cryptsleeper | With matercula

With matercula

Continued from here!

[The way back to the castle brought no surprises. No mobs. Nothing. There was only the road and there was only silence. For most of, Alucard slept, stirring only when there was a change in terrain or something felt off. His sleep wasn't deep. It was just enough to take the reins from his mother if he absolutely had to.

That never came to pass, and in the foothills of the Carpathians, familiar spires rose above the treeline. For any other travelers, the word to describe the spires would be loom. Alucard considered them welcoming. They were home, the horrors far, far behind them and any church hounds were equally distant.

Alucard sleeps for a solid week, having not bothered to eat before collapsing on his bed and only taking a cursory five minutes to try and remove all the blood from his person. (The tattered remains of his shirt and trousers were exchanged for sleep clothes, at least.) It's longer than he expected, the expanse of energy hadn't felt that intense at the time. But it was, and his body decided that those same abilities that had propelled Alucard ever forward needed that much time to reset.

When he wakes, there's an uncertainty that everything before wasn't a dream. It's only when he walks over to the mirror to look at himself, enough blood still there (his hair's a matted mess, it's not a good look) to remind him: yes. Everything transpired as you remember it.

The next part is routine. Cleaning all the blood off. Finding clean clothes. Changing the sheets on his bed not because of the few spots of dried blood, but because the stink of it is alarming at best. It helps keep his mind away from the next wave of emotion that he knows has to hit sooner or later. The emotional one, the one that's going to take more time to get through. Guilt, grief, anger, relief, all of it, a churning mess that will interact with two others and make those same feelings flare like wildfires. He ought to eat first.

But he doesn't. Alucard walks the halls of the castle instead. His parents should know he's awake.]

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[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.

With matercula

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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

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