A/N: Returning to Alfred's POV this time. I'm contemplating adding something from the Count himself - we'll see if the next part may have him making an appearance.


Learning to live again – no, to exist – was hard.

There were times, and those were many, when Alfred very much realized the temptation of suicidal attempts. When he looked at the mirror and saw nothing, when he struggled not to kill his victim, when he tried not to give in to hunger at all... When he slept and did not dream, when he looked forth and saw an empty future... But most on those moments when he knew he could never move on.

Alfred was stuck.

Yet when he held a wooden stake in his hands and pressed its tip on the place he knew his heart was, he never found the courage and the strength to just do it. For one, he was scared what would happen; surely someone who had done so horrible things as he had would be cast into the deepest pits of hell? Yes, he was scared of such fate, even if he deserved it. And then... if there was heaven, and he somehow managed to get there...

Pathetically enough, he couldn't help but think: would any heaven suffice without him?

For sad as it was, the most Alfred knew of happiness was somehow linked with the one he had loved and who was now irretrievably lost.

But the nights went on, with minutes dragging by until they became hours and days and weeks, and he continued to exist.

And it wasn't what he'd have called life. He was stuck: he'd never father children and grow old and die. That, at least, would have helped. To move on, to find new things, to fulfill the dreams of his youth... but that wasn't what vampires did.

So, unable to move on yet having no way to go back either, he was left where he was. And it was a difficult existence, and often without purpose... still, he drifted. Now, more than ever before, he really was ship lost at the sea, and the oceans had drowned earth. There was no home harbour for him to return to now, and in the unending night with no sun to break the darkness, it was easy to lose sense of time.

That was what scared Alfred about being a vampire the most.