Author's Note: Sorry for the long delay (again). I know you all love lots of detail, but I'm not wildly fond of this chapter, so I'm going to try to get it over with as soon as possible.
Disclaimer: I do not own or make money off Hellsing, Dracula, or The Little Mermaid (Disney or H.C. Andersen version).
Misery was Seras' only company over the next three weeks. She lay crying in bed and wouldn't come out. The servants often found her lying under her stomach with a mess of blankets over her back and pillows over her head. They often tried to dig her out, but she would not move for anything. Even attempts to grab her arm and drag her out proved too difficult since she often went limp and flopped like a rag doll.
The Count grew impatient to be in her prescence, but the servants and Walter alike had to assure him that Seras was feeling too ill to see anyone. Indeed, they were not completely dishonest about the ill part, because Seras was not eating again, and looking very pale and haggard besides. Her eyes were often red and raw, her cheeks streaked with tears and tear stains. Even Pip's presence did not cheer her, for she just burrowed her head under her many throw pillows until he went away.
She emerged from her blankets only to drink water that she lost to her tears, and agreed to sit up and bathe and let the doctor examine her, but she refused to look people in the eye or acknowledge when they were speaking to her, or get up and get dressed and get paraded around like a doll in frills.
The Count slowly grew more impatient, for while he was engaged with plenty of parties and social events with which to pursue, court and woo the church girl (which gave him no end of pleasure), they were growing tedious without his little foundling there. Seras scowled at her lap and thought he could deal with it.
Eventually even Walter soon thought that enough was enough, and by the fourth day he urged the count to sit down beside her, talk to her, and learn of her grief.
Seras tried to ignore him for a long time, hoping that without an answer he would eventually grow tired of waiting and go away like he always did, but he did not move. He sat and stared at her (although she was on her stomach with the blankets over her back and the pillow pressed over her head) for what felt like hours, and waited patiently for her to emerge from her hiding place and give cause to her grief.
"The servants tell me you are not well," the count said, "Once I would have been surprised, but you seem to have been unwell more often than not as of late."
Seras felt a stab of indignity. Of course she was sick! She was heartsick for him!
When he did not leave, she slowly emerged from her pillows. She was angry, ashamed, and heartsick for him, but she still hung onto every scrap of attention; every hint of affection. He sat on the edge of her bed and looked at her, and waited patiently for her response, and she did not want to keep him waiting too long lest he leave.
She reached for her journal and pen (each resting on her bedside) and scribbled, The London air makes me ill.
"Yes, the 'City of Fog,' " he said. "The doctor has hinted that some country air might do you some good, but that is not all, my little foundling. You refuse food only when you are distressed, and you have not touched so much as a custard tart since your 'illness,' although Walter had some specially made to tempt your appetite."
Seras turned her head away, and would have rolled back onto her side had he not continued, more harshly, "And you refuse to look me in the eyes. You have always been shy, at times peevish, and still others tired and unsocial, but never have you refused my presence in your room, nor gone so many days hiding. Tell me what it is."
She could have wept on the spot. Her mind groped for a lie, her heart fumbled with its grief, but her hand scribbled, Did you father that woman's child?
It was as though the wind went right out of his sales.
The light faded from his eyes, the moon glow of his pale white skin turned wane and clammy, and his back slumped to a defeated posture. He had always been so proud and confident; stood up straight and took up lots of space and seemed to fill a whole room with his presence. The self-assured smirk that betrayed his good opinion of himself fell, and he just seemed so sad and lost. All the light seemed to leave the room when it left his eyes. His back slumped forward and his head seemed to be held up only by the elbow on his knee and the fist under his chin. He seemed to have crumple like a scarecrow let off the pole, or a sail without wind released from the mast, and everything about him seemed so sad and alone and tired.
Seras realized that she had never seen him look so endlessly sad and alone... except the night she had saved his life, when he drifted alone in the dark and the storm in the middle of the black endless sea. While the lamp continued to burn in the corner, the room felt as dark and cold and alone as the sea.
"Who told you?" he asked without turning his eyes from the wall.
Gossip, she wrote.
"Remind me to dismiss the servants," he said crossly; and then weakly, "I had hoped you would not hear..." his voice trailed off.
Now it was Seras' turn to wait for a long time. When he did not move, she eventually ventured to write, So it's true.
"Do not be so quick to pass judgment without hearing the whole story, my little foundling," he snapped, although there was more pain than anger in his voice.
A long silence passed between them, until he barked a bitter laugh. "Not that it would have mattered. She would not have taken me even if I had not had some sport and play with her best friend."
Seras felt sickened. She had always held her master up as a paragon of virtue; a man among boys, a gentleman among scoundrels, a king among peasants. She had known him to be gloriously handsome from the moment she first laid eyes one him, anyone could see that, but she also took him for being polite and cultured. Elegant and refined. He had fine tastes, and finer clothes, hobbies, and pastimes. He sipped wine alone on his moonlit balcony where most men would have guzzled down cheap ale and told dirty stories in large groups at the harbor. He rode his horse through the sweet-smelling woods where most men would have crowded around fighting dogs or cocks and shouted at their favorite to win. He spoke of love as dearly as Seras regarded it, while other men spoke of love as casually as fucking and leaving.
She had believed him to be a man of virtue along with his appearance and elegance, but she saw now that he was just like all the rest of them, if not worse, and it sickened her.
She would have pulled away, had he not caught her hand in his. "Tell me, what is your age, child? The servants tell me you look to be no older than ten and five, or ten and six."
It was true, so Seras nodded.
It had been the evening of her fifteenth birthday when she had first beheld the count, and it had been nearly a year later when she had given up her voice for a pair of legs so that she could walk beside him on land, and she had been with him here on land for nearly a year. She realized that she was late into her sixteenth year, and soon to be seventeen.
He nodded slowly. "A good age, child. You are a good girl, Seras Victoria. I have not met many of your ilk before, except..."
He trailed off. He looked so alone and sad.
Seras was afraid to hear it. Still, she shifted under her bedclothes and crossed her legs into a sitting position, to let him know she was listening.
"When I was your age, I married a maid as lovely as winter, with moonlight in her hair." He seemed half as surprised to be telling her as she was to hear it, but also half reminiscing and introspective. The soft glow of the candlelight beside her bed made a romantic mood. "It was a marriage of convenience, arranged by my father. Our family is one of the oldest and most respectable in my home country, but hers had more money. She brought a handsome dowry to the match, which my father craved so much he did not wait until we were both older; mere children at the time, she and I. Yet I could not have loved her more if I had chosen her myself. She was the loveliest creature I had ever seen, with a heart and spirit just as beautiful to match."
A phantom joy lit up his eyes as he recollected, lost to memories. It was a pure and tender joy, not at all like the manic and (at times) boisterous smirks she was accustomed to.
Seras had once heard a fortune-teller say that there were different kinds of love in the world; the kind that flickers in a moment, the kind that lasts a night, the glow of summer, the kind that fades after a few years... and there was a kind so deep that it changes your smile.
The count's smile changed when he recalled the bride of his youth.
Seras realized with a dull start that he was still describing her. "She had eyes as bright as stars, and a wit to match. Her skin was white as the moon, and her hair reflected the glow of the moon the few times it shown."
How like his own, Seras thought. Such loving descriptions, she could have cast about it.
"She was the moon and stars of my life," he said. "As far as I was concerned, the moon and stars shined every night because she was there beside me, and the sun rose every morning when she woke beside me. No matter how much gloom and cloud (and there was plenty, since I inherited my father's cold, crumbling castle in that rainy country), the world was filled with light and warmth in the world because she was in it. She, my darling Elisabeta."
He seemed so lost to memories that the words poured out of his mouth as smoothly as water down a babbling brook. He seemed so absorbed by the joy of his memories that he smiled and his eyes lit like stars themselves, and he went on and on describing their happy life together, heedless of the sad ending that Seras felt would inevitably come since she, Elisabeta, was no longer here.
When he seemed to reach the part of his story where she would leave, it seemed to occur to him all at once that she was not here, because then it seemed all the light and warmth left his eyes, and the whole room with it. (Although the lamp still burned.)
Lost and cold and hollow, he said, "She died giving birth to our first child…"
Slowly and heavily, his eyes turned to Seras, "She would have been about your age, had she lived."
Seras felt puzzled about this, for didn't he say that he and she had been about Seras' age when they had married? How could Elisabeta still be Seras' age if she had married the count about sixteen years ago—and then it struck Seras that he had meant their child.
Her heart felt like a stone in her chest. "A girl," her lips formed.
The count nodded slowly, heavily. "A girl… our daughter." Then a heavy silence fell over them both.
Seras felt both profoundly sad for him and revolted for herself. She loved him as a bride loves her husband, and she realized with profound grief and disappointment that he saw her only as a replacement to the child they had lost. She felt nauseous and revolted with herself, and wanted at that moment she wanted nothing more than to bathe in bubbling, scalding water and scrub herself clean, until every part of her that reminded him of his lost daughter was gone and all that remained was the type of woman he could love.
But he looked so sad and lost that she pitied him profoundly too, and dared not move or breathe too suddenly in his grief.
He twisted a golden band around his finger. "I looked for wars to fight in. Our country is stable though, and the time of knights and lords battling the Ottoman for God and country are done. My father died soon after, and I was trapped alone in a cold stone castle, filled with nothing but echoes and shadows of what had once been, and what could have been. I traveled from city to city, castle to castle, making calls with other nobles and visiting cities that my Elisabeta had loved, trying to forget my grief, but it would not do. I was alone, trapped, bored ruling a backwater fiefdom filled with worthless peasants and their worthless concerns."
Seras waited for him to continue. But you left.
"That I did," he agreed. "My Elisabeta had been fond of the bustle of city life, and I had heard great things about England, the Jewel of the World. My fief was small and empty, and the peasants practically ruled themselves; there was no need for me there, and there was no way to forget my own grief when there was not but myself around. So, I made plans to move, and lost myself and forgot my grief in my preparation. I studied for years to learn the English language; and geography, and laws and customs. I had hoped to find a new challenge, and an adventure, and a new start; to blend in and lose myself and start a new life in England's teeming millions."
His hopeful voice turned to hard bitterness as he recalled, "And then I saw the picture."
Seras had heard the story before, and heard it now in the count's own words. The final preparations were being made, the estate selected and almost bought, and solicitor Jonathan Harker traveled to his estate to help him with the final paperwork. They had gotten along splendidly, and Jonathan even helped the count practice the last of his English, and learn the last of London's local geography, streets, laws, and social customs from the perspective of a native Londoner.
And then the count had spied a picture of Jonathan's fiancé, Wilhelmina "Mina" Murray.
The gossipers said that he had fallen in love with a photograph, but the count told her now that Mina had been his Elisabeta come to life.
And just like that, Seras suddenly understood why he had gone to such lengths for a woman he had only seen from a distance. He had been consumed with grief for the death of his childhood bride, and after many years of being alone with the shadows and echoes of her ghost, he he had arranged to live in England for a new start and a chance to forget his grief, and here was a woman (still technically unmarried) who reminded him so much of the wife he had lost. A new start and a new chance indeed.
With all that in mind, of course he would leave for England post-haste, without waiting for the woman's fiancé to return with him. Of course he would arrive in England and try to woo the woman he desired away from her husband, while the said husband dawdled in Transylvania. (And he had more time than he had thought, since Jonathan had taken a sudden chill in Transylvania and became seriously ill.)
Of course he had pursued Mina with heat and fervor, and had ignored or failed to recognize her many rejections because he had been too blind and drunk with love for her.
He described how impassioned his love for Mina had made him, especially since it had been many years since he had desired a woman's embrace. Since he desired Mina so greatly but she would not have him, he blew off some of his fervor for her with a woman who would have him.
When he told his side of the story, in that charismatic tone of voice, it was almost easy to see it from his point of view.
"I did not mean to cause the problems I did," he said sincerely. "I did not mean to get Lucy with child, and I did not mean to ruin her reputation. I did not mean to make Mina doubt my devotion to her by dancing in the arms of her friend, and I did not mean for her husband to become ill. (And I did not poison him, whatever they may tell you. His illness was an unfortunate coincidence, but not one orchestrated by me.)"
Seras' eyes widened.
He explained how he had remained blind with devotion to Mina, telling himself that he could still win her if only he could do this or that to show his devotion. Even when she publically denounced him and helped run him out of London, he stubbornly believed that he could still turn this around if he showed her that he still cared.
He had thrown everything he had into an armada that set off a dazzling display of fireworks next to her country home on the beach, hoping that if he threw everything he had into a grand romantic gesture, she would be his.
(So that was why he had the armada in the sea when she first laid eyes on him! Seras thought. And that explained the fireworks!)
But then the storm had struck, and destroyed the armada, and every chance he had of winning Mina.
"… They say your life flashes before your eyes as you are dying, my little foundling," the count said slowly, sadly, "And that the truth comes to you as death takes you, for they are one and the same. And as the life seeped from my wounds; when the light had fled and darkness remained, and my worldly goods were stripped from me and there was nothing left but myself, all pretenses fled.
"I was forced to admit that my life was a lie; that everything I had worked for was built on a dream. My Elisabeta was gone from this world, and nothing I said or did would ever bring her back. Mina was nothing like my bride—of course, she shared her likeness, but their looks were all they shared. She had neither her kindness, nor warmth, nor gentleness, nor regard for me. No, I was forced to recognize that she did not want me at all. I was a plague to her—she had said as much herself, but I was too foolish and stubborn to listen. All hope that she would ever consent had all been in my head—wishful thinking that would not bring result. And in the attempt, I had lost everything I had.
The emptiness of my life consumed me," he continued; numbly, hollowly, with voice cracked, "The darkness soon followed, and the cold after that. I was prepared to allow my death to consume me too, until…"
"DRACULA!"
The memory cheered him, and warmth returned to his eyes. He turned to Seras, and smiled. "A voice. A voice called out to me. Bringing me back from the brink. Everyone I had known hated and scorned me, so what did it matter if I slipped gently into the eternal night? Who would notice, or mourn me? But that voice…" he smiled, lost in remembrance, "that young, beautiful, earnest little voice, so far away but so filled with spring and hope and life, and worried for me."
Seras realized that he was talking about her voice!
She remembered still. When she had called out to him, tried to rouse him from sleep. She could still remember the darkness of the night broken only by the flashes of lightning, and kindling of fire. She still remembered turbulent water of the storm, the pelting of the rain, and the crash of the waves. She still remembered how she had struggled to keep his head above water so he would not drown, and caught a giant burning splinter of wood that would have plunged into his heart, had she not caught it with her bare hands, and held it up so that its top leaned against an overhanging mast that leaned on its side from the storm.
She still remembered how the fire bit her hand and the embers had freckled her shoulders, and the waves had nearly pushed her aside so many times, but she would not let go. She had tried to wake him, shouting his name, so that he might wake up and swim away so that the great splinter would not plunge into his heart, for she did not have the strength to push him away and hold up the beam at the same time.
She had pressed her nose against his cheek and had screamed his name as loud as she could, over the claps of thunder and the crashes of waves; above the howl of the wind and the roar of the rain. She had seen his eyes flicker, and slowly open, and for a moment she had felt elated and triumphant; but his eyes were foggy, unfocused, and barely seemed to comprehend her, before they closed and he was lost to the world again.
"When I opened my eyes, I saw a girl with the most beautiful blue eyes you have ever seen," he continued. "They were so young, and fresh, and innocent, and pure. But they were so full of love and concern. After being scorned by so many, could you blame me for falling in love with such eyes?"
It was me! Seras thought desperately, but she was frozen in place; her arm would not move. It was me! It was me! Oh, how can you not see that it was me?
The count sighed, and there was a finality in the way he did it.
"I married a maid as beautiful as winter, with moonlight in her hair." He leaned back, and spoke less with reverence and nostalgia as he did before, and more with the matter-of-factly briskness of his usual tone. He was coming back to himself. "And it was the chasing of her memory that nearly drove me into that eternal winter that all men go when they reach the end of their life.
"I am done with chasing ghosts and shadows and memories. My Elisabeta is dead and gone, and while part of me will always mourn her, I cannot forever dwell in the memories where she remains. There is only darkness and winter there, and that is where there is death."
He looked at Seras, and a trace of that insolent grin returned. "Now I am in love with a maid as fresh as spring, with sunlight in her hair. But she is fast becoming a woman as lovely summer, and I would not have her any other way. Where there is spring and summer, there is life, and there is hope. I will never gain my Elisabeta back, nor win Mina's unwilling hand; but I can live while there is still life, and forge a new life with a maid unlike any I have known, and we can grow a new happiness together, provided she wants me."
I want you! Seras thought, and felt that fresh tears could spring out of her eyes. I want you! I want you! Oh, how can you not see that I want you?
"She enjoys these games, you know. More than she admits," he turned away, and sighed with satisfaction. "I did not intend to make the same mistake as with Mina. I have told her many times that if she wishes for me to withdraw my courtship—to leave and to never see her, or send correspondence, or to invite her to events again—she need only say so, and I would withdraw forever. And she has not done so. Oh, she has toyed with it a few times—turned them over in her head, toyed with them on the tip of her tongue like babies toying with small tin soldiers—but she never utters them out loud."
Why do you think I want to hear this? Seras thought miserably.
"The way people talk, you would think I stalked her against her will, but I have given her plenty of distance when she asked for it, and even promised to leave forever if she requested it. I even promised never to speak to her again forever more, and I turned to walk away, but I had scarcely taken five steps when she called out, 'I did not say never again,' and smiled that coy smile, her face peeking out from behind her shoulder and her parasaul."
If only she had told him to leave forever! Seras thought, Why does he think I want to hear this?
"She has the most brilliant mind I ever had the pleasure of conversing with," the Count said. "She is very well-educated, well-read, and well-informed about world events. Not petty trivialities like Lady Such-and-such's new hair or new salon furniture, but politics and law! She reads the newspaper as well as any man, and can converse with any gentleman in any party keeps up with politics, stocks and trade. While most women at these parties can barely remark upon anything else but the weather above their heads and the fashions before their faces, this young lady can out-debate any gentleman about the nature of religion, science, philosophy, and the very nature of human society."
This made Seras sick; this, she did not want to hear. She turned over on her bed and slammed a pillow over her head, pretending to go to sleep.
If she had hoped he would get the hint and leave, she was wrong.
"I always knew it was her intelligent eyes and her sharp wit that I admired most about her, from the moment I awoke and got a good look at her. Most of the other cloistered girls were silly, foolish, giggling and gossiping little girls, but she alone remained calm and composed. She saw to my rescue in a swift and orderly fashion, with Beautiful, clever, cunning, and intelligent all the
"She is witty, intelligent, and engaging. Every conversation with her is a battle of wits, which she always wins, but just barely. I actually find myself challenged when I speak to her! Between meetings with her I find myself needing to restock my repertoire of wit, and it is glorious! Oh, I have always longed for a worthy opponent in a conversationalist."
Seras felt sick; so sick, she felt she could barely endure it. She had given her voice to be with him, convinced that her beauty and her eyes and her smile, and her sweet devotion would be enough for him, but instead it was wit and words he craved in a woman!
Seras burst into silent tears and sobbed into her pillow, for that was all she did not have!
Agony streaked her heart every time she recollected someone (usually Schrodinger) calling her stupid, and she had no voice to speak! Her writing was also slow and clumsy. She and her master exchanged ideas occasionally, but he talked far faster than she could write, and soon he grew bored of constantly waiting and changed the topic to lighter
The end of their talk had been spoiled by his gushing about the church girl (Seras did not want to give the girl the dignity of even thinking her name), but it had given Seras a lot to think about. His story did explain so much; how he had experienced such profound marital bliss when he was young, and longed to experience it again. How he was fond of Seras because she reminded him of the daughter he had lost, although she wondered with despair of why he saw only a daughter in her and not a bride?
He himself noted the similarities between her and Integra; or at least their blue eyes and blonde hair. They had both also been maidens when they had met him; fresh young girls new to the world (Seras who had come to the surface from the bottom of the sea for the first time, and Integra, a cloistered sister who had been sheltered by her family and private schools all her life, and had met a strange man for the first time, without the deliberate introduction from her relatives or teachers), who saw him and fell in love with him; the first handsome man they encountered in their young lives.
If they were so similar though, why did he see Seras as the daughter and not Integra?!
And why did he still believe Integra had saved him? Surely he knew there was no storm when Integra found him, and that she had not gone into the water to pull him to shore? Surely he knew that Integra had not known his name when she met him, had not sang that song, and had not looked at him with love and adoration, but merely consternation and alarm? Surely he must have known that she was not the one that saved him?!
Seras had not told him that she had been the one to save him, because she felt there was no way to tell him without revealing that she was a mermaid. And she could not let him know she was a mermaid—a human's gaze was agony for a mermaid. When a human gazed upon them and knew them for what they were, comprehended their true nature, it was said to be agony; feel as though the human eyes were charring their bones, boiling their blood, scorching their skin, and singing their hair!
Okay, that last one was silly, Seras thought, but the rest was serious! (She momentarily forgot that a mermaid's hair was her pride and joy; considered more beautiful than her eyes, nose, lips, teeth and ears all in one.)
But still, a human's gaze was agony when they looked upon a mermaid and knew them for what they really were, which was why all mermaids avoided being seen by human eyes. Even the most daring and mischievous mermaids only mischiefed human things behind their backs, or before humans' dogs and human children too small to be taught what a mermaid was—but never in front of fully adult, comprehending human gazes. This was why most humans did not believe that mermaids existed, and most mermaids were content to keep it that way. None of them wanted to feel as though they were being tortured, boiled, and scorched alive by human gazes.
Seras herself had avoided telling the count what she was and how she had rescued him because she had been afraid that if his gaze caused her agony, it would be the end of her life with him. She was afraid that she could no more live beside him and enjoy his company if he knew that she had been a mermaid, than she could have before when she was a mermaid. She had gained a pair of legs so she could live beside him, to avoid the proverb, "A fish may love a bird, but where will they live?"
But she had also done so for another reason, and that reason was to hide what she really was. To hide the fact that she was a mermaid, so that his gaze did not cause her agony.
She had risked him falling for another, and stood by as he fell for another, because she had been afraid (desperately afraid) that all she had worked for would vanish. That the moment he looked upon her and knew her for what she truly was, she would not be able to bear the agony, and she would have to live forever with him looking away from her (which would not work, especially not when she did not have a voice, and the only way she could speak to him was with her eyes, her hands, and her body), or leave his side forever.
Yet, the more the count seemed to fall for the church girl, the more the little mermaid began to feel that she was losing him anyway, so she must risk losing him altogether to risk gaining him back.
With that resolved, Seras wrote a letter to the count… but she soon lost her nerve, and did not feel that she could directly tell him that she was a mermaid who saved him from drowning by swimming him to shore. So instead, she decided to poke holes in the obvious logic of Integra saving him (it had not been dark or storming when she found him, she had not sang a song when they met, she had found him on the beach instead of pulling him from the water, and so forth), and presented her questions to the count, asking how the church girl could have saved him when none of this was so?
But when Seras tried to bring this to his attention the next evening, he had given her journal a casual glance (as he always did) and confessed that he was not sure that Integra had saved him that night of the storm. In fact, he was not sure anyone had.
"It was probably a dream," he confessed, "Or a wistful fantasy that I had conjured to reassure myself that I was not fully abandoned or rejected by all in this world, and thus find a reason to live. Or perhaps it was a vision sent by God, telling me of the girl I am destined to be with; or perhaps an angel guiding my soul back to the living." He smiled, half-insolent, half-wistful. "It seems fitting that the woman I was destined to love so closely resembled the girl from the dream, the vision."
Seras was struck numb. Her brain was numb, and she could not even think of the words…
She hastily scribbled on the paper, She did not pull you from the water. She did not sing. Do you remember the song?
"Ah yes, the song," he remembered with fondness. "The song of the waves. I shall ask her about it on the morrow, if you are truly curious."
Seras was dumb-founded. Why would she be curious?! She just wanted him to realize that Integra was not the one so he would stop loving her and love Seras instead!
But she waited for him to learn, breathless with anxiety, curiosity, and dread, until he returned from some tea he met her in the next afternoon.
"I have asked her about the song, as you have requested, my little foundling," he said, "And you were correct to inquire about it. As it turns out, Lady Integra confesses that she did not sing a song the morning she found me (in fact, she has no gift for singing, she assures me), but that she heard what she thought was a song, someone singing, (perhaps that of a young maiden, she confessed at my urging, although she seemed doubtful), and it was following this song that led her to me."
He smiled, and it was pure rapture, "Further proof that we were meant to find each other. It could have been simply the song of the waves, or the sound of the sea echoing on the cove, or even some supernatural beauty (perhaps the angel that guided me from death) guiding her to where I lay. Such a song could be natural, or supernatural, but in either case it brought us together."
Frustration and violent sobs gripped Seras all at once. Did nothing, nothing prevent him from believing it was this girl he was meant to be with?!
Desperately, Seras scribbled, It was me.
He read it easily, and laughed.
"Yes, it was you, my little foundling," he kissed her forehead, "I found you on the waves just as Lady Integra found me so many moons before, and I knew you were meant to be mine just as I was meant to be hers. And I was proven correct, for you have been a dear companion and a comfort to me, ever since I had found you."
You didn't find me, she thought, Mr. Bernadotte did.
He regarded her with heart-melting affection, and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. "In many ways, you remind me of her," he said, and kissed her cheek and walked away.
Seras would have screamed and pulled her hair out if she had a voice.
This is the second half of the previous chapter. I know I should have posted this with the last chapter (especially since y'all have gotten used to nice long chapters), but it was difficult to write. Better half a chapter now than a full one a year from now, right?
Good news: I'm enjoying writing the chapter after this, and it's halfway done, so it should be out within the new few days.