He's coming down the stairs to her, beaming. "There! This is better, isn't it?"
"Better?" She blinks. Remembers, suddenly, conversing in the cabin with him, the cabin, her dismal reality. She looks around. Nothing hurts here, there is no blood and no horror; it is indeed better. She smiles. "Ah. Yes."
It seems to mildly surprise him. "Oh, good – you do remember."
She can remember bits and pieces of the cabin, now, and she also remembers that she's spent time conversing with him here before. Which is fascinating. "Will I remember this when I wake up?" she asks. "And more importantly, will you? Am I only dreaming, or...?"
He takes up a goblet of – not wine – from the table and takes a sip. "Your mind, Agatha, is a wonder." He smiles at her. "That's an excellent question."
"Which you have not answered."
"Does that tell you anything?" he counters. "If you'd dreamed me up would I be this resistant to your commands?" He puts down his drink and dips a finger. Licks it lasciviously. "Or would I be... pliant... to your every-"
"Count."
He laughs and cleans himself efficiently. "I'm here with you. We are both dreaming of this together, and if you have any lucidity when you next awaken, I can confirm it for you in the cabin."
"Please do." He's right; her mind is working well here. "The code word will be... oh… hedgehog."
"Hedgehog." He gestures for her to take a seat. "Interesting choice. Impossibly prickly to the eye, and yet, a soft pink underbelly that-"
"Please. I was reading about hedgehogs at the convent," she interrupts testily, "Before poor dead Jonathan Harker arrived." She wonders if he's right. She doesn't like to think that her mind might not be working as well as it ought – or at least, not as well as his. She has almost every conceivable disadvantage already; sharp wits are almost all she has left and she'll be defeated for certain if they fail her.
His weaknesses, on the other hand, are few, but she is keeping a list.
His hunger is the most obvious one, and right now, he's watching her hungrily. It can't be a hunger for blood, though; he has a glass of it right there and he's sipping as he stares.
She frowns. "That can't be mine," she recognizes. "If you were siphoning from me by the cupful I'd never have made it out of Budapest."
He shrugs, gracefully. "I told you, we're dreaming."
"Mm." In that case she should be grateful that all he's imagining is sipping neatly from crystal. He could be transforming this place into an abattoir, ripping into her veins in bestial frenzy, if he chose.
"Yes," he agrees – apparently in response to her thoughts. Or perhaps just to the expression on her face? "I have absolutely thought about that. As well as about other pleasures."
"Other pleasures?" she echoes flatly – cool clinical curiosity, a tone designed to suck all the mystery out of the conversation. "You mean sex?" He seems displeased by her matter-of-factness, so she persists. "I'm afraid I'm not really interested – you'll recall I am a nun."
He gives a theatrical scowl. "Oh, don't lie to me."
"It's not a lie. I've always preferred conversation to sex, with the right partner." She smiles at him, and he raises his glass as though acknowledging a compliment.
He may believe he enjoys compliments, but she knows what it is that really keeps him crawling back to her. She gives him some. "Don't look so smug," she says, "I'm not flattering you. I'm saying that with your lack of self-control, sex with you would probably be rut, rut, rut like a beast and then it's over, almost before it starts. I've had that before. It's underwhelming."
He does look offended, but only for a moment. There is something else. He stares at her for a while, not smiling, but somehow she senses that he is smiling somewhere. He knows something. She wonders what. She hasn't given sex to him, has she?
"Agatha..." When he finally speaks his tone is soft and almost kind. "You know that when I drink people's blood I take them into myself – their knowledge, their skills. You know that, right?" Full of smirking pity.
She nods. Tries to clamp down on thoughts of deceiving him, in case he's suggesting that he is able to read her mind.
But it turns out he's going in an entirely different direction. "I just devoured an entire convent full of nuns," he reminds her. "Do you really think I could be lacking in self-control right now?"
She thinks about that, and finds herself recoiling from him. It's possible to not hate him – to forgive him, even – when she thinks of him as a ravening beast enslaved to his nature, but to learn that he is wreaking this slaughter voluntarily, purposefully, makes her stomach turn.
"You see?" he says, gliding towards her, still oozing corrupt amusement. "My restraint is not failing me at all, Agatha. Yes, I've drained a couple of people over the last few nights... but it was never them I was trying to preserve." He's reached her now; she is frozen. He reaches out to play with the ends of her hair.
Which lie neatly, because he has combed them for her.
Unacceptable. "Take your foul hands off of me," she says suddenly, cold. She sees surprise, then confusion, then (shame) anger a long moment later.
Then he pulls a playful pout, a transparent attempt to mask what she has seen. "Oh-..."
"Don't touch," she insists, stepping back, hands raised. "How dare you insult me in this way?"
He blinks. "Insult you?" He cocks his head. "I thought you'd be flattered."
"Did you? You thought I would want you to prolong my life at the expense of others? Did you think that of me?"
That brings him up short. Then he looks pained. "Agatha, they're..."
"Children of God, like everyone else," she reminds him stubbornly. As if, having just devoured her sisters, he doesn't know.
He hisses pssh and waves that away. "You are worth ten thousand of the-"
"No." She doesn't even let him finish. "Be quiet. That's not acceptable to me."
He's quiet. He's staring at her, mouth open and working as if he wants to argue, but is at a complete loss as to what to say.
"You worried earlier that I might find your love pathetic," she says. "I don't. But I do find it repugnant, if this is what you mean by love."
"I don't- I, I don't love you," he objects, stammering. "And how did you-"
"You do. And it's costing people their lives and I cannot allow that." She feels dizzy and unwell – the way she feels on waking. He's losing command of the dream, losing the ability to keep her here. Maybe he has stopped drinking from her; maybe she is putting him off his appetite at last.
He seems to recognize the same concern. "It would be best if you stop agitating me," he says, jaw tight. "For everyone's sake. Thus far I've exerted influence over the rest of the passengers to keep everything sailing along smoothly, but I'm afraid if you keep interfering with me then I may well lose my grip on them and who knows what will happen."
Threats. She understands it as a victory. "I would like to go back to the cabin now, please," she says clearly. "And I would like to make my peace with God, and then I would like to die."
She can feel the pillow beneath her head, feel the pain and exhaustion of her body. She clings to the sensations, and tries to claw her way back to the living world by force.
She realizes, just as she succeeds, that she has one more thing to say to him. "What I want you to take from me," she grates out, physically, "When you kill me, is the understanding that what you do to people is wrong. That you can, and must, do better."
She hopes that he heard her. She doesn't think she'll have another chance to say it; she doubts they will be sharing dreams again.
The End.
Wahh! This is no better! I still have no plan for how they could move forward together, so, I guess I'll give up and stop here, and assume that things just played out the way they did on the show. Awwww. What a bummer. Thanks for reading, let me know what you thought!