[And that's a good cue, perhaps, for Sypha to simply...walk right into the back of him, blanket and all, and unwrap it just enough to gather him into its folds with her as she embraces him from behind. She's quite warm, despite her bare feet (the heated floors help a great deal with that), and she rests her cheek between his shoulderblades as she draws him in close and just holds him.]
You've been remembering her.
[It's a softer, kinder way of hinting at the trauma he's clearly been reeling from. Remembering her is a gentler way of saying he's been drawing ugly parallels.]
[It always circles back to legacy, doesn't it? This one always achingly complex, but almost always defined by his father's actions. Horrors committed and imagined over centuries, all in contrast to just twenty years of something softer. It was easier to deal with in a way. Everything wrong his father did, that was a lesson. Things to avoid.
His mother was so much more raw and ugly to deal with because it had been senseless and infuriating and done for no reason beyond a stupid set of beliefs that contradicted where the world was heading. And every second on that stake was a reminder of that injustice, how no one said anything, how he and his father failed to act in time, and all the horrible miseries of it.
(The amount of fire and rage from Sypha was a parallel too. One he never expected to make.)
How warm is Sypha against the natural coldness of his skin? Infinitely so. He's so very still when the blanket wraps around him, and his hands seek hers in an instant.]
What is there to say? [His voice is so soft.] Who wants that to be one of the memories of their mother, and then to connect to it so intimately?
I've wanted to tell you something for a while now, but I could never find the right time. I don't know if this is the right time, either, but...
[She draws him a little closer, holding him, feeling his fingers weave through the spaces between hers.]
Someday, if you can allow it, I wish you would tell me stories of her. The ones that aren't in her books. So that I can help save them, too.
[And maybe, because it would lift that subconscious burden that rests on Alucard, too — left alone to be the sole keeper of his mother's memory, along with her legacy.]
I want to know about her, and about you. Trevor and I...we've always only seen the worst of it. I would like to know the best of it, too.
[Alucard's not sure what expression his face makes at Sypha's words. He knows they're too kind, a reflection of who Sypha is and her birthright as a Speaker. Because she's still a Speaker, even if she has a home now. Even if she mostly travels with two idiots instead of an entire caravan.
His hands are heavy in hers. Those hands are warm too, and he squeezes gently.]
I will. Just...[Just not right now.
And somewhere there's a quiet pained noise that comes up with a laugh that really isn't.]
...That I knew, already. Because you adore me, too.
[She presses her nose against his back, nudging against the long subtle ridge of his spine, and tightens her arms around him right back.]
When you stand in here, among her books and her tools...I can tell how much she loved you. Because I think you learned to love because of how she loved you first.
[Sypha's not wrong. Not about any of it, but especially not about that last part. And for that last part, there are no words in him. Just a little attempt to keep a very soft sob from creaking out of his throat (managed), and too many tears that there's no point in trying to hold them back. Waste of energy.]
[There are no words, in any language, that could possibly express the depth of her feelings for him right now. There's nothing to convey how deeply she loves him, how desperately she wishes there were any means in the world of easing his pain. How she wishes the world were not so terribly unfair, and senseless, and cruel. How she wishes she could give him his mother back, and the family that loved him so much.
All she can do at this point is to hold him, and so she does. Again, she has strength enough to support him. She keeps her arms around him, keeps herself pressed flush up against him, so he can't possibly lose sight of the fact that she's here with him, and that he still has a family who loves him desperately, even if it isn't the one he yearns for.]
[The words come out too softly, because anything else means a loud sob, and while there has never been any shame in Alucard for letting that out, there is always the fear of making the other two worry more than strictly required. It's stupid, he knows that it's stupid, but it has always been there. The three of them, they've shown all the vulnerable spots to each other since the start of this. But that doesn't stop the kneejerk response of trying to hide it.
Everything else is catharsis. Never has the love of the other two been in doubt. But never has an uncomfortable truth strayed far from Alucard's mind either: he only has this because of what happened to his mother and what the world demanded be done to deal with his father. The ugly parallels from the week before, the horror of history repeating itself for only a second, that's the worst part of all of this. Not being laid low by the stupidity and fears of men. Not the agony of the silver. Just the fire and the raw anger and the fucking stake.
There's a point in all of this that he lowers Sypha's arms so they rest around his middle instead, draws them away for just a moment, and lets go so that he can turn around and bury his face into the crook of her neck. There's warmth there too, and no shame in getting the area damp. She probably anticipated it at some point anyway.]
[She lets him cry, offering him the comfort of plausible denial by staying carefully behind him so that he doesn't have to show her his face, and when he turns around she keeps her eyes closed as he gravitates into her, lets her wrap her arms around him again. It's a little bit gawky, the way he has to bend to fit himself up against her neck, but she would stand on her toes for him for a week without flinching if it were to ease his pain even a fraction, and her focus is solely on making sure he's grounded and anchored as he finds his catharsis.]
You never had the chance to mourn her. Everything that's happened...it came so fast, so soon after.
[And even now, after vanquishing Dracula in this very castle, they've still kept busy, kept moving. Always moving ahead, never pausing to allow all of this to rise up to the surface on its own.]
We can make something for her. For both of them. A memorial.
[Alucard's back would hurt from this angle, if he was human. As it is, he can only register that this position is a bit odd, and nothing else really matters. Warm arms around him, and he's spent a few hours in tears here before. There's novelty to having another person around for once.
There had been the tiniest bit of dealing with grief the first time Alucard was left alone. He had needed that alone time more than anything on the heels of his father's death, but there had been the need to repair the castle and busy himself caught up in all of it.
Then Sypha says something else, and there's the tiniest, warmest noise against her neck that might be a fonder, warmer thing in any other circumstances.]
[Of course it does. Of course he would have, her Alucard with his soft heart and his deep, profound loneliness.]
Show it to me? When you're ready.
[Only when he's ready, and not a second before. There's no pressing him through his anguish, no hurrying him along to its conclusion. There's only staying by his side while he processes it, loving him and giving him the chance he needs to cry.]
Until then, I am not going anywhere. I'm here with you.
[It had been one of the first things he did. The little ashes that were on the floor of that bedroom, swept into an obsidian urn. A little carved spot on the lid for his father's wedding ring. Placed under his mother's portrait in the study, and the study left locked most days
He nods. It's nothing elaborate, just quiet and what feels right still.
This angle is still awful.]
Here can at least move to the next room where there's a chair.
[The number of chairs is not the point. But all of that also requires moving, and Alucard has to really force himself to straighten up even just a little. It is more like unfolding from Sypha's arms, and it is an embrace broken with great regret.]
[But she'll still bring him down for a kiss before he can get too far away from the reminders of their embrace, carefully pretending that she can't taste the salt of his tears clinging to his skin.]
[He wants the kiss to linger. So Alucard doesn't move to break it, bittersweet as the gesture feels in the moment. The reassurance in the kiss, that's all he wants right now. The worse of the catharsis is past, at least he thinks.]
I'm the better rescued maiden in this scenario anyway. Hair's right.
[So this is how they're going to walk instead. Alucard's arm around Sypha's shoulder in a side hug, because at least that means they're still touching. He'll shuffle along, eyes still bleary. The distance is short, there's a sofa in the other room too, and he'll try and compact himself the best he can to fit in her lap.]
[This is absolutely absurd, the two of them plus one sofa plus one blanket and Alucard's hilariously long legs trying to fit somewhere into the middle of it all. But she gets them arranged well enough, and wraps her arms around him tight, and nuzzles against him.]
I like the one where the prince locks himself away in a castle closed off by three magical doors, and says that he wants to see no one but the person who can open all three doors to reach him. The king and queen offer a reward to anyone who can free him, up to half the kingdom. So plenty of people try, men and women alike, but no one ever comes back, and finally someone who went with them to watch came back and said that when their friend had approached the door, it had turned into an awful face full of sharp teeth, and asked to be brought "an eye that cannot see". So the person had plucked out one of their own eyes and offered it to the door, but then the door said it was wrong, and ate him.
[She stops a minute.]
...Actually, looking back on it, this is a much more gruesome story than I remember it being when I first heard it as a little girl...
[Alucard's head winds up somewhere in the nebulous space between Sypha's shoulder and breast, and his eyes focus up at her. He's listening, and more than that he's not trying to hide his face after all this. That's progress, even though his eyes are still redrimmed and sting just a bit.]
Doors devouring people sounds about right for this kind of story. If not tame.
[When your dad's Dracula, the bedtime stories get way worse than this. And done when mom's not around.
Yes, well. In any case, the girl is a peasant from the village who no one pays much mind to. I think when I first heard it she is the daughter of the tailor? But where everyone else was seeking the prince because of the reward of half the kingdom, she spent day after day thinking to herself that he must be very lonesome shut away in his castle.
[It's a good position for her to keep a hand at the back of his head, stroking his hair even as she supports his neck. It's also good for smiling down at him, sweet and warm.]
So one day she decides that she will go and try, and so as not to worry her parents she sneaks out at night to travel to the castle with its monstrous door. And when she arrives, it turns into that same horrible face, and demands an eye that cannot see.
[Her smile widens just a touch.]
So, she offers it a silver needle from her father's shop, and the door devours it in its big sharp teeth, and turns back into a door as it swings open to reveal the next one.
[Alucard has one arm lowly slung across Sypha's middle, hand dangling off the edge of the sofa itself. His other is just sort of smooshed under Sypha's back, because where else is it going to go?]
It'd have to be a tailor in most versions then, for the needle to make sense as a solution.
[He's listening. And the cleverness of the solution sounds terribly familiar too. There's more curiosity in his face than any other emotion, because the story may mirror certain circumstances, but it is also nothing he's heard before.]
...Oh, I think the doors had colors, too! It doesn't make any difference to the story, but the first door was brown, and the second door is yellow.
[But details are important in the oral tradition, so these ones deserve to be cited even if she is delivering a sort of cliffs-notes version of the actual tale.]
The second door also turns into a horrible face full of sharp teeth, and when the girl greets the door, it asks her for "an ear that cannot hear".
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You've been remembering her.
[It's a softer, kinder way of hinting at the trauma he's clearly been reeling from. Remembering her is a gentler way of saying he's been drawing ugly parallels.]
Tell me?
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His mother was so much more raw and ugly to deal with because it had been senseless and infuriating and done for no reason beyond a stupid set of beliefs that contradicted where the world was heading. And every second on that stake was a reminder of that injustice, how no one said anything, how he and his father failed to act in time, and all the horrible miseries of it.
(The amount of fire and rage from Sypha was a parallel too. One he never expected to make.)
How warm is Sypha against the natural coldness of his skin? Infinitely so. He's so very still when the blanket wraps around him, and his hands seek hers in an instant.]
What is there to say? [His voice is so soft.] Who wants that to be one of the memories of their mother, and then to connect to it so intimately?
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[She draws him a little closer, holding him, feeling his fingers weave through the spaces between hers.]
Someday, if you can allow it, I wish you would tell me stories of her. The ones that aren't in her books. So that I can help save them, too.
[And maybe, because it would lift that subconscious burden that rests on Alucard, too — left alone to be the sole keeper of his mother's memory, along with her legacy.]
I want to know about her, and about you. Trevor and I...we've always only seen the worst of it. I would like to know the best of it, too.
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His hands are heavy in hers. Those hands are warm too, and he squeezes gently.]
I will. Just...[Just not right now.
And somewhere there's a quiet pained noise that comes up with a laugh that really isn't.]
She'd adore you. That much I know.
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[She presses her nose against his back, nudging against the long subtle ridge of his spine, and tightens her arms around him right back.]
When you stand in here, among her books and her tools...I can tell how much she loved you. Because I think you learned to love because of how she loved you first.
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All she can do at this point is to hold him, and so she does. Again, she has strength enough to support him. She keeps her arms around him, keeps herself pressed flush up against him, so he can't possibly lose sight of the fact that she's here with him, and that he still has a family who loves him desperately, even if it isn't the one he yearns for.]
And you are still loved. So, so much.
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[The words come out too softly, because anything else means a loud sob, and while there has never been any shame in Alucard for letting that out, there is always the fear of making the other two worry more than strictly required. It's stupid, he knows that it's stupid, but it has always been there. The three of them, they've shown all the vulnerable spots to each other since the start of this. But that doesn't stop the kneejerk response of trying to hide it.
Everything else is catharsis. Never has the love of the other two been in doubt. But never has an uncomfortable truth strayed far from Alucard's mind either: he only has this because of what happened to his mother and what the world demanded be done to deal with his father. The ugly parallels from the week before, the horror of history repeating itself for only a second, that's the worst part of all of this. Not being laid low by the stupidity and fears of men. Not the agony of the silver. Just the fire and the raw anger and the fucking stake.
There's a point in all of this that he lowers Sypha's arms so they rest around his middle instead, draws them away for just a moment, and lets go so that he can turn around and bury his face into the crook of her neck. There's warmth there too, and no shame in getting the area damp. She probably anticipated it at some point anyway.]
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You never had the chance to mourn her. Everything that's happened...it came so fast, so soon after.
[And even now, after vanquishing Dracula in this very castle, they've still kept busy, kept moving. Always moving ahead, never pausing to allow all of this to rise up to the surface on its own.]
We can make something for her. For both of them. A memorial.
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There had been the tiniest bit of dealing with grief the first time Alucard was left alone. He had needed that alone time more than anything on the heels of his father's death, but there had been the need to repair the castle and busy himself caught up in all of it.
Then Sypha says something else, and there's the tiniest, warmest noise against her neck that might be a fonder, warmer thing in any other circumstances.]
Already exists.
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Show it to me? When you're ready.
[Only when he's ready, and not a second before. There's no pressing him through his anguish, no hurrying him along to its conclusion. There's only staying by his side while he processes it, loving him and giving him the chance he needs to cry.]
Until then, I am not going anywhere. I'm here with you.
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He nods. It's nothing elaborate, just quiet and what feels right still.
This angle is still awful.]
Here can at least move to the next room where there's a chair.
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[She quips, soft but lightly, as she finds a lock of his hair and weaves it through the spaces between her fingers.]
I like the sound of that.
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[The number of chairs is not the point. But all of that also requires moving, and Alucard has to really force himself to straighten up even just a little. It is more like unfolding from Sypha's arms, and it is an embrace broken with great regret.]
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[One has to wonder if she's not deliberately playing to his romanticism with that idea, except that it's Sypha, so clearly she is.]
And then I could stay holding you, too.
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I think things are a little to blurry for that to be a safe proposition.
[Besides, the romanticism of the moment would absolutely require positions reversed.]
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[But she'll still bring him down for a kiss before he can get too far away from the reminders of their embrace, carefully pretending that she can't taste the salt of his tears clinging to his skin.]
That's all right, too.
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I'm the better rescued maiden in this scenario anyway. Hair's right.
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[She tugs lightly on his hair, since he brought it up, just a little for emphasis.]
She's always very clever, and wins him over with brilliance. And a little bit of sneakiness!
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[So this is how they're going to walk instead. Alucard's arm around Sypha's shoulder in a side hug, because at least that means they're still touching. He'll shuffle along, eyes still bleary. The distance is short, there's a sofa in the other room too, and he'll try and compact himself the best he can to fit in her lap.]
Which is the best version of the story?
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I like the one where the prince locks himself away in a castle closed off by three magical doors, and says that he wants to see no one but the person who can open all three doors to reach him. The king and queen offer a reward to anyone who can free him, up to half the kingdom. So plenty of people try, men and women alike, but no one ever comes back, and finally someone who went with them to watch came back and said that when their friend had approached the door, it had turned into an awful face full of sharp teeth, and asked to be brought "an eye that cannot see". So the person had plucked out one of their own eyes and offered it to the door, but then the door said it was wrong, and ate him.
[She stops a minute.]
...Actually, looking back on it, this is a much more gruesome story than I remember it being when I first heard it as a little girl...
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Doors devouring people sounds about right for this kind of story. If not tame.
[When your dad's Dracula, the bedtime stories get way worse than this. And done when mom's not around.
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[It's a good position for her to keep a hand at the back of his head, stroking his hair even as she supports his neck. It's also good for smiling down at him, sweet and warm.]
So one day she decides that she will go and try, and so as not to worry her parents she sneaks out at night to travel to the castle with its monstrous door. And when she arrives, it turns into that same horrible face, and demands an eye that cannot see.
[Her smile widens just a touch.]
So, she offers it a silver needle from her father's shop, and the door devours it in its big sharp teeth, and turns back into a door as it swings open to reveal the next one.
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It'd have to be a tailor in most versions then, for the needle to make sense as a solution.
[He's listening. And the cleverness of the solution sounds terribly familiar too. There's more curiosity in his face than any other emotion, because the story may mirror certain circumstances, but it is also nothing he's heard before.]
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[But details are important in the oral tradition, so these ones deserve to be cited even if she is delivering a sort of cliffs-notes version of the actual tale.]
The second door also turns into a horrible face full of sharp teeth, and when the girl greets the door, it asks her for "an ear that cannot hear".
[She pokes the very tip of his nose.]
Can you think of how she got past this one?
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