[Underworld] Circle of Hell

[Salem Renfield]

Salem smiled as she took a seat, wondering what she was going to do with herself after all this was over. She could barely remember what she had done before she had met Dai Yosada, in dreams that was. Everything prior to it all had been a fog and that was highly unsettling. The stress she had felt had literally taken over every part of her brain and to think of what to do after Marius was gone and Dai and his Angel had moved on...it onbly made her nervous. She wasn't dependent on these three people, certainly not, however it did give her a life, something she had always been lacking in.

Salem was quick to order, Dai, surprisingly, getting something to drink. She was so interested in his ways, his past, and who he was, or had been. Salem had been shot down once before and she wasn't wanting to have to endure the embarassment again, but it was that struggle she was having with trying to piece together these dreams, memories that she herself had been having since she was little, and fond happenings that were neither mentioned in dreaming or in journals. It scared her. And with Marius throwing around the fact she could be Ariel in another life...it did make her wonder. How did Dai feel about that?

Salem wasn't one to believe in such a thing, but she was the kind of person never to rule anything out until she had enough information, which she was determined to get some way or another. Starting off with brushing up on her history in the subject of reincarnation.

"You know, a few weeks ago I would have not trusted you as far as I could throw you..but here I am allowing you to shadow me and make sure I don't get harassed by Marius. Odd." Salem wasn't sure where this came from, but she was figuring it was because of how she felt like she knew him from another life, like they secretly knew everything about each other, and that she trusted him with her life.

[Dai Yosada]

Dai took off his fedora and hung it on the back of his chair. He leaned on the table and watched her for a long moment before she spoke. He smiled at her and nodded.

"Yes, I find it strange myself," he said with a shrug. "I am notorious for chaning my mind. I suppose this time is no different." He smiled a little. It was true he had been bad at changing his mind at the last second for centuries. Even when he had been a little child, growing up, he had never been able to decide on anything. It was an apsect of Dai that had driven Marius to distraction, and drove Angel the same way. He dipped his head. "I wouldn't want you to throw me, if you could at all avoid it." He smiled. He was sure what she said was a saying of some sort, modern and such, but he wasn't quite up to date on those sorts of things. And anyway, saying you were going to throw someone was utterly ridiculous. After all, Salem wouldn't be able to throw him at all, let alone very far.

It clicked after he'd gone through all of that reasoning and he finally smiled, then chuckled, then laughed.

"I certainly wouldn't have trusted me as far as I could throw myself," he repeated, still smiling. Then he sobered a little. "But I am glad that you are."

[Salem Renfield]

Salem laughed loudy, lively, from deep within herself and drawing too much attention. She hadn't seen a man work so hard to figure something out in a long time. His face went through several emotions and it was quite a surprise when he realized that it was a metaphor. She put her hand over her mouth and tried to lower her voice as she moved foward into the table trying to calm herself.

"Dai!" She said laughing. "You should have seen your face! It was so funny! You went through so many emotions all at once that when you realized I was kidding...it was adorable!" She sighed out and ran a hand under her eyes, wiping away the tears.

"Sorry I am not laughing at you! I am laughing at the situation. I'm sorry I should have said something that would have made more sense." She sighed out and shook her head, glancing around seeing she had interrupted older peopels meals by her laughter. She cleared her throat and glanced down at his hands that were small and cute then up to his face, only to find herself smiling like an idiot. She was so surprised that her nightmare had become her dream.

It made no sense. He had scared her to death for months, but today he was beyond precious and she wanted so much just to hold his little hand and give him a hug. How could he have ever been evil to her? Especially when she saw him smile. She hadn't seen him do it often, she had seen him at his worst, evil and snearing, but when he smiled...it was miraculous. It only made her more attracted to him. Salem shifted in her seat, unaware that her mind had just touched that little subject. She wasn't stupid, just because he had a cute face didn't mean he was that good on the inside. Salem just wanted to believe that he was. The way Ariel had described the love she had for him...it literally made Salem want to feel it too. Desperately feel that love. Was she jealous of her Great Aunt who lived centuries before? Was that even possible?

[Dai Yosada]

Dai blushed a little. He was unfamiliar with slang, and that was something he had never heard before. He would have to go to his house and tell Angel. The younger vampire would like that. He glanced around at the cafe they were at. She had said it was one of her favorite places to eat. He wished he ate mortal food, he would very much have liked to eat with her. But he would get a drink, and they could talk.

Dai wondered what he would have done if he had not become a vampire. He wondered whether or not he would have become a businessman like he had always wanted, or if he would have stayed in the village the rest of his life. He wondered if he would have stayed friends with Ariel. He wondered if he would have married, had children.

He never got the chance to know. Marius took that away from him, took a life away from him. Dai would always care about Marius, because he could do nothing but. He would always hate him, too, for the things he deprived Dai of experiencing.

[Salem Renfield]

There was a moment of silence between them and Salem took this time to glance around the shop and take a drink of the water they had offered as a service to all. She bit her lower lip and briefly glanced up at Dai and wondered what he was thinking, if anything at all. She was thinking a million and one things, whether or not this was going to be a good friendship, if it was going to work out at all, what she was going to do about Marius if he happened to reappear. So many things whirling through her mind at one time.

"So, how long have you been here?" She figured the best way to learn about Dai in the slow, friendly way, was to ask questions that weren't too personal. She smiled at him and leaned on the table, perhaps a bit too interested in what he had to say on this particular occassion.

[Dai Yosada]

Dai smiled, thinking a moment. He ran a hand across his hairline to push hair out of his face.

"I came here first around nineteen eighty-two," he said. "I met Angel around nineteen eighty-nine, and we moved into our apartment about nineteen ninety-four. We moved around the world in between those times," he explained. He looked around the small cafe.

"I ought to go visit home again," he looked back over at Salem, and smiled. "You should come with me when I go."

[Salem Renfield]

Her heart jumped. Did he just ask her to go somewhere with him? She wasn't sure if she had heard him correctly, but she was usually pretty good at hearing things that pertained to visiting new places! She bit her lower lip and looked at him for a long moment, taking in his appearance as she usually did when she was confused or unsure, something calming about his appearance, well at least in her opinion there was.

"Like...Japan home? Like...me go with you?" She frowned knowing that sounded stupid, then again she had never been invited anywhere if it didn't pertain to work. She let out a bit of a shy laugh and felt her face grow warm. She leaned back slightly in the chair and put a hand on her face and looked away as she thought of travelling abroad with Dai. It was a rather appealing thought!

[Dai Yosada]

Dai smiled and leaned across the table, pulling her hand away from her face.

"Yes, Japan, home. And yes, you should come with me," he said, nodding at her. He leaned back in his seat. "I can show you Shibuya, and the site of my old home. It's a historical museum now, but has some good historical sites on it that you would like, in particular..." he paused a moment. "You really should come with me."

[Salem Renfield]

Salem looked down at his hand and felt it slip away when he leaned back into his seat, telling her the things he could show her. She smiled like a baffling idiot so excited, well in her mind and inside she was excited, for the thoughts of roaming around a busy street in Japan with Dai Yosada, even going back to the place he once, literally, called home.

"Yeah?" She said with a goofy smile giggling at the thought and almost snorting because she laughed a little too hard. She cleared her throat after a moment too long and sighed out. "Sorry. I never expected to be invited to Japan by a vampire before." She leaned forward and laughed. "Kinda cool." She heard a woman clear her throat and Salem looked to her side to see the waitress had been standing there with a tray of food. She sat it down and Salem smiled, embarassed that the woman was within hearing range to hear she called Dai a vampire. By the woman's raised eyebrown and sour face Salem knew she thought she was nuts.

With a thank you she let out a nervous laugh and looked at Dai and then to her food. Frowning after a moment.

"Can't eat anything?" She asked with curiosity.

[Dai Yosada]

Dai looked at her food, still smiling a little and waved his hand in front of his face. He jabbed a thumb over his shoulder.

"Had lunch already, remember?" he said, trying not to gross her out. He looked at her plate of food, thinking about how he hadn't ever tried anything normal. He never had the appetite to eat any mortal food. The last thing he had eaten was a fish roll the morning before he had been bitten. After that, it had been blood. All these years he had lived off blood, lived off other people. He felt guilty when he thought about it, but he tried not to. But being in the presence of a mortal woman whom he cared about and wanted to be friends with and he realized that for so long he had eaten woman like her, men alike, he had lived off the blood of human beings, something he had been once upon a time. He smiled a little grimly.

"Tell me if it is good."

[Salem Renfield]

She looked up at him and raised an eyebrow almost surprised that he had requested such a thing. She gave him a little smile and nodded.

"It always is." She said as she grabbed a french fry and dipped it into the ketchup they provided in a small cup. She frowned and glanced at it and then at Dai. "Well...can you at least...try?" She frowned and held the ketchup doused end towards him.

"Just...swish it around in your mouth and spit it back out. You'll get the jist of it." She held her breath wondering if he would, hoping actually that he would take it and at least taste the pleasure of mortals.

"Tell me what you think?"

[Dai Yosada]

Dai lifted an eyebrow at the foreign food. He was allergic to mortal food, or at least had always been told that. He had never tried it out, because he didn't want his throat to swell shut. But it smelled so good. He took the strangely shaped bit of food and smelled it.

"Well...okay..." he said hesitantly. He took a bite, holding it on his tongue, then he chewed a moment. Oh, it was so good! Oh, he wished he could eat this every day! He chewed for a moment before picking up a napkin to cover his mouth and move the food out of his mouth, wrapping it up to be polite. He nodded at her smiling. "That's so good!"

[Salem Renfield]

Salem didn't touch her food she simply sat there staring at Dai and holding her breath, waiting for something horrible to happen. She wasn't sure what, but something awful was going to happen the second that food touched his tongue. She was, she figured, was expecting his head to blow up or his body to burst into flames! Something horrendous and something she never woud have thought to have seen, but when he put it in his mouth, as if he did this every single day, nothing happened. At least...nothing she thought could have occurred. Instead the only physical signal she got was when he spit it back out and nodded poliltey and crumpled up the napkin followed by his thoughts. Sadly, as much as she wanted to jsut give him the whole plate of food for him to consume, she knew that he probably would get sick. She considered food his allergy.

"It is. That is the best part about eating it. I guess you can just say you are on a diet!" She smiled at him and took her own french fry and dipped it in ketchup and ate it, the only difference between the two was her swallowing it.

"Some American foods, however, do not taste as wonderful as fries or burgers. Spinach, I think, is horrible! Anything healthy for that matter except maybe fruits and a few select veggies." She glanced up at Dai and smiled. This was so normal! It was almost unbelieveable. They were sitting together, eating, sorta, and having a normal conversation that was going rather well! Salem was loving this.

"How about you, Dai, pre-change, what foods did you like?"

[Dai Yosada]

Dai laughed.

"Oh, plenty of things," he said, leaning his arms on the table and watching her eat. "Mostly fruits, vegetables, fish, rice. My friend brought back some things from where she was from and I liked some of the things she brought," he explained. Then he shook his head. "But, obviously, we didn't have anything remotely like this back then. Kinda wish I was a human now so I could eat it all," he laughed.

[Salem Renfield]

Salem smiled at him as she continued to eat, inside feeling ridiculously guilty for being able to do so and right in front of Dai. She didn't actually say that she too wished he was human, but she thought the same, perhaps more than she should have. Since they parted earlier that morning she had been avoiding real work by having her time be consumed by Dai Yosada. He intrigued her, he was full of information on what it was like to experience things throughout the years, he could explain to her thing s that others could not, such as how it felt to suck someones blood. She grinned slightly at her morbid curiosity.

She glanced up at him as she ate, continuing her thoughts on how wonderful it would be to go somewhere with him. She was surprised at how the tides had turned since they had first met. She had once considered him a true danger to herself, but now she was wondering how she ever thought such a thing since it all had been because of Marius, the man she was still unsure of. Salem moved her thoughts along, the bad thing about being a person who exercised her ability to catergorize and ask questions in the privacy of her own mind.

Salem wasn't thinking about Dai normally now, well not in the sense of wondering about who he was or what he had experienced in his life. She was now thinking about perverted things that she had seriously been lacking for years. She wondered what it felt like to kiss him. She couldn't help it! She was human, unlike her counterpart, and it was only normal forher ot wonder such things! Especially when she was staring at a pair of very luscious lips that were far more enticing than any other pair she had seen in her lifetime. On instinct she bit her lower lip as she wondered many more things about his sexual activities. She knew it was none of her business as to who he slept with or had slept with, but it was too much fun to think of at this moment in time. She was a pervert inside, she knew she was, especially since she had been thinking really wild outlandish things since he began to invade her dreams. Hey! He was a very attractive...er....man...vampire...thing! Suddenly her face grew extraordinarily warm when she realized that this man could invade dreams that it was only safe to assume he could invade thoughts. So what if he was doing so right then?

Dear Lord! Salem thought. He'll think I am this huge pervert who refrains from all intimate activity on the outside but has a ball on the inside! She clenched her jaw and wanted to crawl in a hole already.

"So!" She said hoping to God nothing like that had occured so she could at least be able to make eye contact with him! "Have you ever been to America? I am sure," She answered for him suddenly feeling extremely embarassed and guilty for think pervertedly. "After all all a vampire has is time, right? Travelling must be something you do regularly." She smiled at him. She had been there a long time ago, but preferred England, it brought her more enjoyment and surprises, after all look who it had brought her so far!

[Taro Lawson]

Please EDIT

[Dai Yosada]

In fact, Dai was not reading her thoughts, although it was certainly possible for him to do so. He had many abilities he preferred not to use on a regular basis. Invading other people's minds was one of those things. He only did it if he really needed something, or suspected harm to come to him or his sweet Angel from that person. None of that did he expect from Salem.

So when he noticed a change in her body heat--he was quite sensitive to human beings and thier body heat--he didn't know why her body seemed so much warmer than it had earlier. Especially her face, which turned a pretty shade of pink. He decided not to inquire after it and listened to her worded question. He nodded.

"Yes, I have been in America. I have a very dear friend who lives there, in fact, a psychology professor at the University of New York. He is quite interested in the afterlife and the undead and all of that. Just celebrated his twenty-first birthday. You would like him, Salem, he loves history as well," he said, smiling at her. Then he nodded. "I have time to go wherever. Although, I haven't been to Egypt yet. I would like to, however. And Russia. And Italy/. Actually, I haven't really traveled all that much..." he laughed a little. "I ought to at least go somewhere, huh?"

[Salem Renfield]

Salem smiled shyly as he laughed, her cheeks flushing red as they always seemed to do whenever in the prescense of the undead man. The undead man that could melt a cold heart in an instant whenever he wasn't being...well...mean. Salem drank a bit more of her drink. Why hadn't the man ever traveled? He seemed to want to go to certain areas, if she had such a chance she figured the rest of eternity would be spent searching the world over for anything and everything. The romanticized version of being one of the undead, the immortals, it was a life she would easily want to live, but then again she hadn't dared ask teh man the true downsides to never being able to die.

Salem wasn't ignorant, at least she never thought herself to be, so she could easily put two and two together. An immortal life amongst mortals. It was as simple as that. She would live forever and everyone else would live until whenever. It was a sad life she was sure. But how could one simply come out and say 'How sad of a life do you lead now that you are unable to die?' she cringed at the coldness of that question. So cold in fact it gave her a shiver, especially when she began to think of things more gothically.

The nightlife would be the only time she would wander, the dark colors of grey, black, and muted tones would be the most lively of hues, the crystal blue waters would be nothing but blackness. The whole darkness was quite depressing, yet at the same time absolutely intriguing. Salem realized it was her morbid fascination with everything. Many things she probably took for granted would suddenly be something she pined for. Salem looked up at Dai and chewed on the inside of her lip. What did he pine for? What did he want? What did he wish he could see again? She was sure after living for centuries one man must have the knowledge beyond mental capacity, yet a deep burning sensation for something he had lost a long time ago. Why was Salem depressing herself all of a sudden? The man had just said he had a lot of time but never went anywhere!?

She sat up in her chair realizing how her brain loved to overanalyze and loved to go places that she never fathomed of going before hand. She smiled at Dai and cleared her throat.

"I guess we should go now." She felt embarassed, but there really wasn't any need. She was just allowing her mind to ask the burning questions she was too chicken to vocalize. Oh but suddenly she was dying o know the answers to those few questions. What did Dai Yosada want? Yearn for? Perhaps, Salem figured, she would ask when the time was right or would find out eventually.