Once more, Arianna listened to the tale of Gabriel (although by that time he was narratively the monster she so loathed). It wasn't quite as short a story as he'd intended it to be, the sky around them darkening considerably all while he spoke.

Shadows danced around the strange electric fire that the huntress produced from her bag, although neither paid much heed to the light that their hostess had so generously provided. Odd as he found the device to be, the vampire was glad that their arrival hadn't been telegraphed by a rising plume of smoke. There was no guarantee that their presence went unnoticed, however it was a good sign that they hadn't been molested in the middle of the story.

Ever prepared for an assault, Arianna kept her hand poised over her weapon. No spectacle had been made of it, but he noted that over the course of the night, her tense grip had slackened and she had even looked at peace as her lids began to flutter.

"Aria...?" Typical. Bloody typical.

Night not yet at it's close, there came from the mortal no more grander response than an unintelligible mumble. A soft crease in the middle of thrashing waves, a personal treasure lost to the seas of time. Just barely able to keep her head up in a semblance of alertness, the huntress swayed indecisively in her seat before acquainting herself with defeat. What a blow that must have been for her pride.

Despite nearly comprising an unofficial third party member, time was never going to be a friend it seemed. Gathering the pieces of this artifact wouldn't just happen overnight, nor would the return of the real enemy, but it certainly didn't help that they were still bogged down by the need to rest. Granted, he himself wasn't some miracle that was above sleep altogether, but the time he took to regain his strength was quite different from what it took her.

"Come," resignation all that was left him, the vampire spoke as if some part of the woman were still listening, "Little Aria."

Standing in a single fluid motion that rocked the huntress away from her unlikely perch, he eyed the nearby shadow of a small stone hovel. Provided that this was even such a realm that knew the orange glow of warmth, the ramshackle marker seemed stable enough to his eyes. Columns creeping with a dewy green ivy, the bricked walls were strong enough to provide more than adequate coverage from the environment.

Catching the human as she slumped too far forward, he gave the laced curve of her shoulder a gentle nudge. Startled awake for a minute more, the slayer of demons and monsters the world over emitted an overlong yawn that almost made the man within feel drowsy. Traveling by portal took a rather large toll on the body, and listening to even the most masterfully woven chronicle could best a better man. Or woman. She was too tired to fight with finding the right way to put it, so she reluctantly took the hand being offered.

"Fine, fine." Scarcely able to finish her own sentence, it fell on him to bring her to the most private of the shabby shelters. Unfortunately, that also meant the most cramped of them, but at least she would be too tired to make it even more of an issue than it needed to be.

Too proud to admit otherwise, her mortal coil was far more susceptible to the elements; experience a cruel master at times, he was all too familiar with making camp in all manner of territories. Raining forests of sentinel and pine, leaking clay caverns partially submerged below hidden waterfalls, hostile fields that spanned far beyond what the eye could see, leaving one feeling completely naked. Even now, there were still faint memories of sleepless nights spent toiling in the land of the dead.

Present location hardly accommodating, what concerned Dracul now was the matter of their safety. Alter as suitable for sacrifice as it was for slumber, there was a place for the huntress to settle her bones... a place wide enough for the both of them, truth be told. Spacious enough for them to sleep comfortably abreast, it was not propriety that gave him pause but the rotted door, the lack of life that filled him with disquiet.

Much as it pained him to allow, the fact of the matter was that they were vulnerable, even with the limited aid of the other. And it would have been worse if they were to get too far apart. No more fond of the notion that they had to rely on each other than she would have been, he hauled her into the crypt.

Head rolling into his chest as he hoisted her leather-clad figure into his arms, Arianna seemed so tiny and fragile against the thick enamel of his gauntlets. Heartbeat a faint murmur beneath restrictive layers of protection, her pulse thrummed against the skin of her neck, elongated temptingly by a waterfall of sable sapphire. Thirst rising in the back of a parched throat, Dracul felt his gaze following a loose strand of the night as it fell across the edge of her acid-colored collar and spilled over the fabric armor that shielded her chest.

Rosemary swirled peacefully through the air, wafting ever so delicately to the nose. A loaf of warm, fresh-baked bread sat stationary on the tabletop as it settled, proudly dressed in sunflower seeds. Marie had spent hours at the oven, peering at the dough to keep it from burning. Golden-orange light was failing over the tablecloth by the time that she called in her husband to eat.

Cobalt in the silver wash of the moon, the trailing framework led the gaze of the predator from the unguarded angle of her cheek to the steady pounding in her jugular. As for the man, there was something more to the beacon, something that began at the sweetheart neckline of the woman's corset. Emerald and ebony, it drew a stirring scarlet line to the pressed flesh below the lace shrug, the feminine curvature that threatened to burst free at a moment's notice. He hadn't really stopped to consider that part of the woman before.

"You're warm." Not entirely lost to the world as of yet, the huntress peeked up at the vampire through a fan of dark lashes, almost liking the picturesque view.

Abashed that he should be caught at such an undignified moment of weakness, Dracul hastily tore his eyes away from the female and fixated them upon their destination instead. Sleeping arrangements so much simpler with Claudia and her gigantic protector, the vampire berated himself for the sudden call to the untended blood beating just within reach.

"Stay?" Had she been even a fraction more awake, Arianna would have elaborated on the request, tacking on a 'with me' at the very least. Provided she were even more alert, she would have found a way to work in that the inquiry that he remain close was only so that she could benefit from the scant warmth of his coat, nothing more. Ever since meeting Sonja, she had become much more adamant that her every move meant nothing.

Stay? Obviously neither was going to stray very far from the other until their business was concluded, so it was only natural that his mind inferred the word to have a deeper meaning. Intelligence screaming that the odds were far from in their favor, it seemed unlikely that this meaning was anything long-term. How could it have been, when her father had slain his son? The only part of Marie that lingered on in this bleak new world, and it was gone, all because of a human... Arianna's father, no less.

Mind circling back through all the cruel ways that fate had connected them before they had ever even crossed paths, Gabriel frowned at the serenity that had claimed the huntress in her sleep. She claimed so fiercely that he had wronged her, that he was the only one that had committed foul deeds in this tale, yet her hands were no cleaner than his own. How many dark creatures had she killed, how many that hadn't deserved it in the moment? No, there was no such thing as innocence or true goodness...

But there was was remorse.

Again, I really really wished that more things specified the actual timeline of events. Does Venom happen over a six month period like I've been hearing? Are Nathan Drake's adventures all over the course of a day, or is there a lot of downtime looking over books that we aren't seeing? I'm not saying we need to stay with the characters every single second while they're sleeping or peeing or what have you, but it would be nice to know that more time is passing than what we think. Or maybe that's just me. I have no clue. (I apologize, at the time of writing this mini-rant these were just really recent for me, hence, they get made into examples).