draculabutbackwards

His name sounds odd coming from her. "No," he agrees. "I was just... getting used to the memories." So he can bury them deep once he's got the shape of them. Someone else's happy life.

She leans against the wall, wrapping an arm around her chest. "Supposedly all of that happened in only a few days," she says, voice softer. "Like a very long dream."

He appreciates the bit of distance, standing contained and careful himself. "But with a life behind it. It's the second time I've done it. Last time was... bad. But good isn't better, somehow."

"I-" She keeps her eyes on him, her expression complicated. "Most of what I saw there will take time to make sense to me. But we made sense."

Halfway through berating himself for giving away even that much--he didn't have to say good--he realizes she's not saying what he expected. His eyes flicker back up, then down again, guarded. "Those were... different people." A banality if there ever was one, but he's thrown.

She shrugs one shoulder, but makes an agreeing sound. "People who'd had a much easier time through life. But they were not strangers."

"Makes it harder to recognize, doesn't it?" He can talk about this. It's fine. Talking to her doesn't ache with someone else's longing. He's done it before. He can help. "The first time it happened to me, it mirrored my real life, one where events were... never corrected. Terrible, but we know our nightmares. Being a peaceful scholar with direction and simple plans..."

She snorts, shaking her head. "Maybe that is why Cypher found so many things to do. Filling a void. My plans, my own, were more like hers. Until I met the two of you."

Alucard winces and hopes it wasn't visible. She was never going to let him leave this abstract. "You're right. A lot like you."

Since when has Sypha taken the path of comfortable half-truth? She wouldn't even know how.

"I see him in you," she says, taking more direct aim. "Not as much alike, but it's there - the way you are with Trevor, the kind of good moods I have seen you in." Not that they're nearly as frequent as for his other self, but still. "You, but made in a different forge."

How could he possibly talk about Trevor while it's taking everything he has to face her? "Well, I can't imagine taking quite such an avid interest in the chemicals of various rocks or a deranged quest to prove there's no such thing as magic. But. Yes. If you'd met me before Mother died..."

"That was deranged," she agrees, with mild humor. "But the rocks were interesting.

"I would like your mother, I think."

"Oh. Absolutely," he agrees, pleased to find some neutral ground. No landmines here. Everyone would like his mother. He doesn't think the people who killed her even disliked her, just found her where politics, power, and stagnation happened to crash. (This is not exoneration. Losing her to small, pathetic impulses and not a grand, principled act of evil is not better.) "The two of you together could rule the world. But wouldn't, because of the bother."

"It would be so much bother." She puts some drama on the tone. "But the two of us could make you, Trevor, and probably your father do most of the work, so we may as well." There's only the slightest change in her tone - she's still much more uneasy than she'd admit about Dracula. Instead of actually stopping to have a conversation with him, she's just very low-key stalking him from time to time.

Alucard relaxes further. This is fine. Mother is a loss he's confronted, internalized, learned to live around. Gone, mourned, still with him. And Father is complicated in ways that feel possible. "Well. Father, anyway. He's an able administrator if you can get a fire lit under his ass."

"Did you have to put it like that?"

"Sorry, whistling in the dark."

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