Dracula fic: To Ashes...
Title: To Ashes...
Fandom: Dracula
Word count: 2431
Warnings: Canon divergence, dark Lucy, violence and murder, revenge, manipulation, kiss of dubious consent, femslash
Pairings: Dracula/Lucy, Lucy/the eldest "bride"
Prompt: Any, any, villain
They warn her not to go, to stay where they can protect her. She smiles demurely and ducks her head and never promises.
She creeps away into the night the very first moment their guard drops for an instant.
Her breath catches when she sees it. There is Mina; dear, sweet, clever Mina. There is Mina, dead, dead! There is so much blood, and dear Mina's head rests atop the gaping wound in her breast. There is something bulbous and pale in her mouth, just visible past her teeth.
Lucy just can't tear her gaze away. Everything smells of death underlain by garlic.
They're all so worried, fretting, when she comes back; all her handsome suitors. She smiles sweetly, fakely; says, "I needed air, it's just so stifling here, and... and..." She lets herself stop smiling, feels the tears well up and somehow manages not to scream. "I miss Mina."
Jack won't meet her eyes, which is probably just as well. Quincey clears his throat and looks away. Her fiancé Arthur wraps a gentle arm around her shoulders, and she holds still and does not scream.
She remembers how she has loved her three suitors; these handsome, adoring men. She remembers how she has wished that she could marry all of them, rather than hurt the two for the happiness of the one.
She thinks of dear, sweet, clever Mina, with her grievous wounds and all her blood. She remembers how they told her Mina had been murdered by a vampire, when she had pressed and urged and beguiled for details.
She knows the stories, or some of them at least. Those wounds were not inflicted by a vampire, but rather by vampire hunters.
She sees how it must have happened, all too clearly, and finds that all her love for her handsome, adoring suitors has run dry and curdled into hate.
~
There is a shrine of sorts in Lucy's bedroom. She changes the flowers every morning and lights the candles every night. Sometimes she fancies that Mina's face or form appears for a moment in the flickering flame.
"You were always the sensible one, my dear," she whispers. "And I have always been so... passionate. I'm not nearly so good a woman as you, my dear. I fear I may burn myself to ashes, without you here to temper me."
She isn't so sure that fear is the correct word, exactly. It's more like she knows she should fear it, but doesn't.
She finds the thought of burning up does not bother her, just so long as she can take the others down with her. She thinks that everything loving in her heart must have died with Mina.
~
Lucy dresses herself in the dark hues of mourning and lurks silently as though a ghost. It is quite a change from the happy, so-bright young lady she used to be, and the men that love her treat her all the more gently for it. They must believe her so delicate, although that is something she has never been in truth.
She remembers walking in the garden with Mina. Lucy had loved the hummingbirds; so small, beautiful and fierce. She would almost say that something about them called to her.
Mina had found them pretty enough, but she had not loved them as Lucy did.
Lucy sees and hears more than the men imagine. They seek to shelter her from the truth, but she knows that they hunt Count Dracula, a foreign vampire who came to England in that doomed ship the Demeter, who drank Mina's blood nearly every night until she died.
Well, until she died for the first time.
She knows that Professor Van Helsing is their mentor and leader. She avoids him when she can, because she knows that he sees more of her than do the others. If any of them can realise what she truly feels, it will be him.
When the letter arrives for dear Mina, from her fiancé Jonathan Harker who has been in Transylvania on a business trip, Lucy is the one who sees and opens it. Her head tilts and her eyes narrow as she reads, and then she hides the letter and does not speak of it.
Later that day she posts a reply.
~
Count Dracula comes to her while Jack, Quincey and Professor Van Helsing are all out on the hunt, leaving only Arthur to protect her.
There is more than one fallacy to this, for Arthur is only her fiancé and a gentleman in the next room, and she is not their distressed damsel but rather a viper disguised in their midst.
Lucy rises from her bed, smiles politely and curtsies. She wears only her nightdress, but she does not scream or blush or lower her eyes.
"Count Dracula?" she murmurs. "I have heard so much about you."
There is an interested, demonic light in his eyes. His lips curl and he takes a step forward. She does not move.
"As I have you, my dear," he says. "You are their beloved one."
"Yes, but they are not beloved of me." And she drops all her careful masks at last, lays bear her hatred before his regard.
He laughs and closes the last of the distance between them. He holds her and bites into her neck; she gives a choked gasp but still does not try to move away.
Eventually he pulls away. She sways a little, light-headed and weak, and watches with interest as he makes a deep cut in his chest with a claw-like nail. He smiles mockingly. "You so despair at the fate of your pretty friend that you would be my willing ally against those who play their wits against mine. Drink, then."
So she latches her mouth over the bleeding gash, and she drinks until he pushes her away.
~
A connection has opened between the minds of Count Dracula and Lucy Westenra. She has a feeling, now, for his movements and moods, and sometimes he whispers into her dreams or her thoughts.
She knows that if she, who is so unpracticed in these arts, can know such things, then he must know even more, and more clearly. It thrills her that her very presence has become sabotage, as she continues to quietly see and hear more than the human men think.
Van Helsing has taken to watching her all the closer. She hates his gaze on her and his presence when she least of all desires it. She is made wary by the suspicion she senses.
It brews inside her like a witches' cauldron. Double, double, toil and trouble, she thinks, and barely keeps from laughing. By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes.
If she had laughed, it would not have been a sound of joy. She feels the hate and paranoia brewing inside, and wonders when it shall boil over.
~
Lucy screams and stumbles backward, raises her arms as though they can shield her. It burns. Her forehead burns.
Van Helsing's eyes are blazing. He steps forward, still holding the holy wafer, and Lucy cringes and hisses.
“Lucy?!” Arthur whom she once loved, bursting through the door as though a saviour knight, as though he can ever save her. “By God, what has happened?”
“The Count has been to her,” says Professor Van Helsing. “He has drunk of her blood, as he did poor Miss Mina, and would make her also of the undead.”
Arthur's eyes are wide with horror. Lucy cannot help but laugh. She knows that she should deceive, should play the distressed damsel, but she is so very tired of hiding. She screams her rage finally, finally, and lunges for Arthur, screaming, screaming.
Van Helsing comes between them; Lucy's gaze rivets upon the wafer he still holds. Thwarted, she backs away once more.
Her eyes are wild, as is her hair, and her teeth are gnashing; she is as a rabid beast. “I hate you!” she howls, and here are Jack and Quincey, rushing in through the door. “I hate you all! Mina's murderers, you cannot comprehend how I despise you!”
“The undead are cursed, Miss Lucy, to go on age after age multiplying the evils of the world,” says Van Helsing, earnest and intent. “So it would have been with Miss Mina, but her soul was freed so she could take her place in heaven. But for you it is not too late! If the Count is destroyed...”
Lucy spits at his feet. “I saw Mina's body! Better she go on! You have destroyed her, but she shall be avenged, I promise!”
She turns, finally, and flees.
~
“Foolish girl,” scolds the Count. “You were everything to them, you might as well have held their hearts in your hands! So close to them, so dear, you could have destroyed them utterly at the ideal hour, but you have thrown it away in your fury, and so the opportunity for that satisfaction has flown from your grasp.”
“I know,” Lucy whispers, head bowed, her shame a blush across her face. “I'm sorry.”
He reaches out and strokes her hair. “Well, what has been done cannot be changed. Flesh of my flesh, blood of my blood, kin of my kin; now you shall be hunted as I am hunted, and as your so dear friend was hunted.” He kisses her on the mouth, and she kisses him back. One of his fangs cuts the inside of her mouth; she gasps, the sound of it swallowed by his mouth, and flinches, but he grips her arms and does not let her go. When he pulls away, his lips are red with her blood.
“You are a villain, Count,” she whispers, a little shakily.
He raises an eyebrow and smiles dark amusement.
She laughs without mirth and finally admits, “As am I.”
(I'm not nearly so good a woman as you, my dear. I fear I may burn myself to ashes, without you here to temper me.)
~
Jonathan Harker looks at them with dead eyes, and his hair is as grey as though he were an old man. “She would not have wanted to be a... vampire,” he points out, coldly.
Lucy smiles, just as coldly. “Come now, Jonathan. Would you have driven the stake through her heart? Would you have cut off her head and stuffed garlic into her mouth?”
A little of the deadness leaves his eyes, only to be replaced by anguish. He looks away and swallows hard. “I could not!” he whisper-screams, and collapses to his knees.
Lucy hesitates, and then turns to whisper into Count Dracula's ear. “He's broken, but maybe I can put some of the pieces back together; give him purpose. Master, may I? He loved Mina too.”
Calculating and cunning, Dracula looks at her. Slowly, he nods.
Lucy goes to Jonathan, kneels beside him and places a gentle hand upon his shoulder. He shudders and leans away, his expression twisting into something repulsed.
“Jonathan,” she says quietly, seriously, her own expression carefully blank. “Please, listen to me.”
Perhaps it is the lack of seduction in her manner and voice - seduction, she thinks, is something he has come to expect from vampire women, although he really hasn't met very many - but he pauses, and then, hesitantly, he nods.
~
Lucy's favourite of her new “sisters” is Lavinia, who is the oldest; a pale-haired beauty who loves to dance in the light of a full moon, and who loves rats. She calls them to her, all the bold rodents of the castle, and feeds them what is left over from her meals.
“I was a lonely child,” she tells Lucy, smiling as she strokes the sleek black rat that sits docile on her palm. “The rats were my friends; they never shunned me once I had gained their trust.”
“You don't remind me of Mina, not really,” says Lucy. “But...” She grasps for the words to explain her feelings, is unsuccessful.
Lavinia smiles. “Mina,” she muses. “She must have been an exceptional woman. Did you ever make love?”
Lucy stares blankly for a moment, but then she gathers herself, shakes her head slowly. “No. We never did.”
It is strange, she thinks, how it never occurred to her before, but now that the suggestion has been made, she almost regrets.
“I once loved my suitors,” she says. “I would have married all three of them, had it been allowed.” She sneers bitterly. “I have always loved Mina best of all, that is the truth of it.”
Lavinia smiles. Lucy's gaze follows the curve of her lips, involuntarily.
“It is not so unusual,” Lavinia murmurs, “to love more than one, even in the same moment. Our lord has, in his own way. I certainly have.”
Lucy nods, and watches through half-lidded eyes as Lavinia reaches for her hand, entangles their pale fingers. Lavinia's other hand moves to the back of Lucy's head, plays with her hair.
Lucy laughs as comprehension comes to her. “I don't love you,” she says.
Lavinia laughs in turn. “Does that really matter?”
“No, not really.” Lucy feels herself grin. She has never felt more free, she realises, and there is a fierce joy that comes with freedom, at least for her.
~
Lucy lets go of Arthur, watches dispassionately as he crumples lifeless onto the crimson-spattered snow. Jack lies likewise crumpled and bloodless, only a few feet away. This is her moment, this is Mina's moment that Lucy has so eagerly plotted and awaited.
She should be happy. She should feel something, at least.
Maybe she will, if she pretends hard enough.
There is a strange, choked noise coming from Jonathan. She can't quite tell if it is laughter or sobs. She wonders, in a detached, only partly interested way, if it might be both.
There is blood on Jonathan's hands. It smells good. She imagines licking it like some sort of dog or one of her master's wolves, considers the idea and discards it.
She simply doesn't care enough, really.
(I fear I may burn myself to ashes, without you here to temper me.)
She thinks that Jonathan hates her for cajoling him into this, for playing the devil at his ear, or he will when there is a little more distance between himself and overwhelming, overruling grief. She had not thought that before, not really, but she thinks it now.
She hopes that she is right. Maybe a new enemy will light up her passion, her soul, once again.
Fandom: Dracula
Word count: 2431
Warnings: Canon divergence, dark Lucy, violence and murder, revenge, manipulation, kiss of dubious consent, femslash
Pairings: Dracula/Lucy, Lucy/the eldest "bride"
Prompt: Any, any, villain
They warn her not to go, to stay where they can protect her. She smiles demurely and ducks her head and never promises.
She creeps away into the night the very first moment their guard drops for an instant.
Her breath catches when she sees it. There is Mina; dear, sweet, clever Mina. There is Mina, dead, dead! There is so much blood, and dear Mina's head rests atop the gaping wound in her breast. There is something bulbous and pale in her mouth, just visible past her teeth.
Lucy just can't tear her gaze away. Everything smells of death underlain by garlic.
They're all so worried, fretting, when she comes back; all her handsome suitors. She smiles sweetly, fakely; says, "I needed air, it's just so stifling here, and... and..." She lets herself stop smiling, feels the tears well up and somehow manages not to scream. "I miss Mina."
Jack won't meet her eyes, which is probably just as well. Quincey clears his throat and looks away. Her fiancé Arthur wraps a gentle arm around her shoulders, and she holds still and does not scream.
She remembers how she has loved her three suitors; these handsome, adoring men. She remembers how she has wished that she could marry all of them, rather than hurt the two for the happiness of the one.
She thinks of dear, sweet, clever Mina, with her grievous wounds and all her blood. She remembers how they told her Mina had been murdered by a vampire, when she had pressed and urged and beguiled for details.
She knows the stories, or some of them at least. Those wounds were not inflicted by a vampire, but rather by vampire hunters.
She sees how it must have happened, all too clearly, and finds that all her love for her handsome, adoring suitors has run dry and curdled into hate.
~
There is a shrine of sorts in Lucy's bedroom. She changes the flowers every morning and lights the candles every night. Sometimes she fancies that Mina's face or form appears for a moment in the flickering flame.
"You were always the sensible one, my dear," she whispers. "And I have always been so... passionate. I'm not nearly so good a woman as you, my dear. I fear I may burn myself to ashes, without you here to temper me."
She isn't so sure that fear is the correct word, exactly. It's more like she knows she should fear it, but doesn't.
She finds the thought of burning up does not bother her, just so long as she can take the others down with her. She thinks that everything loving in her heart must have died with Mina.
~
Lucy dresses herself in the dark hues of mourning and lurks silently as though a ghost. It is quite a change from the happy, so-bright young lady she used to be, and the men that love her treat her all the more gently for it. They must believe her so delicate, although that is something she has never been in truth.
She remembers walking in the garden with Mina. Lucy had loved the hummingbirds; so small, beautiful and fierce. She would almost say that something about them called to her.
Mina had found them pretty enough, but she had not loved them as Lucy did.
Lucy sees and hears more than the men imagine. They seek to shelter her from the truth, but she knows that they hunt Count Dracula, a foreign vampire who came to England in that doomed ship the Demeter, who drank Mina's blood nearly every night until she died.
Well, until she died for the first time.
She knows that Professor Van Helsing is their mentor and leader. She avoids him when she can, because she knows that he sees more of her than do the others. If any of them can realise what she truly feels, it will be him.
When the letter arrives for dear Mina, from her fiancé Jonathan Harker who has been in Transylvania on a business trip, Lucy is the one who sees and opens it. Her head tilts and her eyes narrow as she reads, and then she hides the letter and does not speak of it.
Later that day she posts a reply.
~
Count Dracula comes to her while Jack, Quincey and Professor Van Helsing are all out on the hunt, leaving only Arthur to protect her.
There is more than one fallacy to this, for Arthur is only her fiancé and a gentleman in the next room, and she is not their distressed damsel but rather a viper disguised in their midst.
Lucy rises from her bed, smiles politely and curtsies. She wears only her nightdress, but she does not scream or blush or lower her eyes.
"Count Dracula?" she murmurs. "I have heard so much about you."
There is an interested, demonic light in his eyes. His lips curl and he takes a step forward. She does not move.
"As I have you, my dear," he says. "You are their beloved one."
"Yes, but they are not beloved of me." And she drops all her careful masks at last, lays bear her hatred before his regard.
He laughs and closes the last of the distance between them. He holds her and bites into her neck; she gives a choked gasp but still does not try to move away.
Eventually he pulls away. She sways a little, light-headed and weak, and watches with interest as he makes a deep cut in his chest with a claw-like nail. He smiles mockingly. "You so despair at the fate of your pretty friend that you would be my willing ally against those who play their wits against mine. Drink, then."
So she latches her mouth over the bleeding gash, and she drinks until he pushes her away.
~
A connection has opened between the minds of Count Dracula and Lucy Westenra. She has a feeling, now, for his movements and moods, and sometimes he whispers into her dreams or her thoughts.
She knows that if she, who is so unpracticed in these arts, can know such things, then he must know even more, and more clearly. It thrills her that her very presence has become sabotage, as she continues to quietly see and hear more than the human men think.
Van Helsing has taken to watching her all the closer. She hates his gaze on her and his presence when she least of all desires it. She is made wary by the suspicion she senses.
It brews inside her like a witches' cauldron. Double, double, toil and trouble, she thinks, and barely keeps from laughing. By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes.
If she had laughed, it would not have been a sound of joy. She feels the hate and paranoia brewing inside, and wonders when it shall boil over.
~
Lucy screams and stumbles backward, raises her arms as though they can shield her. It burns. Her forehead burns.
Van Helsing's eyes are blazing. He steps forward, still holding the holy wafer, and Lucy cringes and hisses.
“Lucy?!” Arthur whom she once loved, bursting through the door as though a saviour knight, as though he can ever save her. “By God, what has happened?”
“The Count has been to her,” says Professor Van Helsing. “He has drunk of her blood, as he did poor Miss Mina, and would make her also of the undead.”
Arthur's eyes are wide with horror. Lucy cannot help but laugh. She knows that she should deceive, should play the distressed damsel, but she is so very tired of hiding. She screams her rage finally, finally, and lunges for Arthur, screaming, screaming.
Van Helsing comes between them; Lucy's gaze rivets upon the wafer he still holds. Thwarted, she backs away once more.
Her eyes are wild, as is her hair, and her teeth are gnashing; she is as a rabid beast. “I hate you!” she howls, and here are Jack and Quincey, rushing in through the door. “I hate you all! Mina's murderers, you cannot comprehend how I despise you!”
“The undead are cursed, Miss Lucy, to go on age after age multiplying the evils of the world,” says Van Helsing, earnest and intent. “So it would have been with Miss Mina, but her soul was freed so she could take her place in heaven. But for you it is not too late! If the Count is destroyed...”
Lucy spits at his feet. “I saw Mina's body! Better she go on! You have destroyed her, but she shall be avenged, I promise!”
She turns, finally, and flees.
~
“Foolish girl,” scolds the Count. “You were everything to them, you might as well have held their hearts in your hands! So close to them, so dear, you could have destroyed them utterly at the ideal hour, but you have thrown it away in your fury, and so the opportunity for that satisfaction has flown from your grasp.”
“I know,” Lucy whispers, head bowed, her shame a blush across her face. “I'm sorry.”
He reaches out and strokes her hair. “Well, what has been done cannot be changed. Flesh of my flesh, blood of my blood, kin of my kin; now you shall be hunted as I am hunted, and as your so dear friend was hunted.” He kisses her on the mouth, and she kisses him back. One of his fangs cuts the inside of her mouth; she gasps, the sound of it swallowed by his mouth, and flinches, but he grips her arms and does not let her go. When he pulls away, his lips are red with her blood.
“You are a villain, Count,” she whispers, a little shakily.
He raises an eyebrow and smiles dark amusement.
She laughs without mirth and finally admits, “As am I.”
(I'm not nearly so good a woman as you, my dear. I fear I may burn myself to ashes, without you here to temper me.)
~
Jonathan Harker looks at them with dead eyes, and his hair is as grey as though he were an old man. “She would not have wanted to be a... vampire,” he points out, coldly.
Lucy smiles, just as coldly. “Come now, Jonathan. Would you have driven the stake through her heart? Would you have cut off her head and stuffed garlic into her mouth?”
A little of the deadness leaves his eyes, only to be replaced by anguish. He looks away and swallows hard. “I could not!” he whisper-screams, and collapses to his knees.
Lucy hesitates, and then turns to whisper into Count Dracula's ear. “He's broken, but maybe I can put some of the pieces back together; give him purpose. Master, may I? He loved Mina too.”
Calculating and cunning, Dracula looks at her. Slowly, he nods.
Lucy goes to Jonathan, kneels beside him and places a gentle hand upon his shoulder. He shudders and leans away, his expression twisting into something repulsed.
“Jonathan,” she says quietly, seriously, her own expression carefully blank. “Please, listen to me.”
Perhaps it is the lack of seduction in her manner and voice - seduction, she thinks, is something he has come to expect from vampire women, although he really hasn't met very many - but he pauses, and then, hesitantly, he nods.
~
Lucy's favourite of her new “sisters” is Lavinia, who is the oldest; a pale-haired beauty who loves to dance in the light of a full moon, and who loves rats. She calls them to her, all the bold rodents of the castle, and feeds them what is left over from her meals.
“I was a lonely child,” she tells Lucy, smiling as she strokes the sleek black rat that sits docile on her palm. “The rats were my friends; they never shunned me once I had gained their trust.”
“You don't remind me of Mina, not really,” says Lucy. “But...” She grasps for the words to explain her feelings, is unsuccessful.
Lavinia smiles. “Mina,” she muses. “She must have been an exceptional woman. Did you ever make love?”
Lucy stares blankly for a moment, but then she gathers herself, shakes her head slowly. “No. We never did.”
It is strange, she thinks, how it never occurred to her before, but now that the suggestion has been made, she almost regrets.
“I once loved my suitors,” she says. “I would have married all three of them, had it been allowed.” She sneers bitterly. “I have always loved Mina best of all, that is the truth of it.”
Lavinia smiles. Lucy's gaze follows the curve of her lips, involuntarily.
“It is not so unusual,” Lavinia murmurs, “to love more than one, even in the same moment. Our lord has, in his own way. I certainly have.”
Lucy nods, and watches through half-lidded eyes as Lavinia reaches for her hand, entangles their pale fingers. Lavinia's other hand moves to the back of Lucy's head, plays with her hair.
Lucy laughs as comprehension comes to her. “I don't love you,” she says.
Lavinia laughs in turn. “Does that really matter?”
“No, not really.” Lucy feels herself grin. She has never felt more free, she realises, and there is a fierce joy that comes with freedom, at least for her.
~
Lucy lets go of Arthur, watches dispassionately as he crumples lifeless onto the crimson-spattered snow. Jack lies likewise crumpled and bloodless, only a few feet away. This is her moment, this is Mina's moment that Lucy has so eagerly plotted and awaited.
She should be happy. She should feel something, at least.
Maybe she will, if she pretends hard enough.
There is a strange, choked noise coming from Jonathan. She can't quite tell if it is laughter or sobs. She wonders, in a detached, only partly interested way, if it might be both.
There is blood on Jonathan's hands. It smells good. She imagines licking it like some sort of dog or one of her master's wolves, considers the idea and discards it.
She simply doesn't care enough, really.
(I fear I may burn myself to ashes, without you here to temper me.)
She thinks that Jonathan hates her for cajoling him into this, for playing the devil at his ear, or he will when there is a little more distance between himself and overwhelming, overruling grief. She had not thought that before, not really, but she thinks it now.
She hopes that she is right. Maybe a new enemy will light up her passion, her soul, once again.