Fandom In Endless Night ;; 1 x 1 Castlevania RP ;; malfortuna & lucyfer

[Lucyfer]

Trevor didn’t move immediately. He was warm, of course, a sensation Lucia always missed, always craved. He did move, though, shaking off the words, but curiously – not riled. Not angry. Depressed. Still.

Lucia rolled her eyes, “You clearly did not hear me when I mentioned how I’d be the envy of the world if I had your support,” every vampire would reconsider striking out at her. It wasn’t vampires that did the Belmonts in, after all. “You’re one of the few hunters actually willing to talk – though I’ll thank Alucard for that,” Trevor would have killed her on sight otherwise.

“You shouldn’t lose that edge. Or mistrust. You haven’t even known me a night,” she grinned, “and Valerian has me banned from Rome, Belmont. You should consider what kind of terror I am that Valerian is afraid.”

It was actually more superstition – any defiled ‘vestal virgin’ couldn’t be in Rome.

No matter how homesick.

“You do not know me well enough to be throwing in with me, and you have far more power than you realize to go squandering it on someone who might be planning to destroy you,” she smiled serenely, the threat there.

It was false. She meant him no harm.

But he really should know better than to trust that. Vampires were master manipulators.

~***~

Alucard was startled by the pinch. It didn’t hurt, and the commentary – rude – made him think of Sypha. He let his brows raise, realizing what he’d done with a touch of embarrassment tinting his cheeks red. “Oh—my apologies, I….” living in the world of immortals, being ancient was something bragged about.

He forgot normal women didn’t like that question.

That confirmed she wasn’t centuries old, but she was still substantially older than him. He blinked in surprise, but then relaxed a bit. Of course, she only looked young, because of when she was turned. “I hope it will all be that wonderful in the morning,” Alucard smiled fondly at how Jillian remembered everything. “I suppose we should try to see your brother then, as well. Especially if our visit to his barn caused any trouble….”

They couldn’t be sure, but they likely owed him the visit, as well, if Jillian’s mom didn’t immediately go to fetch him.

He glanced away as he realized he should even the odds a bit, “I am…twenty.”

Just twenty.

It felt a bit awkward. He was painfully aware he was the youngest one there.

 

[malfortuna]

Trevor didn’t seem to falter when she told him that he didn’t know her well enough. That much was true, yes, but he believed he was often able to tell when someone was really bullshitting him or not on some grand, near impossible scheme. They were either lying or mad, or very rarely, telling the actual truth. He couldn’t help but chuckle a bit at her “empty threats”, pressing a hand up to the side of his head. “Yes, well, it has been years since I last have been paid a compliment like that. Where were you when news of our excommunication started to spread?” It was kind of a bad joke but there was no helping it. He was used to being thrown out many an establishment on his ass when a flash of his family crest revealed itself beneath his robes.

“Belmont or not… I don’t think you would consider destroying me. At least not yet,” Trevor considered almost casually with a wave of his hand in a dismissive motion. “You are here with us planning to take on Dracula. If you do that much, destroying me would be the least of your worries.” He was one to talk. They had no idea how the world was going to be once the Count was gone, or what would even be left of it. “But if you insist, we can revisit the idea once we get killing him over with. Just because I say I support your ideas does not mean I fully trust you. But like you said… you talk. I talk. And thus progress is made,” he looked at her with a slight smirk. “...Besides, what did you do in Rome that had Valerian in unease? I take it for all the power behind the scenes he wields, his paranoia is the only thing that could match it.”

—

Jillian could not help but laugh a little as Alucard stumbled a bit over his apology, waving a hand, “Don’t worry. I am sure that is not going to be the last time I hear that question,” she shook her head. She crossed her arms and bowed her head thoughtfully as he mentioned seeing her brother as well. “I did steal his spare key… Though you must admit, quite unsafe to be hiding it all of this time in the same spot,” she closed one eye in a bit of a cheeky wink. And then he mentioned his rather young age, which proved to make Jillian quirk an eyebrow. Well, considering his mother was a human, it made sense. “...Well, there will be plenty of time to not be twenty,” she joked slightly with a snicker, mainly just to relieve some of the awkwardness that came with his admission.

She then pointed to herself with a soft smile, “I wouldn’t say I have done much maturing in my time running with werewolves. Have you seen any of those brutes? I am lucky I have some of my sanity intact. Besides that, I changed when I was nineteen.” She chuckled a little bit and then placed her hands together behind her once more. “...Dead before twenty if things had gone the way I had wanted it to. But hopefully having my mortality rudely manipulated will have some use in the near future.”

 

[Lucyfer]

“Chernihiv,” Lucia answered the rhetorical – she had indeed been there, where his family wouldn’t have been considered excommunicated. Orthodox Churches usually loved to spite the Pope in Rome. It was one advantage to her area against Valerian. But she wasn’t considering destroying him. She had no reason to, and it was evident she rubbed shoulders with hunters, with no problem.

She did match his smirk at ‘revisiting’ the idea. “We will, I am sure of it,” whether it was in a more positive light, or negative one, was yet to be seen. Lucia wasn’t one to run from a hunter, either. She’d try to talk it out, but if they couldn’t be reasoned with – well, Trevor wouldn’t be the first she slew.

He might be the first to succeed.

It only took one.

At the mention of why Valerian was uneasy, she sighed, “You would be right, his paranoia knows no match. We’re both Roman, you see,” she noted, “I’m all too familiar with the politics and paranoia, even if I wasn’t allowed to play it back then,” no, no, women didn’t get to, “not…overtly. I had power in another way, and that I exist, is the reason Valerian won’t let me enter Rome.”

She sighed and shook her head, “He…I would not say he still believes in Iupitor or Pluto. I do not think he believes in the Christian God, but some superstitions remain. I…was a Vestal Virgin when I was in Rome. Any vestal who is defiled, willingly or not, is sentenced to death, but there’s…traditions around it. They cannot die in Rome, and they must go willingly,” none went willingly, but coercion was a huge part of things. “To let me back into Rome would be a terrible taboo for poor Valerian, and he certainly believes it would spell ill tidings. I happen to love Rome a bit too much to doom it in such a way,” she admitted, “but I’m not willingly dying, and burying me underground won’t really kill me,” she chuckled, “so we are at a bit of a standstill. He accepts my existence as half-dead, so long as I stay out of Rome.”

~***~

It probably was not at all going to be the last time. He didn’t know if Lucia would ask, but Trevor might. Usually, Trevor was the one to make these blunders, after all. Blessedly, she let the conversation be changed to her brother, and seeing him – before joking of his own age. He chuckled, a bit.

“Several hundred years not to be twenty, I suppose,” and how many of those years would he wish he was 20 again? Hopefully none. 20 sucked. He wished to be many centuries away already, where the pain of the losses were already faded to memory, and he could think of his father without feeling such heart-wrenching agony at the man he loved, and what he became. At all that was lost to the world, with the mistake of killing Lisa.

“I am sure that you will find yourself grateful to have lived through these years in time, Jillian,” Alucard said, “I already wish it was several centuries ahead,” a joke, in poor tastes, but true in many regards, “there must be something you appreciate about being a werewolf, though. Not for the others, but for yourself,” he noted, curious to what she did find to be the positives.

It would be good to say them.

Good to remember there were aspects worth keeping around, when she did find her freedom, and had to convince herself it was worth going on. “Besides the long life, of course,” that was a curse and a blessing, depending on the year, it seemed.

Not that he yet knew.

Not truly.

But he knew from Dracula, and he knew from Lucia, and other vampires he’d spoken with.

 

[malfortuna]

Trevor smirked to himself as Lucia agreed that they most likely would turn around and try to kill one another if their relationship would go south. He expected that sort of thing from Alucard as well even though he had yet to be proven untrustworthy. He could just picture the image of his dear old dad’s rotting corpse in the ground turning over in his grave, if he had one, at the thought of a Belmont working alongside a vampire, much less one and a half of one. Hopefully it would not come to blows but Trevor could admit that he did not have the best record of keeping favorable company… But then the conversation turned towards what seemed to be the background she and Valerian shared. His eyes seemed to cloud over as she explained her predicament. So, she too had been driven from home, though at least she had love for it. But he supposed that would just make it hurt all the more.

He believed if she had wanted to go into greater detail than that, she would have and so he opted to not ask what she could mean by defiled. He also did not ask if it was her choice as from what he had heard, Vestals were chosen to serve. He could not help but to scoff ruefully when she finished, “And so you are committed to an unofficial exiling. But I am sure he would be glad to demand the few that are so high and mighty to meet only in Rome.” He glanced back at her, falling into a short moment of silence before deciding to pry only a little, “...What is it that makes you love Rome so?” He ventured, turned in order to lean his upper back more comfortably against the tree. “Surely you have lived longer than Alucard. Is there something to go home to if you are able?” He’d like to think there might still be something left for him when they returned to the Belmont Hold. But he knew better than to invest into wishful thinking.

—

Jillian returned the small smile and she raised an eyebrow at his words, intrigued at his fascination with living a life a couple hundred years in the future. It was almost too much to even consider, depending on what kind of world they would be in at that time. “I suppose by that time, this short stretch will seem nothing more than a blink of the eye,” she relented with a light shrug of the shoulders, not seeming too intimidated by the idea of living in the world that long if it might mean she could do anything else other than what she had been with her endless amount of years. Perhaps he wanted it to hurry up and get to that point so that the pain of doing what he needed to in this time would have long since faded. One could hope. She would have gotten lost in thought if not for the fact that he asked her yet another question she had yet to ever be asked about herself and she took a step forward, expression seeming to light up slightly as she thought it over.

“Well… Have you ever gone for a run as a wolf?” She questioned, recalling again that he was able to change into the animal at will. “Without any true reason, just running and allowing yourself to focus on what is around you? I like to set forth and keep moving until I can’t anymore. And then I try to think about all the sensations I’ve experienced. I really get to hear and feel them in that form. You get to experience so much others may take for granted simply because they do not possess the same level of senses as the werewolf. It’s difficult to explain…” She hummed slightly. “...As savage as they may be, you cannot say they lack devotion to those they care about. I’ve seen families of multiple generations traveling with us the entire time I was with my pack. Couples stayed together even centuries after they had married. Strangely romantic and sentimental,” she chuckled, shuffling her feet underneath her skirts.

 

[Lucyfer]

“He might,” Lucia grinned, “but Amon enjoys spiting him, so I think I can count on Amon to dictate it be elsewhere,” Amon might feel like spiting her on occasion, but that was to be determined. She didn't really have many issues with Amon. So long as she wasn't questioning his beliefs, he was quite amicable.

Insane, but amicable.

As for Rome, though….

Lucia let out a sigh.

Her smile was faint, but fond, as she looked skyward. “Do you not still love your family, Trevor, even if they are not there to return to? Are there not still fond memories of warm meals, and secret hiding spots, in your home?”

She assumed, anyways, that he didn't hate his family and his past as he wore the crest. “There is nothing in Rome that waits for me, but I love all that it was for me. That love does not fade with time. It would be like asking me why I miss my first lover,” she chuckled and shook her head, “I cannot have him back, and I've grown into a woman he would not recognize, and may not love him now – but I did love him, and he remains a part of me, as Rome.”

As the lovers after him, some loved better, some worse, but love was constant.

“I would love to see what Rome has become, and how she has grown. Perhaps it is worse, perhaps it is better, but it is Rome.”

And love never left.

It did not leave for Dracula, either.

“Certainly that at least makes sense?”

~***~

That was what Alucard hoped – that this seemed small, in comparison to all the life he led. That he grew around it, and this moment, this pain, felt so small and insignificant in comparison. What else could he hold onto?

Thankfully, Jillian did not linger on it, but took the bait of what it was to enjoy being a wolf. It seemed there was plenty – she enjoyed running, she enjoyed the sensations, and she enjoyed the romanticism that some exhibited. “I am not sure that is exclusive to wolves,” of course, Alucard considered his own parent’s love, "but...it is nice to see it," to hope to experience it. Alucard doubted it. After witnessing all that he had, he wasn't sure he wanted to pursue a love so consuming. If he turned out to be like his father....

Well, he didn't want to think of it.

Their love would have lasted until Lisa died -- though even then, it would have lasted for Dracula, for his eternity, for Lisa did not want to become a vampire, and Dracula respected that. He could have accepted letting Lisa die a mortal death, of old age, but not of murder. That, clearly, was too far for him.

“I have never just gone running my wolf form,” he said, imagining it was quite different. It was a form he took, but it was not as much a part of him as her werewolf nature was. “What was it like, to first experience the change in sensations?”

He’d had it all the time; he hadn’t been turned, after all, but he knew those humans turned vampire experienced a sudden shift, as well. Their senses sharpened, too. Their sense of smell was likely still nothing compared to the wolf, but still – he was curious what that change must have been like for Jillian.

He was unlikely to ever experience any sort of significant change like that.

 

[malfortuna]

He didn’t know much about this Amon individual, either. It seemed like he was moreso on the unpredictable side and perhaps she had that at least to count on if there were any tensions to rise between her and Valerian. It was a problem and she would cross the bridge when she came to it, he supposed. Trevor was a man to be counted on for looking at things with a glass half empty perspective but if it meant that a new outlook on coexisting with humanity in such a way that both parties did not have to live in so much fear of one another, to continue the endless cycle of hunting and being hunted. He shook his head slowly and instead focused on such fond words of recollection.

Trevor found his gaze downturned to the ground at his feet, a heavy sensation twisting and pulling within his chest as she asked if he missed his family. “Yeah…” He quietly agreed under his breath. The warm, nostalgic feeling of being wrapped up in the encouragement of a mother who comforted her young son after a difficult day of upbringing by a father and others sharing the family name. But at the same time he understood why they all had been the way they were. He was born cursed to face such danger all of his life simply for having the Belmont name. “I don’t know if I could say I represent the good family name well or not. Most likely not. But better late to the call than never, right? Maybe that gives father some peace.” He joked slightly and raised his chin, grinning at her. “I’m sure your home misses you too. With devotion like that, I daresay she might even crave it one day. What would you hope to see if you did get to return…?”

—

Jillian let off a soft chuckle as he pointed out that being monogamous was not just limited to werewolves, “Yes. They seemed very happy. It was almost an infectious sort of joy,” she responded, though she could not say she had experienced such a thing for herself. Quite the opposite. Her own mother once had been married but once they had tried and failed to conceive a child naturally, the man abandoned his home. And so, Natalya had taken in a couple of strays before they could even be made aware of the fact that they had been unwanted by their birth parents. She harbored no ill will about it as she had at least managed to have a fairly warm childhood as a result.

But then he questioned how it was when she first experienced the enhanced abilities that came with becoming a werewolf. “Oh… Mm, well… It is different for everyone, they say. My circumstances were not so pleasant. I was very weak at the time as a human. I fought but I barely recall the bite itself. Everything after felt terribly hot. The sounds around me kept growing louder and I felt like my head was going to split open. I remember crying for days as I adjusted on top of other factors.” She shrugged rather stiffly at that, smile fading somewhat but still present. “But after… It was exhilarating. It was overwhelming, certainly. I sometimes still find myself in disbelief of what I am capable of. Almost like I had been sleeping for a long time and just woke up.”

 

[Lucyfer]

The sorrow was apparent, but this time, it was tinged with warmth. Lucia was pleased to see that Trevor’s thoughts hadn’t drifted too far into the negative, as she kept her own mentions light, on happier thoughts, things that made one nostalgic.

Everything she could want from Rome was gone. The people she had known, the language, the locations, the food – and yet, she missed it, desperately, and somehow thought she’d find enough of it in what Rome was now. “If your father was anything like Geoffrey Belmont, I doubt it,” she rolled her eyes, “but I hope he was more…accepting than that.”

Geoffrey was ages ago.

Dead at her hand. A nuisance Belmont who trekked all the way to her home to deal with her, after she’d dealt with her sire, likely thinking she’d be easy. He was a fool.

“I am not sure what I’d like to see. I do not think it’s seeing, so much as being there,” she chuckled, “perhaps that’s where that rumor of vampires needing soil from their home to sleep on, started,” she shook her head a bit at that ridiculous thing. Alongside coffins, humans created such bizarre myths about vampires. “But what was your father like, Trevor?” he’d mentioned it, and he bore the name, “I’m not going to insist you make him happy if he was a racist asshole, but I’m curious if he is worth…honoring.”

~***~

The experience was not a pleasant one to recall. Alucard had hoped it might at least be not bad, but what Jillian spoke of was just…bad. He winced a bit in sympathy, regretting asking and bringing up such an unpleasant thing – even if she turned it to end on a happier note. “I’m sorry to have brought up such a bad memory,” he apologized, looking down a moment, before back at her. “You have a way of turning everything towards a silver lining.”

It was encouraging.

Nice.

“That must be how you’ve made it so far,” able to see the hope, even in a hopeless situation. Able to even consider joining them, to consider they stood a chance against Dracula. It was a strength he…didn’t quite have, but he could admire it. He could be practical. He couldn’t be sunshiney or silver liney.

But practical worked, for now.

“Were most in your pack like you? Forced to go along under threat of some sort?” it sounded like there were people she admired, or were inspired by, like the lovers and their large family. He wondered what held such a group to a terrible pack, or if they were terrible people who just happened to be loyal to each other.

 

[malfortuna]

“Hm. The familiarity of being home, I s’ppose…” Trevor ventured lightly in response to her words about being home. Trevor was unsure if he had shared the same sentiment as there was most likely nothing but the Hold left of the Belmont Estate but perhaps there was something deep down within him that had wished somehow, somewhere, there could be a way in which his family’s legacy had been regarded more highly than a betrayal to their country. It was probably nothing more than wishful thinking, though. That much he wondered if Lucia could agree upon. Wishful thinking that they would have been welcomed back in some way as they were right now even though they knew the likelihood of such a thing was near impossible.

“Oh? You’ve met one of us before? I am sure that impression was very impressive, then…” A lot had changed since that man’s time. Sometimes he even wondered if they were truly related to some of his earlier ancestry. However, focus shifted moreso to his father, which for a moment he seemed to struggle within his mind on settling on words to describe his relationship to the old man. “My father was probably the best of them all, to a fault,” he finally replied sincerely as he looked up to her, a mixture of calm recollection and forlorn in his gaze as he bitterly smiled. “He did not care for titles or any sort of knighthood. He simply wanted to protect those who he held dear. He rid himself of titles so he could save his first fiance from a vampire but she was changed before he could.” He pursed his lips together and settled his fingers against his forehead, looking downward.

“He was strict but despite all of the shit he dealt with he still trained our family to protect the world. I think he died believing he could still do much more even though he long had done enough for humanity, even when persecuted. “I can’t call him the most loving father figure. But I did respect him. After all he had done, he did not deserve the fate brought down by the Church on him.”

—

Jillian could not help but to chuckle a little at his words, lifting her shoulders and shaking her head to indicate that no harm had been done with asking such a question. “Please. I honestly have not been asked such things before, perhaps I find it refreshing to say these things out loud for once after all this time,” she reasoned. Decades had gone by where she had buried her thoughts and feelings within herself. Her protests of what happened, what was happening, fell on deaf ears as she adjusted to her new life. Eventually she ceased to say anything at all. To admit that she had not wanted to be changed, to feel sadness for it at first, that was something she had to keep to herself unless she wished to be punished or worse.

“Do I?” She wondered lightly. Jillian tilted her head to the side and smirked slightly. “Well, it would be nice to put all of these silver linings to better use in the real world. One cannot live on dreams and ego alone,” she joked a little before he questioned her fellow pack members.

“I’m not sure…” She said after a moment, her voice lowering slightly. “I would think many of them stayed together out of necessity but there were some who I recognized who had been taken from my village before I had been. I think at first it was out of fear that some of the others may have gone along with orders. We did not wish for what was left of our human lives to be destroyed, or anyone else to suffer the same fate as we had.” Though there were some who were willing to change on their own. Like Nikolai. Those types of people were the ones who were truly terrifying. “It’s easy to forget your humanity with time, though. There are aspects of such togetherness that I may compliment but a majority of it was killing or being killed. In the end, I suppose there were many who resigned themselves to that being just the way of things. I don’t necessarily blame them. It’s survival. But is it truly living?”

 

[Lucyfer]

Lucia’s lips twitched just a little. Impressive wasn’t how she’d put it. Geoffrey had annoyed her more than anything. He’d been skilled – Lucia would grant him that – but he hadn’t known the powers he was dealing with. The Belmont family, it seemed, may never have picked up on it with his death. No one else ever came for her, at any rate.

She opted not to engage that too much.

Trevor’s father, it seemed, was of a similar bend as Geoffrey. Hardened by his work, and unwilling to compromise that work. Discarding whatever got in the way. Trevor would likely be ousted, the way Johann was ousted, just for humoring her.

Alucard, at least, was half-human. He was half-tolerable. “No. I daresay any of you deserved that fate. Some of you may have deserved brutal deaths, but,” she shrugged, “so do plenty of my kind,” so it was even on that. Except, of course, now there was just one Belmont. “I am glad his memory can serve as something for you to look towards now, even if it may not have provided you the love you craved as a child. I cannot say the same of my own parents,” she chuckled and shook her head, “but shouldn’t you be resting, Belmont? It is getting late, and you have to meet people tomorrow, and perhaps drive that cart.”

She didn’t know how their cart arrangement worked, but sticking Sypha with all the work was cruel regardless.

~***~

It was easy to forget humanity. Dracula did it in an instant when Lisa was killed, but Alucard knew that even before. The endless march of time took its toll on all immortals. There were some who could maintain lucidity – Lucia and Dracula had been the two examples he knew of. They spoke of others, including Carmilla, Valerian, and Amon, but those seemed on the other side of sanity, even if they held lucidity.

Humanity.

“I am glad to allow you a space to vent your thoughts, if you need to, now that you are free to speak them aloud,” he offered. He would likely wish for the same all too soon, when Dracula was dead.

Trevor wasn’t going to want to hear it.

“But perhaps not all will be lost with others you knew. Some may be able to find their own life again, when everything is done with Dracula,” he could hope, “though I will not say it is easy to retain humanity with eternity ahead. Most vampires do not make it long with their humanity intact. I imagine, much is the same for werewolves.”

A depressing thought. Was his own future to head in that way? “I wonder what it is that keeps someone inhuman…human?” he mused.

 

[malfortuna]

Impressive certainly wasn;t the word he would have used either, at least not with a lot of sarcasm behind the word. Trevor knew that earlier generations of the Belmont clan may have practiced old-fashioned beliefs much like some of the churches of today did. It was the way the world had once worked and he was sure that it had been to some degree a driving factor of how his lot had managed to be supported by the clergy for that long. But those beliefs had become diluted overtime with each passing generation, the more they came to know of the night creatures and how intricate consciousness and emotion ran for some of those capable of intelligent thought and reason. Dracula was certainly a testament to what horrible power such a creature might possess and just how devastating it could be if it fell into the wrong hands.

Perhaps that was what made the average man fearful of the Belmonts in the end. They believed that at some point they had turned against their own kind and were probably planning something nefarious and so they tried wiping them out at the source before they could even chance such a thing coming to pass. He only gave a stiff shrug in response to Lucia as she paid what condolences she could. “Who knows. Perhaps we stuck our necks out for people far too often. I don’t blame them for believing we may have been doing it for some ulterior reason in the end. We like to make up stories for the questions that we don’t have the answers to.” But he wasn’t going to be crawling back to the Church. It would be a cold day in Hell before that were to happen.

He let out a forced chuckle a bit at the mention of rest, “I can assure you no amount of sleep is going to fix how much I would like to be doing anything else,” he admitted, though he would play nice so long as those of Jillian’s family thought to do so. “But you’re right. I’ll be leading us tomorrow…” He sighed and pushed off from the tree to stand up straight again, “I’m sure you won’t be missing anything too intriguing. Though if you want anything specific from the village, would it help to have an excuse for an early escape from any small talk that goes on when we get there?”

—

Jilian did not know if Alucard would understand it as he had yet to truly experience such a long passage of time to feel it begin to wane on the good voice in the back of the head that tried to steer one clear from terrible choices. Not that it mattered as much. Those who held immortal souls might be able to do one horrible thing that had lasting consequences on something mortal but they did not have to worry about such a thing for long, as that mortal thing may wither and die in what could be seen as a mere blink of the eye to the immortal being. She had assumed that was the way that her alpha had lived after all of this time. He also had plenty of expendable underlings to take the fall for him should things go awry.

Jillian did not want to resign herself to something like that quite yet, though. She knew that it was possible that there may come a day where doing the right thing or finding any sort of fulfillment in life would lose its luster. “I could only think… and hope,” she added seriously as she thought about his question, “That there would be things that come in and out of our very long lives that remind us to not become closed off to the rest of the world,” she smiled back to him slightly, “I’m sure that would be extremely difficult. But I think that might be something that we are going to have to find out for ourselves. It probably means different things for everyone…” She looked almost apologetic, because she knew it was a bit of a non-answer. “But I do wish the best for everyone else if they do want to live a different sort of life.” She looked over her shoulder back to the camp. It looked like Trevor might have been on his way to parting ways with Lucia and calling it a night. “...Well, feel free to vent into this safe as well should you ever need it. I cannot say I will be able to understand all of it. But I could at least listen, should it help at all.”

 

[Lucyfer]

“I don’t know is a legitimate answer, Trevor,” Lucia said.

Sure, he moved away from that, but that was something worth pointing out, before the opportunity passed. He wouldn’t have to lie to her. He could just claim not to know. At his query of wanting anything from the village, Lucia arched a brow.

“I…won’t be partaking in the small talk,” did he forget? Perhaps being around Alucard had caused him to forget, “when day comes, I will not be able to leave the carriage. I will get my own rest during that time, and Danica knows what to grab in town,” she didn’t need to announce anything.

Everything would be taken care of.

“You should try to enjoy what bit of normalcy you can grab before the journey continues,” it would, all too soon, and he might miss this break to see Jillian’s mother.

He might not.

~***~

Hope.

That was something Dracula had lost. That very human thing, might be what could keep one from losing their sanity in the same way. Hope. He didn’t know how difficult it was. He had evidence for the majority of vampires losing their sanity, but as Jillian looked back to camp, there was evidence for one who didn’t lose it.

Lucia Belrun herself, well over a millennia old, and still quite sane.

Hope.

He hummed at the offer to listen to his venting. “I will keep that in mind,” he agreed, “but perhaps you should rest. You have a big day tomorrow,” reuniting with her family. “You may need some sleep to prepare yourself.” He smiled lightly at the suggestion.

He ought to sleep, as well.