T/W: Very very brief mention of suicide and PTSD (skip first paragraph)
Bonnie was in her room inside the manor. She didn't have a real reason to leave her room, but she was worried about tiger-boy. He had been constantly spacing out, and his face looked like he was pretending everything was fine. It reminded her of one of Dorothy's friends who had PTSD. Dorothy had seen her with that look in her eyes a few days before before she committed suicide. The death of her friend had destroyed Dorothy for months afterward.
Tiger-boy had just gone through a lot of shock from the kidnapping incident, so it made sense that he was dissociating and even depressed, but that hopeless gaze in the dining hall kept coming back into her mind and overlapping with old memories.
In the end, she decided to check on him. She remembered seeing him going in the direction of the gardens after the meal, so that's where she went. Walking along the stone pathway, nothing seemed amiss, at first. Then she heard a slight thump coming from the orchard and hurried her steps towards the sound.
As she neared the location, she saw a practical graveyard of crumpled and dried fruits lead a path to a tree with a rasping figure curled underneath. Tiger-boy's breathing was ragged as his fingers dug into his sides and he bit down on a piece of bark.
Bonnie painted her face with worry to match what she was feeling and called out.
"Tiger-boy?"
Tiger-boy opened his eyes and hesitantly met Bonnie's. They were a dark maroon, much darker than when she first saw them. Then his pupils began rapidly contracting and expanding before they seemed to explode and his entire eye was dyed black from the center, as if they were eyes made of ink.
Something about tiger-boy changed the moment his eyes turned to ink. He stopped trembling and clutching his sides. The bark fell from his mouth, and he slowly started to crawl in her direction.
"Are you alright?"
Tiger-boy ignored her as he approached slightly faster than before, eyes looking directly at her arm. She crouched down to the level he was crawling on and held out her arm.
"Is this what you want?"
Her question was answered a moment later when he reached her and grabbed the outstretched arm immediately. She could see the sharp fangs in his open mouth.
Bonnie probably should have been scared at this point. It was pretty obvious what was going to happen, but for some reason, she wasn't scared. Maybe it was intuition? A coping mechanism? She didn't know. She preferred being calm to being afraid anyway.
Bonnie was pulled out of her thoughts when he started licking a spot on her arm. She was about to question it, but then he bit down on where he had licked, which surprised her. Not because she wasn't expecting it at this point, but because it didn't really hurt. It wasn't like she didn't feel anything either, so it wasn't just numb. It was almost like a massage that put her mind at ease.
Bonnie wondered how that worked, as far as anatomy went. Did vampire saliva have built in anesthesia like mosquitoes? It would have to be a different chemical compound, though, because this didn't stop her from feeling anything at all. Did it also had an anti-clotting effect? That wouldn't be good. She might actually bleed out if that was the case. It wasn't going to be super itchy like a mosquito bite, right? At the very least, it shouldn't be the exact same as mosquito saliva, since that is a very complex mixture and is applied through a different method. Then maybe a type of hormone? Bonnie decided to check this out later to see if it was a mixture of anesthesia and some hormone. If it is a hormone, which is it? Adrenaline would probably have the opposite effect. Dopamine might fit with the mood part, but it normally increases motivation. Erythropoietin helps red blood cell production, so that could be in there, but Bonnie wasn't sure whether it was safe for it outside the kidneys. Serotonin definitely seems the most likely, since it helps with mood, wound healing, and blood clotting, among other things...
Bonnie forced herself to pay attention to the present again. She heard a deep purr coming from tiger-boy's chest after he had had enough to fill a little over half of a soda can.
Bonnie decided that meant it was enough to return him to his senses, as if she lost more she'd definitely die. Bonnie stuck her thumb in behind his fangs and gently, but intently, pushed up against the roof of his mouth, smoothly removing the fangs from her skin.
Bonnie held his face back with her thumb still pressed against the roof of his mouth. It wasn't a pleasant texture, but it was better than drowning...
After pushing resurfacing memories down as far as they could go, she checked on her arm. The bitemarks were smaller than she was expecting, and had already started to clot. Good, maybe it was serotonin after all...
Bonnie shook her head and looked back at tiger-boy. The inky slowly started to retract back into the pupils, revealing eyes that glowed a dull red. The red eyes blinked several times and looked around, filled with fear and hesitation. Realizing he had returned to normal, Bonnie released her grip on his mouth and wiped her hand on her dress.
"Sit, Tiger," Bonnie commanded.
After seeing him flinch and then sit down, Bonnie stood back up and ripped part of the cloth off of her dress without hesitation. Taking the strip of cloth in her hand, she tied it around her arm to apply pressure and speed up the clotting process more. She had to pull on the other end with her mouth to get it tight enough, but she decided to take a break from being a lady for a bit. She's only ten, she can allow herself this much.