A/N: Inspired by discussions on the Dracula1897 LJ community. Set sometime before Jonathan realizes that Dracula is actually a loathsome undead fiend.
Dracula is the only mirror he allows in his house.
Jonathan dismisses the thought as soon as he thinks it; he doesn't even know what he means by the phrase. Yet the idea sticks with him, slides under his skin, and it festers. Dracula is the only mirror he allows in his house. A human mirror who echoes back Jonathan's own mannerisms and patterns of speech more and more adeptly each day. It is Dracula's goal to make himself into a proper Englishman, using Jonathan as his model. He is learning to reflect Jonathan.
The spectacle of an eccentric foreign lord trying to ape more sophisticated English habits should be a farcical diversion, but watching Dracula learn is not so much farcical as terrifying. He drinks in every detail of Jonathan's behavior, and grows stronger with each new mannerism he absorbs. Dracula is a mirror that feeds on what he sees, draining its essence until the reflection becomes more real than that which it reflects. There is a dreadful hunger in those beetle-browed sockets, a hunger for knowledge and... something else. A hunger for Jonathan's life, he thinks, for his heart and soul and everything that makes him Jonathan. Then he dismisses that as well. He dismisses it, but he can't make himself forget, try as he might.
So Jonathan scribbles frantic shorthand, filling up the pages of his journal with his thoughts, his fears, his hopes, his observations. Capturing himself in coded print where Dracula cannot find him. He pours out pages and pages of ink, filling his little book with the rational, stout-hearted Englishman he fears he may not be for much longer, which he no longer is. The journal is a mirror as well, he thinks, a secret mirror, the only other mirror in the castle. Reading it, writing in it he can remember a piece of who he used to think he was, if only for a little while. He can dream of a man with nothing more exciting on his mind than paprika breakfasts and passing his solicitor's exam.