[closed]

[cryptsleeper]

Who: Alucard and others
When: Post-event 18
Where: Free Cities
What: Fall out and catch up
Warnings: Added as needed



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[cryptsleeper]

[The understatement of the year gets a very small smile out of the dhampir, along with a soft snort. That is the understatement of the year and they both know it. Alucard's fully aware that he just straight up Pulled A Dracula on his friend, and that speaks volumes of where his own head was at at the time.]

Talking it through from your perspective is helping. I can at least see where my biases began to come into play, and a few major assumptions that fed into my overall discomfort at the situation. [He thinks he has the overall gist of it, at any rate.

The question is a valid one. Alucard considers it for a moment.] I think that for me, the line is I can change back, and I don't discard my emotions. I am realizing that is starting to feel like a refrain, but that is also one of my sticking points, I think.

[He leans his head back, closing his eyes to think a moment more.] I'm going to need time to digest all of this and engage with my own assumptions that you've challenged.

[techmaturgy]

And when you turn into a wolf and run off into the desert, or to your cactus, away from everything and everyone…that is, somehow, not discarding your emotions?

[It’s a genuine question, one said with a raise of the eyebrow, but Viktor thinks it gets at the aforementioned assumptions that Alucard must now digest, as he says. He thinks he’s made his point clear, all things considered.]

I learned the lesson I needed to, about my mind. I know that I hurt people. If you want reassurances that I will not attempt similar research here, you can have them.

[It should be the real concern, and yet has somehow become secondary in this conversation. He refuses to accept that the future they experienced will come to pass—that they will have eight hundred years ahead of them. He won't make the same mistakes this time. ]

But you were equally disturbed by the things I did to my body, and that is—you do not have to like it, or even accept it. But it is my choice, and I will not limit myself because it's more comfortable for you.

[cryptsleeper]

[The tone makes it clear the question is meant genuinely, not as a means to score a point. It gets a genuine answer:] The change of the thought patterns change, but no. Those feelings are there. It is actually one of the reasons I kept to my wolf form as frequently as I did when I was newer to Abraxas. I was full of anger, hurt, fear, paranoia, and so much more that thinking and feeling those things in another form helped me work through them. I don't have a good metaphor for what those changes are like, but that's not what you're after.

[They've made enough headway, Alucard thinks. There is a graceful exit, and he intends to take it. Anything else is going to lead to cross words. But in all of this, Alucard thinks he's found something of a boundary line come into clarity for him. On matters of limits, he thinks there's value in those in the natural world. Not just death, but with the body. That some things can and should be accepted.

And that's something he and Viktor are never going to agree on.

It is something else to think about.]

I think reassurances are secondary to action. [What good did promises made in that shared fever dream mean, when they were said at the moment and at outsets. Still, he needs to respond to that last point. Which has never been about comfort for him, but in wanting Viktor to understand why it was upsetting. Why it's still upsetting and something he needs time to sit with.

He doesn't push back about the comfort comment. Alucard wants to. He feels like it's going to be walking on eggshells in his own head for a time.]

I'll continue to expand my understanding.

[He stands slowly.] I think my own punch list fell out of my pocket. Let me go get it.

[techmaturgy]

[Viktor makes a noise in the back of his throat that indicates he's processing the information but does not necessarily believe it's any different. Or, at least, Alucard has done a lot of rationalizing, in that department. There's a slight pang of distrust, somewhere within him, though he does his best to push it aside.

He can sense the stalemate, though, and leaves it there. Viktor can accept certain philosophical differences, and he knows he's not really in a position to justify himself further. Even if Alucard asks. Even if he doesn't really owe that, to anyone. So Viktor nods, and jumps at the chance to get back to work.]

Just point me in the right direction.