cryptsleeper | 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.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

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.]

With matercula

i have GOT what it TAKES

U DO also the entire production team keeps liking shit posts so

holy shit this is my shot to make it big

you gotta do the thing.

it is my destiny

the greatest destiny of all (where is my season of lisa and vlad romance netflix)

RIGHT THOUGH AT LEAST MAKE AN OVA OR SOMETHING

COME ON NETFLIX. OR MINI SEASON THAT'S HALF THAT HALF 3 IDIOTS HAVING ADVENTURES

concept: season 3 is "trevor and sypha fight vampires while alucard reminisces about his childhood"

sometimes we check in with hector to see if he's gotten free yet SOUNDS GREAT