charloft } { no more gasping for a breath

[Prompt: #54. Set in empty_gunshells, which I’m assuming is going to be housed at smallchoices eventually. Jo is huntersdaughter and used with permission and love.]

Usually Bela is the one who needs to be saved.

Bela lives in a perpetual state of being in over her head. Even when she’s gaining ground, she tends to lose, by virtue of the choice she’s made. It’s not an easy way to live, but sometimes the ways that she gains ground makes it worth it. Smidgeons of hope aren’t much to go on, but compared to the way she was living when she had no hope at all, she’ll take it.

Regardless, Bela is still the one who needs saving. She’ll get in over her head with a buyer or the thing itself that she’s supposed to be stealing, and someone else would need to swoop in and save the day. She supposes that she should probably consider herself lucky that she has those people who can bail her out when she’s in trouble, but she doesn’t really have them. They help her because they have the luxury of being able to do the right thing. Not everyone gets to have that.

In fact, the only person that Bela is sure she truly has is Jo.

And Jo is never late.

( *** )

1249 words

charloft } { should i choose a noble occupation

[Prompt: #41 – run in with neighbors. Set in fooledtheworld. Faith is msattentionspan and used with permission and love.]

The first time Bela meets Faith, she nearly shoots her. Nearly, because shooting a Slayer is never a wise career choice, and her own way, Faith had saved her life. Bela is therefore left in Faith’s debt, and shooting people you happen to owe is never the best way to start off a relationship.

It doesn’t decrease the desire to shoot her any, but it does buy her some time to figure out how to deal with the woman without violence being involved. At least until Bela manages to figure out how to pay her back.

She pays the debt by saving Faith’s life when an object she picks up happens to go horribly wrong. She’d be happy just to never see the woman again, as making friends isn’t exactly on her agenda, but at this point, she’s reluctant to admit that they actually make a decent team. It’s not an easy consideration for her to make, but it’s enough for her to agree to work with her again.

But only as colleagues. Bela Talbot doesn’t think she’s going to live long enough to actually become friends.

( *** )

1144 words

charloft } { my discarded heart has finally found a home

[Prompt: #26 – Heat. Set in fooledtheworld, which is probably moving to smallchoices for DW purposes. Dean is swayzed, Faith is msattentionspan and Sam is imnot_likeyou and they are used with permission and love. Set somewhere in Season 6 before Sam gets his soul back.]

Bela doesn’t like Dean hunting with Sam.

To be fair, Bela doesn’t like Dean hunting period, but she hasn’t given up her relatively dangerous job, so she shouldn’t expect him to do the same with his. But if he’s going to do it, she would prefer that he has a partner she trusts. Bobby, Rufus—she would even prefer Faith at this point. She can’t trust Sam when he doesn’t have a soul. She doesn’t think Dean should either.

That isn’t going to stop him, though. Sam is his brother, and Sam is all he has, and there’s some part of Dean that will always blame himself for everything that happens to Sam, even if there’s no way that he could have been responsible for his brother losing his soul. Sometimes she doesn’t think he realizes that she’s gotten him through losing Sam and she could probably do it again. Dean, however can’t bear the thought, and she knows that the conversation is over before it starts. He has a sense of responsibility to Sam, to the world. Bela hasn’t managed to learn how to do that yet.

The only thing she truly cares about is him. Dean has this need to save the world, and Bela just wants to make sure she doesn’t lose him in the process. It doesn’t help matters that she doesn’t trust Samuel, either. She doesn’t trust anyone, really.

“I thought the world was saved,” she says coolly. When Bela gets upset, she doesn’t get angry, she goes cold. She lost the ability to truly lose her temper in Hell, and she doesn’t seem to be getting it back anytime soon. Dean’s packing for another whirlwind adventure, hunting with his brother, and getting angry with him won’t make him stay. She knows that better than anyone. “Any particular reason why you’re doing this all over again?”

( *** )

1200 words

charloft } { a mark, a yen, a buck or a pound

[Prompt: #8 – greed. Set in swallow_thelies. Sylar is heroslayer and used with permission and love.]

There are certain facts that need to be made clear about Bela Talbot’s life.

One, she damned it. She is the one who made the choice to sell her soul, and she is the one who spent her life trying to fix things herself and alienating the people who could help her. That, in and of itself, makes her life hers, and leaves her free to do with it as she wishes. She’s free to value it or throw it away. It plays a large part in the way she does business, because it’s very hard to threaten someone who doesn’t fear to the point—more to the point, welcomes it so long as it’s not at the sharp claws and teeth of a hellhound.

Two, Sylar saved it. It’s rather ironic when she tries to think about it. The idea that a serial killer secured his own damnation by saving her from hers would probably be incredibly amusing to someone more sadistic than herself. Contrary to popular belief, Bela isn’t that sadistic.

Three, it’s hard to place a value on a life. Some people fear death enough that they will be devoted to their savior for the rest of their lives. Some consider saving the other person’s life to be an appropriate way of clearing their debt. Bela once paid two men twenty thousand dollars for her life and called it even. It all comes down to the value that that person places on their life, and how far they’re willing to go to keep it.

The problem with the devoted servant ideal is that eventually people get bored with the lack of quid pro quo. Bela Talbot is one of those people.

( *** )

949 words

charloft } { prompt request post

So ages and ages ago, I snagged the 100 prompt summer drabble table from Charloft to try and kick my Bela muse back into gear. I took requests from friends to help me do so and it helped me knock out 44 of the 75 unprompted prompts. But that still leaves me thirty two prompts to write, so! Fresh prompt request post.

These are for Bela only. All RP verses or no verse at all, I’m not picky. Pick as many as you like. If we run out of prompt-prompts there are 25 writer’s choice prompts that I’ll open up, but not until all of these are gone.

( To save flists. )

Each request gets 100 words, minimum. Have at it.