Meredith nods. She has to repeat to herself that any new knowledge is better than no new knowledge, it’s going to have to be her mantra throughout this interaction. She doesn’t want her questions to go unanswered but she has two options: she can agree to Sanna’s terms and not get some of the answers; or she can not, and get no answers. And hopefully, Sanna will eventually trust her enough to tell her everything. 

Sanna is outwardly calm, but internally she's freaking out. Meredith's poker face is nerve-wracking; Sanna doesn't know if she's actually calm, or if she's this close to snapping from sheer impatience. If Sanna dies because she asserted too many boundaries… The very thought makes her question if this is worth it.

But, much as her younger self hates her for it, Sanna refuses to pretend she has no spine whenever it looks like having one might get her killed. Doing that would show that she never really had one in the first place, and if that goes then most of her self-worth goes with it. What's the point of surviving if she can't respect herself afterwards.

(She can hear her younger self shooting back "What's the point of self-respect if you're dead?!", but she can litigate that later, she is busy right now.)

"Second: As I mentioned before, there might not be a lot I'm willing to tell you tonight, given how little I trust you. I won't rule out the possibility of you earning more trust, but that would take time, and I genuinely don't have a single clue how you could even do it. You've spooked me enough that I'm not completely sure it's even possible. I might just decide I never want to see you again after tonight, and I will expect you to honour that, so the things I tell you tonight might be all you ever learn. Got it?"

Meredith still tries to keep her emotions off her face but this gets a reaction from her. Her lips curl up and her brows furrow, her instincts angrily screeching. It’s not until her fangs are digging into her lips that she realises Sanna can see it.

Vampires don’t need to breathe but she inhales slowly anyway, slowly smoothing her features as she squashes her instincts down, continuing to repeat to herself that only getting some answers will still be better than getting none. Although, having seen her react like this, Sanna will likely not want to tell her anything anymore, so, it’s not easy for her to calm down (at least she’s managed to make her expression even again).

“Understood”, she says after a long moment, nodding. 

Sanna leans back in alarm as soon as Meredith's expression changes.

…Jesus Christ.

For a minute there she was sure Meredith was about to attack her. She almost spiralled hard enough to attack pre-emptively out of sheer terror; she's glad she didn't.

If that was pushing the limits of Meredith's patience, she suddenly has serious doubts about this working out. Fuck.

And just when she thought it was starting to look promising! Just when she was starting to think that Meredith really isn't any danger to her and she really doesn't need to fear for her life!

Maybe they can still salvage this…

"…Can I ask which part of that you found unusually upsetting? I had one more thing to say, and I'd really like to avoid having teeth in my neck at the end of it."

“There’s some background knowledge in vampire psychology that you’d need for me to explain it properly but it’s the thought of being permanently locked out of learning something”, she admits, snarling slightly with the last part but managing to remain mostly calm. “It’s not the most logical thing but knowing that there’s something I can’t learn feels worse than not knowing that thing existed in the first place. I’ll keep a grip on that, apologies.”

"…I see. Okay. I kind of wish I'd known that, I might have tried to frame some of that differently so that it sounded less like you were being locked out of something. But I can see how it wouldn't be obvious that you should tell me that. …Actually, even now it's not obvious to me that it would've been better to know earlier, so, never mind.

"Anyway… The next condition isn't really about that, so I don't imagine it'll upset you even more, but if it does for some reason, do you think there's any risk that you'll attack me over it? If it somehow upsets you, say, twice as much? It looked like you were really struggling." ('But maybe my own panic was making it look worse than it was', she doesn't say.)

“I can’t think of anything else that could upset me as much,” she replies, shrugging. “And I doubt I’ll attack you either way. It wasn’t an aggressive kind of upset. Plus, killing you would make sure I couldn’t get any more answers, so I should be able to stop myself from doing so no matter how angry I am.”

…Sanna super does not believe her that it wasn't an aggressive kind of upset. If that wasn't the look of someone struggling to swallow a metric ton of bloodlust, she doesn't know what would be.

Should she call her out on it? Would there even be any point?

…Maybe not, but her only reason for not doing it anyway would be that she's scared. She's trying to limit how many things she's not doing just because she's scared.

…Ugh, and yet, she still can't make herself do it. She's mentally exhausted, she has nothing to spare on pushing past that for a probably-pointless question. Or, maybe she could, but she doesn't want to, dammit.

Okay. As long as she's clear with herself on why she's not asking this question, she can deal. The worst thing is when she lies to herself that she's doing something for a good reason when she's actually just doing it for a comfortable reason.

…Actually, this seems like a good time to mention the dead man's switches. It didn't feel like a straightforward decision before. There were pros and cons either way: Telling her might deter her from violence, but might also make it easier for her to do violence anyway and simply circumvent the switch or avoid its consequences; not telling her would flip the trade-offs around. Until now, Sanna mostly believed that the deterrent probably wasn't necessary, and she thought that Meredith's reactions would be more illuminating if she wasn't being threatened into behaving herself. (Not to mention, she might have already inferred a dead man's switch from hearing the end of Sanna's first phone call.)

But now, Sanna feels plenty illuminated by Meredith's reactions, and she doesn't trust Meredith's self-restraint anymore.

"Just in case you need some extra motivation, I'd like to mention that more than one person is expecting me to contact them within a certain period of time, and if I don't then they're going to assume I'm in mortal peril and will contact the police."

“That doesn’t really change anything. If I get to the point of killing you, I won’t care much about hurting some humans or compelling them into ignoring this. Oh, and don’t tell me if some of them are from your same species. That’ll make me more likely to hurt you, not less. It means that you aren’t my only source on this topic and I can try other approaches on them if I kill you.”

…she’s not being reassuring, is she? Meredith is beginning to wonder how she’s ever managed to learn about other species before. She doesn’t mean to threaten Sanna and she knows that it only makes things harder if Sanna feels like she is but she’s neither a good liar nor a good diplomat. Things would be so much easier if she was driven by something other than curiosity. Bloodlust is easy, obtaining other people’s trust isn’t.

Internal sigh. That was a miscalculation, apparently. (Or so Meredith claims. If the dead man's switches won't make a difference, it calls into question how honest she was being earlier when she said that she won't kill Sanna because it would create trouble for her. Apparently that only matters until it doesn't? Which means it might as well not matter at all.)

Anyway, that might have been a bust in terms of deterrence, but Sanna actually got some useful information out of it! Possibly, the most useful information she's gotten since they started talking.

Such as, it might actually be in her best interests to tell Meredith that as far as Sanna knows she's actually the only member of her species on this entire planet.

Sanna's been assuming it might be bad to tell her that. It might make Meredith even more excited to learn things about her, but that might not be a good thing. And it might also make her all the more disappointed when Sanna can't live up to the hype, or disappointed that she can't verify most of what Sanna tells her about her species.

She's still not going to say it yet, because Meredith could be lying to coax that kind of info out of her. And also, all those reasons not to tell her might still be true! But it's food for thought.

And if Meredith's being honest, then Sanna actually really appreciates that she's giving her advice on how to not get hurt or killed? Especially since telling her this isn't necessarily in Meredith's own best interests; presumably she wants to know if there are other members of Sanna's species, and how she can get to them.

Oh, and supposedly Meredith can compel people?! Could be a lie, but if it's true then it's really good to know! AAAAAAA what if she's being compelled right now

"Okay. Thanks for telling me that. I guess I'll have to rely on your self-restraint." Comforting!

Sanna takes a deep breath as she collects her thoughts.

"So, this one's mostly a rant-slash-lecture. There's a condition at the end, but it's kind of an afterthought. Mostly, I just want to be very clear about something."

Her expression darkens a little. She's not exactly glaring, but she's at most one or two steps short of glaring. It's an expression that says 'You'd better pay attention, or else.'

"On some level, I appreciate that you more or less asked me nicely to answer questions for you, instead of threatening me into it. I also appreciate that you've been listening to and agreeing to my conditions, even though some of them are upsetting for you. I realize that from your perspective, you didn't have to go the nice or cooperative route.

"But from my perspective, you've still done a pretty terrible thing to me. I was just going about my life, and you came along and put me in a position where I don't know if I'm safe anymore. You may not have deliberately threatened me, but a supernatural being with unknown powers and a dubious moral compass showing up and knowing something about me and wanting something from me is massively threatening in and of itself. I don't know what would happen to me if I simply refused. I don't know what happens to me if I reveal all I'm willing to reveal and you decide it isn't enough. I don't know when this ends or how this ends. I don't know what my life looks like from now on. Because I don't know what you're capable of or how far you're willing to go. For all I know, you might end up being the worst thing that's ever happened to me — and you're up against some stiff competition.

"I don't just feel unsafe right now, I literally don't know when I will feel safe ever again. And that isn't okay. It isn't even slightly okay that you did that. In any sane version of this scenario, you doing that would have immediately destroyed any possibility of me interacting with you or giving you anything, now or ever.

"So I want you to interpret my willingness to have any conversation at all as me being inexplicably lenient and forgiving towards someone who has done me a very serious wrong. I want you to interpret my willingness to go beyond that and answer even a single one of your questions as me being unreasonably generous. I don't acknowledge any obligation towards you. We're not going into this with the framing that you have a right to this information and I am being cagey. We're going into this with the framing that you have no right to this information whatsoever, but I am charitably letting you have some anyway. I expect that charity to be reciprocated, plus extra for the frankly awful time you're putting me through.

"Understood?"

Nope, not understood at all. Well, she understands how Sanna wants her to act, or is guessing so at least, but all the parts relating to morality are not coming across. It's most likely due to her vampirism but all Meredith has for a sense of ethics is 'probably don't kill people, that might be bad?' and the fact that scaring people might be doing them harm that she should consider is not taken into account there. She thinks she should be trying to imagine herself in Sanna's place but in Sanna's place she'd be so excited to have met someone from a different and new species and she wouldn't care that it had been by getting stalked as long as she got to ask questions (and had them answered). 

Is it okay that she doesn't understand the why is she can understand the what? Assuming that she's correctly interpreting said what. Sanna wants her to... not be pushy and answer more than ask, right? It's not her favourite conditions but she can work with them. So... she still doesn't know if that means she should answer yes or no. 

...And she'll go with nodding, yep, that easier. She wanted to let Sanna explain in which circumstances she'll be willing to share information but she's reaching the limits of her capability to pay attention to this matter and it's just so different from how she thinks.

"Understood."

Another internal sigh. Yeah, she doesn't care at all, does she.

"I get the feeling that approximately none of that got through to you, but whatever. As long as you agree to that last part."

(In actual fact, Meredith's agreement elides so much confusion and expedient guessing that it might as well be a lie; but Sanna isn't psychic, so she doesn't know that.)

"Let's get started. For now, let's just take turns. Me first. How well do you remember your earliest years as a vampire, or your years as a human?"

And now Meredith is happy again because this is interesting and she’ll get to ask questions. She just needs to answer some in return and hope that Sanna doesn’t refuse to answer to all of them.

“My human years are very foggy and hard to recall. It’s not only that they’re from so long ago, it’s also that they were lived by a very different mind. My first vampire years are much easier to remember than that. The first week is still a bit faded but the rest is almost as clear as yesterday. Clearer than yesterday, actually, on account of yesterday having been much more boring.”

Huh. Neat. It does make sense that it would be harder to remember things from when your mind worked completely differently, maybe even had a different brain architecture. Sanna sometimes wonders if that's why humans can't remember their earliest years.

She was kind of hoping Meredith would give her a highlight reel of her human life or her early years as a vampire, but Sanna didn't ask, so fair enough. She might ask later, especially about what made those first years so terribly interesting.

"Okay. Your turn."

Yes, yes, yes! But where to start asking? There’s so much she wants to know!

And she’ll go with the first question to come to her mind, “Why do you look” -and think and act- “like a human? I look like one because I used to be one, but what about you?”

In hindsight that feels like an obvious question, but she's so used to looking like this that it never occurred to her that Meredith would be wondering about it.

Sanna had already decided to mentally count to a number between three and ten before each of her answers, so that if she needs time to think (e.g. about whether she should glomarize) the delay won't stand out. It's an idea she got from Dolores Claiborne, though she didn't think she'd ever have a reason to use it. Thanks, Stephen King.

It doesn't bode well that this decision is already proving useful on the very first question, but so it goes.

"I have the ability to change my form to a human form. It can't be any arbitrary human form though, only this one. It looks like me."

This is carefully worded to be technically true while predictably giving Meredith the wrong impression. Sanna doesn't want to reward Meredith's cooperativeness with outright lies, but given the circumstances she has few qualms about mental reservation.

"Tell me about being turned. Things like: Who turned you? Did you know them? Why did they turn you? Were you upset at first? Did you keep interacting with the person who turned you?"

Only human form?Most shapeshifting creatures she’s met can take shapes from many species,, although some, such as selkies, are much more limited. Maybe that’s how Sanna’s ability works too and her other form is tied to an object. That’d make her reluctant to explain. She wants to ask, to make sure she isn’t working with half-truths (this reminds her of speaking with the fae). Sanna wouldn’t like it though… she’ll keep the question in mind but not ask it yet. She might even learn more about it without explicitly asking, although Sanna is being very careful with how she answers. (Also, ‘it looks like me’ is such a confusing statement! Does she really mean that her original body resembles this one or is it a more spiritual connection?)

Meredith refrains from commenting that’s she’s actually asking multiple questions and moves on to answering.

 “I was turned by an older vampire, obviously. Do you want their name?” It won’t be of much use to Sanna but she might be interested anyway. “From what I remember, I had noticed some unusual events in the months before I was turned and was trying to investigate them. That led me to meeting said vampire. I was curious. They were unwilling to explain things to me at first but eventually I managed to get the answers I wanted. And I realised there was more to discover about magic than I’d be able to as a human. So, I convinced them to turn me. As soon as I had become used to being a vampire and learnt as much as possible from them, I left to explore.”

“Oh, and they died a few decades after that. Although it was a few years before I heard of it,” she adds with a shrug.

She’ll then pause briefly to see if Sanna wants her to clarify anything before asking her own questions.

(If Meredith did comment that Sanna is asking multiple questions, Sanna would pointedly remind her of the agreement she just made scarcely a minute ago!)

"I didn't want their name, I more so meant what was their relationship to you. Like, were they a random stranger or someone known to you, if you knew them then who were they to you, things like that. The answer you gave covers that."

Sanna's surprised that Meredith was the one that asked the vampire to turn her. Both that the vampire needed to be convinced, and that human!Meredith wanted it. Do most vampires need to be convinced like that? It's certainly better than the alternative…

Huh, how did the older vampire die? That probably shouldn't be her next question, it might sound like fishing for weaknesses. (She does want to fish for weaknesses, but she's separately genuinely curious about how that particular vampire died.) Then again, it would be weird to bring it up later instead of as an immediate follow-up question. Screw it, that will be her next question.

"Your turn."

(She remembers the agreement and would have been mostly teasing!)

Meredith’s glad that her answer covered what Sanna wanted to know and also, much more importantly, that it’s now her turn to ask.

“Apart from the shapeshifting, which other abilities do you have?”, and she’ll check this answer against the information she gets from Sanna’s flair! She hopes Sanna doesn’t decide to evade it completely but won’t be surprised if she does. She’s agreed to let her do it and she’ll keep her word but won’t be able to stop being curious about it. 

Is Meredith just assuming Sanna has other abilities, or does she have a way of telling that she does? She could tell Sanna was a different species but not what species she was, maybe she can also see abilities but can't tell what they do…

This is important enough that she might be willing to break her policy of not lying, if she thought she could get away with it. But without knowing what Meredith has to go on, she doesn't know if she could get away with it. So she can't say 'None.'

Can she get away with replying 'What makes you think I have other abilities?' That's too transparent, right? It would not only be obvious that she does have other abilities and is hiding them, it would also be obvious that she's trying to find out what kind of answer she can get away with, which in turn would make it obvious that she's hiding her abilities for strategic reasons rather than privacy reasons. And in the meantime, Meredith would probably either refuse to answer, or lie.

Is this a good time to glomarize? 'I can neither confirm nor deny that I have other abilities'? That has basically all the same problems, but it might be less provocative than trying to probe at the same time.

Really, she should just make up an ability, or pretend one of her non-magic abilities is magic. If Meredith can tell how many abilities she has, that combined with the shapeshifting should satisfy her. And if she can somehow tell that these aren't her real native abilities, she can't call her out on it without revealing how she knows that. But Sanna can't think of anything convincing. Now she wishes she hadn't outright said that her vocal mimicry is non-magic, she could've used that… Fuck's sake…

…Oh!

She looks at a plastic water bottle lying empty and flat on the ground nearby.

It rises into the air and drifts towards her until she can reach out and grab it.

"That."

She didn't even want to reveal that much, but it might be better than tipping off Meredith that she has a vested interest in concealing her capabilities.

Meredith frowns at the answer. She can’t detect lies (which is a shame, it would be very useful) but she has some pieces of the puzzle of Sanna’s powers and this one doesn’t fit neatly with the others.

She isn’t sure how to remark on it because, although she doesn’t really mind telling Sanna about her flair-sense, that doesn’t mean she wants to volunteer that information either. In addition to that, just directly telling her not to lie to her isn’t necessarily a good way to do it. Not only might Sanna react badly to it, Meredith is unsure whether it’s worst to be lied to when she won’t notice it or to not get an answer at all… Either way, she doesn’t like being lied to now and, even if she ignores that, she still wants to learn more about the power that Sanna has shown.

She gives herself one more moment to think about it but doesn’t manage to find a perfect solution. 

“I know that that’s not all you can do. You can ask me if you want to know how I know that, but I’m certain of it.” There. Just a statement of the facts. She can’t misrepresent her opinion on the matter if she doesn’t express it.

Eyebrow raise.

"Okay, sure, tell me how you think you know that."