"Master?"
Broken-off snoring snort and a grunt sounded.
"What is it, Poli—Ränee?" he grunted, his voice muffled as it seeped out to her through the wood of his four-poster coffin. The mechanical device lifted slowly upwards along the golden banisters of the king-sized… thing. Burgundy and black satin sheets were tangled haphazardly around the pale, unclad torso of Alucard, a hint of his smoky red-black boxers showing as his breathing moved his tangled inferno of ankle-length hair around his sprawled form.
"I didn't know what to do… I had a horrible nightmare…"
There was no reply from the pale, splayed bulk that was Alucard.
"There was a girl with short blonde hair that was all untidy and sort of poked out at the base of her skull," she continued nervously, "and it covered one eye, and she had fangs that had grown so big she couldn't close her mouth which kept shortening to normal size then growing again, and she kept swaying on her feet and muttering 'Though I walk through the shadow of the Valley of Death, I shall fear no evil, for in so fearing I give in to, and in so giving in to, I feed it and become it', and then she started screamind and something blunt and metal started pushing out through her chest, and—" She faltered she felt his vermilion gaze on her and looked down
One of Alucard's eyes had cracked open during her recount to watch her black-silk-pajama-clad figurewith sleepy thoughtfulness. He grunted and moved over.
"My bad."
Ränee blinked. He looked rather… melancholy, actually. She stood there pondering that for a while, just staring at his drawn face.
One red eye glared up at her again.
"Hurry up and hop in, it's cold and you're letting the warmth out of my canopy box."
She blinked a few times, decided, and then climbed carefully into the box. The lid slid shut behind her, spreading wings of inky darkness over them.
Damn it, now I can't get back to sleep.
"Sorry, Master."
"Wha'?"
"I heard your thought. Sorry."
"You can't sleep either?"
"No… I keep wondering about--"
"Her name was Seras Victoria. She was my fledgeling, and I wasn't a good mentor. She died."
"…Oh…"
"I'll tell you more about her later. After sleep!"
"Yess…" she yawned, "after sleep."