"Minor Initiations" - Dracula fan fiction
Title: Minor Initiations
Fandom: Dracula (novel)
Character/Pairing: Mina, Vampire Brides, Jonathan, Count Dracula, Dracula/Mina, Dracula/Vampire Brides, Dracula/Jonathan, implied Jonathan/Mina.
Summary: AU. Mina watches as Jonathan tries to adjust to life in the Count's castle.
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Polyamory, power dynamics, abuse, vampiric violence, characters dealing with trauma.
A/N: Technically a sequel to Home, but can also be read on its own. For the "leash" prompt at 50_darkfics.
The bloodstains would get out more easily if she washed the sheets quickly, so she didn't bother washing all the blood off of her own body immediately, even as it dried into thin layers on her skin. They had too many sets of sheets already with faded bloodstains - she knew that much.
And it was a beautiful night, the wind not as biting as it normally was in the Carpathians, the wide expanse of the sky thick with stars. She gazed at it for a moment, and then turned her attention back to earth, plunging the sheets into the tub of icy water.
Some of the blood from the thicker stains came off immediately, thin spirals of red in the water, and more came off as soon as she picked up the soap and began to scrub at the stains. The work was comforting, a little - there was an odd feeling of simple accomplishment as the stains slowly lightened, and the rhythmic movement of it relaxed her. She remembered doing the washing at her aunt and uncle's house, where all the women would have to join in with the work, starting Monday morning, the starching and ironing continuing through the next days. She remembered being wet to her elbows in the soapy water, the way the starch for the lace collars made her hands feel dry and odd. The memory seemed so distant, tinged with the butter-yellow candlelight of nostalgia.
Soon there were footsteps behind her, soft but audible, and she turned around. Ecaterina was walking towards her, her pale hair ethereal in the moonlight. As always, Mina marveled that she could see Ecaterina, could see everything so clearly in the dark night. She wasn't used to her heightened senses.
Ecaterina was at her side in a few moments. “You don’t need to do that now.”
“Ileana will make a mess of it, and I know that you would prefer not to. I want to get the stains out before they set.” Mina didn't know why she always mimicked Ecaterina’s voice when she spoke to her, her words turning expressionless.
“Then let Adriana do it, or Jonathan.”
“It’s not Adriana’s responsibility, and Jonathan’s too much of a perfectionist - he’d drive himself mad with it.”
Ecaterina didn't laugh. Instead, she reached a hand out to Mina’s cheek. Her nails scraped a fleck of dried blood from it. “Vlad won’t like it if he sees you still like this.”
“He’s out.”
“He’ll be back soon.” She took the soap from Mina’s hands and put it down on the stones. “Come inside.”
Ecaterina was centuries older than her. Mina went.
~
Everyone else was sitting together when Mina came inside with Ecaterina. Adriana was embroidering, head bent low over the cloth, her dark hair making a curtain over her face. She didn't look up at Mina’s footsteps. Ileana was shuffling a deck of cards, looking bored and restless with some sort of pent up energy inside her. Jonathan had obviously just taken a bath - all the dried blood was gone from his skin, and his hair was damp against his scalp, the water turning the white strands nearly to gray.
“Vlad won’t like to see you like that,” Ileana said promptly upon seeing Mina. She was the second oldest, after Ecaterina. The two of them were used to these things, like patterns deep beneath their skin.
“Is he back yet?” Ecaterina asked, though obviously any of them could figure that out for themselves with a minimum of effort.
“Almost. Not quite.” To Mina again, “You won’t have time.”
“She’ll be fine,” Ecaterina answered before Mina had a chance to. Almost a command, to Adriana, “get a basin of water and a cloth.” Adriana put down her embroidery and left the room. Mina wondered how she herself would deal with Ecaterina’s blatant commands. Obeying Vlad was one thing, but obeying one of his Fledglings was quite another, even Ecaterina, who was four hundred years old.
“Stand still,” Ecaterina told Mina briskly, not even bothering to explain anything else before beginning to unlace the back of her dress. Mina fought the urge to flinch at the contact and run from the room. She succeeded in the latter aim, but not quite the former. Things were different, there, and nudity among them was common. But it all still made something in her stomach clench in bright, vivid fear, as though she was seeing everything through the nightmarishly varied colors of a stained-glass window, the world full of new rules that she could still only barely recall.
“Why was it that he punished the two of you again?” Ileana asked Jonathan as Ecaterina finished with Mina’s dress and began to ease her chemise away from the places where it was stuck to the blood on her skin.
“He wasn’t punishing us,” Jonathan replied. Mina thought she heard a tightness, a reticence in his voice, but couldn’t say, “he was testing us.”
“Our pain tolerance,” Mina added softly. She didn't mention that it was mostly Jonathan who he was testing, herself having been tested quite adequately in the nights before Jonathan’s arrival (so Vlad had told her, softly, his strong hands snapping one of her finger bones or holding a knife against the skin of her torso: “I am testing you”).
At that point, Adriana returned with the water, Ecaterina thanked her before placing the basin on the table next to her. In an instant, Mina felt a cold cloth against her back and flinched again. “I can do that myself,” she protested, feeling rather as though she was being treated like a child, though she could not remember this terrible sense of vulnerability during her childhood.
“Not on your back,” Ecaterina said reasonably, before proceeding to wash the dried blood from Mina’s back. “How was it then?” she asked Mina and Jonathan casually, “Your pain tolerance, that is.”
Mina glanced at Jonathan, who was resolutely not looking at her.
“I’m not certain,” he said, eyes on his book, “I think Mina managed it better than I did, though."
Mina didn't know how he could say that, when neither of them knew what the other had felt. "Jonathan, it doesn't matter."
“Of course not,” Ileana said, “it just determines how difficult it will be for you here."
“That’s not quite true,” Ecaterina interjected. She’d finished washing Mina’s back. Still feeling terribly awkward, Mina thanked her and took the cloth from her, sitting down and beginning on her legs. She still felt vaguely threatened. Jonathan, she noticed, was pointedly not looking at her.
“Well, of course he’ll make punishment terrible no matter how much pain you can endure,” Ileana said, seeming to take some small delight in scaring Mina and Jonathan with such things, “but there’s a certain amount of pain one just has to deal with in living here, and if you can handle that, it makes things a good deal easier.”
Ecaterina was sitting next to Ileana now, and Ileana was beginning to deal the deck of cards out between the two of them. Quickly, Mina finished getting the worst of the blood off of the rest of her body and redressed, ignoring the fact that her clothing, particularly her shift, was already stiff with blood. “Jonathan, could you please…?” she asked, when she reached the problem of lacing up the back of her dress. He nodded, and did so. She considered sitting next to him, but decided not to. She had a sudden desire to grab his hand, as she had done so often before all this, and she had the sense that such an action would not be quite appropriate, under the circumstances.
She felt glad for Ecaterina’s briskness then, for Vlad entered almost immediately, an unmistakable exhilaration in his eyes. Everyone looked up then - Ecaterina and Ileana from their card game, Adriana from her embroidery, Jonathan from his book. Ileana gave him a wild grin, stretching out her long legs. “What have you brought for us tonight?” she asked.
Mina wanted to be sick, and did grasp Jonathan’s hand then. He looked more disturbed than she was, in fact - there was a sort of dull terror in his eyes. He held her hand so tightly that it hurt.
“Come downstairs,” Vlad told Ileana, who leapt to her feet immediately, Ecaterina and Adriana following somewhat more leisurely. He looked then to Mina and Jonathan. “You two as well,” he said, in a tone that clearly gave no opportunity for argument.
Irrationally, Mina worried about the sheets.
~
Neither Mina nor Jonathan had fed from a mortal yet. In fact, the thought of it had hardly entered Mina's mind, for it was terrible enough to drink Vlad's blood, and he still had to hold her down most nights to stop her from instinctively struggling against him. Willingly drinking from a mortal seemed nearly incomprehensible. And Jonathan had been there for far less time than Mina - surely Vlad would not make him do this yet.
Going downstairs was terrifying enough in and of itself, and though Mina had grown used to the nightmarish furnishings of the castle in the past weeks, her heightened awareness, at that moment, of how such things must look to some unjustly abducted human made it all frightful again. There was first the descent to the room at the foot of the tower, filled with torture instruments like a penny-dreadful depiction of a medieval torture chamber, and the low-ceilinged cellar where the coffins were kept, and then the dungeons, remnants of the days when the castle was still used for the function of some actual government, rather than being simply the home of a sadistic vampire. And those were where they went that night, from where Mina, with the heightened sense of her cursed nature, could hear a heartbeat, smell mortal blood. The mere fact of it made her sick.
Vlad was talking to Jonathan in lowered tones as they walked. Mina tried not to listen, tried to only focus on the stone beneath her bare feet and the red fabric of her dress. It succeeded, well enough.
But then they reached the dungeons, and hardly mattered any longer whether Mina heard or not.
There was a young woman chained there, against the wall of one of the cells, shackles around her wrists and ankles, a gag her in mouth to prevent her from screaming. She wasn’t incredibly pretty, especially like that, sweaty from obvious struggles, eyes wide with confusion and terror, but Mina felt terrible, shameful hunger within her responding to the veins at the woman’s neck and wrists, blue and fragile.
Forcing her attention away from the woman, Mina saw Ecaterina kiss Vlad, obvious excitement on her face. “Oh, thank you,” she said, with a smile like some heartless reptile’s.
All three of them seemed ready in fact, fangs bright and terrifying. They waited, though, for Vlad to give them permission. Mina closed her eyes, pretending she was somewhere else, anywhere else.
But she felt Vlad's hand around her wrist, and she opened her eyes abruptly. "Come here," he told her. His gaze was steady, and his intention clear. She followed him to where the mortal woman stood, not daring to break her gaze from where it met his. If she kept looking only at his eyes, then she would not panic, she would not scream or fight, or do something else futile and stupid. She knew herself.
But it was Vlad who glanced away from her, back at Jonathan, who must have moved forward. "No, not tonight, you need not. But watch." She felt glad for this mercy towards Jonathan, but it was little enough comfort.
Vlad gestured the others away from the woman, who was struggling again, sounds coming from behind her gag. Ecaterina hissed something at her and she was still and silent, even as Vlad moved her head to one side. She was trembling, though. Mina stared up at Vlad, human compassion moving her to nausea. “Please -“ she began, but he placed a hand upon her lips.
“Don’t,” he told her, not ungently, but in a tone entirely without compromise, “I know very well that you’re capable of this.”
She nodded, reassured still somehow by his hand around her wrist, and, swallowing hard, she leaned down and bit the woman.
It was different somehow from drinking Vlad’s blood, though she could not have described any difference in taste or consistency. As though from very far away, she could hear muffled sounds coming from behind the woman’s gag, and the sound of someone retching on the other side of the room - Jonathan, she slowly surmised. She stopped drinking as soon as she could, and it was only then, when she saw the open gashes upon the woman’s neck, that she began to cry.
Vlad drew her aside and held her close to him, his cold hands gentle in her hair. He let her cry, as though her compliance had won her the luxury of weakness. When she finally stopped crying, she looked up at him. “I need to wash the sheets,” she said softly.
His eyebrows lifted. “I beg your pardon?”
“From earlier,” she explained, “the sheets got bloody and I need to wash them before the stains set.”
He nodded. “I see.” He looked towards Ecaterina, who was then biting the mortal woman, her teeth almost exactly where Mina’s had been. “Go with her when you’ve finished,” he told Ecaterina. He then looked back to Mina. “Wait here until she goes with you,” he said. Mina nodded, and he let go of her.
She saw then that Jonathan had indeed retched, and was now on his knees, his palms braced against the floor, breathing unnecessarily and with some effort. Vlad went to him and knelt down at his side so slowly that Mina thought he was going to be gentle, but then he twisted his fingers in Jonathan’s white hair, forcing his head up brutally. Then he whispered something in Jonathan’s ear, something that Mina could not hear but did not wish to. Jonathan shook his head violently, as much as he could within Vlad’s grip. “No, never,” he half muttered, the words coming out choked.
Mina winced then as Vlad pulled Jonathan up and slammed him against the stone wall with a sickening crunch. Mina closed her eyes to avoid the impulse to run to Jonathan’s side, and kept them closed for several moments until a feather-light touch on her arm, which she quickly saw was Ecaterina, who had finished with the woman. At her side, Mina left the dungeon.
~
“Why did he send you with me?” Mina asked when they were back into the courtyard and her arms were yet again submerged in the cold water.
“He didn’t want you to hurt yourself,” Ecaterina said calmly, looking at the clear sky.
“He thought I would?” Mina found again the rhythm of her washing, and gratefully fell into it.
“It’s likely enough. Jonathan made enough noise when he was attempting to slash at his wrists that time before his changing, but it would be just like you to leave for some household chore and then quietly throw yourself into a fireplace.”
Mina laughed for an instant. “I suppose that’s true. But I don’t want to kill myself.” A pause. “I’m worried about Jonathan.”
She turned to look at Ecaterina, who was looking directly at her, her blue eyes almost uncomfortably bright. “Don’t be,” she said.
Mina frowned. “Why not?”
“First, because he’ll be perfectly all right and your fear is pointless in that respect, and, second, because you’ll get into trouble with Vlad if you take Jonathan’s side or attempt to defend him.”
Mina found herself scrubbing at the stains slightly more aggressively than necessary. “I know. But Jonathan’s my husband, I can’t help -“
“Not anymore.” Ecaterina had stood, and walked closer to where Mina knelt against the flagstone. “Your loyalty is to him, Mina, and him alone. Do try not to forget that.”
Mina nodded, letting her head fall so low that the ends of her hair dipped into the soap-filled water.
~
When she was done, she and Ecaterina found Vlad and the others sitting together. Jonathan was near Vlad, and looked quiet, subdued. Mina tried to ignore the swift burn of anxiety for him, particularly as Vlad smiled at her.
“You did well tonight,” he told her, and, with a hand at her waist, he drew her towards him. She went, submitting as he pulled her to sit beside him.
“Thank you,” she murmured, genuinely glad with the praise, though she could not quite bring herself to smile.
Slowly, his hands went to the back of her dress and began, carefully and methodically, to do away with the lacings there. “Jonathan,” he began conversationally, “says that he cannot stand the sight of his wife behaving like the blood drinking creature that she is.”
Mina bent her back so that he could reach the lowest laces. She was briefly glad that the fall of her dark hair covered the expression on her face.
She could feel his sharp nails against her back through the thin fabric of her chemise. “I want to teach you how to torture,” he continued, slipping the bodice of her dress off over her shoulders, “I do not think that you would enjoy it, but I do think that you’re capable of doing it well.” He managed to ease her dress off the rest of her body as well, and it fell to a pool at her feet. “Were I less invested in teaching you to endure torture as well, I would try offering a choice of being tortured or torturing another, on continuous occasions, and watch your reactions.”
As he pulled her chemise off over her head, she made a point of not looking at any of the others. “Is that a test of whether one’s inclinations run closer to sadism or masochism, or do you just enjoy watch people’s moral standards slowly disintegrate?”
He laughed, tracing his fingers over the curve of her spine. “Both.”
She shivered at the cold of his touch, but managed to ask, softly, “Could we go to another room? I feel rather -“
Abruptly, his nails sunk into her skin, probably deep enough to draw blood. “No, we could not,” he told her, and she did not argue. He guided her to lie down on the floor, and, with the vivid intensity of too much sensation, made it quite easy to forget about the others there.
But, when it was over, she saw Jonathan with his head in his hands and she felt guilt like a sharp pain in her stomach. She dressed carefully, Vlad helping her with the laces on her dress, and only then did she see that Adriana had not looked up from her embroidery. Ecaterina and Ileana were still talking.
Things one grew accustomed to, Mina supposed.
“The sun should rise soon,” Vlad said, and, as always, Mina wondered how he knew those patterns so well. “We’ll sleep now.”
Mina nodded. Ecaterina stood, going to Vlad and twining her fingers with his, leaning in close and whispering things to him. Adriana knotted off a thread and got up, moving unhurriedly. Ileana caught her arm and rushed her along.
Mina went to Jonathan, though she felt the still unfaded bruises of Vlad’s passion on her face and collarbones, and felt marked, embarrassed in front of Jonathan. But she knelt in front of him, holding out her hands. “We’re leaving now,” she told him quietly, though she knew he must have heard.
He took her hands, but said nothing. Silently, they went together down to the cellar.
~
The next night she woke late and saw Vlad, his hands dark with soil, out in the courtyard. With a sudden jolt, she thought of the mortal woman from the night before, pictured Vlad burying her bloodless body in the garden. But she could see no hole large enough for a grave. And so she went to join him.
He looked up at her impassively as she walked towards her, and, oddly, she thought she saw a shimmer of silver in the movement of his hands. “What are you doing?” she asked, hoping that the response would not unsettle her.
“Gardening,” he said, and she smiled.
“I didn’t know you -“
He nodded. “I like plants.”
She sat down beside where he knelt, laying her head against his knee and watching him. She noticed that her fear with him was now something rhythmic and predictable, like ocean waves and that, while she could not ignore it, it did not truly trouble her.
“It’s getting warmer out,” she said.
“Yes,” he agreed pleasantly, “that’s why I’m here this evening. The ground is softening.”
She stayed there in silence for a moment. His gardening seemed erratic to her eyes, for he pulled up plants that others would leave, and left weeds that most would seek to eradicate.
“Please,” she asked finally, so quiet that she could barely hear herself, “could you be kind to Jonathan?”
Vlad grew still, and put down the tools he held. She did not draw away from him, and when he shifted into sitting and moved her head to lie upon her chest, she moved with him. “No,” he told her, without room in his tone for compromise.
She nodded. She could not truly have expected him to say anything else. “I’m worried about him,” she murmured, prepared for any violence those words might trigger, closing her eyes against the fabric of his shirt.
“Yes, I know that,” he said conversationally, “you shouldn’t be.”
“That’s what Ecaterina told me.”
Vlad laughed, briefly. “Of course she did.” A pause. “Do you think, then, that he is weaker than you are?”
“No,” she said suddenly and fervently, “not at all, of course not.”
“Then you have no need to be worried for him.”
“You’re going to hurt him,” she murmured, the words coming out as a quiet, half audible rush, “which you always do, I know that, but after everything you did to him when he was staying with you I don’t know that he’ll be able to stand it, and if he can’t -“
“He will be able to stand it.” Mina felt Vlad’s earth covered hands in her hair as he spoke. “I am…learning his limits and in what ways I can dissolve them.” Soft, his mouth against her hair, “Trust me.”
“I don’t,” she told him in quiet honesty.
“I know,” he said, as though that fact was assumed. He let go of her. “Now, I would like to continue with this. I will see you when I am finished.”
She nodded in deference, and left.
~
She found Ileana and Adriana inside. They were playing cards, though Mina could not imagine how Ileana managed to involve Adriana in that pursuit. Ileana smiled, her expression uncommonly open, as she saw Mina.
“The murderess Mina Harker!” she cried, standing and coming to meet Mina. She kissed Mina’s cheek and Mina tried not to wince. “I would have congratulated you last night, but I couldn’t find an appropriate moment.”
“That’s all right,” Mina assured her, “but thank you.” Towards Adriana, “Good evening, Adriana.”
Adriana looked up and smiled faintly.
Ileana returned to the card game, but gestured for Mina to come and sit near her. “What do you think of things here, so far?” she asked, “You have been here…several months already, by my count.”
“I’m not sure,” Mina told her with complete honesty, “It is rather…different from what I am accustomed to.”
“Of course it is,” Ileana responded, her tone dismissive, “it’s different from anything else.”
Mina supposed that might be true. “If I’m not prying,” she began, “may I ask what you thought, when you first arrived here? Was it…difficult for you to adjust?”
Briefly, Ileana looked at Mina, as if curious about the origin of that question. “It took some time, I suppose. I was angry at first. I rebelled all the time. He had to beat it out of me.” She laughed, throwing her head back as she did so. Her red hair fell down behind her like a comet’s tail.
“You were all right, though?” Mina asked, trying not to sound insistent, “Nothing that he did was beyond -“
“You’re worried about that husband of yours, aren’t you?”
The question came so directly and suddenly that Mina had to nod.
“Don’t be ridiculous about it. He’s only been here a month or two. And you’re hardly a model of healthy adjustment yourself, what with that flinching all of the time.” Ileana reached out, her fingers barely brushing Mina’s cheek. Mina flinched, unthinking, then blushed. Ileana laughed, though it was almost more of a giggle. “See. It takes time. I could tell you what Adriana was like her first few years, but I don’t want to frighten you.”
Adriana smiled, and Mina envied her lack of bitterness. For a moment, she watched the progression of the card game, and then Ileana continued, thoughtful, “With Jonathan, though, Vlad is very…what is your English word? Vindictive.”
Mina felt her hands tighten in the fabric of her skirts. “What do you mean?”
“When Jonathan was here for that business deal, Vlad liked to play with him. Make him think he was going mad, all that. It is something to do with victims, something Vlad enjoys. But Jonathan ran away, and now that Vlad has him back, he still…well, you’ve heard what he did to kill him for his changing.”
Mina felt a sudden desire to breathe, human and unnecessary as that was. “No, no, I haven’t.”
“Oh.” Ileana looked down for a moment, as though deciding whether or not to tell Mina. “He had all three of us attack him, drink from him till he was very weak. Then he had Jonathan beg him not to have us torment him further. Jonathan drank Vlad’s blood willingly after all that.”
Mina remembered Jonathan’s stricken face during his mortal nightmares, and wanted to scream. “I…thank you for telling me.” She stood, feeling lightheaded.
Ileana grabbed at her wrist, her nails suddenly sharp against Mina’s skin. “You won’t go and panic, yell to Vlad about this, will you? That would be stupid.”
Mina shook her head. “I’ll try not to.” A pause. “Please, would you let go of me?”
Ileana did so. “It was madness to take both of you, that was my opinion.”
Mina laughed. “Possibly. Thank you, Ileana.” With that, she left the room, trying to ignore the anger bubbling up in her stagnant veins.
~
She sought out Ecaterina, then, because she didn’t trust herself to talk to Jonathan reasonably. Ecaterina was folding laundry, which she had left to dry during their daytime sleep. Mina walked in on her, feeling awkward. “May I help?” she asked.
“Of course,” Ecaterina said, handing her a full basket. Mina took it and knelt down, beginning with the sheets she had washed the night before. “You and Jonathan are both more compulsive with housework than anyone else here,” Ecaterina observed, her pale, elegant hands moving swiftly.
“I think Vlad is about equal as well,” Mina said, trying to smile.
Ecaterina shook her head. “Vlad doesn’t like it to be undone, and he doesn’t like it to be done wrong. He doesn’t automatically go to do it.”
Mina half shrugged. “I suppose so. I saw him gardening earlier.”
“Yes,” Ecaterina said, expressionlessly, “he does that.”
“I was talking,” Mina began hesitantly, “to Ileana. About Jonathan. She told me -“
“Stop,” Ecaterina cut her off, abruptly and without any moment of consideration, “you are being…ridiculous about this and I do not want to be involved. If you want to go and make Vlad furious with you, that is not my concern, but I will not be part of it. I have been here a long time and I have no room for this kind of sentimental nonsense.” Only after all that did she look at Mina. “I want you to leave now and go someplace alone. I would like to talk to Vlad about this before it goes any further.” She took the laundry basket from Mina. “We all answer to him. I will not be complicit in your paranoid disloyalty.”
Mina did as she was told.
~
She went to the room Vlad had given her and waited, rereading Plato as she did. He arrived there after only a few minutes, his hands clean and damp. He shut the door behind him. She put down the volume of philosophy and looked up at him, folding her hands together in her lap.
“I considered,” he said, “keeping you and Jonathan from contact with one another until I judged your loyalty to me cemented enough that you would not have these sorts of reactions. But Jonathan’s inhibitions are too far bound up in ideas of his marriage to you, and I thought it best to force him inescapably to confront the collapse of those ideals, rather than letting him maintain a false image of you as strong, loyal, and virtuous. I am beginning to reconsider that decision.”
“I’m trying,” she said quietly, “but I can’t stand you using me as a means to hurt him.”
He looked at her very directly. “I suggest you accustom yourself to it,” he told her, “as I will continue as I long as I deem necessary.”
She looked away from his gaze, though hating herself for the weakness of it. “I can’t help worrying.”
“I do not ask you to eradicate your worry for him, only to control your expression of it. Of which you are entirely capable.”
She nodded, and was suddenly aware that her folded hands were now clasped tight together, her nails biting into her skin. She forced herself to soften her grip and again looked at him.
“Come with me,” he said. Mina left.
~
He brought her to Jonathan’s room and unlocked the door. She was not surprised in the least to see that he kept Jonathan’s door locked, but she also knew that it was different from the way he had kept her doors locked in her early nights there. With Jonathan, it was not merely a matter of practicality.
Jonathan was reading as they entered. She couldn’t see the title of the book, but she did see the dread in his face as he registered her presence. She hated it.
Vlad stayed by the door, watching. Mina went to Jonathan, but stopped a few feet away from him. It would, she was sure, be presumptuous to come any closer, as if she was assuming that her closeness could not cause fear.
“What are you doing here?” Jonathan asked, and his voice was low and careful.
She tried to smile. “It’s nothing. I was…worrying, and it was irritating him. It doesn’t matter.”
Something in his eyes softened, and he held out his hands to her. “Don’t worry about me, Mina.”
Reassured, she took the few steps to bridge the gap between them, kneeling down to take his hands. “I can’t help it. What is he…”
Jonathan looked at their clasped hands, then at her face. “I have to stay here. Last night, my reactions were too…severe, and he’s trying to do something about that. He’s keeping me here for now.” He paused. “How are you?”
“I’m all right,” she told him, her voice quiet because she couldn’t imagine speaking any louder, “It does get…easier, Jonathan, really, it does. I know that’s difficult to believe now, but…”
He didn’t reply.
“Do you think that he’s…done something to my mind? Changed me somehow?” She was beginning to understand his wariness, his reticence with her. “Jonathan, he hasn’t. I’m still me.”
He kissed her hands, gently and chastely. She wanted to cry. “I know you are,” he said.
“One day,” she said softly, her voice hoarse with the tears in the back of her eyes, “when we’ve both….adjusted, and he gives us time…we’ll talk again, Jonathan. As we used to. It will be all right.”
Jonathan nodded, looking at her. “Yes,” he said, “we will.”
Vlad spoke, from the other side of the room, “Mina,” he said, “You should leave now.”
She stood and left, letting go of Jonathan’s hands.
Fandom: Dracula (novel)
Character/Pairing: Mina, Vampire Brides, Jonathan, Count Dracula, Dracula/Mina, Dracula/Vampire Brides, Dracula/Jonathan, implied Jonathan/Mina.
Summary: AU. Mina watches as Jonathan tries to adjust to life in the Count's castle.
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Polyamory, power dynamics, abuse, vampiric violence, characters dealing with trauma.
A/N: Technically a sequel to Home, but can also be read on its own. For the "leash" prompt at 50_darkfics.
The bloodstains would get out more easily if she washed the sheets quickly, so she didn't bother washing all the blood off of her own body immediately, even as it dried into thin layers on her skin. They had too many sets of sheets already with faded bloodstains - she knew that much.
And it was a beautiful night, the wind not as biting as it normally was in the Carpathians, the wide expanse of the sky thick with stars. She gazed at it for a moment, and then turned her attention back to earth, plunging the sheets into the tub of icy water.
Some of the blood from the thicker stains came off immediately, thin spirals of red in the water, and more came off as soon as she picked up the soap and began to scrub at the stains. The work was comforting, a little - there was an odd feeling of simple accomplishment as the stains slowly lightened, and the rhythmic movement of it relaxed her. She remembered doing the washing at her aunt and uncle's house, where all the women would have to join in with the work, starting Monday morning, the starching and ironing continuing through the next days. She remembered being wet to her elbows in the soapy water, the way the starch for the lace collars made her hands feel dry and odd. The memory seemed so distant, tinged with the butter-yellow candlelight of nostalgia.
Soon there were footsteps behind her, soft but audible, and she turned around. Ecaterina was walking towards her, her pale hair ethereal in the moonlight. As always, Mina marveled that she could see Ecaterina, could see everything so clearly in the dark night. She wasn't used to her heightened senses.
Ecaterina was at her side in a few moments. “You don’t need to do that now.”
“Ileana will make a mess of it, and I know that you would prefer not to. I want to get the stains out before they set.” Mina didn't know why she always mimicked Ecaterina’s voice when she spoke to her, her words turning expressionless.
“Then let Adriana do it, or Jonathan.”
“It’s not Adriana’s responsibility, and Jonathan’s too much of a perfectionist - he’d drive himself mad with it.”
Ecaterina didn't laugh. Instead, she reached a hand out to Mina’s cheek. Her nails scraped a fleck of dried blood from it. “Vlad won’t like it if he sees you still like this.”
“He’s out.”
“He’ll be back soon.” She took the soap from Mina’s hands and put it down on the stones. “Come inside.”
Ecaterina was centuries older than her. Mina went.
~
Everyone else was sitting together when Mina came inside with Ecaterina. Adriana was embroidering, head bent low over the cloth, her dark hair making a curtain over her face. She didn't look up at Mina’s footsteps. Ileana was shuffling a deck of cards, looking bored and restless with some sort of pent up energy inside her. Jonathan had obviously just taken a bath - all the dried blood was gone from his skin, and his hair was damp against his scalp, the water turning the white strands nearly to gray.
“Vlad won’t like to see you like that,” Ileana said promptly upon seeing Mina. She was the second oldest, after Ecaterina. The two of them were used to these things, like patterns deep beneath their skin.
“Is he back yet?” Ecaterina asked, though obviously any of them could figure that out for themselves with a minimum of effort.
“Almost. Not quite.” To Mina again, “You won’t have time.”
“She’ll be fine,” Ecaterina answered before Mina had a chance to. Almost a command, to Adriana, “get a basin of water and a cloth.” Adriana put down her embroidery and left the room. Mina wondered how she herself would deal with Ecaterina’s blatant commands. Obeying Vlad was one thing, but obeying one of his Fledglings was quite another, even Ecaterina, who was four hundred years old.
“Stand still,” Ecaterina told Mina briskly, not even bothering to explain anything else before beginning to unlace the back of her dress. Mina fought the urge to flinch at the contact and run from the room. She succeeded in the latter aim, but not quite the former. Things were different, there, and nudity among them was common. But it all still made something in her stomach clench in bright, vivid fear, as though she was seeing everything through the nightmarishly varied colors of a stained-glass window, the world full of new rules that she could still only barely recall.
“Why was it that he punished the two of you again?” Ileana asked Jonathan as Ecaterina finished with Mina’s dress and began to ease her chemise away from the places where it was stuck to the blood on her skin.
“He wasn’t punishing us,” Jonathan replied. Mina thought she heard a tightness, a reticence in his voice, but couldn’t say, “he was testing us.”
“Our pain tolerance,” Mina added softly. She didn't mention that it was mostly Jonathan who he was testing, herself having been tested quite adequately in the nights before Jonathan’s arrival (so Vlad had told her, softly, his strong hands snapping one of her finger bones or holding a knife against the skin of her torso: “I am testing you”).
At that point, Adriana returned with the water, Ecaterina thanked her before placing the basin on the table next to her. In an instant, Mina felt a cold cloth against her back and flinched again. “I can do that myself,” she protested, feeling rather as though she was being treated like a child, though she could not remember this terrible sense of vulnerability during her childhood.
“Not on your back,” Ecaterina said reasonably, before proceeding to wash the dried blood from Mina’s back. “How was it then?” she asked Mina and Jonathan casually, “Your pain tolerance, that is.”
Mina glanced at Jonathan, who was resolutely not looking at her.
“I’m not certain,” he said, eyes on his book, “I think Mina managed it better than I did, though."
Mina didn't know how he could say that, when neither of them knew what the other had felt. "Jonathan, it doesn't matter."
“Of course not,” Ileana said, “it just determines how difficult it will be for you here."
“That’s not quite true,” Ecaterina interjected. She’d finished washing Mina’s back. Still feeling terribly awkward, Mina thanked her and took the cloth from her, sitting down and beginning on her legs. She still felt vaguely threatened. Jonathan, she noticed, was pointedly not looking at her.
“Well, of course he’ll make punishment terrible no matter how much pain you can endure,” Ileana said, seeming to take some small delight in scaring Mina and Jonathan with such things, “but there’s a certain amount of pain one just has to deal with in living here, and if you can handle that, it makes things a good deal easier.”
Ecaterina was sitting next to Ileana now, and Ileana was beginning to deal the deck of cards out between the two of them. Quickly, Mina finished getting the worst of the blood off of the rest of her body and redressed, ignoring the fact that her clothing, particularly her shift, was already stiff with blood. “Jonathan, could you please…?” she asked, when she reached the problem of lacing up the back of her dress. He nodded, and did so. She considered sitting next to him, but decided not to. She had a sudden desire to grab his hand, as she had done so often before all this, and she had the sense that such an action would not be quite appropriate, under the circumstances.
She felt glad for Ecaterina’s briskness then, for Vlad entered almost immediately, an unmistakable exhilaration in his eyes. Everyone looked up then - Ecaterina and Ileana from their card game, Adriana from her embroidery, Jonathan from his book. Ileana gave him a wild grin, stretching out her long legs. “What have you brought for us tonight?” she asked.
Mina wanted to be sick, and did grasp Jonathan’s hand then. He looked more disturbed than she was, in fact - there was a sort of dull terror in his eyes. He held her hand so tightly that it hurt.
“Come downstairs,” Vlad told Ileana, who leapt to her feet immediately, Ecaterina and Adriana following somewhat more leisurely. He looked then to Mina and Jonathan. “You two as well,” he said, in a tone that clearly gave no opportunity for argument.
Irrationally, Mina worried about the sheets.
~
Neither Mina nor Jonathan had fed from a mortal yet. In fact, the thought of it had hardly entered Mina's mind, for it was terrible enough to drink Vlad's blood, and he still had to hold her down most nights to stop her from instinctively struggling against him. Willingly drinking from a mortal seemed nearly incomprehensible. And Jonathan had been there for far less time than Mina - surely Vlad would not make him do this yet.
Going downstairs was terrifying enough in and of itself, and though Mina had grown used to the nightmarish furnishings of the castle in the past weeks, her heightened awareness, at that moment, of how such things must look to some unjustly abducted human made it all frightful again. There was first the descent to the room at the foot of the tower, filled with torture instruments like a penny-dreadful depiction of a medieval torture chamber, and the low-ceilinged cellar where the coffins were kept, and then the dungeons, remnants of the days when the castle was still used for the function of some actual government, rather than being simply the home of a sadistic vampire. And those were where they went that night, from where Mina, with the heightened sense of her cursed nature, could hear a heartbeat, smell mortal blood. The mere fact of it made her sick.
Vlad was talking to Jonathan in lowered tones as they walked. Mina tried not to listen, tried to only focus on the stone beneath her bare feet and the red fabric of her dress. It succeeded, well enough.
But then they reached the dungeons, and hardly mattered any longer whether Mina heard or not.
There was a young woman chained there, against the wall of one of the cells, shackles around her wrists and ankles, a gag her in mouth to prevent her from screaming. She wasn’t incredibly pretty, especially like that, sweaty from obvious struggles, eyes wide with confusion and terror, but Mina felt terrible, shameful hunger within her responding to the veins at the woman’s neck and wrists, blue and fragile.
Forcing her attention away from the woman, Mina saw Ecaterina kiss Vlad, obvious excitement on her face. “Oh, thank you,” she said, with a smile like some heartless reptile’s.
All three of them seemed ready in fact, fangs bright and terrifying. They waited, though, for Vlad to give them permission. Mina closed her eyes, pretending she was somewhere else, anywhere else.
But she felt Vlad's hand around her wrist, and she opened her eyes abruptly. "Come here," he told her. His gaze was steady, and his intention clear. She followed him to where the mortal woman stood, not daring to break her gaze from where it met his. If she kept looking only at his eyes, then she would not panic, she would not scream or fight, or do something else futile and stupid. She knew herself.
But it was Vlad who glanced away from her, back at Jonathan, who must have moved forward. "No, not tonight, you need not. But watch." She felt glad for this mercy towards Jonathan, but it was little enough comfort.
Vlad gestured the others away from the woman, who was struggling again, sounds coming from behind her gag. Ecaterina hissed something at her and she was still and silent, even as Vlad moved her head to one side. She was trembling, though. Mina stared up at Vlad, human compassion moving her to nausea. “Please -“ she began, but he placed a hand upon her lips.
“Don’t,” he told her, not ungently, but in a tone entirely without compromise, “I know very well that you’re capable of this.”
She nodded, reassured still somehow by his hand around her wrist, and, swallowing hard, she leaned down and bit the woman.
It was different somehow from drinking Vlad’s blood, though she could not have described any difference in taste or consistency. As though from very far away, she could hear muffled sounds coming from behind the woman’s gag, and the sound of someone retching on the other side of the room - Jonathan, she slowly surmised. She stopped drinking as soon as she could, and it was only then, when she saw the open gashes upon the woman’s neck, that she began to cry.
Vlad drew her aside and held her close to him, his cold hands gentle in her hair. He let her cry, as though her compliance had won her the luxury of weakness. When she finally stopped crying, she looked up at him. “I need to wash the sheets,” she said softly.
His eyebrows lifted. “I beg your pardon?”
“From earlier,” she explained, “the sheets got bloody and I need to wash them before the stains set.”
He nodded. “I see.” He looked towards Ecaterina, who was then biting the mortal woman, her teeth almost exactly where Mina’s had been. “Go with her when you’ve finished,” he told Ecaterina. He then looked back to Mina. “Wait here until she goes with you,” he said. Mina nodded, and he let go of her.
She saw then that Jonathan had indeed retched, and was now on his knees, his palms braced against the floor, breathing unnecessarily and with some effort. Vlad went to him and knelt down at his side so slowly that Mina thought he was going to be gentle, but then he twisted his fingers in Jonathan’s white hair, forcing his head up brutally. Then he whispered something in Jonathan’s ear, something that Mina could not hear but did not wish to. Jonathan shook his head violently, as much as he could within Vlad’s grip. “No, never,” he half muttered, the words coming out choked.
Mina winced then as Vlad pulled Jonathan up and slammed him against the stone wall with a sickening crunch. Mina closed her eyes to avoid the impulse to run to Jonathan’s side, and kept them closed for several moments until a feather-light touch on her arm, which she quickly saw was Ecaterina, who had finished with the woman. At her side, Mina left the dungeon.
~
“Why did he send you with me?” Mina asked when they were back into the courtyard and her arms were yet again submerged in the cold water.
“He didn’t want you to hurt yourself,” Ecaterina said calmly, looking at the clear sky.
“He thought I would?” Mina found again the rhythm of her washing, and gratefully fell into it.
“It’s likely enough. Jonathan made enough noise when he was attempting to slash at his wrists that time before his changing, but it would be just like you to leave for some household chore and then quietly throw yourself into a fireplace.”
Mina laughed for an instant. “I suppose that’s true. But I don’t want to kill myself.” A pause. “I’m worried about Jonathan.”
She turned to look at Ecaterina, who was looking directly at her, her blue eyes almost uncomfortably bright. “Don’t be,” she said.
Mina frowned. “Why not?”
“First, because he’ll be perfectly all right and your fear is pointless in that respect, and, second, because you’ll get into trouble with Vlad if you take Jonathan’s side or attempt to defend him.”
Mina found herself scrubbing at the stains slightly more aggressively than necessary. “I know. But Jonathan’s my husband, I can’t help -“
“Not anymore.” Ecaterina had stood, and walked closer to where Mina knelt against the flagstone. “Your loyalty is to him, Mina, and him alone. Do try not to forget that.”
Mina nodded, letting her head fall so low that the ends of her hair dipped into the soap-filled water.
~
When she was done, she and Ecaterina found Vlad and the others sitting together. Jonathan was near Vlad, and looked quiet, subdued. Mina tried to ignore the swift burn of anxiety for him, particularly as Vlad smiled at her.
“You did well tonight,” he told her, and, with a hand at her waist, he drew her towards him. She went, submitting as he pulled her to sit beside him.
“Thank you,” she murmured, genuinely glad with the praise, though she could not quite bring herself to smile.
Slowly, his hands went to the back of her dress and began, carefully and methodically, to do away with the lacings there. “Jonathan,” he began conversationally, “says that he cannot stand the sight of his wife behaving like the blood drinking creature that she is.”
Mina bent her back so that he could reach the lowest laces. She was briefly glad that the fall of her dark hair covered the expression on her face.
She could feel his sharp nails against her back through the thin fabric of her chemise. “I want to teach you how to torture,” he continued, slipping the bodice of her dress off over her shoulders, “I do not think that you would enjoy it, but I do think that you’re capable of doing it well.” He managed to ease her dress off the rest of her body as well, and it fell to a pool at her feet. “Were I less invested in teaching you to endure torture as well, I would try offering a choice of being tortured or torturing another, on continuous occasions, and watch your reactions.”
As he pulled her chemise off over her head, she made a point of not looking at any of the others. “Is that a test of whether one’s inclinations run closer to sadism or masochism, or do you just enjoy watch people’s moral standards slowly disintegrate?”
He laughed, tracing his fingers over the curve of her spine. “Both.”
She shivered at the cold of his touch, but managed to ask, softly, “Could we go to another room? I feel rather -“
Abruptly, his nails sunk into her skin, probably deep enough to draw blood. “No, we could not,” he told her, and she did not argue. He guided her to lie down on the floor, and, with the vivid intensity of too much sensation, made it quite easy to forget about the others there.
But, when it was over, she saw Jonathan with his head in his hands and she felt guilt like a sharp pain in her stomach. She dressed carefully, Vlad helping her with the laces on her dress, and only then did she see that Adriana had not looked up from her embroidery. Ecaterina and Ileana were still talking.
Things one grew accustomed to, Mina supposed.
“The sun should rise soon,” Vlad said, and, as always, Mina wondered how he knew those patterns so well. “We’ll sleep now.”
Mina nodded. Ecaterina stood, going to Vlad and twining her fingers with his, leaning in close and whispering things to him. Adriana knotted off a thread and got up, moving unhurriedly. Ileana caught her arm and rushed her along.
Mina went to Jonathan, though she felt the still unfaded bruises of Vlad’s passion on her face and collarbones, and felt marked, embarrassed in front of Jonathan. But she knelt in front of him, holding out her hands. “We’re leaving now,” she told him quietly, though she knew he must have heard.
He took her hands, but said nothing. Silently, they went together down to the cellar.
~
The next night she woke late and saw Vlad, his hands dark with soil, out in the courtyard. With a sudden jolt, she thought of the mortal woman from the night before, pictured Vlad burying her bloodless body in the garden. But she could see no hole large enough for a grave. And so she went to join him.
He looked up at her impassively as she walked towards her, and, oddly, she thought she saw a shimmer of silver in the movement of his hands. “What are you doing?” she asked, hoping that the response would not unsettle her.
“Gardening,” he said, and she smiled.
“I didn’t know you -“
He nodded. “I like plants.”
She sat down beside where he knelt, laying her head against his knee and watching him. She noticed that her fear with him was now something rhythmic and predictable, like ocean waves and that, while she could not ignore it, it did not truly trouble her.
“It’s getting warmer out,” she said.
“Yes,” he agreed pleasantly, “that’s why I’m here this evening. The ground is softening.”
She stayed there in silence for a moment. His gardening seemed erratic to her eyes, for he pulled up plants that others would leave, and left weeds that most would seek to eradicate.
“Please,” she asked finally, so quiet that she could barely hear herself, “could you be kind to Jonathan?”
Vlad grew still, and put down the tools he held. She did not draw away from him, and when he shifted into sitting and moved her head to lie upon her chest, she moved with him. “No,” he told her, without room in his tone for compromise.
She nodded. She could not truly have expected him to say anything else. “I’m worried about him,” she murmured, prepared for any violence those words might trigger, closing her eyes against the fabric of his shirt.
“Yes, I know that,” he said conversationally, “you shouldn’t be.”
“That’s what Ecaterina told me.”
Vlad laughed, briefly. “Of course she did.” A pause. “Do you think, then, that he is weaker than you are?”
“No,” she said suddenly and fervently, “not at all, of course not.”
“Then you have no need to be worried for him.”
“You’re going to hurt him,” she murmured, the words coming out as a quiet, half audible rush, “which you always do, I know that, but after everything you did to him when he was staying with you I don’t know that he’ll be able to stand it, and if he can’t -“
“He will be able to stand it.” Mina felt Vlad’s earth covered hands in her hair as he spoke. “I am…learning his limits and in what ways I can dissolve them.” Soft, his mouth against her hair, “Trust me.”
“I don’t,” she told him in quiet honesty.
“I know,” he said, as though that fact was assumed. He let go of her. “Now, I would like to continue with this. I will see you when I am finished.”
She nodded in deference, and left.
~
She found Ileana and Adriana inside. They were playing cards, though Mina could not imagine how Ileana managed to involve Adriana in that pursuit. Ileana smiled, her expression uncommonly open, as she saw Mina.
“The murderess Mina Harker!” she cried, standing and coming to meet Mina. She kissed Mina’s cheek and Mina tried not to wince. “I would have congratulated you last night, but I couldn’t find an appropriate moment.”
“That’s all right,” Mina assured her, “but thank you.” Towards Adriana, “Good evening, Adriana.”
Adriana looked up and smiled faintly.
Ileana returned to the card game, but gestured for Mina to come and sit near her. “What do you think of things here, so far?” she asked, “You have been here…several months already, by my count.”
“I’m not sure,” Mina told her with complete honesty, “It is rather…different from what I am accustomed to.”
“Of course it is,” Ileana responded, her tone dismissive, “it’s different from anything else.”
Mina supposed that might be true. “If I’m not prying,” she began, “may I ask what you thought, when you first arrived here? Was it…difficult for you to adjust?”
Briefly, Ileana looked at Mina, as if curious about the origin of that question. “It took some time, I suppose. I was angry at first. I rebelled all the time. He had to beat it out of me.” She laughed, throwing her head back as she did so. Her red hair fell down behind her like a comet’s tail.
“You were all right, though?” Mina asked, trying not to sound insistent, “Nothing that he did was beyond -“
“You’re worried about that husband of yours, aren’t you?”
The question came so directly and suddenly that Mina had to nod.
“Don’t be ridiculous about it. He’s only been here a month or two. And you’re hardly a model of healthy adjustment yourself, what with that flinching all of the time.” Ileana reached out, her fingers barely brushing Mina’s cheek. Mina flinched, unthinking, then blushed. Ileana laughed, though it was almost more of a giggle. “See. It takes time. I could tell you what Adriana was like her first few years, but I don’t want to frighten you.”
Adriana smiled, and Mina envied her lack of bitterness. For a moment, she watched the progression of the card game, and then Ileana continued, thoughtful, “With Jonathan, though, Vlad is very…what is your English word? Vindictive.”
Mina felt her hands tighten in the fabric of her skirts. “What do you mean?”
“When Jonathan was here for that business deal, Vlad liked to play with him. Make him think he was going mad, all that. It is something to do with victims, something Vlad enjoys. But Jonathan ran away, and now that Vlad has him back, he still…well, you’ve heard what he did to kill him for his changing.”
Mina felt a sudden desire to breathe, human and unnecessary as that was. “No, no, I haven’t.”
“Oh.” Ileana looked down for a moment, as though deciding whether or not to tell Mina. “He had all three of us attack him, drink from him till he was very weak. Then he had Jonathan beg him not to have us torment him further. Jonathan drank Vlad’s blood willingly after all that.”
Mina remembered Jonathan’s stricken face during his mortal nightmares, and wanted to scream. “I…thank you for telling me.” She stood, feeling lightheaded.
Ileana grabbed at her wrist, her nails suddenly sharp against Mina’s skin. “You won’t go and panic, yell to Vlad about this, will you? That would be stupid.”
Mina shook her head. “I’ll try not to.” A pause. “Please, would you let go of me?”
Ileana did so. “It was madness to take both of you, that was my opinion.”
Mina laughed. “Possibly. Thank you, Ileana.” With that, she left the room, trying to ignore the anger bubbling up in her stagnant veins.
~
She sought out Ecaterina, then, because she didn’t trust herself to talk to Jonathan reasonably. Ecaterina was folding laundry, which she had left to dry during their daytime sleep. Mina walked in on her, feeling awkward. “May I help?” she asked.
“Of course,” Ecaterina said, handing her a full basket. Mina took it and knelt down, beginning with the sheets she had washed the night before. “You and Jonathan are both more compulsive with housework than anyone else here,” Ecaterina observed, her pale, elegant hands moving swiftly.
“I think Vlad is about equal as well,” Mina said, trying to smile.
Ecaterina shook her head. “Vlad doesn’t like it to be undone, and he doesn’t like it to be done wrong. He doesn’t automatically go to do it.”
Mina half shrugged. “I suppose so. I saw him gardening earlier.”
“Yes,” Ecaterina said, expressionlessly, “he does that.”
“I was talking,” Mina began hesitantly, “to Ileana. About Jonathan. She told me -“
“Stop,” Ecaterina cut her off, abruptly and without any moment of consideration, “you are being…ridiculous about this and I do not want to be involved. If you want to go and make Vlad furious with you, that is not my concern, but I will not be part of it. I have been here a long time and I have no room for this kind of sentimental nonsense.” Only after all that did she look at Mina. “I want you to leave now and go someplace alone. I would like to talk to Vlad about this before it goes any further.” She took the laundry basket from Mina. “We all answer to him. I will not be complicit in your paranoid disloyalty.”
Mina did as she was told.
~
She went to the room Vlad had given her and waited, rereading Plato as she did. He arrived there after only a few minutes, his hands clean and damp. He shut the door behind him. She put down the volume of philosophy and looked up at him, folding her hands together in her lap.
“I considered,” he said, “keeping you and Jonathan from contact with one another until I judged your loyalty to me cemented enough that you would not have these sorts of reactions. But Jonathan’s inhibitions are too far bound up in ideas of his marriage to you, and I thought it best to force him inescapably to confront the collapse of those ideals, rather than letting him maintain a false image of you as strong, loyal, and virtuous. I am beginning to reconsider that decision.”
“I’m trying,” she said quietly, “but I can’t stand you using me as a means to hurt him.”
He looked at her very directly. “I suggest you accustom yourself to it,” he told her, “as I will continue as I long as I deem necessary.”
She looked away from his gaze, though hating herself for the weakness of it. “I can’t help worrying.”
“I do not ask you to eradicate your worry for him, only to control your expression of it. Of which you are entirely capable.”
She nodded, and was suddenly aware that her folded hands were now clasped tight together, her nails biting into her skin. She forced herself to soften her grip and again looked at him.
“Come with me,” he said. Mina left.
~
He brought her to Jonathan’s room and unlocked the door. She was not surprised in the least to see that he kept Jonathan’s door locked, but she also knew that it was different from the way he had kept her doors locked in her early nights there. With Jonathan, it was not merely a matter of practicality.
Jonathan was reading as they entered. She couldn’t see the title of the book, but she did see the dread in his face as he registered her presence. She hated it.
Vlad stayed by the door, watching. Mina went to Jonathan, but stopped a few feet away from him. It would, she was sure, be presumptuous to come any closer, as if she was assuming that her closeness could not cause fear.
“What are you doing here?” Jonathan asked, and his voice was low and careful.
She tried to smile. “It’s nothing. I was…worrying, and it was irritating him. It doesn’t matter.”
Something in his eyes softened, and he held out his hands to her. “Don’t worry about me, Mina.”
Reassured, she took the few steps to bridge the gap between them, kneeling down to take his hands. “I can’t help it. What is he…”
Jonathan looked at their clasped hands, then at her face. “I have to stay here. Last night, my reactions were too…severe, and he’s trying to do something about that. He’s keeping me here for now.” He paused. “How are you?”
“I’m all right,” she told him, her voice quiet because she couldn’t imagine speaking any louder, “It does get…easier, Jonathan, really, it does. I know that’s difficult to believe now, but…”
He didn’t reply.
“Do you think that he’s…done something to my mind? Changed me somehow?” She was beginning to understand his wariness, his reticence with her. “Jonathan, he hasn’t. I’m still me.”
He kissed her hands, gently and chastely. She wanted to cry. “I know you are,” he said.
“One day,” she said softly, her voice hoarse with the tears in the back of her eyes, “when we’ve both….adjusted, and he gives us time…we’ll talk again, Jonathan. As we used to. It will be all right.”
Jonathan nodded, looking at her. “Yes,” he said, “we will.”
Vlad spoke, from the other side of the room, “Mina,” he said, “You should leave now.”
She stood and left, letting go of Jonathan’s hands.