[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.]
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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.]