Chapter Text
Agatha cries, Agatha cries, Agatha cries and her tears wet the wood of the ship.
Agatha cries and her tears exist. Agatha exists.
Dracula has to admit, despite his partial bad faith, that in hundreds of years of experience he has known nothing in common.
He feels her: now that he knows she is there, he feels her all the time. Like a shadow behind his skull. It's not really unpleasant, he has always liked having an audience. However, and although it's hard for him to admit it, he was beginning to find it hard not to feel this thing.
Guilt. That's what voices with accents of memory whispered to him. Guilt.
Count Dracula is brilliant. He knows it, he uses it to excess. Oh, it's not only because of himself: he has drunk doctors, philosophers, scientists. Agatha.
But these very real tears, of his ghostly nemesis, are, he admits, far beyond his intelligence.
Agatha observes the surroundings, doesn't miss a crumb, not a moment. He goes down to every port of call so that she can discover the world that books alone have portrayed to her.
Tonight it is a warm coast, a sandy bay with campfires and laughter in the throat. From where he is, he perceives the music of the concrete piers, a little higher up. Behind, the shadow of a mountain cuts through the still luminous blue sky.
-Do you like it?
He hears the rustle of fabric to his right. Agatha Agatha.
-I thought I would die without seeing all this. Well. I did. But you see what I mean.
He smiles, stretches out his arms towards the city.
-Look at all that man has built Agatha. You worry too much about them. Science and curiosity will always save them.
-Not from you.
-The cold kills more in a year than I have since I was born Agatha. Don't spoil my moments of poetry.
-Was that poetry? You must have eaten mediocre writers.
The arrogance in her voice is familiar, palpable.
She observes the world she lives in with relief. It is beautiful. Catastrophic and self-destructive but so beautiful. She would have liked to see so much of it in her lifetime. Wants to see more.
-What was your family like, Agatha?
-Are you interested in others now?
-Just you, since we are linked for eternity. Almost married by the universe in short.
-If I could throw up on you I would.
He laughs silently and stops with his back to the sea, arms folded. Their silence is embellished by crashing waves. The sea rises.
In the corner of his eye he sees her sitting on her knees. The night cuts her profile, darkens her.
-You have known some of them. The Van Helsings.
He nods with amusement.
-None as good as you.
She smiles and packs the sand with one hand.
-They were a family of warriors. Like yours. They captured vampires, creatures. I'm not even sure I remember. Maybe I made it all up. But I could hear them screaming, Dracula.
Her eyes left the sand, sailing from fire to fire. A fold marks the centre of her forehead. He looks at her now.
-I could hear them screaming every night. The creatures. My family wanted to understand them. They opened them up, questioned them. I used to clean the barn sometimes in the morning. After they had tested what they had to test. I washed the floor, threw away the red straw and put in new straw and then I would pray to God that it wouldn't happen again. But it would happen again.
He doesn't know what to say. It's honest and huge. He drank her blood so many times, how the hell did he miss it? Agatha Van Helsing had closed her mind better than he had guessed.
-When I heard the sisters screaming in the convent. I felt like them. I became like them. I paid for my curiosity with blood.
Her features sag a little. She hears it sometimes, like echoes. She thinks she perceives them between two waves, between two winds.
-They screamed so much.
She knows he doesn't regret it. It's a game, a round that she has lost. Nothing more. For him, nothing more. She is waiting for his biting reflection underlining her defeat and her fault, her pride and her arrogance. But nothing comes. Nothing of the kind.
-Let's walk now, Agatha. We can reach the cliff in the night.
She raises her eyes to the Count, her eyebrows to the sky. But no malice, no mockery dyes his features. On the contrary, she is relieved to read in the expression muffled by the night only silent respect and absolute forgiveness.
Of all forgiveness, Dracula's was not really the one she was looking for.
But she accepts his arm, gets up, and walks.
For tonight, the screams stops.