Chapter Text
His fingernails strum the glass table. He doesn't know what he's waiting for. Frozen, he is unable to face his own reflection.
When he came out of the water towards this promised land and miraculously saw before him Agatha alive and breathing, a wave of euphoria had washed over him.
He had come to terms with the idea of her death : a death that had cost him. A lot.
But to see her alive in front of him had brought him sincere joy. Agatha, Agatha. You'll never leave me in peace.
What a disappointment to smell on her the perfume of another soul, of another human being. Same voice, same face: but no trace of his favorite sister in the eyes of this apparition. What a cruel prank of genetics.
In a mere second all his hopes had collapsed in on themselves; it was when he figured out that it wasn't her, that she was dead and definitively so, that he realized his own prophecy.
When, through that stupid circle, on the Demeter, he had whispered to her: I will miss you, terribly.
He could feel her in his head. He felt her in his blood. Like a barely audible presence, a trace of her. How frustrating.
His fingernails were strumming again.
On the glass table in front of him lies a cream-colored manila folder. The autopsy of Agatha Van Helsing, found drowned a few miles from here. A 120-year-old autopsy, written with a feather. So much hassle, hands and fangs, to get it.
And now that he's got it, he doesn't dare to open it.
“Agatha, Agatha, till the very end you will have stood up to me.”
He barely realizes it when he talks to her.
“I'm the stubborn type.”
“I know that.”
She's here. Not really there. He feels her presence, hears her voice in her thick accent. He's had her, sucked her up, eaten her. Capricious Agatha; sometimes she responds to him, and sometimes she doesn’t.
“Count Dracula, be logical. There is nothing in this report that you don't already know; why do you put so much importance in it?”
He hears her as if she is leaning over him, and drinks a little from his glass to regain his composure.
“Disgusting.”
He laughs dryly at the nun's comment, and raises his cup.
“You were much better.”
“You're avoiding my question.”
Even dead and buried, she is still bitter. He rarely converses with his victims. But he drank so much of her, and she's so stubborn.
“Doesn't it strike you ? Isn’t strange to know that what's left of you is in those scraps of paper?”
“You're doing it again.”
He drinks and crosses his legs.
That's right, he is. He's avoiding it. He received it yesterday; and instead of reading it, he bought a new suit, learned Mandarin ( thanks to a delicious woman ), in short: made himself busy so as not to face it. But it's daylight, he's finished all his procrastination. No more excuses.
“No more excuses.”
“Get out of my head, Agatha.”
“You're the one who put me there.”
How to respond to that logic.
His glass is empty. So he bends over, and delicately opens what's left of his beloved nun.
He instantly regrets it. Sketches accompany the report. He recognizes her hands, her eyelids, the curve of her neck. He goes through it all, quickly.
Words flash.
Tortured.
He closes the stupid file with rage.
“The report is a bunch of crap. Wait till I find the descendants of those idiots.”
Agatha's not answering.
“How can you defend such idiots?”
He gets up, annoyed. Annoyed by her silence. Always something to say except when he talks to her.
He takes the report, and throws it into the fire that burst out suddenly in the narrow fireplace.
And when he turns back to the big table, for the first time since he came back, he sees her. Standing there in her nun's habit, just as he left her on the deck of the Demeter. Her hair untied, lips and hands ruined. The agony suits her.
He's silent, they look at each other.
“You never cease to be surprising.”
“What word disturbs you, Count Dracula?”
He sees her eyes blazing. It's reassuring to see her exist, even briefly.
“Tortured ?”
Her accent makes the word rougher than it already is. He approaches the table, faces her. It's never happened before, to see or hear so much of an absorbed soul. A matter of character, perhaps ?
“For example.” he concedes.
“Or the rest?” she walks around the table to stand in front of him. Her bright eyes are hollowed out. She's inside him. Knows what was between the pages.
“Dehydrated ? Lacerated skin ? The water in my lungs ? Do you know that drowning is the most painful way to die, Count Dracula ?”
She's getting closer.
“The water that fills the body, that chokes the brain. The terror, the heaviness, the consciousness that won't shut off, then finally the brain drowns and the lungs explode. It's not instantaneous at all. You made that last, too.”
He crosses his hands, lacing his fingers.
She puts a hand on her own neck, taping the rope marks around her throat. Ah. He almost forgot.
“And I've been through very little really, I am not equal to the martyrs of my religion, Count Dracula, but I do not find the term tortured particularly excessive.”
“You played, and you lost, Agatha.”
“I'm not some poor little sheep you've frightened, Count. And I regret nothing. I ask you as a scientist, do you find the term tortured excessive ?”
“You're not a scientist, you're a nun.”
“I was, Count. I'm not a nun anymore, I'm nothing. I am dead. And you feel guilty.”
“Well, look at that.” He raises his head, licks his lips.
Agatha raises a finger, her eyes light up, and she smiles, almost cruelly.
“You are a child who has broken his toy and realizes that he will never be able to fix it.”
How he hates these moments of lucidity.
“You're not a toy, you're an opponent.”
“I don't care what you call me Count. I'm dead, and you realize too late that there is no way back from that.”
She looks so real. He raises one hand. They're so close, he imagines her smell so clearly.
He raises his eyebrows, barely smiles and puts a finger against her neck. Barely a touch of the skin before Agatha dissolves into the air, with a laugh that sounds a little fake. Her condescending tone is absolutely unbearable.
She is silent, disappears, leaving him alone with the crackling of the fire. He doesn't feel guilty. But she's not completely wrong. Having believed in her resurrection made a biting impression on him, followed by his disappointment.
He turns to the fire and waits for the feeling to pass.
It doesn't.
“If you had given me the chance, I would have made you my bride.”
His tone is accusatory.
And she's not answering anything.
She's right. She's right. She was right on the Demeter. She was right all along. They played.
He lost ; she won.