Work Text:
“We’re done here.”
Ygor looks up from the jar of spare fingers he’s twisting shut. “A bit early to call it quits, no?”
“I have personal matters to attend to tonight. We’ll resume our work at dawn,” Victoria says. She shuts off the room’s generator and throws a heavy sheet over their latest work in progress, a specimen smaller in build than her Creation that’s proving to be a difficult puzzle to piece together.
Ygor nods, a motion that devolves into rhythmically bobbing his head as he hums under his breath, hands on autopilot to clean up his worktable. He doesn’t notice Victoria studying him and the way he seems to be in more of a hurry than yesterday. She turns back to her own cluttered table when he moves to put away the various tools and schematics scattered about.
“Don’t bother, I’ll take care of it. Just go and get some rest.”
Despite her usual dismissive tone, Ygor stops to regard her quizzically. “You don’t have more work to spring on Ygor?”
Victoria doesn’t avert her attention from the spool of wire she rewinds, but she keeps him in her peripheral. “Do you want me to?” Ygor raises his hands in mock surrender, eyebrows shooting up as he backs away.
Victoria’s hands pause in their work. “You’ve been distracted, and you somehow look even more haggard than normal—an accomplishment, really. I don’t need you passing out on the operating table from sleep deprivation. If you're not going to keep working, then go to bed.”
He seems to buy it. “You got it, boss. See you in the morning.”
Ygor sees her off with a lazy salute and shuffles out of the laboratory. Victoria watches the closed door until the sound of his distinct gait grows distant. She sighs, clicking her tongue at the mess she’ll have to leave behind if she wants to leave on time, before reaching under her workbench for the hunting gear she set aside that morning.
As she double-checks that her supplies are in working order, she falls far enough into the mindless routine to ask herself a question she’s been ignoring since she let this absurd idea possess her.
What is she doing?
She’s a busy woman. There’s plenty of science to be done, and a significant portion of the manor near the basement needs repairs from the failed attempt to control Dracula. Not to mention she still needs to capture Dracula again after he slipped away in the destruction. She doesn’t even know where her Creation is, thanks to the Bride sneaking him out of the manor more often than usual, but she already has another resident slipping out on his own for suspicious rendezvous to worry about.
Speaking of which…
She silently exits the lab just as her quarry hits the last step of the staircase, staying out of sight behind the banister. The carpet along the hall’s center muffles her footsteps as she follows him to the main foyer.
Tailing a subject is an art she’s honed over the years, but she never expected she’d ever be following her assistant in her own home.
Any other time, she would march up to Ygor and interrogate him about what he’s roped himself into now. Her first assumption for his peculiar behavior was an organ trade gone wrong. Some of his searches for viable body parts and supplies to restock have led to midnight dealings with more unscrupulous characters, dealings that ended in Victoria and Ygor fighting off a pack of humans rather than the usual werewolves or undead.
The problem with that theory is that she would already know. Ygor has a tendency to omit details regarding his own blunders leading up to bigger issues, but he knows better than to hide something that actually warrants her concern.
That leaves Theory #2: Ygor’s hiding something from her. Which, unfortunately, leads to her current investigation.
It’s not something she wants to do. Despite performing experimental (admittedly only sometimes life-saving) surgery on him on a regular basis, and the frankly complicated workplace relationship they share, they still have boundaries. Of which she's toeing the line as she tracks him through the east wing.
Her passive attempts to figure out what’s going on over the past couple of months have gone nowhere. Questions about what he’s planning to do that night are answered with nothing more than noncommittal plans to relax in a secluded part of the manor or mentions of a new woodworking project. She knows Ygor’s lying about the latter, or he would’ve shown off his latest creation by now and found a place for it in one of the labs.
She even offered an invitation to eat dinner together, rather than the typical routine of taking her meal before locking herself in her study. He’d turned her down, claiming he was busy without elaborating.
Now, Ygor may be scatterbrained, clumsy, unstable, and he attracts mortal danger like a deranged magnet (which admittedly makes searching for monsters to capture much easier). But she trusts him despite it all, and maybe, possibly, on some level, cares for his well-being. If it were up to Ygor, he might even describe them as something resembling friends on a good day.
So there lies another possibility—that Ygor believes whatever’s bothering him isn’t worth her time.
She doesn’t exactly incentivize him to think otherwise. She knows that. The first rule he learned when she took him in was “Do not disturb the doctor while she works”. Then he learned that her definition of “work” includes a lot more than creating life or hunting monsters, and all of their interactions since have been preceded by a request for permission.
If she hadn’t kept Ygor at arm’s length, would she already know the answer to why he’s acting like this?
It would mean she could stop worrying about him. She wasn’t entirely lying when she said he needed to catch up on sleep. He’s taken care not to let it affect his performance, but he has a habit of hiding how much his workload affects him, and an even worse habit of not paying attention to his physical health. His limp has worsened in recent days, and she sometimes catches him wincing from unseen injuries underneath his clothes.
She’ll have to accompany him next time he makes a supply run to the village. She hasn’t eliminated the possibility of the townspeople still showing overt hostility toward her associates. She doesn’t need those ignorant simpletons harassing her assistant again.
Theory #2’s credibility—and her concerns—only grow when she follows him into the cellar, where he steps into the foreboding passageway connecting Frankenstein Manor to the Darkmoor Catacombs. At least she was right to bring the crossbow. Ygor walked in with no protection other than a flashlight.
Her quarry holding a light source eliminates the challenge of losing him in the scarcely lit halls deep within the catacombs, although she can’t be too careless. As much as Ygor seems to be treating this like a leisurely stroll through Darkmoor’s new tourism district, he would never have survived this long (barring the occasional revival) without gaining a perception for potential stalkers in the dark rivaling Victoria’s. Hopefully, it’ll allow him to escape if he does run into one.
The catacombs house supernatural creatures both harmless and deadly that thrive within the oppressive darkness of the underground. She took one of her scent-masking tonics before passing the catacomb threshold, so nothing should detect her as they wander the tunnels.
Nothing she’d rather encounter with an entire arsenal of monster-slaying gear and daylight on hand. There’s a very real chance that they could find Dracula tonight—or Dracula could find them. God knows he’d pounce at the opportunity to maul the people who locked him up and reduced his brides to dust—her, especially.
She takes a moment to scan the path behind her, sweat building at her temple against her efforts to stomp out any semblance of fear.
She can defend herself until she finds an opportunity to retreat, but Dracula has an even easier target to pick off several yards in front of her. She wouldn’t put it past the vampire to seek revenge by proxy before closing in on her, and Victoria internally curses her assistant for putting himself in these situations so carelessly. Victoria’s had him keep tabs on Dracula to ensure he hasn’t recovered enough strength to flee Darkmoor entirely. He knows what kind of threats lurk around every corner and he—
He’s gone.
Ygor’s light has disappeared, and the man himself is nowhere to be found in the encompassing darkness. Victoria rushes to the next junction as fast as possible while keeping her footsteps silent. None of the open paths show any sign of Ygor.
Shit, shit, shit, where the hell is he?
Cursing herself for her own negligence, she picks a path at random, no time to deliberate. The chances of her choice being correct aren’t in her favor, but another second wasted could be—
She hears voices.
It’s hard to discern their exact location as they echo off the cavern walls, but she latches onto her only sign of Ygor and follows. Morbid thoughts of what she might find invade her mind against all rationality as she passes corpse after corpse buried long ago. She moves faster.
She picks up the sound of struggling to her left, and then she’s sprinting.
Two figures stand further down the tunnel. A torch on the wall opposite Victoria glows behind them, so all she can see is the outline of their shadows against the dim light. An inhumanly tall figure hunches over the other, and Victoria doesn’t need to see the distinct cape flowing from behind to recognize him.
In his grasp, Ygor stands pinned against the wall with Dracula’s hand pulling at his hair, head tilted and neck exposed for easy access to his bloodstream.
Victoria readies her crossbow, switching on the mounted flashlight.
She won't let him.
“Let him go!”
Her flashlight hits their joined silhouette, and she sees that Dracula's lips are not on Ygor's neck.
Not anymore, at least, judging by the marks beneath his rumpled shirt collar that don't quite resemble vampire bites.
Dracula hisses and shields his face against the beam of light. Ygor lets out a muffled noise of shock against the vampire’s lips as he pulls away, and he makes the sound of a dying animal when he sees his boss standing behind him. He raises a gloved hand to cover his mouth, but it doesn’t stop Victoria from catching a glimpse of blood beading along his bottom lip, a droplet spilling over his chin in his haste to pretend she didn’t just walk in on him.
Kissing Count Dracula.
Passionately.
“Ygor. What the hell is this.”
“D-D-D-Doctor! Wha—” Ygor scrambles for an escape route, moving to shove the damning evidence of his crimes behind the corner wall. When Dracula refuses to budge (pausing from shooting Victoria a crimson-eyed death glare to give the man an amused smile for his efforts), Ygor resorts to leaning against him as if he were part of the stone and not an eight-foot vampire looming over him. “What are you doing here?” He awkwardly gestures with his free hand before fiddling with some strands in that unkempt rat’s nest he calls hair. His attempt at a casual smile is ruined by the blood still staining his mouth.
“I noticed my assistant wandering into uncharted sectors of the catacombs with nothing more than a flashlight and was worried for his safety,” she says, slowly and clearly so the absolute fool in front of her can understand. She pins him with a venomous glare to make sure it gets through. “Although I see now that my concerns were greatly unfounded.”
Ygor cringes, a keening noise escaping his throat, rising into a pitch only the Wolf Man could hear. “It's not what you think! I-I can explain!”
“Can you?”
“... If you give Ygor thirty seconds to think of a lie.”
“What is there to explain? Victoria here saw what happened.” A crooning drawl speaks from behind Ygor as Dracula sets his hands down on Ygor’s shoulders and leans into the man’s space. Victoria’s eye twitches when she notes how Ygor leans back without hesitation, craning his neck to meet his eyes. “You were tasked with monitoring me to make sure I haven’t escaped these tunnels. You were doing your job the way you saw fit.”
“That,” Ygor gapes, stammering before finding the confidence to put his hands on his hips and puff out his chest as he answers, “That's right! Ygor discovered a new method to keep the Count docile and was simply testing its effectiveness! As you can see, the results have been very, uh—e-effective!”
Maybe he’d sound more convincing if he weren’t blushing furiously behind his goggles.
Maybe.
“... I see. So this was all part of an experiment of yours?”
“E-exactly! This was an experiment done in the name of science! We all understand that now, yes?”
“I hear you loud and clear.” Victoria’s mouth tightens into a smile. She doesn’t blink.
Ygor averts his gaze until she can no longer see the lenses of his goggles. “Good, good—that's good!” His nervous chuckling becomes manic. “So we can all go home and pretend this never happened!”
“Calm yourself, Ygor. I just wanted to know why you were spending all your free time down here, and I’m glad I do now. In fact, I’ve taken a special interest in your endeavor myself.”
“O-Oh, you… You have?”
“Yes, I’ve even thought of a follow-up experiment.” She pulls out her crossbow, glass containing thousands of volts of electricity glinting beneath the flashlight. “How many times can I take you apart until I can’t put you back together again?”
Ygor yelps, tripping over himself as Victoria advances. Dracula takes this as his cue to sweep Ygor off his feet, a task made laughably easy by the sheer difference in height and frame, and bolt. Victoria wonders if the vampire insists on carrying her assistant like one of his brides just to piss her off further, and then she follows, hot on their heels and fueled with the power of a Frankenstein scorned.
Ygor peeks over Dracula’s shoulder in horror as the doctor keeps pace with the savage vampire, ducking when a shot nearly grazes him. “I’m sorry! Ygor didn’t mean to fraternize with the enemy test subject! It just sort of happened!”
“How long has this been going on!? That was a lot more than ‘fraternizing’ back there!”
Leaping off a wall to dodge another bolt, Dracula casts a glance at the human in his arms. “I never thought I’d say these words in all my years on this earth, but she has a point.”
Ygor matches it with an exasperated stare. “Don’t give me that! I thought you were the lookout, you should've smelled her from miles away!”
“Ah, I was,” Dracula pauses, and if she hadn't witnessed him sucking face instead of blood less than a minute ago, Victoria's mind would be denying the reality of the vampire sounding embarrassed. “Preoccupied. Can you blame me when such an irresistible distraction lay before my eyes?”
“Hold it! Ygor sees what you're up to! You're trying to charm me with smooth talk and flattery so I won't be annoyed at you!”
“Is it working?”
“Yes!”
“Good.”
“Stop flirting while I'm trying to kill you!”
“Gyaah! She’s gaining on us!”
The spirits of the departed trapped within the Darkmoor Catacombs are unable to rest that night. And well into the morning.