(A gross drabble that's probably gonna be wrong when new Dawn chapters come out. Inspired somewhat by Andiiwalker's work that she let me cut up on Tumblr. Warnings: gore, corpses, medical bullshit and light necrophilia. I'm sorry, but not really. For best reading, listen to Valse Sentimentale, Op. 51 No. 6 - Tchaikovsky.)
Eine tanz mit IHR
Carefully, he set the needle on the record. Static hissed before he thought better of it and turned the gramophone off all together. As he crossed the sterile room, past the empty, yellowed tank and toward his patient on the gurney, Herr Doktor knew she wasn't up to the task anymore. The sheet tented over her body and gave the illusion that flesh webbed over bone. Yet, as he tugged the stained cloth down, the skeletal remains gleamed wetly in the light of the laboratory. Smile growing on his lips, he ran a gloved finger down a bare cheekbone, strings of yellow mucus connecting them even as he pulled away.
Over the years, she hadn't changed too drastically due to his constant care. It was a rarity that she wasn't suspended in fluid this evening, as the tank needed disinfecting twice a year less his prized patient start to rot. She was still just as soft as when he'd first unwrapped her because of the treatment: from the intricate veins and arteries that wove around her bones, to the delicate membrane that laced shoulders and neck, and the pliable cartilage that held her joints together. She was grotesquely gorgeous. For that was her secret, the moist decay had allowed horrible, miraculous oddities to be born, and so she had to remain.
A hack would have used an aldehyde or alcohol in a vain attempt to preserve her, foolishly ruining the bounty her body offered; cross-linking proteins and amino acids in what little flesh remained, what horror—what waste! No, her structures were still complete; every molecule, every vestige of HIM still survived in her blood and marrow. Perfectly imperfect, she had unknowingly mothered thousands of fledglings—well, perhaps not true fledglings, but almost.
It was the mucus pumped into the tank that kept her intact, closer to amniotic fluid than anything else. For although she was certainly dead, HIS touch still lived within her, just as alive as the day HE had bitten her centuries ago. She was the downfall of Alucard, the reason for the Vampire King's current slavery, and with his genius and Herr Major's cunning, she would be the instrument that brought about the vampire's complete demise. How marvelously poetic.
Fingers trailed up the atrophied throat. She must have been beautiful to capture the vampire's attention, and remained so even now; terribly delicate, yet wonderfully fierce in her decay. As his thumb smoothed down an elongated incisor, he could feel empty eye sockets staring.
"Don't look at me like that," he scowled.
She said nothing, but the weight of her eternal stare endured.
"I may have wired you together since the last time, but you're getting too old for such things," he pressed.
Her silence felt damning now; it wasn't polite to talk about a woman's age. Shoulders slumping, he sighed theatrically and stomped over to the gramophone.
"Fine, but you insisted," he lamented and turned on the player.
Static hissed as he returned to her side. Gently, he crossed thin arms over naked ribs, then began to bundle her oozing remains in cloth until all but her head was wrapped. Bending down, her cradled her in his arms like a child, supporting the back of her skull and upper vertebrae with a palm. Mucus began to soak dark yellow stains through his lab coat as he lifted her away from the gurney.
The music started slow and sweet and he pressed the side of her temple to rest in the dip of his collarbone. With her in his arms, he took a sweeping step to the right and their waltz began. There had been a time when he could hold her like a man ought to, when there had been more ligaments keeping her bones together, but he supposed there had been a time when his fingers didn't throb and swell after a long day in the laboratory as well. He sighed and their dance slowed to a sway as he looked down at her. Empty eyes greeted him.
"Well…I suppose I too am getting old," he mused, because tinkering with life had allowed him to extend his own, but there was always room for improvement. That was the crux of their relationship after all, progress: innovation over life, death, and everything in-between. Gazing at the labeled skull he continued, "But it's comforting to have the cure within arm's reach, wouldn't you agree?"
She said nothing, as always, but her head seemed to shift so perfectly to rest over his heart, he felt she understood. Hooking a finger under the jut of her jawbone, he lifted the hideously beautiful face and bent to press a chaste kiss to bare, pointed teeth.
Together, they danced even after the music ended. Mother of monsters gathered to his chest, Doktor swayed with her in his arms to the crackle of static and the drip, drip, drip of mucus on the tiled floor.