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Post by Mason Lockwood on Nov 7, 2010 21:41:45 GMT -5
"I vaguely remember Erika Mirazida shouting at him before I passed out," he mused. "So I'm not dead. Yet, anyway." He made the mistake of trying to move and groaned, closing his eyes. "No offense, but what's to stop him from coming after me again?"
He took a couple of deep, slow breaths and looked at her again. Yeah, he thought, I could be forgiven for thinking she was an angel.
He shook his head sadly. "Maybe you haven't heard, but nobody can help me, Miss Giles."
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Post by Nina Giles on Nov 7, 2010 22:13:55 GMT -5
The despair in his voice would have been enough to convince her to help him even if she hadn't already decided to. "It's just Nina. And I know more about you than you might think."
She sat carefully on the edge of the couch again and put her hand on his cheek. "You certainly pissed off the wrong vampire, didn't you? Not that any of them have tempers I would personally want to run afoul of, mind you. I guess you haven't been around long enough to know that Katherine makes Damon crazy. I think this was less about you being a werewolf than having been her plaything." She winced at her choice of words. "Sorry. That was inexcusably rude of me."
She thought for a moment. "At any rate, I can heal the worst of the damage to you until the wolfsbane is out of your system, and I would be happy to lift that nasty compulsion you're under if you like."
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Post by Mason Lockwood on Nov 7, 2010 23:18:36 GMT -5
He stared at her, hardly able to believe what she was saying. He hadn't wanted to believe what Damon had told him about Katherine, but it all made sense, and it answered a whole lot of questions. "Damon... was telling the truth about her then. She was just using me, making me believe..." he sighed.
"Please. If you can help me, then please, do. If half of what he said was true, about her, then I haven't been in control of my own mind for a long time." He closed his eyes. How could this have happened? He tried to be a good person, tried to limit the damage he was liable to do under the full moon. The compassion in her eyes made him ask the question he had never asked. "What did I ever do to deserve any of this?"
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Post by Nina Giles on Nov 7, 2010 23:36:56 GMT -5
The magic words, Nina thought. All it took was the request for help to give her unfettered permission to act. "Good man. Just lie back and try to relax. Ordinarily I'd just pour one of my healing potions down your throat, but they tend to knock one on one's ass, and you've been out long enough." She deliberately made her tone soothing, radiating calm and the feeling that she could be trusted implicitly. "I won't hurt you, Mason, I promise." Nice eyes, she thought. Not to mention everything else.
She waited for his nod of assent, then carefully placed her hands over the first of the wounds on his shoulder. To her own eyes a healing glow surrounded her hands, although nothing would be visible to the average human. Not that a werewolf was entirely human, exactly.
She worked in silence for close to an hour, healing the damage Damon had done, and she could feel him relax under her hands. Finally she sat back and smiled. "You haven't done anything wrong," she said softly, in answer to his earlier question. "She's a manipulative bitch, she always has been. She never gave a damn about anyone but herself, she just uses whoever she wants and tosses them out like so much rubbish when she's done with them. And you certainly aren't responsible for being born a Lockwood." She leaned in close and gently framed his face in her hands. His eyes locked onto hers and she spoke several words in an ancient language, freeing him from the vampire's control.
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Post by Mason Lockwood on Nov 8, 2010 16:20:47 GMT -5
Although doubtful at first and not terribly inclined to blindly trust another beautiful woman, once the first of the wounds was healed and the searing pain easing, Mason relaxed despite his misgivings. He watched Nina closely, a thousand questions running through his mind.
She wasn't the first to tell him that none of this was his fault, but for several reasons she was the first he actually believed.
She leaned in and framed his face in her hands, and for a moment he forgot how to breathe. He felt like a huge weight had been lifted from him, even though everything Katherine had put him through, everything she had ever done or said flashed through his mind, and he knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that it had all been a lie. She had never cared about him in the least, had only been using him to get what she wanted.
A single tear escaped and slid down his cheek.
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Post by Nina Giles on Nov 15, 2010 13:54:42 GMT -5
"Hey," Nina gently wiped the tear away with her thumb, "it's going to be alright. I rather doubt it's going to be much consolation, but you're not the first one she's manipulated this way, and you probably won't be the last." She sat back and studied him.
"Try and get some rest. I know everything looks desperate and irreparable at the moment. I won't tell you I know what you're going through because it would be a lie, but I do know a thing or two about heartache." She looked up at the sound of her doorbell, and draped a blanket over Mason. "Just rest, and don't worry. I promise you that no harm will come to you here. You'll feel better once the wolfsbane has left your system, and sleep will definitely help that."
She touched the cell phone on the table. "You're welcome to stay as long as you like, but you may want to tell Carol or Tyler something so they don't think you've dropped off the edge of the planet. I'll check in on you in a bit." She smiled a little and walked out of the room.
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Post by Mason Lockwood on Nov 17, 2010 21:58:44 GMT -5
He watched her walk out of the room, feeling a mixture of emotions he could hardly even begin to comprehend. Gratitude was definitely up there, along with relief and wonder.
Who was Nina Giles? He knew she ran the library and taught at the high school, and he vaguely remembered seeing her at Richard's funeral and the gathering afterwards, actually now that he thought about it he had spoken to her at the house, she had been sitting with Tyler when he had gone looking for him.
But aside from that, who was she? And more importantly, why would she help him? He had been under the impression that she was somehow involved with Damon Salvatore, so...
It would take far too much of the little energy he had to puzzle it out, so for now he decided to just take her advice and trust in her words. He fired off a quick text to Carol to tell her he'd be gone for a few days, then closed his eyes and drifted back into sleep.
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Post by Nina Giles on Nov 18, 2010 22:44:45 GMT -5
Nina left Mason hoping he would actually do as she had directed, but centuries of living suggested that, like most men, he would do as he damn well pleased despite any advice to the contrary. She sighed.
The doorbell rang again just as she reached the massive front door, and she was more than a little surprised to find Damon on the other side of it. She opened the door and leaned against the frame, clearly denying him entry into the house, for all the good that was likely to do. Having been invited in once he could come and go as he pleased and they both knew it.
She regarded him expressionlessly, but her mind was racing trying to decide what she should do. She didn't want to hurt him, but she wasn't about to turn Mason back over to him either.
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Post by Damon Salvatore on Nov 18, 2010 22:59:15 GMT -5
Damon frowned at the expression on her face, and knew that his instincts had been right. "She brought him here, didn't she?" he stated more than asked.
It was only in that moment, looking at her absolutely flat expression, that he realized this may have been a fatal mistake. For the first time in a very long time he was actually on the edge of being afraid. He suddenly remembered her telling him that her emotional state amplified the irresistible scent of her blood, and he knew all too well that her shields still weren't holding.
Before he could stop himself he took a step back and held up his hands in defense, and watched her expression turn to either shock, hurt, anger or a combination of all three. "Nina..." he started.
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Post by Nina Giles on Nov 18, 2010 23:27:07 GMT -5
Hard to say what she found more disturbing, Nina mused. The fact that he had come here at all, or that he looked as if he expected her to stake him.
Not stake him, she realized, but something far, far worse. Hurt and angry she took a moment to wrestle her shields firmly into place. "How could you think, even for a moment, that I would ever, ever, do anything to harm you? If you honestly believe that... you..." she shook her head. "I guess you really don't know me at all then, do you, if you have so little faith in me."
"And yes," she went on before he could say anything, "Erika brought me the man you tortured and tried to murder."
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Post by Damon Salvatore on Nov 21, 2010 20:15:15 GMT -5
"Nina, I'm sorry." Damon replied. Crap, he thought to himself, that was really badly done. He reached out and took her hands in his before she could pull them away. "I never believed you'd hurt me. But I have been on the receiving end of your 'vampire bait' at full strength, and you yourself said that your emotional state amplifies it."
He refused to look away from her steely gaze, hoping she'd see the truth in his words. They had been standing pretty much where they were right now when she had dropped her shields, just for a fraction of a second, and it had still nearly overwhelmed him.
"As far as the rest goes, you know how dangerous he is to us, to me, Stef and Caroline! He almost killed Stefan at the last full moon, and he tried to have Liz Forbes kill both of us!" He almost had her, he realized, until that last statement.
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Post by Nina Giles on Nov 21, 2010 21:24:23 GMT -5
Nina sighed and regarded him as she might a particularly dense child. "In wolf form, Damon, a werewolf is incapable of rational thought or restraint. Their chosen prey is vampires, which is hardly surprising since your lot have hunted theirs to near extinction. He also backed off when Tyler shouted at him, if the story of the night's events transpired the way I heard them." She looked down at their still joined hands until he let hers go.
"Yes, the werewolf bite is fatal to a vampire, but let's be honest here, he's no more potentially dangerous to you than I am, and he's only liable to bite you three days out of the month, assuming that one: he manages to get out of his self-imposed lockup, and two: that he can find you. With my shields the way they have been ever since Founder's Day, I'm a constant threat to you, yet you've made no attempt to kill me. And I've already pointed out the danger Liz Forbes represents to you, so I won't bother to rehash that one."
She sighed again and walked over to her porch swing, inviting him with a glance to come and sit with her.
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Post by Damon Salvatore on Nov 24, 2010 22:56:02 GMT -5
Damon watched her walk across the deck and took the look she gave him as an invitation rather than a dismissal. He followed her and perched on the balustrade across from the swing, lifting her feet up off the railing and setting them in his lap.
"I know, okay?" he finally admitted. "I know that there are far more dangerous things out there than one lone werewolf, and yes, you and Liz Forbes both fall into that category. Hell, so do Katherine, Isobel and whoever else she has trapped under her manipulative little thumb. Even Elena in her own way..." He shrugged in his characteristically enigmatic way. "He pissed me off. He REALLY pissed me off when I was already in a bad mood." He looked up at her, his intensely blue eyes asking her to understand and forgive, even if it was something he wasn't about to give voice to.
"Come on," he said, giving her his best doe-eyed expression, "You can't stay mad at me forever, you're not that kind of person." He rested a hand on her ankle. "If you were you probably would have staked me long ago."
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Post by Nina Giles on Nov 24, 2010 23:27:49 GMT -5
Despite her best efforts to the contrary, Nina had to laugh a little. "Yes, and if Patrise had his way I would have. Don't be so damn charming, I'm still not happy with you."
They sat in silence for a few minutes. "I asked you to stay away from the Lockwoods, Damon. I know he turned you and Stefan over to Liz and nearly got both of you killed, but in his defense you did keep dropping truly horrid wolf references and stab him with Jenna's good silver knife at the dinner party." She frowned a little. "That woman has the worst luck with kitchen implements. I hope you plan on returning that knife, it's part of a set that's been in their family for a long time."
She fixed him with her sternest look. "I want you to promise me, swear to me, that you'll leave Mason Lockwood alone, and I want you to mean it."
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Post by Damon Salvatore on Nov 24, 2010 23:59:24 GMT -5
"Why? Why do you care so much about the guy? He tried to get me killed, Nina, the reasons for it are immaterial. Well, to me, anyway, since I've kinda gotten used to living after all this time. No you don't." He held her ankle firmly when she moved to swing her legs down. "You've had your say, it's my turn."
"Now don't go kicking me, either." He watched her with wide eyes for a second, then loosened his grip. "Seriously, besides busting Tyler for making out in the Medieval section of the library, you don't even really associate with the Lockwoods. This Mason guy blows into town and you've appointed yourself savior and protector? What gives?"
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