its way back onto his face. "Same old Ninette."

Julian tagged along behind her, hands shoved into his pockets. Was this how everyone had felt after he'd been beaten up? This sudden nagging feeling to never let him leave their sight? Pulling up beside her, he glanced sideways at her.

"You did try to stop him though." He frowned slightly, bringing a hand up to brush through his hair. "You said that you said no. That should have been enough to stop him." His eyes darkening, his voice fell, his tone suddenly harsher. "But nothing stops people like him. You can beg, but that's never enough for them." Blinking away the mental image of his father, he let out a deep breath. "You tried. It's not your fault Moreau's a monster."

He met her gaze, his expression blank. He could try and he could pretend that his life experiences were like hers, but really, they weren't. "Fine," Julian said, nodding. "Your wish is my command. But just this once and never again."