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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[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.]

With matercula

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