cryptsleeper | With matercula

[They had made light, on the way home, of the inevitable storms set to rock the house when Vlad Dracula Ţepeş eventually caught wind of what had transpired while he traveled, but the reality proves to be no joking matter.

Lisa has never liked fighting with her husband, despite knowing that she is perhaps the one being on the entirety of the earth — including their own son — who can raise her voice against him with impunity. Even in his most furious moments, Vlad never directs his ire toward her, only the circumstances that surround their disagreement. Their wedding rings never leave their fingers, no matter how terrible the clash. And even when they separate to calm down and process through the verbal blows exchanged, sooner or later they always gravitate back to each other again.

That is, after all, what love is. Not the absence of disagreement, but the ability to work through such conflicts together.

Still, this does prove to be perhaps the worst fight they have in her recent memory, if not the worst they've had in the whole of their time together. Vlad rages with fire and fury from his outrage, but also from his guilt and his pain at having failed to protect her from what had transpired. The people of Târgoviște make for an easy outlet for his anger, and if he is able to vent his rage upon them, then he doesn't have to turn it inward toward himself. It is, after all, far easier to condemn someone for the mote in their eye than to deal with the branch in one's own.

He rails upon her when she defends their right to live, accusing her of protecting the guilty. He finds it incomprehensible that she would stand up for a people who had come so close to executing her out of baseless hatred and superstitious fear, and it only reminds her that any affection Vlad may hold for humanity is a mere refraction of his singular love for her. He is not altruistic by nature. He has no compassion for compassion's sake. What progress he's made toward tolerating humanity endures solely because she lives, and she shudders to think how that all might come undone if she really were to die.

It's been a week, now, of ongoing marathon fighting, interspersed in the middle with surreal little pauses of tenderness and gentle concern. They fight for hours, separate, and then quietly come back together again to curl up together near the fire for a short spell before bed. Come the morning, they fight over breakfast, storm away, and before mid-afternoon Vlad is back with some book he's unearthed for her that will better than replace one she'd lost. They fight and they rage and before long they're drawn back to each other again, both too stubborn to allow Târgoviște to remain as a wedge between their happiness for long, and sometimes when she weeps he holds her and doesn't suggest making the town's rivers run with the blood of its inhabitants, because he's preoccupied with reminding her that she's safe in the cradle of his arms.

It's still not decided, the fate of Târgoviște. The battle continues on, in bits and pieces. But it's one of the quiet lulls now, and she and Vlad are in his parlor, her head on his shoulder as she reads and his pencil scratching against a yellowed page as he sketches a replacement portrait for her from memory.

They both hear the footsteps in the hall, and know who it must be. Lucky, perhaps, that she's got most of her weight propped against her husband at this point, because it removes the possibility that he might get up and go confront his son alone, while she rests here.]

We're in the parlor, Adrian.

[It's significant, that she uses the word we. It'll warn him, perhaps, that he'll be faced with the both of them when he enters. But it'll also let him know in advance that his parents are still defining themselves as a unit, still together, no matter the arguments that had unfolded while he'd slept.]

[When Alucard walks into the parlor, it's the final reminder that he's home. Not because he has seen so many variations of his parents curled up together like this before, but because of the expressions on their faces. They've been fighting, they're tired, this ordeal's toll is clear as any bell ringing in the first rays of light. He's probably missed what, at best, are the fight's opening. There's a rabbit warren of additional things that will come up, and had his mother been alone, he'd ask what transpired already. With his father there, it isn't going to happen. It might just provoke the next round of arguments, and after all of this, Alucard is not going to be responsible for yet another fight.

Not until tomorrow at least, when it's his turn to be the object of debate, and he'll yell back too and the new pattern of argument will be established. If this is how it's going to end every night though, then the fights are already worth it.

He walks in quietly, hair still wet from the bath, smell of blood washed away in full. There's no question about where to go to either. He sits down on the sofa and proceeds to rest his head against his mother's side, one arm very lazily wrapping around her middle while the other very gently brushes against his father's back. It's really the only good angle for that arm anyway, this entire sofa is just a mess of limbs now.

He doesn't say anything for a time. No where have we moved to? because the snowy mountain tops are the answer. No what day is it? because that doesn't matter in the slightest. No how are you both? because that answer is obvious.

Besides. Words would spoil this thing that he just went up against an entire city for. Went up against an entire city and won, come to think of it.]

[It's telling how worn out all of them are by this ordeal, that even after Alucard comes to join them, nothing is said for quite some time. There's a hint of initial tension that radiates off of Vlad (which probably owes to the fact that the moment is being intruded upon by anyone, even their own son), but it's also one that quickly passes when Alucard settles in and Lisa instinctively accommodates him. Like so many thing when it comes to dealing with other people, it seems, Vlad draws instinctive cues from the way that she behaves, becoming more permissive where he sees her permit and allowing himself to be more of a man because she implicitly expects him to be.

And for Lisa, it's a relief to have the three of them together. It's a rare moment of peace that almost makes all the fighting worthwhile; it's certainly one that renders her grateful for the chance to experience it again at all.

His hair is wet and his clothes are clean, so that ticks off a few of the necessary questions already. The next obvious one is to ask if he's eaten, but after a moment she thinks better of it, conscious of Vlad's presence at her side and not really wanting to create a chain association from eating to blood to the blood of humans to, yet again, the ruin he wants to visit upon Târgoviște.

So instead, she chooses something safer, albeit slightly more banal because of it.]

You look as though the rest helped. Did you sleep well?

[There will be a point in time where the matter of food is seen to if only because Alucard's stomach happens to have some very strong, very loud opinions on the matter. That's yet to happen though, if only because it takes a while for all the lingering effects of sleep to fully be shrugged off. For all that he's acting right now, he might yet fall asleep, this time not out of requirement but because of the sense of warmth and safety around him.

Better not to add any blankets to the mix for the time being. Alucard shifts a little, feet no longer dangling off of the sofa.]

Well enough and then some.

[He's unsure what topics are safe right now, so there's nothing else added. Nothing else asked about either, because there's zero doubt that there have already been nightmares from this horrifying scenario. He'll have them starting tonight, and maybe he can go for a while without settling too long into dreams.]

A whole week.

[Which answers one of his unspoken questions from earlier, how long, and also lends some insight into why, perhaps, the current calm between his parents is so fragile and so precious. They've had it out so many times by now that to some degree they're both weary of it, and yet they're nowhere near close to arriving at a resolution.

But eventually, it's Vlad who brings the moment tapering to a soft conclusion, turning his head to kiss his wife and reaching to rest his hand for a moment or two atop his son's head, as though he is still just a child and not a man. It's bittersweet, but not altogether surprising when he rises and politely excuses himself; she could tell that the longer they all stayed together, the more and more difficult it became for Vlad to hold his tongue back from demanding answers from his son.

So he'd left, it seems, because even in his formidable temper, he'd been loath to rekindle the fighting, himself.

Thus Vlad leaves them alone, excusing himself on some pretense, and removes himself from the parlor to go fume or brood or preoccupy himself until he can stand to maintain his calm again. And then it's just the two of them, now with more room on the couch and a little less heat between them to share.]

[A week is not ideal. Embarrassing, almost childish that he was that out of it for so long. But maybe it's better that way, having been left alone, allowing his body to heal for as long as it needed. There's n underlying sense of shame though, which is more than how he feels about so many other parts of last week's actions.

There's disappointment that his father doesn't linger longer, but the reason why is obvious. This fragile peace isn't worth breaking yet, but temptation is strong. It's self control, and that in and of itself is a strength that is foreign to his father in so many ways.

There's no relief in his father's departure, and Alucard the only part of him that moves at all is the one hand that was at his father's back. It's on the cushions now, resting on the other side of his mother.]

Have you managed restful sleep at all?

[Not how bad has the fighting been, he already has that answer.]

Mm. After he moved the castle, I did.

[To whatever degree her sleep could be expected to be restful, at least. But the castle's movement had set aside two of her more significant anxieties — the thought that any pursuers might have a chance to catch up, and the fear that they wouldn't even make it to arguing before Vlad simply decided to shower his rage upon the town. But now, both concerns are hundreds of miles away, and they are nestled in the security that comes with secrecy. They won't be found here, so at last there's a certain peace to be had.]

...There's something I've been meaning to ask you. All I expect is the truth, not excuses.

[A significant clarification. An inquiry rooted in curiosity, then, as opposed to suspicion or interrogation.]

How closely to your plan did our escape follow, that night?

[It's a less accusatory way of asking just how many human casualties he'd accepted as necessary, when he'd planned it. But that's largely where her concern lies.]

Good.

[The relief at her response doesn't make his mother's next question any easier to respond to. Alucard knows he should look his mother in the eye when he responds to this. But it would mean too much moving, too much shifting of limbs, too much disturbance. This is the only place he wants to be for the next few days, as childish as it all sounds.

He wants to delay. Ask how much she really, really wants to hear any of this, but she's asking. She wants the knowledge, even if it will disappoint her.

There's no weariness in his response, but it is distant, a faint patina of guilt painted over every single word. His mother raised him so much better than this.]

There were fewer causalities than I anticipated, and I was not originally going to go through the market. I think doing so impacted that number. [He knows it did.] Other than that, it wasn't far off the mark. But I had enough time to plan.

[He wants to clarify one thing though, because those deaths did have a logic to them. At least, dumb Ţepeş man logic.]

I thought that with fewer survivors, it would be harder for any of the lies said to stick. I...have had the opposite effect, no doubt.

You thought that if you killed more people, they would see me as less of a witch?

[What absolutely incomprehensible Ţepeş man logic. Though that's not entirely true, there's a certain amount of sense to it, if one looks at it sideways enough. It's something she occasionally has to remind herself of, when dealing similarly with Vlad — that sometimes when sorting out his rationales, one has to mentally replace "humans" with something more equivalent to the vampire experience, like "cabbages".

Still, whatever disapproval she may have, she's able to keep it carefully suspended. She'd promised him that he wouldn't have to defend himself to her, after all, so it would be a certain betrayal of that promise to make him endure her scrutiny now. Besides, there are still holes in her understanding of what had transpired that night, and if anything, perhaps having the chance to review it with someone who won't judge will be good practice for when Vlad inevitably demands the same information.]

Or was it that you thought you would be reducing the number of my accusers, so that the ones leftover would be the ones indifferent to the charges?

...Closer to no one to level them at all.

[No one ever said Ţepeş man logic made sense to literally anyone else. It's just an explanation for extremely bad decision making. And there were some very, very poor choices that night, even if the result is exactly what was intended.]

Mother I...[He should think more about the words that come next, but this is processing everything for the first time. Everything is messy, and there's no eyes to meet. Not yet.]

I'm not sorry for what I did, even though you've raised me better than to behave as I did. But at the time, there were no other apparent options, and between what I did versus what father might have done...

[It's a weak excuse, just as it's a true statement. Alucard's head burrows just a little bit harder into his mother's side.]

[It's hard to hear, with her soft and caring heart, that these were the choices he made for her sake. That he'd looked at the situation at hand and determined that the best way to ensure her safety was to make certain there were no voices left to accuse her. And she remembers, less vividly now that the events are a week behind her but still with understandable clarity, the occasional moments in saving her when his control had slipped. The guards torn apart when he'd merely knocked others unconscious. The way the man's back had assuredly shattered when he'd been kicked into the wall.

He'd wanted to hurt them. He can couch it in reason when he explains it to her like this, can offer apologies born of guilt and shame with every breath he draws, but deep down she knows that his calculations had only gone so far that night. Not every death had been reasoned. Some had been simply the product of anger and hurt and the outrage of a son faced with his mother's suffering.

And yet here, now, he's contrite. He's ashamed to admit his actions to her, because he knows it's not what she would have wanted. You've raised me better, he says. At least I did better than my father would have, he pleads.

And for a second, she finds herself thinking of her husband, and his deficiencies in understanding what it means to be a man. How many cabbages must be forfeit before he is satisfied that justice has been done. Vlad, who struggles so much with compassion when she isn't there to model it for him.

Yet here sits her Adrian, with compassion knitted into his nature in a way that it isn't for his father. Adrian, left to struggle with being the product of the same two competing viewpoints that fight for days upon days over the same questions that he's expected to answer himself, and left to make his selections between the two when every choice he makes must feel like a betrayal of one parent or another.

She's always hated it when people called him Alucard. She never wanted him to define himself by his father.

What he's telling her now is that he made a choice, his own choice. Whether it agrees with what she would have done or not is irrelevant; what matters is that it was his alone to make. After all, he should no more define himself by her choices and opinions than he should by his father's; she'd hate it just as much to hear him called Asil as she would to dub him Alucard.]

I raised you to think for yourself.

[Her voice is quiet, and while her own pain may rest inside her, she won't let it get in the way of her pride, or her point.]

You know I don't agree with what you did. But you can't live your life only doing the things I agree with. That's no life at all.

[She holds him a little tighter.]

Your life will never be an easy one, my love. I've known that since the day you were born. All I've ever hoped for is that when the time came for you to make a choice, you would see more than one path open to you, and that you would choose from your heart and your mind. Not from what you thought would make us happy.

In any other situation, it would have been easier to do exactly that.

[Because this had been an extraordinary situation. Nothing any of them had thought to prepare for, because the happiness had seemed endless. A bubble, now utterly destroyed. There were only open wounds now, still bleeding. It would take more time for any kind of healing, and that was a sick irony considering his mother's profession.

Alucard closes his eyes, aware that his actions were a pendulum swung between both his natures in a way that simply had never happened before. The anger, that's inherited, as is the desire to minimize harm. In defending himself, the second one was always easier, but then again, the sense of danger had never felt that life threatening. A week ago? Those were the highest stakes of all both for his family and for the whole country. There was no good way to gauge how destroyed Wallachia would be if the execution was allowed to take place.

The only thing he can do is own what happened and to never be put in that situation again. There's a terrible reminder here too, that his mother will die before himself or his father, as humans do, and they will need some way to navigate the grief. He'll go after that, barring disaster, and then his father will be alone again with no restraints.
Not the best thoughts to have in all of this. Alucard forces them aside as quickly as he's able, and lets out a soft sigh.]

...I get angry with them too, sometimes. The more I learn, the more impossible it becomes to understand how they can be content to stay so close-minded.

[She turns her head, pressing her lips against his damp hair and lingering there a minute in quiet affection.]

It was more tolerable, somehow, before I first came to the castle. I suppose it was because back then, I knew there was much more to learn, but I didn't know how much I didn't know. Now...I look at everything we're surrounded by here, and all I can see is how much better their lives could be if they would only embrace it. And to think that they reject it on something so shortsighted as superstition...

[It's a rare thing to admit to, perhaps. But she suspects it's somehow more important than ever, that she let him see that she's not without her own failings. Not a statue on a pedestal, but a human being, herself.]

I wanted to shout at them, with their witch-tests and their fallacies. But they just...

[She sighs.]

Sometimes we can only take the world as it is. Not the way we wish it would be.

[They're words that Alucard needs to hear. Because he knows, knows now more than ever before, how deep the capacity for anger is within him. Not only that, but how that inner bubbling of fury can be put into action, and exactly how satisfying the damage can be. Those moments were scary when they were happening, but he didn't have time to acknowledge the feeling. Not when he had to get to his mother and make sure that nothing else happened to her.

They've always sat like this after something's happened, haven't they? The pattern is so well worn and familiar, embedded in his memories even stronger now. As if that'd ever be possible.]

...Other men are ambitious too.

[The bishop. He means the bishop, because there had been no small talk about that in the gossip he overheard during the day. That it might put the man on the path to cardinal-hood faster, among other stupid, petty things. It was just more fuel for rage at the time.

Now, now it's just a cold fact of the world, easier to sit and talk about at a very far distance.

Finally, Alucard shifts so that he can look up at his mother. In his face there's still weariness, but of the emotional sort this time. And this question is worth meeting her eyes for.]

How do you manage all that anger?

I ask myself what good it does, to take my anger out on them.

[That's a little self-righteous herself, maybe, or at least it would be if she weren't so resignedly matter-of-fact about it. He looks so strange when he turns to look at her, somehow very young and yet ages old all in the same expression.]

I won't convince them I'm right by shouting at them. No stupid person has ever been called stupid and thought, "Why, you're right, I am stupid!". I can't solve that problem with anger. So, I turn the anger to solving problems — like banging on a strange devil-man's door to ask that he teach me to be a doctor.

[The humor of it, in retrospect, actually manages to bring a sheepish sort of smile to the corner of her mouth. She'd been so angry, so frustrated back then. But she'd taken it and put it toward action, and look what had resulted.]

...Like raiding a city alone to rescue a loved one from peril.

But when that method fails?

[The problem has been solved, at least in the short term. The long term is still very much in the air. Moreover, the response is so very much his mother that there can't help but be a little bit more warmth in his expression than there was a moment ago. Had she not chosen to be a doctor, then art of chemistry would be a fine fit. The art of transmutation (technically alchemy, but not chemistry, but close enough) is a talent of hers that manifests in these moments.

This is far better than any other path of talking about what's happened, because it allows room for the guidance to get through whatever comes next. Not the arguments but where the castle goes next. Where they go next, what humans they interact with next. The bitterness and distrust will come so much more easily when the scenery changes, as will that deeper sense of protectiveness. From all three of them, because if there will be any lasting impact from this, it will be a far more defensive circle than ever before.]

All emotions need an outlet. Part of managing them is finding the right outlet, or at least the right time to let them out.

[Now, the smile that she turns to him transitions from sheepish to soft, in a way that makes her expression truly radiant.]

Sometimes that means solving a problem. Sometimes that means dedicating your efforts to ensuring that the same problem never arises again. Sometimes that means trying to put back into the world a measure of good equal to the evil that made you so angry. And sometimes it's as simple as weeping from the acceptance that there's nothing else that can be done for it.

[She pauses, reaching up to smooth his damp hair back behind one ear.]

It's not that I don't want your father to hate humans. Or — well. It is, but that's too simplistic a way of looking at it. It's that the only outlet he knows is to repay hurt with hurt in kind, when I want him to see that there are other ways of coping, too.

[When that hand moves to tuck hair behind Alcucard's ears, the arm not still wrapped around her waist moves to gently reorient where her hand is. Where it might stay, on his cheek rather than fussing with hair that's not dry yet.

His mother's words make sense. And maybe there's yet an outlet to be had for all the anger that has resulted from this situation. What that might be for Alucard hasn't manifested yet though, and that's perhaps the source of his immediate personal worry.

But then again so many things have not been decided. The right thing might manifest at the right time, and everything else is waiting]

Ones that haven't been explored in a long while for him. [The words are said softly, more to himself than to his mother. Alucard is content with that though, that options take a while to find. To settle into and make sure that they're used rather than default to the old ways.

So much about this has been on the topic of old ways.]

We don't know what we're doing next, do we?

[He'd been so afraid for her, that night. All things considered, she's been bearing up...almost unsettlingly well, with only a few scattered moments of vulnerability, and she half-wonders if that isn't a sign that she's not processing things all that well in her own right, whatever opinions she might have on the subject on an objective level.

In some ways, it never quite seems real unless she sees the magnitude of it reflected in her son's expression. It happened; she was taken and tried and insulted and beaten, but it's as though there's a chasm between the horror of it and the place where she's sitting now, bridged only when she's able to see how it had affected the ones she loves around her. They were going to kill her, but with no real frame of reference for what that means on an individual level, it's a set of emotions only accessed through the grief reflected back in others. She could have died, and didn't, and someday she suspects a dam is going to burst and drown her in weeping and screaming from it, but as yet it simply...hasn't come.

But it's not the same, when it's her boy. Her boy, who was so afraid; her boy, who had to listen to creatures beneath him degrading and deriding his mother. Her boy, grown and yet in some things still such a child, a man whose hands have taken life yet still guide his mother's fingers to rest against his cheek.]

We've gone from "go back and put the whole town on spikes" to "go back and burn the whole church to ashes". It's not much of an improvement.

[And yet it is an improvement. Particularly when all things considered, there's really no way anyone could stop Dracula from doing whatever he pleases, except that he still cares to listen to her opinion.]

What do you want to do? Truthfully. What you want, however petty or noble or anything in between.

To my ears that sounds like a very big improvement. [He's just saying. The family's dynamic is not exactly hard to understand, especially in this situation. Localized destruction down to a single building almost feels like the best compromise, because it really is on the institution of the church for creating this fear anyway.

But what he wants. What Alucard truly wants has already happened, and to be further involved is to be beyond selfish. He's already taken lives for this selfish desire to just keep his family whole. He shouldn't be given any more. Nor should the response that rests at the tip of his tongue escape. Let me think about it. That way lies vengeance. There's a flash of bitterness in his voice, although not with the same depth as his father likely has.]

...And a way to make it look as if there's a disapproval of such actions from their God, rather than any other interpretation.

[But that sparks a particular thought, a slight one that had lingered in the back of Alucard's mind all throughout the day that he planned his mother's escape. How many other families had endured this horrible farce? And how many of them had lacked the ability to do anything about it?

The thought seizes him again, and Alucard sits up a little bit more as his mind starts to analyze the thought.]

Maybe that's the better way to approach this. Treat it as preventative work, not a response to something else. This isn't the first nonsense case of so-called witchcraft. It won't be the last. Not everyone has the luxuries we do.

...Preventative work.

[There's something in her that initially rebels at the thought of retaliation at all, however it may be framed, but as Alucard starts to tease out his notions into fully-formed thoughts, she starts to see where his ideas are leading, and the foundations upon which they're resting. Still vengeance, yes, but with an angle to it that comes from a place of wanting to do good.

Not everyone has the luxuries we do, he says. Because not everyone has a moving castle to flee to and the denizens of darkness at their beck and call. Women before her have surely been dragged out as witches, and had no supernaturally-gifted sons to come running to free them. So what happens to the families they leave behind? The only route open to them is weeping, and standing by in their horror.

Her son. He doesn't want to just save her; he wants to save every other condemned so-called witch after her, too.]

To do that, you won't be able to stop at just one church. It would have to be every one of them. None left untouched, and no room for dissent.

We both know that something will be destroyed in all of this. Better to put that to good use, and strive for a time where there will be fewer people in the buildings.

[It's a cold observation, but it's also a true one. This is directing rage and the desire to do harm into a productive end that still satisfies the need for vengence. It's easy to see exactly how the escape plan was formulated if this was how Alucard thought about it. An all too cool head and a clarity of foresight that is most certaintly unhuman.]

As for the rest, I don't know yet. [It was only a single thought, the rest will fall into place with time.] The universities elsewhere on the continent are only just starting to catch up, and none of their scholars have come this far east. They'd have a better chance of penetrating through older thoughts, same with the new printing presses.

[Wait.]

...Those can be brought down the rivers though. Far easier to float it down the Danube and then pick the thing up in Brăila.

[It's really a wonder to listen to him, as ideas collect traction and snowball into thoughts and plans, and she almost doesn't want to stop him by interjecting because there's something magical about simply sitting back and listening to him. How easily his notions shift from the plight of one woman to the plight of all women like her, to the state of all people on the whole of the continent, just like that.

He's dreaming of changing the world. He wants to use the power at his disposal to shape the course of the world to come, and if there were ever a synthesis to be had of his father and herself, this truly must be it.]

You'd replace the churches with schools. Fill the vacuum the church leaves behind with places for learning, instead.

[It might prove to be too lofty a goal to hope for, in the long run. And yet, how would any change ever take effect, if not for radical thinking and reckless attempts to make it a reality?]

That might be too much to soon. [This requires more realism, but now that his mother has said it, the idea is good. Because it's admittedly easy to look at all of this and say that it's mostly because of the church that is the source of so many the problems.] Introducing the presses might be it's own struggle, and it isn't like I can involve my own face for a lifetime.

[Someone might remember him, after all. Then everything falls apart again, but this is a solid foundation.

There's an important sidebar here though.]

...None of this exactly stops the amount of trouble I'm in, does it?

Oh, no, you're still in trouble. But now you'll have something to ponder over while you're serving out your punishment.

[She turns her hand over, brushing her knuckles lightly against the curve of his cheek.]

And I can tell you the first question your father is going to ask you, as soon as he manages to get you alone. If you'd like to know what it is in advance, to ponder over in the meantime.

Understood.

[Whatever the end result is, there's time to plan. Far better and far more thoroughly than anything else he's done lately.

It still feels good to have his mother's hands where they are, even if the question is one that inspires the first pang of real dread that he's felt for...oh, however long it's been since he woke up and has been talking to his mother.]

Please. I will probably need all the time I can get to formulate the least either rage or disappointment inducing response.

If it were up to me I'd have you cleaning the castle from top to bottom. Dusting the sconces, mopping the floors, cleaning every piece of glassware in the laboratory...

[That's probably an attempt at lightening the mood a little — a punishment so mundane it's almost silly, as though he'd merely broken a window or stayed up past his bedtime or brought home a hellhound and kept it under his bed as a pet.]

But I'm afraid I only have half-say in it, so I can't tell you what your penance will end up being for certain.

[The levity fades, however, when the topic turns back to Vlad, and she takes a moment to purse her lips and glance askance before finally answering him.]

I expect he's going to ask you why the bishop of Târgoviște still breathes. He's been... — it's come up almost every time we've had it out. Even if I could persuade him to do absolutely nothing else, I don't think at this point even I can convince him not to go after that one man in some way, shape, or form.

[There is a very dark chuckle at the extensive description of cleaning the entire castle. To his knowledge, a full deep clean hasn't ever actually been done.]

So half of it will involve cleaning, at the very least.

[At the question's revelation, there's not a single beat missed with a response. This is the easiest question in the world.]

You were, are, and always will be the priority. I didn't have the time of night for the man.

[Nor is he exactly going to disagree with his father's opinion on the man, because from where Alucard sits, this goes back to his earlier point about this not being an isolated incident.]

...He is right though. A man like that will find some excuse to destroy another person in your place now. Better for everyone that he dies.

I expect he'll next go through all of my patients, to see if I infected them with witchery while I was treating them.

[Absently, she rubs at her arm through the sleeve of her dress, where a week ago she'd been pricked with silver needles to see if her flesh burned from the contact. It wouldn't have mattered in the slightest whether she did or not, of course, and it had shown in the self-satisfied smirk on the bishop's face where he stood supervising from his pulpit.]

...I don't want any part in it. Whatever you both decide to do...I can't. I can't have anything to do with that.

Forget I elaborated on it.

[The words are said very, very quickly. His mother's reaction make it clear that this is a Do Not Discuss Ever, and Alucard is happy to close and lock that door. And what's worse is that his mother's thought process about what's next makes a horrifying amount of sense.

There's a gentle squeeze around her middle, a reminder that he's here and that if silence is better right now, that's okay too.]

...I'm the one who should be sorry. You shouldn't have to go out of your way to safeguard your own mother's feelings.

[But it seems now it's her turn to lean on him, seeking the same support she's been so steady in offering up until now, as once again a hairline fracture splits her otherwise collected composure, and a little hint of emotion leaks through with the recollection of her chief tormentor's face.]

But it's hard to disagree that Wallachia would be a better place, were it not for him.

[Alucard's excuse for sitting up in full is that his legs are falling asleep. They're not, he can just sense a shift in who needs to be where, and in a few moments, being a child again using his mother to lean on isn't best for either of them.

There's one arm wrapped around his mother's shoulder now, his free hand rests atop hers gently. He's cold because Alucard has always been cold to the touch, but it has never mattered.]

Mmm. I know.

[He doesn't want to say more. That slight change in composure could go so many ways right now, and Alucard's not sure what will tip the balance. So he just stays quiet, knowing if there's another crack, he'll be able to provide the same kind of support.]

...He was going to cut my hair. Cut it off. If I'd still been there at dawn.

[She knows it's irrational, the fact that her thoughts keep turning back to such a minor and insignificant thing. But for some reason it's the one that has lodged itself in her memory and refuses to fade away, like an errant nail catching threads every time a piece of fabric drifts past it.

She's been putting those thoughts and feelings away, ever since. But she'd also been the one advocating for the processing of emotions, hadn't she, and she's not particularly in the mood to be a hypocrite.]

I don't know why I keep coming back to such an...insignificant thing. I just remember thinking it was such an absurd addition to make to the order. Build the pyre, shear her hair, and set her alight at dawn. I don't...know why it stands out. Why it keeps standing out.

The final piece of absurdity sticks the hardest, perhaps.

[He says it softly, resting his chin on the top of his mother's head. It is a pointless act, doing that as a final action for an execution. For an axe it almost makes sense, but for this?

The thought just makes Alucard angry because the act is so pointless. Just for show, as if there hasn't been enough of that as is.]

Some last petty slight, I suppose.

[The awful thing is, she's already sort of arrived at the same conclusion; it's simply easier not to dwell on it. It's one thing to recite the particulars of the ordeal clinically, but to go the extra step and name it the torture it was...

Calling it torture adds context and connotations. It applies an intent and a malice. It means reliving her memories through a new lens, not just of a laundry list of occurrences but with an acceptance of the intentions behind them.]

Something something can't suffer a witch to have a head of hair.

[It only took three failed tests and one piece of spoken testimony to seal the verdict of witchcraft. They'd done more. They'd done every test and trial they had at their disposal, with the bishop looking prouder and more sanctimonious all the while.

Her lower lip trembles at the corners, threatening the otherwise thin-pressed set of her mouth.

They were torturing her, because they could.

The next breath she draws is a shaking one.]

Idiots.

[There are much stronger words, but Alucard's not the kind to use such lanuage. (Trevor Belmont also isn't in his life, so that means fewer colorful sayings too. Probably for the best.) What is happening in his mother's thoughts, what she's reliving, he's imagined so many times already. He used those thoughts to spur himself onward. They still make him angry.

But his anger doesn't matter right now. His mother's feelings are more important, and right now, he's here for her. He holds on tighter when he sees that tremble. Doesn't think about how many times his father might have been it already. It's instinct born of the devotion his mother inspires, and that same impulse is what prompts him to gently kiss the top of her head.]

I'm here.

[If she needs a sign post in her own thoughts, he's given it.]

You don't have to clean the castle.

[Which is, perhaps, an odd thought to lead with, except that the balance between them is shifting and they've both silently caught on to it. Alucard is right; this is a similar pattern to the one she and Vlad have cycled through over the past week while he slept, with periods of strength and calm interspersed with moments when she's needed to fall quiet and be supported.

It's a different dynamic, with each of them. In some ways it's easier to seek comfort from her husband, where with her son she runs into the difficulties of feeling guilty about the need for parent to solicit child for relief. Yet Alucard is half-human, and Vlad is not, and so there are vulnerabilities she can show in front of him that would only incite her husband to further anger.]

The truth is, I can't think of anything to punish you for, really. Saving me goes a long way toward pardoning the rest of it.

[There is a moment's incredulous laugh, a short, sharp thing at the next words out of his mother's mouth. But it also feels like avoiding the source of everyone's problem right now, and that can't be good in the long term either. Alucard's not sure when it will happen, or who it will be with, but at least he's made it clear that he'll listen whenever his mother is ready.

He doesn't move from his position though, and doesn't plan on it until his mother forces him to.]

Mm. You'll think of something in the moment, you know. You always have.

[For smaller infractions that don't involve quite a bit of murder. But it's also the only failproof defense he'll ever have for getting in trouble: there's literally no better version of this ergo I am immune.]

For not giving the horse a name.

[She shrinks down a little lower, tucking her head more securely under his chin, and closes her eyes to concentrate on the feeling of his arms wrapped around her. It's the same exercise she's been doing with Vlad, all week; memorizing the weight of their embrace, the security of their arms, and reminding herself that nothing will stand a chance of getting through that circle of arms to reach her, so long as it holds.

She's safe. She'll have to keep telling and telling herself that until she believes it, and sometimes she still doesn't quite. But she'll keep after it, until it grows easier.]

I'm proud of you, you know.

I did. It only sounded like endless snoring.

[He hadn't made a single noise in his sleep as they journeyed home, so that's just a gentle lie in an attempt to fight back against the horrible gravity pressing down on them both.

It's unfair that they have to sit like this, talking around and about what's happened. Naming the thing for what it is, it hasn't been done yet. Maybe doing so will give it too much power, and everything is still so fragile. Everyone in the castle is.

So maybe that pride isn't what Alucard expected to hear from his mother after everything they've already discussed. But it's acknowledgement too that in a way, it was the right thing.]

Thank you.

Is that its name, then, a week-long snore? That'll make things tedious, to call for him.

[She's going to fall asleep on him herself, if she's not careful. Not from tiredness, no, but from the carelessness of getting comfortable and letting herself be relieved to feel comfortable at all. She shouldn't impose it on him, this business of needing to mind her and fuss over her, but maybe they both find a certain solace in it, after all.]

I hope that someday the world will learn to be kind to you, and embrace you when you travel it. I encouraged your father to travel because I thought it would be good for him to see the world as a man.

[She smiles softly, hidden just for herself.]

But I think it's the world that would benefit, from having you pass through it.

I wasn't aware that we still had the horse.

[Color him gently surprised that it wasn't just left to run free after they reached the castle. Why that fact, out of everything, takes Alucard so aback he can't say. Something something absurdity, most likely.

If his mother was to fall asleep not long after, Alucard would sit and refuse to move until she woke. To know that he could help contribute to her feeling safe is another kind of reassurance, and maybe seeking so many examples of it is childish. He can't say he cares.]

It...will be a while before I do that. [Not now, that much he knows. Never in Wallachia. West, perhaps, but not alone.]

It nobly carried us to our freedom. There was talk of ceding some choice lands to it. Perhaps a barony.

[Some choice words may also have been uttered about the various Wallachian territories and how a horse would be better suited to govern them than the fools currently in power. Absurdity occasionally flows freely throughout every member of this family, perhaps.]

...Because of this?

[She makes a soft hmmm noise under her breath, like she's mulling over how she feels about that.]

Out of concern for your own safety? Or because you don't want to be away from me?

As good as making the horse a boyar might be, I have to wonder who has been re-reading Suetonius.

[It goes without saying that maybe following after Caligula is a bad idea. In fact, it is a horrid idea, but at least everyone can agree on the fact.

But talking about horses as boyars is a much better conversation topic than this other one, and the honest truth of Alucard's answer.]

Yes.

[To all of them and a few unspoken parts too.]

[It's her nature, somewhat, to approach darkness with dry humor — a seed cultivated over her many years in Vlad's company, tempering his colder moods with brisk wit. In motherhood, that tendency had taken on a softer, lighter touch. Less of a rapier, more of a toy sword.]

There you have it. We'll call him Incitatus; a perfect fit.

[The brevity of his response piques her interest, however; Alucard has always been one to say one word when he means thousands of them. So, in that way that only a mother can, she nudges.]

...It would be good for you, to love someone other than me.

It will be at least fifty years before anyone else can appreciate that joke.

[This poor horse probably doesn't deserve the name, but there's a little bit of relief in being able to make light of something with so much darkness around the castle otherwise. But now the horse is left be, for a topic that feels a little too out of left field. But there's no scandalized teenager response to it, the groans of mother! and asking why the topic has pivoted in this direction.

There's something much calmer instead, practical even. Because between the two options, Alucard knows how he wants to sound. Even if the other response is lurking in the back of his mind.]

There will be time for it. Just not now. There's more important things.

It's not always something you're able to choose. It may well find you first, without being invited in.

[Discreetly, her previously faint smile widens just a touch. Just because he'd taken the smooth and rational response doesn't mean she isn't fully aware that the other was considered. Sometimes it's nice to make him squawk a little. An occasional flustering is sometimes just what the doctor ordered.]

But I mean it. It teaches you about people, and about yourself, and about...growing, in a way that you haven't before. If all you do is watch your parents, then all you'll know how to do is imitate your parents. You've always had my love, and you always will. But finding it, and struggling through learning to foster it...that's something very different.

[Without being invi...that gets a momentary squint, because Alucard had heard the story of how his parents first met time and again and that absolutely felt like a very bad joke.

And his mother's right. Of course she is, and there's a little slump in Alucard's shoulders that say it without the words ever leaving his mouth. This entire experience has been about the pull of both of his parents, the all too delicate balance of his dual nature, and the fact that while it was so easy to default to the human side because of his mother's influence, there was so much more to learn to control.

None of that erases the fact that he's not ready for this conversation yet. Never mind the notion of leaving the house for a while.]

I know you mean it. But this hasn't settled yet. [Not the fighting. He hasn't had a second to sit through his own emotions alone.]

[You know what doesn't come in without being invited? Vampires.

Regardless, she sits up a little when she feels him shift, turning to face him a little more properly.]

I know. You may have to just grin and bear a certain amount of mother-henning for the near future. I keep thinking of things I want to tell you. The important things that, a week and a day ago, I thought could've kept awhile.

[And then that quiet contentment had all changed so fast, and she'd come so close to missing out on the chance to ever tell him any of it at all.]

So just know that finding someone to love will make your mother happy. And that if love does find you before you go looking for it, that I expect you to give it a fair chance.

...I think I can live with that.

[He says it with an expression on his face that lets some of that teenaged embarrassment through, but he does understand the impulse now. It should have been obvious without his mother saying it, but that same embarrassment clouded the longer view. The more empathetic view, and that empathy is even more important now. He doesn't say that there will be a few more embarrassed faces out of it, that much goes without saying.

Not that Alucard would trade the world for it, he's proven that much already.]

To both parts. I--

[There is a noise from the pit of Alucard's stomach that just rumbles outward, threatening to shake the sofa. A very pink tinge colors Alucard's cheeks, his stomach's message clear. You haven't eaten in a week.]

...did not eat before you slept.

[Busted. Vlad probably heard that rumble all the way in whatever corner of the castle he's disappeared off to, much less Lisa, who's sitting right next to him.]

Would you like to go find something for yourself, or shall I come with you?

[The sofa moved. Alucard's sure of it, and he puts a hand to his forehead because really, sleep was just much more important at the time. He needed it way more than food or blood at the time.]

I think I can manage on my own for this much.

[It's a quiet acknowledgement that while he doesn't want to leave his mother's side, there's a need to sit on his own at least for a little while. There's a sense of guilt for that need, but it's pointless guilt. His mother's more likely to encourage him to take that hour to himself and recognize what it really is. The first part of processing his own actions in this.]

Give me a kiss, then, and go.

[She rolls her shoulders a little, stretching out a bit after what has proven to be a long stint of curling up with her family. And deep down, Alucard isn't the only one reluctant to separate; already, the notion crosses her mind of going to find Vlad again, drawn into the gravitational pull of simply wanting to be close to someone.

But it's an impulse that she's capable of examining, and appreciating, and moderating. It's also one that she knows she should mitigate if for no other reason than that her son will feel less guilty about the separation if she doesn't make it seem as though she'll be inconsolably lonely the minute he's gone.]

I think I'm going to go find some musical instrument or another to bang around on, in the meanwhile. The organ, perhaps. Anything to make a little pretty noise.

[That's the easiest request in the world to fulfill. Alucard shifts and kisses one of his mother's cheek, then the other for good measure. It's feather light, and now that will just be a part of every farewell, even if it's just to go to the next room over.

Some routines are all too easy to fall into.

Alucard rises to his feet, and at mention of the organ, just nods. The thing is horridly loud, there is no question about where she is in the castle. Of course, the thing does bring one minor concern to mind.]

So long as it doesn't cause an avalanche up here in the mountains. I've been convinced for years that he has it at maximum volume on purpose.

You can't convince him to play it anymore, either. We know him too well to be suitably thunderstruck by its impressive roar.

[It takes a rare and special sort of person to make fun of Actual Dracula and his over-the-top theatrical habits. If Vlad is eavesdropping on them, and there's probably at least a thirty percent chance that he is by now, he's probably huffing about it.]

...I expect he'll come to find me, too. So you ought to have a little time to yourself.

[Before the interrogation that is, inevitably, coming.]

Means we could turn the volume down. If we really wanted.

[In fairness, they are extremely over the drop and theatrical and it's probably to Alucard's detriment to be taken seriously that he's inherited the drama too. Which means that organ is never, ever getting turned down from the eleven that it's at.]

I think that should be enough time to make up for a week's worth of not eating.

[And it will be just enough extra time to brace for what is certain to be a new and unfun entry in the Who's the Ţepeş family member? debate. Among the many others. Alucard knows that this conversation has helped, mostly because it has been so level headed. Then again, had it really addressed the deeper parts of that horrible night? Not in any particular detail, beyond the bishop.

Those words see Alucard's departure, down to the kitchen. There's no particular thought process about what he wants to put in his stomach, he just goes along the shelves and picks whatever catches his eye. Some of this cheese, some of that smoked venison shank, more of that rye bread, and so on until there's a small market around him. There's probably a part of him that needs to drink as well, but that's less dire. He's gone for longer without.

There's an extra hour before the interrogation, as it turns out. Mostly because someone seems to have taken the drama jokes seriously for a short while. The only thing Alucard tries to manage is to ensure that there's some kind of physical barrier between himself and his father, just to ensure that any movements are slowed for just a second. It doesn't occur to him that even just having a coffee table between three triangulated armchairs is going to contribute to the drama instead.]

[If he weren't properly feared as the lord of the night with all of the denizens of hell at his disposal, it might almost be comical to observe the way Vlad has been quasi-drifting around the castle over the past week, in the times when he isn't attached to Lisa's side. He stays occupied, of course, and never gives off the impression of being at a loss, but sometimes he simply turns up in odd places as though out of a lack of anything better to do, and sometimes he skulks without properly making his presence known, as though trying to keep to himself while still keeping tabs on his family, too.

It's telling, perhaps, that he always favors Lisa. Even if it weren't for the natural possessiveness and protectiveness that has arisen out of the recent events in Târgoviște, he would still largely choose to seek out his wife over his son, given the choice. But perhaps that's a mixture of blessing and curse in a time like this, when Alucard needs his own space to process his thoughts, and certainly dreads the thought of being confronted with his father's presence with no warning.

The organ plays for around half of the hour that Lisa and Vlad are absent. For the other half, it's quiet, which is likewise a mixed blessing — no shouting, but no apparent indication of what they might be doing instead.

Eventually, though, the time comes to reunite, and it's Vlad who makes his appearance first, which means Lisa must not be far behind. Still, he's imposing as he enters, tall and broad and still with an air of brooding that burns like embers behind his eyes. His one concession to relaxing seems to be that Lisa has convinced him to take his cape off, but otherwise, he's every bit the vampire that terrified men whisper about in the shadows.

Son, he intones — his first direct acknowledgement of Alucard since he'd woken up and found them in the parlor. He'd been keeping hands-off up until now for the sake of preserving the peace and stillness among them, but it seems that time has come to an end.]

[Alucard has had a lifetime of his father's moods and dramatics. They have been uncommon (or at least he's been kept away from the worst of them), but not wholly alien. So while there has been some immunity built up to that presence, that immunity is not total. There are occasions where all the legends and truths within them are all too apparent. Like now.

For all the presence, for all that opening tone is a thing to be feared, Alucard's not about to shrink in his seat. He keeps himself upright, hands resting on the arms of the chair. There's a sense of not calm or even confidence, but of accepting that wherever this goes, it is well worth it.

That aura is likely to disappear in a moment or so, but for now, it lingers. Makes it so much easier to meet his father's eyes without flinching.]

Father.

[Cool. Collected. Ready to see where this ends, if only to get it over with.]

[For all his severity, there may be in Dracula's demeanor a discernible sliver of something akin to approval of the way that Alucard carries himself, faced with his father at his most authoritarian. It's a favorable start to the encounter, that Alucard holds his ground, calm but without overt challenge. A Ţepeş, after all, does not cower or snivel or hide behind his mother's skirts.

However, Vlad doesn't sit, at least not immediately. Staying on his feet renders him considerably taller than his son, whether it's a choice he's made consciously or not. Perhaps it's merely a sign that he refuses the comfort of sitting at rest just yet; there's a fair chance he'll give in to the urge to pace, in a minute or two.

You've rested and fed.

A question without asking a question. A preamble to something they both know is coming.

The time has come for you to speak, Vlad says bluntly, turning a gaze onto his son that, while calm, is still filled with scrutiny. Leave nothing out.]

[That wasn't how this was supposed to start. But there's no point in protesting that fact, it's too sharp of contrast to how Alucard is carrying himself at the moment. There's no allowance for vulnerability, and the guilt that's about to well up inside him has to be pushed aside. The only thing left to do is to tap into the more inhuman part of him that can lay out every inch of this with a detached clarity.

So he does. Begins with how he learned what had happened and then how he journeyed to Târgoviște. The decisions made on the way, such as that between destroying the bishop or rescuing his mother, the second one was much more important. That if there was a way to get his mother out that meant his own life, that was an acceptable risk. Damage would be minimized if at all possible because that would be his mother's expectation. Each step showing where there was a thoughtful choice or just Ţepeş logic. A 75-25 split, really.

It's easy to talk about until the death count begins. He's always known that it's too much for his mother, not enough for his father. He's matter-of-fact about what things happened, but there's little said about particular injuries or methods of death. Only that as he moved forward, there were moments of rage that meant more clean up for whoever found the body. The death wasn't the point, they were obstacles.

There's a curious lack of detail about the state Alucard found his mother in. Nothing about bindings, about the cell, anything except that he made it, and by that time was half painted in red. His father doesn't need those details, he just needs to know that bindings were seen to and that they got away.

From the cell onwards, it becomes easier again. Perhaps it's because Alucard assumes his mother has shared some of the details herself. Perhaps because it's so close to the end of the explanation. No matter what, it ends the same way. The horse, the castle, and now this discussion.

And with it all laid bare, Alucard braces himself.]

[The reasoning Alucard puts on display as he lays out his recitation proves to be a double-edged sword, both serving his cause and leaving his father to bristle at it. It helps in the clarity it lends, building a framework of narrative that the details then color in; it also helps, to some degree, by preempting targeted questions about the choices he'd made by showing in advance what he'd considered when he made them.

But the relative coldness of his reasoning lacks the fire of rage that clearly burns behind Dracula's eyes, and on some level it might truly have been better for him if he'd been able to admit to flying into a fury and succumbing to reckless anger, if only because it's a response that would have resonated better with his father's emotions.

As it is, it creates a terrible duality between them — one only made worse by the memory of the name Alucard. People call him the opposite of his father. In a moment like this, opposition breeds and warrants a certain level of contempt. There is, after all, a very slender difference between what his mother would want and what someone who loves her with such abandon might believe she deserves.

(For her sake, there should be peace. For her sake, there should be war.)

I find myself wondering, his father says in a slow and chilling way, whether my son could possibly be afraid of a town full of pitiful men and their pitiful arts. Do you think you lack power enough to challenge them?

(For little more than an insult, Dracula alone once slaughtered and impaled forty merchants. The near execution of a wife and mother — the magnitude of such a transgression is so much greater than a mere insult.)

Is my son so weak that fools and peasants pose such a difficulty to him?

Dracula's hand comes to rest on the back of the chair set to hold him, long nails curling in toward the wood of the frame supports in an unholy grip.

You are my son, Dracula says, with harsh emphasis on the last two words. Is it beyond you to preserve that which is yours and answer insult in kind, such that you are merely left to choose one or the other?]

[What Alucard hears in all of his father's questions is an invitation to have a fight about this from another perspective. He's not terribly shocked that there's no recognition of what he did do (all three of them are here he thinks, so is there any value to this?), but there is a note of iritation at it.

But he still doesn't flinch, even with his father towering over him. There's only calm, there's only a steady breath.]

I sound rational about all of this now because it is a week behind me. [This is in fact a lie. He sounds rational because he's hardly had time to think it over in full, tease out the implications of actions, and because he's trying to put off the inevitable fight.] And it was not picking one or the other. It was knowing that what you both would demand of me would be opposite from each other, and trying to respect both of those desires.

Beyond all of that, there was still only one point: getting out with the both of us alive. Or at least with her alive. [Shit. Shouldn't have said that, but at least it's clear how very willing Alucard was to put all parts of himself on the line.] Everything else can come after.

[But the first question, that still needs addressing. But the honest answer, I've never had to control my anger like that before, and could have made a mistake that cost us both our lives and where would you be? doesn't get said. It's a near thing though.]

Their arts didn't deserve my time until after we were out of the city.

[What's probably becoming quickly apparent, as the conversation unfolds, is the fact that Lisa's absence from the room almost certainly isn't the product of coincidence. Whatever discussion she and Vlad might've had in the hour preceding this one, it seems to have included the stipulation that he have the chance to speak to their son individually before they all come together again, and however apprehensive Lisa might've been about what discussion might take place during that father and son conversation, she evidently hadn't been able to prevent it.

But perhaps that's not such a bad thing, in her estimation. A hard thing, certainly, but perhaps she'd suspected that there would be a particular catharsis in it for Alucard — the space for all the things he can't bear to confess in front of his mother to come out.

They put their hands on your mother, Vlad says in a quiet voice that sounds like steel, and there's something very particular in the way he pronounces the phrase "your mother". It's not a term used interchangeably with her given name. It's specific and pointed and possessive, with all the implicit emphasis on yours.

Vlad's lip curls back beneath his mustache, and his fingers tighten again on the chair back. They touched her and you let them live. No, you act as though they pose a threat to you. Those insects!

His eyes are flashing now, sharp and red. What possible interest could you have in answering vermin like that with such a feeble response? You could have carved fire and blood into that town and emerged with the both of you unscathed.]

[This is a softer rage than Alucard expected to be greeted with. It isn't that he's unprepared for the questions being asked either, it's more a matter of the pitch and biting back the more flippant remarks that still try to surface.

It is also the first time that rage of this magnitude has been directed on him. All other things growing up, they were small infractions or just stupid choices that for what his father was, were met with fairly proporinate reactions. This boiled down to why didn't you murder everyone in the capital even though you've said it about five times already?

Gold eyes meet red ones. The first thing Alucard wants to reply with why should I care about responding to vermin in the first place? And why are you so interested in it yourself? should never, ever, ever be uttered.

His defense instead, such as it is, is no stronger. But there's a calmness to it, because it isn't a defense exactly. It's a statement of very simple fact.]

I am still half human. The threat does exist, and it might have cost my mother's life if I forgot that fact in all of this.

[The next part shouldn't be said, especially as there's more of an edge to it. Low simmering anger, but not his father's rage.]

Every time you have responded to insults, you have been able to take the time and plan down to details that most would never think to account for. I didn't even have twenty four hours. Beyond that, I have to consider the budget of energy I have available to me. If I had thrown myself wholly into it and then collapsed, what then? Neither one of us would be here.

[It's evident, then, that Alucard's characterization of his father's tendencies toward vengeance surprise Dracula; he straightens up a bit, head shifting back just slightly in his only outward sign of surprise. But it's a true point, cast in that light: where Dracula recalls those events mostly in terms of the actions taken and the emotion that prompted it, the lead-up to his instances of revenge tends to go mostly overlooked. Time is something that means so little to a creature like Dracula. Power, as well, sits strangely disproportionate in his eyes to the realities of others.

It's not enough to cool Dracula's rage; the wellsprings of guilt and anger and hurt that are fueling it run too deep for it to be extinguished so easily. But it's enough to knock the flow of the conversation sideways, set it off-course.

And now that you are here? Dracula says almost carefully. Here, where you have both time and power at your disposal. How do you intend to respond now?]

[It is very hard to contain the very real surprise Alucard feels that he point lands and makes his father take a step back in consideration. The most he expresses is a moment of real confusion in his eyes, but then it's back to keeping everything in check. Because he has only temporarily redirected this conversation. His father's courses of action, once planned, are never deterred so easily.]

The honest response is I don't know. [He has been asleep for a week, after all.] I've...been caught up on discussions. I don't disagree that the bishop needs to be removed. Destroying the cathedral is a bare minimum, but that is not within my ability to do so. Not in a way that would force something beyond fear and fear alone.

[As you say, I have had sufficient time to plan.

Now the pacing resumes, as Vlad's iron grip on the back of the chair eases enough for him to start moving around the room instead, less consumed with raw ire — though certainly not any less dangerous for it. Quite the contrary, without the inherent recklessness that comes with rage, his planning turns all the more deadly for its uncompromising calculation.

And I have decided to meet their transgressions with retribution in kind. They burned Lisa's house, so they shall see their houses burn. They subjected her to torture, so I shall send my denizens to torture them. They would see her tied to a stake, so I will adorn stakes with their bodies. I will take their wives. I will leave their sons to weep. And to they, who showed her no compassion, I shall have no compassion.]

And that amounts to nothing learned aside from that you are still a thing to be afraid of.

[Oh. Now he sees where the argument really starts. Shit.

And he's gone and said the right words to make it happen. At least he has an alternative plan that will probably result in a new version of the argument. Points for novelty still count as points, he supposes.]

Destroy all the churches instead. Make it possible for the action to look like you or their God, and know either way the actions performed and the superstition behind them have no place here. Not with the changes rolling in from the west and not with what is creeping north from the Ottomans.

[I am a thing to be afraid of!

That is, after all, one of the fundamental concepts supporting the whole enterprise: that all of mankind should simply know that the life and well-being of the doctor Lisa Ţepeş is sacrosanct, because to harm her means invoking the unparalleled wrath of her husband.

Do you not want to make the world safe for her? Then men must know the penalty for touching her! Let them be afraid! Let their terror keep them in line! Let them see whose wrath they should truly tremble before, mine or their god's!]

How long does that lesson last for? A generation? Two?

[There's a desire to finally get up to his feet, but Alucard holds off. It invites the drama to start in full, and he's now trying to keep himself calm just to see how much longer he can last. An endurance run.]

Terror should instruct much, much further down than that. Destroy the source of the problem, which is the church and let others take the lesson in a way that forces them to never do this again not just to one person. That's not your nature, I know it isn't, but you know how things can turn out in the long run far better than any of the three of us.

[There's no sitting anymore. No more point to calm.]

Because this thing that happened, it isn't unique to us, there's just greater power and fury.

["Lesson." "Instruction."

It gets a laugh out of Vlad, but it isn't a particularly kind one.

You sound just like her, begging me to teach them. To make a difference in this world, acting as men do.

But here, perhaps, comes the first real flash of just how deeply his guilt and remorse is plaguing him, wrapped up in his bitterness over comparisons to human men. He had been traveling as one, after all, when his journeys had taken him far away from his wife.

Too far to learn of her plight and reach her in time, the way that his son had managed to.

It's a moment that lends some clarity to many of the tendencies he's previously shown — his rejection of humanity, his preference for acting as a monster, his ire when his half-human son voices opinions that bend in that direction. He was imitating a man, when this came to pass. Small wonder that he has no further desire to do so any longer.]

[I'm not begging, I'm being direct and matter of fact. Don't say it. Don't say it.

He doesn't, but the other words die on Alucard's tongue too, something about vermin and something about having a stake in the human world now. One and a half. It's the last four words that get Alucard to say nothing at all. He isn't sure how to proceed, and the silence is terrifying in it's own way.

Which means doing something equally terrifying. Walking over and reaching up to put a hand on his father's shoulder. Not expected, not in this fight, but now it's an action done because words fail. They'll keep failing for some time, Alucard suspects. For all of them. Too much of this situation doesn't allow for words.]

[For the second time in as many minutes, an unexpected decision of Alucard's renders his father surprised and still. There are so many accusations that could come so easily, most born of baseless fury and spite — Dracula's rejection of the human race so absolute, save for his wife, that even the human half of his son fails to warrant an exception. And in that way, perhaps, Lisa's earlier assessment of him shines through: that in many things, Vlad Dracula Ţepeş truly is limited in his ways, at a loss for a wider breadth of responses than the few he's grown jealously accustomed to.

Shameful or not, sometimes it's all too easy to shove even his own son away. Too much of a human, not enough of a vampire. Too sympathetic to a perspective that Dracula so often categorically rejects. Lisa is always his conduit for relating to the world of men; Alucard should be the same way, in theory, but in practice all too often that connection goes overlooked in Vlad's eyes.

But where Vlad creates that chasm, Alucard now bridges it. And for an instant, even amidst his roiling fury, Dracula proves able see the best of Lisa in Alucard, and not just the worst of humanity.

You care for them. Like she does.

The observation is quiet. His voice has taken on a very different tone than the snapping anger it'd held before.

They would slaughter you, too. Yet you see something worthwhile in them.]

It's more complicated, and I can't even make myself say some bravado nonsense about how they can try. Hubris invites falls.

[That feels like the best assessment of everything. How he feels about the actions he's taken, how bitterness is still trying to set in because his father's points are valid and so very true. Being this focal point of two different ways of looking at the world, it was exhausting even without additional circumstances.

The logic behind it doesn't make sense either, it just feels right in the perspective Alucard has as that same focal point. He's no crux, just someone who stands in a different place than most. Raised with knowledge centuries away from other men. Given abilities no one else has.]

And I don't have the words for it either, beyond some sense of responsibility.

[That's all his mother's influence. They both know it, there's no way it could ever come from his father. Alucard's not sure if he should withdraw his hand, so he stands there. Awkward. Unsure. Slightly afraid of where this may go.]

[Sometime later, when the tension of this encounter has long passed and there has been ample time to process what was said and done, Dracula will reflect back on this moment, and this thing that was confessed to him by his son. It's always so easy to see him as his mother's child, from the gold of his hair to the weaknesses his half-human nature adds to the purity of his vampire blood. But in this one thing, perhaps, the parallels between father and son are easy to see. Neither one is very good at integrating with the world that the humans occupy. Hearing Alucard shed light on his own struggles might, perhaps, lend some clarity to those of Dracula as well.

For now, however, he makes no move to brush Alucard's hand away. He remains still, and steady, and his voice keeps that quieter tone, for the moment.

She won't speak of what was done to her. Not to me, he observes, in a voice that sounds eerily thin. Even as she weeps from the memory of their actions, she protects those who tormented her from my temper.

Guilt, again. This time, with the addition of frustration. Lisa's instincts, it seems, have been the same as Alucard's: both of them knew better, when recounting the events of that night, to elaborate on the parts that would surely infuriate Dracula the most.

And yet, to what practical effect? He's left to wonder, with the blanks filled in solely by the ugliness of his own imagination.

She wants to return to them. She won't stay. A doctor's place is among the ill, she says. Yet if I stay my hand and my wrath, then I am left with no means to keep her safe, among these men who have already sought to slaughter her once.]

[The little thin crack in his mother's facade really had just been a fraction of what was being witnessed. There's the familiar pang of anger again at the words their actions. And his father did't see that horrid cell, the chains, the rope, any of it. Alucard gets it. Why his mother won't say anything, why this part of his father's rage feels right. Because they're both understandable actions.]

She may not be ready to speak of it to herself yet.

[They're words said very softly. Not out of fear, but out of a quieter reflection. There's never been a higher emotional tension in the castle, but neither himself or his father get to make this about them either. That's pure selfishness.

And there's no surprise that his mother wants to return to work. It would be a far greater surprise if she didn't, because if there was one thing Alucard's mother did not do, it was stew or wallow in what happened. Moving ever forward, that was what brought her to the castle doorsteps twenty some years ago anyway.]

A different place then. Not a village. Perhaps not even Wallachia anymore. [Wait. Vampire politics.] If that's possible.

[I wanted to see my anger reflected in yours, he continues even more quietly, as though speaking more to himself than to Alucard. To see Târgoviște razed by your hand, and know that your rage was the match for mine.

He goes silent. It hangs in the air, still and thick, until at last it breaks with one more thought — the rawest, most revealing yet.

To know that in this, my son's feelings were like mine. And not like hers.

Perhaps it will always be Alucard's fate, to act as the bridge between two very different worlds.

But Vlad seems to think on the notion that Alucard raises, the possibility that Lisa's deflection and stubbornness may be a sturdy shell hiding a much more vulnerable state of affairs within, and at length he only hums as he seems to process that before turning to face his son.

Abandon Wallachia. Of course it's possible. Perhaps it would even complete my revenge for me, from the infighting that would occur in the power vacuum I left behind.

To his credit, his tone is more dry now than furious, though not quite near enough to be called anything akin to humor.]

[The strangest part of that statement is that there is a metaphor that rises to Alucard's thoughts almost immediately. That anger is there, it's just as angry and raw, but how it's channeled, how it has decided to run it's course is...yes. The comparison works.]

It's more as if it's been passed through a prism and refracted. It is there. Know that.

[If science metaphors fail though, there's been a much more important point made that they would both do well to reflect on. Now more than ever, since this talk has ended up being reasonable. Far more reasonable than Alucard ever anticipated.]

Mm. And there's plenty of time to decide where to go. [His father is the one that has been traveling, after all. He knows where it is safest, and Alucard is unlikely to ever leave the place they settle on until all three of them head elsewhere in some new agreement.]

[A good thing to know.

A validating admission, somehow — not that Vlad Dracula Ţepeş actually needs validation, but it adds a layer of calm over the buried fury that still burns there. Now, at last, it's Vlad's turn to bridge the gap between them, his own hand coming to rest on Alucard's shoulder in a mirror of what was exchanged before.

You both will stay within the castle, for now. I will move it anywhere we need go, and arrange for anything that need be procured from beyond its walls.

Which isn't a state of affairs that will last for long, certainly, but for the time being, it will last. The castle will endure, solemn and unassailable, and the family will endure within it.]

Understood.

[This is all very strange. The hand on his shoulder, that's all right, and Alucard leans into it a little bit more than he expected to. It is still his father, as terrifying as the man can be in these moments. They've reached a quiet accord, and it came about with the least amount of dramatics that could be hoped for given the circumstances.

Nor is he sure what happens next. There will be a natural break in this gesture, and they'll part ways to explore other places in the castle to be alone with all their emotions. Maybe Alucard will sit and spend most of tthe day alone, maybe he'll just go check on the horse. (He really should check on the horse.) It'll go on and then....

..and then where to? West, where there have been little fits and starts of humans moving closer to the technology in the castle. Embracing science, the wisdom of the Greeks, all the forgotten things? The east, where the Islamic sages never forgot the ways of science?

Who's to say at this point? The only option that cannot be pursued is to live in isolation, if only because all three of them in the castle constantly will drive each other to madness.]

[It goes on, as time always does.

It's only to be expected, of course, that they couldn't stand the isolation for long — Lisa least of all, fueled as she is by her drive to put her skills to use helping others. So perhaps it comes as little surprise that the castle moves again before long, this time on a long jaunt that takes a fair amount of Vlad's focus to accomplish. But there are a few fortuitous things about the move, the most obvious of which being that it still puts them well and truly distant from the dangers they'd faced in Wallachia.

Prague is not a town like the ones they'd left behind. No, Prague is a proper city, developed and bustling with people, with commerce, with ideas. Prague boasts a university of radical thinkers, and more than one outspoken voice willing to decry the church and its workings. Prague has a culture of science and learning, not ignorance and superstition; more than once, the astronomical clock has drawn Lisa's attention, and resulted in more than a bit of insistent urging to convince Vlad to visit it with her.

And of course, Prague is a city ready to embrace a doctor with open arms. Procuring a space as the future site of her clinic isn't difficult in the slightest, and the structure is a charming one, set into the high wall of a narrow winding street, with a red rooftop and an empty sign hanging out over the walkway just waiting for a proper lettering to advertise her availability. It's modest but serviceable, with an upstairs and a downstairs, and while it can't possibly replace what she'd lost when the bishop had burned her cottage, it feels like a fresh start, to walk through it.

Vlad, of course, had sneered at the prospect of city life, yet he'd loathed the idea of being away from them more. So more often than not, he can be seen around the town, himself — always given a wide berth, and certainly gossiped about, but mostly just because the locals don't really know what to make of him, the visiting aristocrat from some unknown locale. And of course, when all else fails, there is always the castle, tucked away some distance from the city, awaiting them always should they choose to run back to the safety of its walls.

But it doesn't feel like they need to, not here. The very atmosphere of Prague is so different from what they'd left behind, and truly, it's a welcomed change of pace.]

[Alucard had expected to go across the sea and south to where the Italians were. It was impossible to miss their rumblings, the sudden interest in what was antique and now valuable again. But there was too much of the church in those lands (and perhaps, in truth, too much garlic) and so further north and just a little bit west it had been.

It wasn't Wallachia, but all three of them were sick of the place. Years after his mother truly did pass (from old age and nothing else), perhaps he would go back. But there would be no affection for the land that saw his parents meet, there would only be a mild interest in seeing the changes to the landscape and how the Ottomans influenced certain things.

There's no point in attending the university, but he is aware of it and the goings on, just as he is aware of so much else. Around him is a veritable sea of humanity, and to be in the midst of it feels strange. He grew up in the castle after all, and in Lupu when his mother realized so much isolation was not in his best interest.

The upstairs is theirs, of course. Much less spacious than the castle, but also a much easier place to protect. There are nights early on when rather than sleep in bed, Alucard takes to his wolf form and squishes himself against the front door, sleeping there instead. To catch drafts. An absolutely bullshit excuse, but he uses it anyway.

One thing that Alucard argued for in the clinic were dummy books. Contemporary works, not the advanced ones that the castle had, works with incorrect understandings of human anatomy and health and all things besides. If there was another attempt to attack, then the books could not be evidence. They were published this year. Last year. Two years ago. The printers were all in Prague or from Italy or the Germans.

He walks into the clinic with another armful of the books, not exactly proud of the fact that there's ink smeared on his face. Picking things up from the printer means time spent means ending up being asked to help with a stuck press means ink on his face and arms.]

Mother? This is the last batch.

[It's unsurprising, perhaps, that Lisa is all but delighted at the prospect of seeing Alucard in particular exposed to life in a city. That's not to say that she doesn't find it daunting herself, to step out of the doors and find that veritable sea of people waiting for her instead of the more sparse populations in the towns of Wallachia, but the exposure to the culture is in some ways the best of both worlds: the benefits of traveling to see the wonders humanity has to offer, but without the physical act of traveling, so that they can stay together.

Still, there are little things to get used to. Waking up to find her son a wolf instead of a young man, for example. Hearing Vlad slip out at night and hoping they won't wake up to rumors of missing citizens come the morning. More often than not, she awakes to find a still-warm loaf of bread waiting on the table instead, which goes a long way toward softening her apprehensions down into relieved fondness.

But this afternoon, they're working at getting the interior of her future clinic in order, and while she's mostly focusing on the big-picture concerns like the arrangement of tables and treating implements, Alucard is focusing more on the aesthetics and optics. They make a good team that way, really, and she smiles when she hears him come in.]

Wonderful. How many shelves is that filled, now?

It should take up the last empty shelf on the book case and leave several additional texts to scatter around as required.

[The wooden crate that they're in is set down on the ground beside the bookcase in question, and Alucard sinks down with it. The actual binding is simple, as again, none of this can match watch the castle has. Plain brown leather. Simple marks. So much Latin and nothing else, because the heavens forefend anything not written in Latin.

There's a practiced care in putting each book back though. Alucard knows better than to damage books, even ones meant to just serve as backgrounds to what is actually a pretty long con, if he thinks about it. Set up as a simple doctor with only the contemporary knowledge, end up providing the best possible care anyone can have because of being married to a vampire who has a massive library.]

What else is left?

To wash your face, perhaps.

[She laughs softly as she looks at him, rubbing lightly at her own face in indication of the places where he's wound up with ink smudged on his. It's actually a rather nice look for him, owing mostly to his ethereal brand of beauty; her son has the sort of features that can carry some imperfections and not just still look good, but to actually make the imperfections seem attractive just by virtue of being a part of his face.

Certainly it won't be long before the eligible daughters of the town start turning out at her door, she muses with a hint of suppressed mirth. A whole flock of them, with all manner of made-up ailments, designed not to seek medical treatment but rather just a glimpse of the young man always hanging about the clinic.]

And I've yet to find a good place to hide the phlebotomy apparatus. It likely needs to be hidden, doesn't it? Or do you think it could sit out without arousing too much suspicion? I'm of two minds about it, at present.

I know. The press got stuck and they needed an extra pair of hands.

[Alucard looks embarrassed enough at the thought of the mess. To know his mother's thoughts about anyone's interest in him, that would just be sheer mortification. There's a version of all of this, the paths gone elsewhere, where the question of romance is not a thing of teenager-esque embarrassment, but she is also not there to witness it. (~~And one of them is rude besides.~~)

His mother's question comes with a considered silence, punctuated by the books on the shelf trying to fall over every so often.]

Hide it for now. When there's more of an established opinion, you can bring it out and claim it a new device you've just bought, and give it a made up backstory. How often do you use it anyway?

[Lisa Ţepeş is alive and well and enjoying every last bit of being a mother, including but not limited to thriving on her child's awkward suffering. What could possibly be a better sampling of the human experience than having to deal with parrying the affections of amorous young women who can't take a hint.]

Not very often. At least, not when it comes to treating patients. Occasionally it finds...other uses.

[Bloodletting equipment in a family of vampires. Hmmm.]

Another for the pile heading back upstairs, then. Do you suppose I ought to have a shelf of jars with strange powders and leafy weeds inside them, just for the sake of appearances?

[There is none, and it is made all the better for Alucard's knowledge of knowing what this is, trying not to give into it, and failing every time.]

...Ah, that explains a few things.

[Really how didn't he put two and two together?]

As for the jars, perhaps. The herbals that have been published recently haven't been incorrect about certain uses, so the material described within would at least have an air of practicality, even if most of it will be for appearance's sake.

And how many have they gotten completely wrong, I wonder? Recommending hemlock as a cure for a sore neck, or something equally absurd. That'll cure the soreness, all right, but by spoiling everything else.

[She picks up the aforementioned phlebotomy equipment, making certain not to tangle the tubes as she arranges it into a reasonably neat pile for carrying and brings it over to what must be her designated "not down here" space.]

Like curing a toothache by beating someone upside the head with a stick.

Less than usual, not enough to meet your exacting standards.

[Alucard picks his head up from shelving the books, looking at his mother with both fondness and some exasperation.]

It's not going to be instant understanding, you know that.

Yes, of course, my standards of not feeding people grave soil and foot shavings as a universal remedy.

[She winds up smiling a little ruefully, though, shoulders dropping as she absorbs that look of exasperation with a little good-natured sheepishness in response.]

I forget sometimes, I suppose. I don't feel very exceptional or even out of the ordinary, but I've had a lot of benefits that even most doctors don't.

Apparently according to some gossip, feet are a thing so perhaps neither of us can judge that fact.

[Medieval Prague is kinky, apparently. Or the university students are getting very, very creative in slandering professors. Either way, Alucard has information he never wanted.]

We both have. But they're catching up, just a little.

[Always they. Never we.]

Is that why you let yourself be caught up in doing so many favors and errands around town, hmm? You've been listening to the local gossip?

[She's clearly teasing. She's also heading over to watch him shelve books for a little while, not because she's done with her own work or because he needs the help, but just for the sake of being a little nearer to him.]

And certainly listening to some interesting discussions, to have learnt so much about feet and people's opinions on them.

It isn't on purpose, I can assure you. On these topics, I would be content in ignorance.

[So much ignorance about the foot thing.

There's a few books left in the crate, and Alucard grabs the next one. It doesn't go on the shelf though, this one he offers to his mother.]

This wasn't in the order. It caught my eye as I walked in.

[The binding isn't flashy either, and within is no medical glory. Instead it speaks of only the skies, of stars, and what patterns live in them. None of it is new information. What is new, why it caught her son's eye in the first place are the woodcuts. They're rendered lovingly, but more than that is the deft hand of a colorist who has taken great care to give a sense of depth to each image.]

Oh?

[Curious, she takes the book from him, nestling it carefully in the crook of one arm as she opens the cover with the other, and as soon as she does, she understands instantly why her son was drawn to this one. The stars, the night sky — they'd always given these things to him, even from the time when he was only an infant, painting the decorations in his room with constellations and rewarding him with glimpses through his father's telescope after moments of triumph and success.

It's a beautiful book. The illustrations are delicate and finely crafted, with that fragile and minimalist sort of look that art of its nature always seems to carry. And page by page, she traces the very tips of her fingers over the images, wondering at their delicate beauty.]

...Oh. It's beautiful...

[No wonder it caught your eye, is the implication between the lines.]

[Alucard can't help but stay where he is, looking up at his mother goig through all the pages of the book. Astronomy was as much a part of growing up as all the other sciences, but the art of depicting the sky, that's something that seems to always be a skill, the knowledge of how it all works be damned.

He remembers the books at home. The illuminated manuscripts (he always wondered how his father acquired them from monasteries), the rarer things on papyrus. This is just a continuation.]

You could keep it open on one of the spare tables. It might spark some interest.

Or make a fine litmus test for deciding which of my patients we like and which ones we like?

[She turns the page again, lips parting slightly in a silent, pleased intake of breath at the next page.]

Look at this one — an aurora. It looks like the glow of a fire below the horizon.

It can serve two purposes.

[The description of the next page is enough to actually prompt Alucard to his feet. It was something read about once or twice, but there had never been any particular images so far as he could remember. Within a moment he is standing besides his mother eyes looking down at the page.

It is remarkable. And he can't help but grin.]

Remarkable. I can't believe the patron that originally requested it decided to leave this behind.

Their loss was your gain, it seems.

[It makes it easy to share the pages, the fact that he's taller than her. She fits in easily just a little bit in front of him, so that he can look over her shoulder without difficulty while they both examine the pages.]

We came close to naming you Sirius, you know. It didn't stick in the end, but it was a favorite for a while.

Yours, actually.

[It's an important clarification. It's also nothing compared to all the books that Alucard got to grow up with, but it's a tiny little start.]

I...hm. [He stands there for a moment, considering the weight of this name versus his own, then shakes his head.] The flow of it doesn't work at all. Whose suggestion was that?

Ours.

[It's a little bit like his earlier they — keeping the important components together. We, us, our. Togetherness. Family. It's also wholly unconscious, and because of it, it takes her a moment before it occurs to her why he'd made that particular clarification in the first place.

The fire took so much of what was hers, didn't it. And the things she has now, many of them are shared — which isn't a bad thing by any means. But this...this is hers, he says, and means for her, just her, without needing to be shared. Just hers, to make her happy.

She pretends like she's shifting to nudge him playfully, but lingers and turns it into an affectionate lean.]

Oh, but the name — that was one of your father's attempts. I recall it was when we were painting your room, and he started to look more and more lost in thought, and was painting less and less. I could tell he was utterly preoccupied with something, so I let him ponder it until he finally offered it up.

[She shrugs a little.]

I only ever heard him admit to it once, but he said under his breath that it would be fitting for you to be the brightest of stars. The name itself didn't stick, of course, but the sentiment lingered.

[He's about to correct, insist yours, but Alucard doesn't have to. His mother figures it out, and to not have to repeat the word again is a mercy. All of the events that lead them here still loom, and it's why the castle has seen less of the three of them since they've moved. There's still the underlying terror that stepping away for even a moment will invite fate to pick up where it let off.

The nudge is met with a gentle hand on his mother's shoulder, all the warmth of the gesture contrasted against Alucard's colder temperature.]

That is...very him.

[It's also very embarrassing, because when his parents want they can really be the schmoopiest people. And because they're still like this, Alucard smiles through the total embarrassment.]

The way he came about it and the sentiment.

It was easier for him, I think, when you were young. He was more at a loss of what to do with you in other ways back then, but it was simpler for him to make you happy. All it took was to pick you up or hand you a toy, and you would smile at him. He liked to make you smile; you might have been too young to remember that, but I do.

[And perhaps work on the clinic is going to stall out for the time being, thanks to this reminiscing, but there will be plenty of time to get the downstairs in order. Right now, the reminiscing adds warmth to the way she's still idly leafing through the pages of the book, glancing over the woodcut images as though taking stock of which pages she wants to peruse more thoroughly later.]

I know it's harder for him now. The sentiment is still there, but he can't simply win you over with a toy or a pat on the head anymore.

Adults are much more complicated.

[He's much more complicated, and adrift in life in the way all 20 somethings are. Before the fire, before everything, Alucard was unsure of what he might do. Travel as his father did, perhaps. But beyond that? A professional life, or something quieter? He was never quite sure.]

And I think that he forgets that for all the parts of himself reflected in me, they've been shaped by very difference forces.

[That had been one of the quieter takeaways from the argument that was not. The way they saw the world, it was both impacted by Lisa. Alucard had come by it naturally, his father had not.]

Yes. He sees me in you, but you aren't me. And he sees himself in you, but you aren't him. But I think, more often than not, he's glad when you take after me more than you do him.

[Which is not always apparent, perhaps, on the surface. But Vlad is, after all, a difficult man to crack, and his true intentions are often challenging to read even among the people who know him best.]

He'll never say as much, of course. And when he shows his affection, he always wants to show it through protectiveness. But you don't need his protection anymore, not the way you used to. So he harbors his feelings without knowing a different way to show them.

I compared it to light refracting to a prism once. I think it still holds, in many ways.

[The gladness of taking after his mother more often is something Alucard doesn't quite believe. The disapproval after everything is not a good way of judging it, of course, but it sticks hardest.

That protective trait, using it to show affection, that's been so very inherited. Having a large wolf at the front door is proof enough.]

...You know he does still pat me on the head if I'm by the door in the mornings.

Which you are, often.

[Seeing Alucard take on his different forms is always a little — well, it's taken some getting used to, and she's still getting used to it. Most of his abilities she takes fairly well in stride, but there's always something a little jarring about seeing a bat or a wolf and knowing that it's simply her son in an adopted form.]

I always feel a little bad to find you've been sleeping on the floor. But I know why you do it.

[And a small part of her, one that she's always a little ashamed of, feels reassured for it.]

You both encouraged me to learn the skill in the first place.

[And the wolf form is warm, content to withstand the chills of not having the castle's heated floors, and enough to give a man pause.

It goes back a ways anyway. That one toy in his bedroom, it was a favorite.]

I admit though, I've been taking one of the pillows from the sofa with me. That's why it's been covered in all the fur.

I had been wondering about that, the fur. I see my suspicions were fairly close to accurate.

[It's sort of cute to contemplate, really. Mostly from wondering if he moves the pillow as a human, and then transforms into a wolf with it already in place, or whether he transforms first and then goes to fetch it in his wolf form.

The latter, obviously, is an almost stupidly charming mental image.]

Do you only do it in the house, or have you been sneaking out that way to go exploring, too?

If need be, I can find some spell to remove it from the furniture.

[He absolutely walks around with a pillow in his mouth. One day his mother will witness this action, and it will never be lived down.]

Only in the house. I'd attract too much attention in the city in that form.

You could also find a brush and about ten minutes of effort.

[She loves her vampire men dearly, but sometimes the teasing comes altogether too easily. Find a spell to do the housework. Only in the house of the Draculas.]

I suppose there'd be no convincing anyone that you were simply a rather large and menacing-looking dog, would there. Except around children too young to know better, perhaps.

You're asleep and I am fairly sure the other option is the highest heights of comedic hallucinations.

[The mental image of brushy brushy with Dracula and wolf son is just too much, and Alucard can feel his own brain trying to deal with it. He's horrified.]

As I said. It's too risky, and the bat thing is...I don't care for the form.

You never know. He might enjoy the opportunity to spend that sort of quality time together with you.

[...Yeah, okay, she's absolutely just fucking with him at this point, but at least it's funny.]

Perhaps you can learn something a little more domesticated while we're here. You'll have the time for it, I'm sure. A housecat, maybe.

[It is funny, but Alucard needs to move on before this is all he sees tonight as he tries to fall asleep.]

Mother, is that commentary?

A suggestion, and that's all. Take it however you will.

[As she says it, she finishes leafing through the pages in the book, then flips back through to find one or two that had immediately caught her fancy and admire them.]

I don't want you to feel isolated here, is all.

Mhmmm.

[He is not convinced, if the tone is anything to go by. But the word isolation brings up a deeper sigh, one of those noises that mean he has been thinking far, far too much and been keeping everything tucked away close to his heart.]

It's a city filled with people, mother. I don't know if isolation is actually possible.

[But he has held this city at arm's length since they've moved in. Explored yes, but interacted with most people? It has been about the same amount of time as his father, and the rest spent here. Home.

And checking on the horse every so often, because they've still got the horse. The horse is probably the most honored guest to pass through the castle wall in centuries.]

[It is a most cherished horse. Worthy of accolades. All things considered Vlad probably likes the horse better than he likes most of the members of his court right now, because at least the horse has proven itself useful and doesn't complain.]

There's isolation, and then there's isolation.

[She knows his habits, of course; he's her son. She knows how he and Vlad both withdraw in their ways, detaching from the world around them and putting up their walls, and only emerging when someone arrives to knock them down.

It really is sort of strange, how she's the one most personally affected by the events that had transpired, and yet somehow also the one most willing to continue engaging with the world around her in spite of it.]

You can come with me, if I need to make a house call. Some patients won't always be able to make it here to the clinic. You can be my assistant.

[The horse gets fed from a bucket of gold. This horse is probably the most sacred thing to ever enter the castle. The Best Horse. And there's zero doubt that Vlad likes the horse more than everyone else who isn't immediate family, he's made it pretty obvious. (And watching the court get upset about a horse is the height of comedy.)

But leave it to his mother to call Alucard out on exactly where he's at emotionally right now. It's easier to hold things at arm's length right now. Not only because they are in a new place, but because this can all still go so sour, and then where shall the three of them be?]

I...I'd like that. [It's safe. Because if something happens, he's there.

But there's something else, and his mother has already called him out on staying just outside of the human world. There's another reason for it, one that's less concerned with his mother's well being.]

How long, do you imagine, it will take for others to notice that I have not aged at the rate men do?

...Longer than we'll spend here, I imagine.

[Which is an admission she's been largely keeping to herself until now, but still. She has her suspicions, and nothing about this move has had its foundations in actually wanting to settle in Prague — only that it seemed the most natural refuge for them in the moment. They're playing house, not making a home. It's enforced normality for all of their sakes, but an escape from unfinished business can't last forever.

How long it does last remains to be seen. But it would be different if the passage of five years took him from the alleged age of ten to that of fifteen, and no changes were seen. As it is, he's a man, and looks the part. Particularly if he's thought to be an aristocrat, his fair features will go a long way toward disguising the fact that they aren't changing much over time.]

Is that why you'd rather stay out of sight altogether?

[Alucard hums softly at that response. This place feels far safer than Wallachia, but right now anything is safer. They've got each other, his mother can rejoin the world, but after that? This mending, it is a lifetime of work, and it will still have a death at the end of it.

There's so many unknowns about his own future, for all the advantages and blessings this heritage has given him. If there was any right time to confide fears, then it would be now. It would be in this moment of transition, for what else can they do but think about the future?]

It seems prudent for the time being. It isn't as if myself or father blend in, be it in looks or in actions.

[The carrot incident.]

You can't very well expect to blend in with a place that you never experience to begin with.

[It's not a retort or a challenge — just Lisa musing aloud, mostly to herself. But things are different for her than they are for her family, and sometimes it's too easy to forget that. They'd decried her for witchcraft and the accusations had been baseless and false. But Vlad and Adrian are vampires — are the things that foolish men shun and fear.

For an instant, a sudden and paralyzing thought strikes her — of men with torches someday coming for Adrian like they'd come for her, ropes binding her son's wrists, silver needles set against his skin —

No. No. He broke the chains that held her. He wrenched through iron. He can change into a wolf and a bat, he's strong, he's fast. They couldn't take her son the way that they took her. They couldn't take her son. The world couldn't take her son.

And yet still, the fear doesn't entirely abate.]

...It never quite seems fair, does it.

Come now. No one in this family has ever had a knack for the art of being subtle.

[The remark is flippant. More flippant than Alucard intended it to be, but it is too late to correct the statement. And his mother's next few words means that she's gone from musing to...something darker.

Alucard's thoughts are concerned, but not in the darkness his mother has just conjured.]

I don't think it's fairness. Just...waters no others must navigate, and no ship has passed through before to give an account of what to expect.

I'm sorry, no one?

[Lisa you stormed Dracula's castle and made him teach you his dark science magics. The assessment is entirely accurate.]

That's a pretty turn of phrase, I like that. Are we each the captain of our own vessel, in the metaphor, or all on the same one together?

....Mother you literally banged on the front door until father let you in and spent five minutes sassing him, and that was the first time you met.

[Look at this unimpressed look, Lisa. Overdramatic AF is the family trait.]

I'm not actually sure. The answer to all of it is probably yes.

Well, it was a very big castle and I wanted to make sure the man who lived there heard me knocking.

[She does an excellent impression of "haughty and cross about it", but she leans on it just a little bit too heavily for it to sound entirely believable, exposing the underlying humor in it.]

That's not a lack of subtlety, that's just good sense.

I'll remember this claim the next time you accuse one of us of being dramatic for the sake of it.

[He's deadpan. But he's so serious too, it will be used against her in the future.]

I would've used the word theatrical, moreso than dramatic.

[This is not actually a retort, mostly due to the fact that she has absolutely no leg to stand on here.]

Capes don't billow in the wind nearly so magnificently when one isn't capable of moving about at blinding speed to make them.

You're mincing words for the sake of avoiding the fact I'm correct, and they can if you have the angle of the wind right.

[He's just saying! And he's laughing, because this conversation has taken a sudden right into extreme silliness.]

[It's so good to hear him laugh, though. His expression turns so bright, the lines of worry and guilt lessening exponentially; he used to smile so easily when he was young, at every least thing, and while such moments are rarer now that he's grown, they're all the more precious for it.]

Oh, can they. I think I'd like a demonstration of it, please, if you're so wise.

Not the right time of day. Nor is it windy enough. We'd need to go down by the river first, and I promised I'd help with this, not...not aerodynamics.

[That's what they're calling it these days, him and his father.]

[Prague has been good. Two years in, and there are routines. A sense of normalcy. (In so much as a city that thinks some politics can be solved with tossing someone out a window is normal.) The castle hasn't moved in two years save for the odd week-long get away. The three of them are only ever there on the weekends otherwise, unless there is an emergency demand for medical supplies.

(No one has looked twice at the success rate of the clinic. It is only known that the woman there is skilled and she only demands payment from those who can afford it, so that those who can't can receive treatment. Alucard smiled thinly the first time he heard someone in a crowd speak of the concept and call it Christian charity.)

Alucard's place, place as Adrian and not Alucard, is either as a large wolf watching his mother work or else with the printers He proof reads drafts before anything gets type set, he double checks pages for errors and makes corrections, he comes home with ink smudged on his hands and on his face and he grumbles only when his mother tries to rub away all of it with her thumb. He talks of work generally, and of the more alarming things when he must. There is a renewed interest in witches starting to bloom, and safety is all he and his father think about most days.

It's a castle weekend again. The only time that either one of them really let Lisa alone, because she is safe within the walls there. Both of them are paranoid, will be until the natural end of her life. (No one has started to think about what will happen after that.) It's night, night and he and his father have been out and considering where the castle might go next when the weigh station they have been at for the past two years must finally be left behind. Quiet and with a full moon overhead and--

--and then Alucard is bursting through the front doors of the castle, shifting from wolf form to human as he yells for his mother.]

We need to go to the castle's engine room! Now!

[It was supposed to be a quiet night.

She'd just been thinking of setting aside her books and preparing herself for bed, when the activity and shout had come through the castle doors; she's in the lab near the telescope, whimsically pausing to take a look up through and admire the constellations in the blue velvet sky (and thinking, equally whimsically, about the next time she'll be able to preoccupy Adrian with some task for a few hours while she gets Vlad alone for a date long overdue), when the sound of her son's voice breaks her concentration, and, well.

After Târgoviște, she'll never hesitate to respond to the sound of her son's voice when it takes that tone, ever again.

She drops everything, grasping her long skirt and yanking it up a few inches to get it out of the way of her feet as she runs to the hall, looking for him, ready to meet him as he rushes the corridor.]

What is it? What's going on?

[Alucard's in the corridor too quickly. His natural speed is to blame of course, and it takes effort real effort for him to slow down. It means nearly tripping over his own feet and the carpet below, and he'd do just that if he hadn't braced a palm on the wall to catch himself.

He turns to face his mother. The expression there is not the look of terror drenched in blood that greeted her in Târgoviște. It is a cousin of that look though, wild eyed and unsure of what it's just seen and where such a thing might end.]

He needs us to move the castle, emphasis on the word now. Said that...[He isn't talking in complete sentences. Alucard uses that moment of realization to center himself. Acting wildly is not helpful in this moment.] He said that you would have written instructions somewhere, and that it may be a two person job.

[None of that justifies the why of it.]

There were scant details he gave me, father only spoke of an old problem from France sweeping in. Have you ever seen him look alarmed?

...At least once.

[But this is no time to reminisce about the day she went into labor with Adrian. This is evidently an emergency, and one with no time to spare on idle pleasantries.]

It's upstairs, in our room. I haven't thought about those instructions in ages, but —

[She looks up the stairs, all ten billion of them, and at the path to her room which will almost assuredly take a good fifteen minutes to walk, because this castle is really bullshit sometimes.]

I won't exactly be getting there quickly.

[Alucard's eyes follow that of his mother, and they rest on the stairs. The enemy so far as there is ever an enemy allowed in this house for any length of time. He has long understood the logic of the construction, making it harder for those that would do his father harm to find him, but it is the absolute worst thing in emergencies.

So there's only one thing to do.]

Get on my back then. Do you know the exact place where they are in your room?

[He's already closing the gap between them.]

Of course. In the room, in a box under the bed.

[Amid the LOVE POEMS and the other notions she hoards for safekeeping. But he moves, and she does too, and they converge on each other easily, until she's able to get around behind him and hop, wrapping her arms around his shoulders from behind in order to hang on.]

On loose sheets. Not in a journal.

I'll leave you to dig around under there. It'll waste time if I do it.

[He can't possibly know about the POETRY but Alucard understands that his mother knows exactly where to go. No flopping around, no squinting at pages to determine if this, that, or the other is the right one.]

Hold tight.

[Then it's full speed. The thing he didn't do with his mother back in Wallachia until they were further away. In their home there is the freedom to move quickly without having to be subtle, without sneaking around for fear of being discovered. Fear of being branded whatever new trendy term those who fear what Alucard and his father are, and what his mother might be of association. There's only speed, only Alucard sprinting up staircase after staircase.

It only takes two or three minutes to reach the bedroom. From bedroom to engine room, two more. Five minutes to gather everything is far better than functioning at normal speed.

Once Alucard is at that bedroom door, he stops. Crouches down so his mother can slide off with dignity, and he leaves her to look for the pages so that he can catch his breath.]

I'd be fool to think that you've been the primary mover of the castle at least once before, wouldn't I?

With matercula

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

what we do in the shadows voice: BAT FIGHT

lisa walks in to a flurry of wings and aggressive squeaking

normal day in the tepes household

mom has to go get the broom and knock them down

everyone screaming in irish accents i'm NOT OKAY

a belmont walks in, takes one look, and immediately walks back out again like "nope"

cannot blame them at ALL

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject