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[draculabutbackwards]

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[draculabutbackwards]

Fuck Belmont, he can figure out his own shit.

[Adrian looks positively delighted.]

Are you angling for a deal of your own, then, or what's the plan?

[It's very hard to imagine his father without A Plan.]

[no_innocents]

[ It’s lovely to see. ]

Nadja had offered to return your mother to us, but I hardly think it her responsibility at this point. I think I will offer to her a trade, as I should hardly like to refuse her generosity, whatever gets things done most quickly. But I do have some ideas.

[draculabutbackwards]

Oh.

[That's. Something to process. He's thought about it himself since he heard of deals to alter the past. Rather than cast out Night Creatures, why not undo everything? But he never felt he had a right to undo a year and change, all the lives begun as well as ended. Just being granted what he'd agonized over is a strange feeling. Bit stunned.]

She really--I mean, you could, that is, either of you, I suppose, when...

[no_innocents]

I figure whichever of us completes the task first. That way I don’t have to refuse her kindness.

[draculabutbackwards]

Seems... logical.

[Getting to the other side of being stunned.]

It did seem, well, unfair, you and I being here and not her.

[no_innocents]

I don't think she would come here. This place is for... very specific people.

But she would be returned to life. And from there, we could make plans.

[draculabutbackwards]

No, she wouldn't have the patience. But. Yes. That makes everything going forward... rosier. Decidedly.

[no_innocents]

I... think so as well.

I hope she will be... happy. With my change of course.

[draculabutbackwards]

Oh, that's the most uncomplicated bit. This is what she wanted for you. Before anything even went wrong.

[He remembers one of many things he said in an attempt to conciliate Belmont.]

Being as good as you'd ever been wouldn't have been enough to get you out of here.

[no_innocents]

No, it would not. Though I wonder how she will take my efforts to take a more active role in the matters of my court and the night creatures in general.

[ She'd always focused on making him more like a man. This, on the other hand, is remaining very much a vampire, every inch who he was and had been. Just... turning that power and influence to another task. ]

[draculabutbackwards]

I never knew her to be discouraging about anything you took an interest in. As long as you're not the you that used to lounge around your enormous entryway to disconcert the foolhardy.

[no_innocents]

She often spoke of me acting 'as a man'. But the truth is that I am not just 'a man'. And there are responsibilities I have let go awry for far too long now, I think.

[draculabutbackwards]

I'm sure she didn't want you to shrink a foot and a half and die of sepsis from stepping on a bent nail. Learning-- Maybe re-learning, rather, the worthwhile bits of being human.

[no_innocents]

No, I did not think your mother was a madwoman.

...and she liked my height.

[draculabutbackwards]

My somewhat facetious point being she didn't want you to be human for human's sake. It was because there was something of value in it.

[no_innocents]

...yes, son, I had gathered that.

But the problem is more complicated than that. And we never got to that sort of discussion.

[draculabutbackwards]

I do see that. But I don't think she'd ever object to an effort to make things better on a fundamental level.

[no_innocents]

I don't think she would either. But, neither of us will know for some time.

[draculabutbackwards]

...Some time is quite a tectonic shift, though.

[And some part of him still whispers never. He doesn't trust good things.]

[no_innocents]

It is.

But it seems more likely given... this.

[ Graduation. And him accomplishing it. ]

[draculabutbackwards]

Sorry, I ought to be ecstatic, and I am! I'm just...

[Having trouble translating knowledge into an emotion and letting himself actually have the damn thing?]

[no_innocents]

You'll notice I'm not having a party myself.

It feels like... I'm halfway through a task. Not completed, whatever it's 'supposed' to be.

[draculabutbackwards]

There is a sense of holding one's breath.

[Well.]

Not the most useful metaphor on your end, but...

[no_innocents]

...something like that.

[draculabutbackwards]

At least you know what I mean.