( closed ) | watch it grow, child of war

[fuga]

Character(s): Lauralae and Alucard
Status: Closed
Location(s): Forests outside Krimnos
Date(s) A few days after Memento Mori ressurection
About: Dragon egg and also cool new powers
Warnings: N/A yet

Lauralae is not the kind of creature prone to pacing, but she feels the urge to do it now, a twitch in her leg as she sits under a tree.

Rav'ahm is perched high in the branches, taking advantage of his new ability to communicate with her silently; sometimes it is as though he is singing, soft noises in the back of her mind, the kind that had her wanting to scratch her ears off at first. The voice in her mind had not been her own and after experiences with the ritual, with the dragon, with all of it, she was sure she was losing herself to madness. It was only the quiet, careful calm and the familiarity with her that led to her realising it was him - her companion.

She doesn't yet consider him a friend. It is too strange and unusual for her to think like this.

Reaching careful hands, covered again with gloves, she strokes against the bag at her side, feeling the weight of the egg she has carried with her since she woke up on the shore. Sometimes she thinks it is warmer than it used to be, that it is growing, that it might hatch, and at other times she thinks she is foolish herself with her own hopes and desires. She wants to see it, wants to watch it come forth and see her, to consider what she might do with it - feed it, care for it, raise it, something of the sort. Something that Myr would be proud of her for.

Breathing out, she tilts her head back and frowns, waiting. Alucard will be here soon: he promised.

Comments

[fuga]

"It is mine. I kept it safe, I brought it from the pit, I saved it. What happens to this egg is for me to choose, not you. You have no right to make any demand of me, no right to command me to do anything." He is not her father, not that she ever had one to make a sure comparison. He is a friend, an ally, but she will not wilt under the pressure of his word, even if it makes her uncomfortable to be against him rather than with him.

She trusted him. She trusted a kinsman, and the quiet voice in her mind - her own, not Rav'ahm's, who shifts awkwardly in the trees - reminds her what a terrible mistake such trust is. First Aramas and now Alucard; she had made too many mistakes. Her instinct is to flee, immediately, to find a new place, another forest, not the one he had guided her to. Anything to protect herself.

"Do you know what it was like to be held a prisoner by people just as guilty of envy and greed?" She hisses it, teeth bared, wolflike, animalistic. "I was killed by people, not dragons. They have done nothing to me, and this being has not been born yet. It is mine, and I would sooner die than let you take it from me."

[cryptsleeper]

"You do not get to be selfish in this moment." The angrier Alucard gets the more deadly calm his voice becomes. "By virtue of taking that egg into your custody, you have forfeitted that right. Whatever you do, you must consider how it impacts the world around you, because mark my words, it will."

They are too big. Too unruly. Too terrible to be let loose.

"For the will of dragons my mother was murdered," he continues, that deadly calm intensifying. Ellis is the one matching wolf to wolf in this moment, the pair of them just two sides of the same straight up fury coin. "She was a doctor and she treated anyone who needed it, regardless of their affiliation or alligence, and she was turned upon others for that care. It is an action that would not have come to pass if selfishness and greed of those things did not rule the land."

He leaves out his father. The grief, the madness, his insanity and the patricide. Those are private matters.

"Do you have any idea of what dragons do with their blood? How if they are clever and cruel they will put their blood into the veins of others and there is such kinship and madness in equal measure?" Alucard's trying to be careful with his words.

"I've no intention of trying to take that cursed thing from you, but you need to think beyond just yourself. That is all I will ask of you. This isn't about you. You are bound to cities and the realm of society more than you can ever know if you continue down this path."

[fuga]

"I have never been selfish!"

It's a violent outburst, brilliant as her anger, sharp as she shouts it. Her hands hold onto the egg, green and large compared to the slight, pale shape of her hands, everything about her screaming frustration, hurt, anger. She does not know how to reign herself in when it comes to this, does not know how to settle herself, and she reaches, careful, placing the egg in the bag. A sharp noise has Rav'ahm coming down, nestling on the top of it, protective. He will do as she asks.

"I have done all that this world had asked of me and I was given nothing but punishment, nothing but torment and anger."

It gives Lauralae enough time to rise to her feet, hand resting against the tree as she steadies herself. She knows how small she appears, how weak she is, but she has a strength that no one else might ever be able to estimate. Aramas had not, even when he had discovered who she was; if he lived still she would rip his throat out, show him the truth of what she had chosen to become. What she had chosen to be.

"For the will of humans my mother was murdered." Her voice counters his, still sharp, but quieter. It's not something she has spoken of often, and she can feel the knots and nausea in her stomach, the way that she wants to curl up inside herself, how she might fall to pieces now. "A man slipped into her room and slit her throat, left her there, pushed poison in her skin so that she could not recover. A man took her from me, just as the dragons took yours from you. Should I be hateful to every man that walks this earth?"

She is, she knows that, but it is more than because of the death of Myr; it is more than that. It is fear, and anger, and pain, thrumming through her even as she stares at Alucard.

"I will not destroy this egg. I will not kill it when I spent so much saving it." A tremble in her voice now, tears in her eyes. "It is mine. This is what I have chosen. It is mine to keep, to love. I will be bound to it and it will be bound to me. This is the path I have chosen, the first I have picked for myself."

[cryptsleeper]

You're being selfish right now.

It's the only thought that Alucard doesn't voice as they fling their damage into each other's faces, justifying lines being drawn. Such a divide is inevitable with dragons, Alucard supposes. He doesn't care for it, but he can accept it. Trying to fight too hard against it is tiring.

"I would not blame you if you chose to do so," he manages with more sympathy than anything else he has said so far. "Those actions are cruel beyond measure."

I would not blame is his father's thinking. His father who transmuted grief into rage at the world around him and promised to burn it all down before anyone else could. Alucard can only imagine his father's reaction to such a death. Cruel and senseless and revealing the world's rotten core.

"The world is going to continue to dole out torment and anger then." It's a horrible thing to say, but weighty truths always are. "We are at an impasse and we gain nothing from throwing agonies at each other," he continues. "You've my word that I will not harm that egg or yourself, but I beg that you think about how such a thing will grow and how you will live alongside it."

[fuga]

It's clear that there's a level of desperation about her, something intense. She has been so desperate for her to find something to give her a reason, a purpose after being restored to life three times - she had chosen this. When society had failed her, had left her to rot and die in a cage or a pit, she had chosen a path. Rav'ahm was one path and now this dragon would be another, something for her to cling to when the world was too much, left her feeling so pained.

She's breathing hard, her eyes wide and wild as she stares at him. The small, childish part of her is desperate to find some way to repair this rift between them, some way to find herself beside him once more, settled, with Ellis under her fingertips. There's a part of her that longs for the softness of what he had offered her before, but she cannot. She cannot give up her egg.

"Cruel, but I learned to accept them. My mother was taken from me and I did not seek out every man that might have harmed her. I did not kill all men. I could, but I did not. She would not have wanted that for me, would not have wanted me to become as cruel as they did."

Tears in her eyes, hands shaking, trying to rationalise herself. She presses a hand against her stomach, forces herself to breathe, feeling the weight of her past and her future baring down on her. She blinks, gazing up at him, wondering what she ought to do or say but not knowing what to do. She has never been in this position before, never wanted forgiveness as much as she so venomously wished to deny herself the chance.

"The world will always give torment and anger and pain. That is the nature of the world." Removing the dragons did not make such a great change, not as far as she can see. Look how much death there had been already, in a world where there were no dragons. "I will take care of it and I will grow with it. If..." A hiccup in her voice, something tense, something that makes her close her eyes, tears falling. "If it becomes as you say then I will allow it to be killed. But only then."

[cryptsleeper]

"Men are not dragons. They do not live so long, they do not infect others with their blood and their curse, closer to vampirs than any other creature I can think of." It isn't a dig at either of their heritages, but a cold and plain fact. Both things played and relied upon blood in ways other creatures did not. The results were never well recieved.

It is hard, watching that desperation. It is cruel to force her into this position, but the decision has already been made clear. The egg. The egg for all the good and ill that shall come with it, and maybe this argument will only make sense in retrospect. Alucard knows that the only thing that will shock him is if he is proven so very wrong.

Ellis is the first to turn around, trotting over to where the horse is. Her tail is in the air, her fur still on end. She is tense and she is very done with all of the dhampir's emotions, the both of them. Too much death, too much grief, too much dealing with 1 Whole Emotion with the Belmont, and now this.

"Be careful not to be blinded by whatever positive qualities you imbue upon it." It's as much as a vote of confidence of changing the thing's nature as he can remotely manage. Alucard knows that the smart thing to do right now is to withdraw. They know where they stand. It is a mark of greater maturity to walk away and not make things worse.

"This world has come so very far without the dragons. There is greater technology and harmony for it, with all I've observed. Beyond my personal grievances, my opposition remains as such for that reason."

He turns then, the first goal being helping Ellis up onto the horse. If circumstances weren't what they were, watching four wolf paws flail and struggle to find purchase would probably be the height of comedy.

[fuga]

Lauralae watches as Ellis turns from her, as Alucard turns to go with the wolf. She is reminded, sharply, that for all that Ellis is her friend she is Alucard's first and foremost - whatever kinship they shared is compromised. Foolishness, failure, all of it rising up and making her feel small and weak, desperate as she squeezes her hand around the strap of her bag, desperately holding on to it and not wanting to let go.

She had made a mistake. She had trusted and she had been mistaken to do it; all the warnings in her own mind had been ignored and she is now paying the price for it. She can feel it in her gut, a panicked, feverish feeling that makes her slip down against the tree, curling in on herself, breathing out sharply as she tries to monitor herself. It is not good enough to feel that she has won this argument - because she has not.

She had lost, completely, and in more than one way.

"I have never been blinded by affection. I do not intend to start now." She knows that she might raise the dragon well, that she might train it, teach it, guide it, but she has also seen the face of evil. She knows that if anyone else - those people that had taken them, watched them, ritualised them - finds out about her dragon she will have to fight for it, but she will. She will fight until there is nothing left inside her, because she has nothing else to fight for.

Afraid, Lauralae wipes the tears from her eyes, staring at Alucard.

She wants to ask if they might remain friends, if they might call one another that, or if this is the end, but she does not have the words for it. Instead, she breathes out and bows her head, causing Rav'ahm to leap up and nudge at her jaw, a soft caw coming as she breathes, shaky. She cannot watch Ellis and Alucard walk away from her.