A/N: Thanks to everyone for your input on the last chapter, I really appreciate it! This is gonna be it for this little story. Happy reading!
"The place is looking pretty sharp, Drac," Murray commented, appreciatively tipping back a glass of wine. "Could probably use a bandstand or something, though. Right over there." He wiggled his stumpy, bandaged fingers in the direction of the garden.
"Oh, I have already arranged for entertainment. You'll never guess who I got," Dracula remarked with obvious pride.
"Who?" Wanda asked with genuine interest.
"No, no, I want it to be a surprise," he grinned.
Wayne and Frankenstein exchanged a look. "Knowing Drac it'll be some classy act that's been dead for a hundred years." Frank playfully elbowed Dracula in the shoulder, which due to their relative sizes looked a bit like a freight train playfully bumping a telegraph pole.
"Careful," Dracula hissed, partly out of wounded pride that Frank's description was pretty much accurate and partly due to the four-year-old girl sleeping in his lap. "You'll wake Mavis."
The softhearted giant gave a slight grimace and whispered an apology.
"Man, you gotta get with the times," Murray sighed, his chair creaking under him as he leaned back. "You should hear these cats I know, playin' this beat they call ragtime. It's music you can dance to, y'know what I mean."
"I'll… keep that in mind," Dracula sipped at his drink. Sometimes he wondered if Murray meant what he said literally or if it was supposed to be code for something.
"Aw, you guys wore the little tyke out." The five monsters jumped at the sudden appearance of a sixth voice, all searching in confusion until a pair of glasses floating above an empty, yet somehow walking, suit complete with trench coat appeared to evidence the invisible man's arrival. "I was all set to play tag," he whined.
"Very funny, Invisible Man," Dracula said dryly, rolling his eyes for good measure.
"Hey, I can play fair! Why do you think I'm wearing my suit?" he protested.
"Got here pretty late, Griffin. Traffic?" Wayne asked, pulling the wine bottle out to pour him a glass.
"Nah, landlord's on my tail again. Had to backtrack through the mountains to make sure I ditched him. I hate that guy." Griffin took a swig, the red liquid sloshed in the air before sliding in a small stream into the empty collar of his coat. "So, what'd I miss? The party come and go already?"
"Technically we open tomorrow," Dracula explained.
"We were helping set up. Wait till you see the pool!" Frank said enthusiastically.
"And Mavis helped catch all the fireflies lighting around the pool deck," Wanda added.
"No wonder she's conked out," Griffin remarked.
"It was almost her bedtime, anyway," Dracula adjusted his hold on her, supporting her head protectively as it leaned against the crook of his arm. She'd left little dark splotches of drool on his jacket, which he chose to ignore. "It'll be good for her to get a little extra sleep."
"Has she been having trouble sleeping?" Wanda asked.
"Not exactly," Dracula said. "She sleeps just fine, as long as she's not in her own bed. She gets daydreams. Bad ones."
"Oh, the poor dear." Wanda clasped her hands together in empathy.
"What kind of daydreams?" Frank asked.
"She won't tell me." Dracula admitted sadly.
"Can't you hypnotize it out of her, or erase her memory or something?" Griffin asked. He was met with an icy glare from the vampire that could've frozen the sun solid. Griffin's empty suit sunk a little in his chair. "I was just asking," he said sheepishly.
"It's possible she doesn't know how to tell you," Wanda replied sagely. She had grown up the eldest in a family of seventeen puppies, which gave her a maternal wisdom that seemed almost instinctive.
"What do you mean?"
"Well, you don't always remember your dreams, do you? She may not remember exactly what it was, or she may not have the words to explain it. A lot of my siblings were like that. They'd have dreams about large, black spots crushing them and we'd figure out much later they had been frightened by one of the neighbor's cows."
"A wolf frightened by a cow?" Murray asked, quirking his head as if that would help him envision the scenario.
Wanda just shrugged. "They were puppies. It happens."
"How do you get them to stop?" Dracula asked her with rapt attention.
"Oh, they mostly just grow out of it. We'd all pile into the same bed so anyone who woke up with a bad dream would have the whole family there to calm them down."
"That never would've happened in my house," her husband chimed in. "My dad wouldn't have allowed it. He'd say, 'Kids need to learn to fend for themselves. Kids need independence. Kids need boundaries…'"
"Kids need to know they're safe," Wanda countered.
"Mavis is safe," Dracula cut in, probably more defensive than he needed to be. "She's independent, too. She wants to do everything else on her own, just with sleeping she needs me there. Otherwise she wakes up screaming."
"Poor kid," Frank murmured sympathetically. "How long has this been going on?"
"Since we moved," he said, briefly summarizing the incident with the dumbwaiter and her behavior afterwards. "She's been sleeping in my coffin everyday since," he finished.
"Weren't you two sharing a room when you lived in the safe house?" Wanda asked.
"Yes, but not the same bed. She wanted her own room so badly before, asked me practically every night. But she won't go near it after daylight."
"Have you tried sleeping in her room with her?" Wanda asked.
"Would that help?"
"It might." The wolf leaned forward, "Try looking at this from Mavis's point of view. Since she was a baby she's always slept in the same room with you close by. Now, she wakes up in a strange new place all alone and doesn't know where to find you. That would frighten any child. She clings to you because you're the one thing that's remained consistent in both homes. Gives her some familiarity. Does that make sense?"
"Yes, of course," Dracula's brow furrowed in thought. "Was it wrong then, to give her the bedroom all to herself?"
"There's no set right or wrong way to raise a child, Drac. She'll probably come around to sleeping on her own eventually. If you slept in her bed with her for a couple of days instead of taking her to your room she might get more comfortable with the idea that it's a safe place to sleep. That is, if you don't want her sleeping in your coffin with you anymore."
He ultimately decided to try Wanda's suggestion. Mavis's coffin was at least two sizes too small for him and he had sleep with his knees bent in order to fit on it. Halfway through the day he woke with a sore back and gave up, moving them both back to his room so he could at least get some semblance of comfortable sleep. The next few days didn't fare much better.
Mavis was so excited to have their unofficial extended family over to play with she got up extra early and fought her own sleep schedule to stay up longer. He spent the week racing between supervising the staff, most of which were still getting used to their new jobs, and supervising Mavis in pool games and piggy-back rides. Wayne caught him yawning an embarrassing number of times, which made him the butt end of several nap related jokes and earned Wayne a few "Just wait till you have kids" comments from him.
Zombie Beethoven went over rather well, or at least it seemed to. He nodded off somewhere in the middle of Moonlight Sonata and when the booming opening to the Egmont Overture startled him awake he found Murray swinging a giggling Mavis around in a kind of light dance thoroughly inappropriate to the music.
"Y'know, Drac, you can take a break and get some shuteye for a while," Frank said, resting a concerned hand on his back. "We can look after Mavis."
"I'm fine," Dracula shrugged the large hand off, mustering a small smile. Murray tossed Mavis high into the air and caught her as she squealed joyfully. Dracula's heart seized.
"Ooookay! I think that's just about enough of that!" The vampire shot to the large mummy, who had the good decency to look slightly guilty as he handed the child over.
"Aw, Daddy…" Mavis groaned.
He hadn't meant to fall asleep on the couch in Mavis's room. He'd only meant to rest for a second while she tried to change into her nightgown and the taxation of the hotel's opening week combined with the lack of decent sleep in so long finally caught up with him. Mavis didn't try to wake him, or if she did it hadn't worked. When he woke up suddenly she was curled up on the couch next to him, startled awake by his sudden movement.
"What's wrong, Daddy?" she mumbled.
"Nothing, Dead-ums. I'm sorry, Daddy wasn't supposed to fall asleep here."
"Did you have a bad dream?"
"No, I… Mavy, did you have a bad dream?" he asked.
She shook her head, her large eyes half shut. "Can we go to Daddy's room now?" she asked.
Dracula was torn. He did not want to carry her all the way back to his bedroom again, but he didn't want to sleep squished on the couch anymore either. He'd frankly rather sleep on the floor at this point.
"We need to sleep here, Mavis," he tried to explain, "Daddy is too tired to move. Why don't you hop in your coffin and Daddy will sleep on the floor next to you and protect you, yes?"
"But there's no lid."
"Lid?" Dracula sat up. "What lid?"
Mavis cupped one hand and slowly slid her other flat over it, miming his coffin closing. "Is that why you want to sleep in Daddy's coffin? Because it has a lid?"
She nodded lazily. "Can I have one?"
"No, Pumpkin, you're too young. You wouldn't be able to get out. I don't want you getting stuck." He briefly thought of Mavis crawling behind her dresser, inside the dumbwaiter, curling up and hiding her eyes. Mavis loved dark, small spaces.
"How about this," he took her hand, slowly rising from the couch as his muscles ached in protest. "You sleep here, and you can pull your blanket up if you get scared," he showed her what he meant, dragging her pink blanket up over her head till she was covered completely. "And I'll be right here, just like at the old house. You didn't need a lid then, remember?" He pulled the blanket back and she watched him with wide, wary eyes, as if she was expecting him to disappear. He carefully reached out to stroke her hair back; fixing the errant strands that got tousled under the blanket. Mavis stared quietly. He tried to shove away the now familiar knot of worry that they might never get over this.
Please, trust me. Please, don't be scared anymore. When you're scared, I'm scared.
Slowly, Mavis's eyes lulled shut. She sunk into her pillows with a sigh and Dracula let out a relieved sigh of his own. He kissed her head, stretched out next to her bed and slept as stiff as a corpse.
Mavis slept soundly that day, and the following day. By the third day it was becoming clear she didn't need him to sleep on the floor next to her anymore. She always woke with a gleeful, "No bad dreams, Daddy!" before hopping onto his stomach and nearly knocking the wind out of him.
When he finally explained to her that he was going to leave to go back to his own room it hardly fazed her. She went through the whole routine, the bath, brushing her fangs, reading a book, without so much as a whimper. Dracula put out the candles and kissed her forehead like he always did, and she made no move to cling to him, no plea to get him to stay or take her with him. And she slept perfectly fine.
At first he was relieved, and also quite proud. His baby girl had done it. She had conquered her nightmares. She no longer woke up screaming or tried to escape into whatever tight space she could find. Her mother would've been proud, too.
He lay awake in his coffin thinking this. He could relax now, his child was sleeping fine all on her own. And yet, the initial relief was quickly slipping away into something else entirely. Some persistent gnawing feeling that he had just been robbed of something. The coffin seemed a bit too big now. There was no little Mavis to roll over and kick him in her sleep or cling to his clothes or poke him awake at night.
He got up, creeping silently back through the hall and easing into her room with all the presence of a ghost. Mavis was fast asleep, perfectly content in her little coffin with pink sheets and no lid. He sat on the edge of the bed and wondered if this was what it would be like from now on; if she would always grow out of things just as he was starting to grow into them.
Mavis rolled over, knocking a pillow to the floor in her wake. He bent down to pick it up, tucking it back into place behind her head, resisting the urge to pull her into his arms and never let her go again. She pulled at the pillow, nuzzling her nose into the fabric. He smiled.
"You still need me, don't you, baby."
He pushed her hair back, kissing her forehead briefly before leaving.
Fin.
A/N:
How I guessed Mavis's age: The prologue shows her as an infant in 1895 and a toddler/preschool-ish by 1898 when the hotel opens 3 years later, which is pretty on track with how humans age. I decided putting her birthyear at 1894 would make sense with the rate she ages in the prologue, making her 4 years old when the hotel opens (the HT wiki also gives her a Sept. 1894 birthday).
My theory on how this works is that when vampires are born (and not turned from already living people) they start out aging much like a human would and at a certain point the aging process slows down exponentially, so it might take 3 years for her to age like a human 3 year old but 9 years to age like a 6 year old and 20 years to get to 10, etc. so that by the time she's gotten up to say Drac's age the rate is so slow it's practically stopped altogether. This would also kinda explain why she ages at all instead of staying an infant for eternity, though I don't think vampire babies are ever gonna make 100% sense ^^.