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It’s strange to “want” to do something when you don’t actually want to do it.
There’s the loud and clear voice of reason in your head saying “this is the right thing to do, and it will help people,” so you dutifully go through the action’s motions, but you know you wouldn’t be if no one were going to check.
Jon sits at his desk and clicks off the tape recorder. He’d sat there reading aloud for over twenty minutes, and he really doesn't feel any different to when he started. With a touch of unease, he realizes he’s feeling nostalgia for his time in America, when one statement and a night’s sleep could put him right as rain.
After over two months of not… feeding … Jon finds himself stewing in a cocktail of rotten sensations. “Hungry” is the descriptor he most often goes for, as sort of shorthand, but that’s not quite it. There's certainly a gnawing of perpetual dissatisfaction in his gut, but there’s more. The headaches, the shivering, the weakness, the itching, the lightheadedness, the confusion, the nausea, the anxiety, the-
The guilt.
Jon is no stranger to guilt. From his bully’s disappearance at age eight to Daisy’s stay in the Buried, he’s quite at home with the feeling, but nothing before has been quite like this. In dark moments, if needed, he can talk some sense into himself about everything else. He didn’t kill anyone, he didn’t personally put Daisy in the coffin.
The same cannot be said for his recent eating habits.
When he thinks about it, it isn’t the fact that he hurt people that makes him feel guilty, that twists up his insides and makes him want to staple his mouth shut. It’s that he doesn’t feel guilty for hurting people. He knows he should, and he’ll tell people he does with no hesitation, but he just doesn’t. It horrifies him to think back on the faces of his victims and realize that the memories are rose tinted. He wants to drive a spike through his head and pull out the part of his brain responsible for thinking like that, but no amount of self hatred can block the knowledge of how much better he’ll feel from tracking down just one person.
More than anything, no matter how hard he tries, he just wants to go out and do it again.
Slowly, Jon slinks down the hallway, trying to not let his shoes squeak against the tile. He sees the door to the assistants’ office is open, and evens out his pace to something a little more natural. He passes by the door, pointedly not slowing to look in, and almost thinks he’s gotten away when he hears Daisy’s voice.
“Where are you off to, Jon?”
His heart beat picks up as he turns around, seeing her and Basira seated at a table, apparently playing a sort of card game together. “Oh, just popping out for some lunch.” There’s a quiver to his voice, but he’s pretty sure he covers it.
Daisy squints and makes as if to speak again, but Basira, not looking up, cuts her off. “Can you bring me back a cornetto?”
Jon nods, shoving his hands deep in his pockets. “Will do.”
“Are you alright?” asks Daisy, as he picks up his foot to leave.
He smiles and ignores the bead of sweat he can feel on the back of his neck. “Yep, fine.” He looks down for a moment and scuffs his shoe against the floor. He feels his face quirk into a sympathetic bittersweet smile, and doesn’t like it at all. “Well, hungry. But fine.”
“Go eat some normal lunch, then. Don’t go getting any ideas.” Basira peers at him over her cards.
He draws his hands up in front of him. “No, I’m not- I wouldn’t- I’m doing better-”
“Calm down, I know, I’m not actually worried, I’m just saying.” Basira motions for him to leave. “Hurry up, I want my cornetto.”
“Right.” Jon turns and keeps walking.
Well, it’s not like I have to go feed, he reasons to himself. I have plenty of time to change my mind. He gets to the door of the lift, presses the button, and hears it whir as it’s called from four floors up. As the light showing which level it’s on sinks down, something plays over in his head. Basira said she isn’t worried. The lift is three floors away. She wouldn’t have let me out like this two weeks ago. She would have made me stay in and harvest something from the office fridge. Two floors. Even if no one finds out, will I be able to look her in the eye? One floor. No, I won’t.
The doors are open. He itches on the inside. His mind plays out what will happen if he gets in. Go out the lobby doors, probably walk over to the Tate Britain, wander the galleries until I see someone I can’t unsee. Follow them until they’re alone. Hurt them. Finally feel better.
He bites his tongue. Before he can second guess himself, he hits the door close button and turns back down the hallway, coming to rest once again in the threshold to the assistants’ office. He squeezes his eyes closed.
“Um, I was lying, just then, I lied completely, I was actually going to, planning on…” Trying to admit this really does not feel good. He stops and opens his eyes. Basira’s face is hard, but not unkind. Daisy is unreadable. He takes a deep breath. “If I go out on my own, I’ll end up doing something bad.”
The pair stare at him. He stares back.
Basira throws her cards down with a huff. “Daisy, do mind if I help our vampire go to Pret without causing anyone grievous psychological harm?”
Daisy leans back in her seat. “Go ahead.”
“Great. Come on then.” She squeezes out the door and back down towards the lift, Jon following a short distance behind. She presses the button and it instantly opens, no one else having called in the minute since Jon left.
They get in and a moment or two passes in silence. Jon can’t bring himself to start any sort of conversation.
“Thank you for telling us,” Basira says, eventually. “It would be better if you never planned to go hunting in the first place, obviously, but keep telling us if you do. I know I’m being a hardass, but I’m just trying to keep people safe. And if keeping you company when you surface from the institute every now and again will help do that, then I won’t fuss.”
“Thank you,” he says, quietly. He wrestles with something. “I don’t like being like this.”
She gives him a look.
“I don’t want to want to hurt people. But I do. Almost constantly. And I hate it so much. I want to stop being like this.” With a start, he realizes he means that.
“Well, if whatever this is functions anything like normal addiction, then you should stop getting cravings-”
“It doesn’t, though. We both know it doesn’t. I’m stuck like this, probably until it kills me.”
The lift comes to a stop and they step out into the institute’s lobby. “I’m sure we’ll be able to figure it out, Jon.”
He's not sure he believes her, but it means something to hear it anyway.
“Like I said, I want to keep people safe, and you’re still a person even if you’re not human.”
He chuckles, though it stings a little.
“Right then." She starts to the main entrance doors. "You’re still buying me a cornetto.”