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He sits atop a tree branch, keeping a vantage point over the forest. It’s easier to hide themselves up in the foliage — even with their hair painted white and a body longer than they remember.
There’s a small wooden hut beneath them, silent and cold. The torches around crackle, but he doubts they’re enough to keep the boy inside warm.
It’s a tiny, barely-liveable thing. They have half a mind to expand it a little, if only to add a fireplace. But it serves its purpose as a lodging, discreet and just far out into the woods that people won’t find it immediately.
The night is quiet, almost unsettlingly so.
It’s the nerves, Robin reasons, from all the lies and pretending.
They had to, to keep people safe.
They ignore the visions of others being clawed at that appear in the corner of their eye.
It’s all excuses, he knows — too much of a coward to turn away from the monuments to run into the bloodshed, and yet too much of a liar to stop watching it from afar.
I’ll help if it gets too out of hand. What a joke.
The wind brushes though the trees and the rustling drowns the thoughts out for a moment.
He leans back on the trunk, claws slowly raking over the crackled, flaking bark. The silent nights were always the hardest, even back… in Dawnmere.
It was easier to pretend too, of course, that everything was fine. Back there, Robin could stare up at the stars with his back laid against the grass or mats or whatever else there was to sleep on and feel their heart thump and beat and lull themselves to bed.
He’s a vampire now, and there is no heartbeat.
Just a long silence that will never be filled again.
If they strain, they can hear Archie’s heartbeat faintly through the walls. It’s as comforting as it is harrowing — one small detail that could cause their poorly constructed lie to fall apart with ease.
And then where would that leave the kid?
If Archie was really turned, maybe it’d be easier.
Robin sinks their nails into the tree and resists the urge to claw at his own skin. Instead, they swing their leg over the branch and slide off, landing quietly on the ground despite the height.
He ignores the way the ground squelches like wet blood —
It’s fine, it’s all fine. The only monster in the dark is me.
— ignores the pained wheezing and gargled pleas from the bodies on the floor.
There’s only one monster in the woods tonight, because Robin knows the others are tucked away in their castle on the hill. There’s one and it’s one that should have died long ago.
“Hello?”
A voice rings out through the trees, young and expectant.
Robin knows better than to answer, so he walks deeper into the woods. Clumsy footsteps that haven’t quite learned to be silent on fresh snow follow him anyway.
“Um, sorry, Miss, do you know the way back to Dawnmere?”
“I’m not… supposed to be awake right now.”
“The stars are pretty, though, aren’t they?”
“Your hair’s really pretty too, like the moon. I don’t see people wearing red usually, though.”
“Um. Other than the overlord’s servants, I mean. But they’re supposed to attack and you haven’t, so, I think it’s fine.”
Robin counts the trees in front of themselves, but no matter how much they try, the presence behind him doesn’t fade away.
It’s no use running, they know, but something in them squirms and begs for them to just take off. But running away has never stopped apparitions from following.
“...This doesn’t look like anywhere near Dawnmere.”
“Do you know how I got here? Can you help me find my way home?”
Robin falters for a second. No one has asked him about home in a long time. They all know, just as well as he does, that they are no longer welcome in the town. Just who is this?
It’s not Jaime, for they remember his voice; not Char, for they remember her steps; not Ron, for they remember his speech; not Reia, for they remember her touch.
The only ones that follow like this are Father and Mother, but neither of them ever speak to him. He understands it, afterall, he is their greatest disappointment.
The wind carries through the forest yet again, and the leaves barely make a sound.
I’ve run into the dead forest, Robin realises belatedly. The footsteps behind him pauses as he does.
They’ve brought themselves back to the cliff where Tobias caught up to them, all those weeks ago. He hadn’t even noticed how close he was to stepping off the cliff.
Nothing would have happened if he did, really. Broken bones mend quickly. It doesn’t matter if their skull cracked open or their neck snapped in half, because the next time they woke up it would be like nothing happened at all.
“Miss?”
Robin shifts their foot over the edge.
It would be easy enough to escape.
Injured or otherwise, it would be so easy.
He pulls his foot back. It would be too easy for something like him.
“I cannot help you,” they say, loud despite how their hands shake. “I cannot go… to Dawnmere.”
There’s a beat of silence.
“That’s okay, I could find my way back, if I just had directions. I’m very good at navigating!”
Robin wrings his hands harshly, ignoring the urge to wrap their arms around themselves. There’s too much happening and everything is a blur — but at the same time, there is comfort in the mess.
Nothing has ever been alright, not since the castle from a lifetime ago. He should be used to it — the blur on the edges of their mind and the deep pang of something hallowed and empty in the pit of their stomach. It coils with want, a ferocious, hungry thing that all the blood and flesh in the world will never satiate.
“You will not find your way home,” their voice comes out far calmer than they feel. “It’s too far away for that.”
Vampirism is as easy as it is forgiving; that is to say, not at all. Vampires do not die so easily, and Robin has found that it is impossible for a vampire to drive a stake into their own heart.
Not that they’ve been trying, though, really.
Afterall, he’s tied Archie to himself in a half-baked plan to keep the kid alive and the vampires away, even if only for a little while. If they died now, where would that leave him?
Selfish, idiotic and desperate.
“Father, forgive me,” they mumble, suddenly feeling very tired. Their torso aches dully, and they know it’s the wound their father inflicted the last time they met. He should have just finished it. “Was I not good enough to save?”
Something shuffles into view to their side. A child, wearing a dull green uniform with a small cloak draped over their shoulders. Their face is… unfamiliar.
The lack of recognition is more alarming than anything else. Robin has always had the sharpest memory – prior to becoming this, at least – and even now he can recall the names of all the Dawnmerian children that donned the uniform before. Their mind draws a blank when it comes to this one, however.
“Do you know how I got here?”
“...No, I do not.”
“I’m not supposed to be here.”
“Right.”
“How far away are we?”
Robin’s mouth opens and closes, flailing for a response they do not have. After… after, everything had gone dark. They moved around with nothing but instinct and barely came back to themselves after the stake had been driven into their ribs.
The child looks to the sky, breath coming out as small puffs of fog through the cold night. They’re not dressed for the winter, and Robin wishes, just for a second, that they’d kept the cloak somewhere on himself. Then they remember how they’d given it to Archie while sewing his shirt, and the thought withers quickly.
Instead, he focuses on how much more visceral this image is, compared to the others. None of them have ever been quite this detailed or physical, always something a little off to remind them that they weren’t real. If they reached their hand out, it feels like he could cup this one’s cheek, or comb their hand through his hair.
Of course, their hands don't move. The claws are sharp and Robin barely trusts himself to pull Archie’s wrist to get him behind themselves without cutting him, much less place a hand on a child they fail to recognise.
There is a reason, after everything, that he does not reach out and hold Andre’s shoulders, does not cradle his cheek and wipe his tears after the attack; that they did not approach Iole after it all happened and merely watched in silence as she wandered frantically around the castle’s cliffs.
“How far?”
The child turns to look at him again, lights from the stars disappearing back into a sunken pool of reddish-brown. The color is almost familiar, but Robin barely grasps onto the feeling as it slips out of their fingers.
The color of blood, perhaps, something whispers, and he fights a wave of nausea as something churns uncomfortably in their gut.
“Are you alright?” The child responds, eyebrows furrowing despite the smile on his lips.
“No,” he says, before thinking better of it. “No, I am fine. Danke.”
The child blinks, then beams up at them, pleased despite the circumstances. “Kein Problem.”
There’s a beat of silence. Robin considers his words carefully, “Dawnmere is a long, long walk away. So far away that I would not be able to go back no matter what.”
That was the main intent with coming so far away. And learning how to kill vampires, if there was a way. If they’d learnt about stakes earlier, they would have gone back for Antoine. Not that they can, with the barrier up around the forest, and the thought makes Robin shake with something awful, but it’s something they’d envisioned doing a while ago.
Now, though, they no longer know the way back. Lost forever, one less monster for the town to worry about.
“Huh,” the child says, simply. “I thought that… There’s people beyond the castle?”
Something in Robin lurches violently.
They’d been shocked too, at first. When they ran they thought there would just be forests, leading out to eternity. Disappearing into the trees and starving to death, if possible, hadn’t sounded too bad.
Except after a while, they’d run out into a town. And then there was another, and another, and another. Robin learned to avoid going into them eventually. Circling around them and avoiding seeing any people or livestock was usually enough to avoid the hunger from flaring too much.
The house in the middle of the forest was–
“Yes,” he says, instead of continuing that thought. They’re a monster, and everybody already knows that anyway, especially themselves. “A very… very big one.”
“...oh.” The child’s brows furrow again, although the smile never leaves their face. Robin distantly wonders how many trips this one has made to the yellow room, or if he was just a natural. Then, “Okay. I need to go back and save people, though.”
The wind pushes by, and Robin has to fight the urge to run again. Can’t you just disappear already? Instead, he says, “What’s your name?”
A mistake. Many mistakes were made tonight.
The child, unknowing, looks back out at the stars, blinking slowly, studying the glimmering lights as if they’d give him an answer. “My name is Robin.”
“Sorry?”
“Robin,” the child repeats. “Like the bird.”
There’s a beat of silence as the details click into place. A heartbeat, old and familiar, returns to their ears.
Robin’s legs move before their mind catches up, and they ignore the distant ‘Wait!’ shouted from behind them. The apparition does not follow, this time, and yet they keep running.
He probably should have stayed, took his claws and swung it at the child’s face, or reached their hands out and wrapped it around the thing’s neck. They have a sword, an axe – no gun slung over their shoulders, this time – and it would’ve been so easy to swing and swing until there was nothing of this image left but blood and gore, and they know even that would fade once they shut their eyes for long enough.
They wouldn’t have, though. Attacked. Even if they hadn’t started running away, continued standing there staring at a face so young it was no longer familiar, a face they couldn’t stand to look at in the mirror and a face they could no longer see for the longest time, he wouldn’t have swung.
Because, try as he might to outrun it, the truth is this:
The first person Robin could not save was himself.