It didn't take long before the memory of his defeat rose, then the memories of his captivity. He'd been so hungry, so exhausted, isolated for day after day, the time stretching into weeks as he lay alone in his cell. Van Helsing had been no fool, had left him to starve, removed his coffin, his soil, weakened him. And when he could no longer fight his chains with any force, the man had come in to the room with him, a look of satisfaction on Van Helsing's face at his condition.
He'd lunged off the floor, springing at the man, to find his muscles stiffened and weak, the chains heavy, and the attack had been off-balanced and weakened. Van Helsing had been the first face he'd seen in uncounted days, alone in the dark, and the man hadn't even spoken to him, but left, smiling, and the door locking behind.
And then he'd wakened that day as they moved him from his dark cell to that painfully, brilliantly well-lit room and strapped him to the table. He was well aware they'd simply waited until he was too weak to fight them before beginning the next stage of their abuse, and had fought desperately. Once they had him helpless, they'd begin to torture him. All it would take was a single bite on a single person, a free arm to grasp a weapon, a leg to kick about him and slash at them with taloned toes, but he could achieve none of that.
And they'd finished strapping him down...he remembered that. Feigning sleep or not, he could not stop the shiver that coursed through his body at that memory. But the next memory surprised him.
Van Helsing had not abused him...no. Sorting through the memories, mind no longer sluggish, he considered what had happened. It was during the day, his normal time of sleep, and he'd been so long out of his coffin and far from his soil that he'd been near delirious from exhaustion. He'd released himself from his bonds, something he hadn't managed to achieve in more than a month of trying. They weren't going to torture him, no...the loss of fear had ennervated him. And Abraham had been there, a warm body, a human touch, after so many weeks of nothing but dark empty silence and chill floors.
He remembered moving to sit by Abraham, far too tired, too dizzy with fatigue, to consider standing near him. He'd thrown himself on the man's mercy...and there had been mercy.
He was hungry, starved, still. Yet the comfort of his long deep sleep and the pleasant lassitude of his body told him that he'd passed that time in his coffin, surrounded by his soil, and rested there still. In the safe, dark confines of his home, red eyes opened, staring up at the coffin lid as he thought.
He'd had his rest. He needed food, and much as he hated to admit it, he needed companionship. He'd never been so incredibly lonely; always, always, always, he'd had a fledgling or a companion or even several filling his existence. Conversations, hunting partners, occasionally bed partners, dances and debates and the rare great flaming row of an argument, he had not been alone in...centuries.
The long cold time in the silent dark had drained him emotionally to an extent that he could barely comprehend, would never have believed. It had been compounded by the certain knowledge that his family, all three of them, had perished, that his newest child had died within days of her waking, and that he was so thoroughly bereft and alone.
Abraham was only a human, but as his memories finished with the man's soft touch on his chair, the way the man had gently cradled his body while carrying it to rest in his coffin, he wanted to see that human so very badly.
It was with difficulty that his numb, relaxed, weakened arms shifted the lid above him, but he'd had his rest. And starved he might be for sustenance, but his very self was more starved for companionship, company of any kind.
The door to the cell was a score of feet away, the distance lined with large boxes of his soil, stacked haphazardly to the right and left. Hopeful, vaguely fearful of the men changing their minds and deciding to harm him anyways, but mostly deeply anticipating the contact with them, Dracula staggered and stumbled as he wove his way to the door.
Abraham, he'd find Abraham again.
The long white hand reached up, slipping about, thrusting and missing until it managed to awkwardly grasp the handle. It took another minute for Dracula to realize that the door was not moving because it had been locked or barred from the other side, not because he was too weak to pull it or unable to grip the handle firmly.
Frowning, he sank to the top of the box nearest the door. He'd wait. It was comfortable to sit here, his home earth under him, leaning on the wall, watching the door and listening. Abraham would have to come and see him at some point; the man hadn't restored his soil and resting place, soothed him and carried him so gently only to ignore him.
But his internal time sense told him that it had been more than four days since this had happened, four days of oblivion, sleeping and recuperating and resting deeply for the first time since his capture. Abraham would come to inspect him, must come...he must only be patient.
Hunger gnawed at him, and loneliness prompted the occasional and unconcious, barely-audible moan from his throat, but mostly, he sat with the patience of centuries, wine-red eyes watching the door unblinking, shoulder slumped casually against the wall, mind wandering from memory to his current captivity and back again.
Time ticked by.