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luanna801 · 2 years ago

Note

Still looking for prompts? I've been searching for some how Arthur/Jack officially get together sometime post final fight and then getting to be happy <}3

(Anon, I am SO sorry this took so long, but the good news is I got inspired and wrote something much longer for this prompt! I really hope you enjoy it, if you do end up reading it.

You can also read this fic on Ao3, and thank you very much to @myroomismytardis for beta-ing for me!)

----

Jack has been happy for Arthur once, and he can be happy again.

Lady Rosamund is a charming girl, with coppery red hair and a pert smile, and he has no doubt that she will make a lovely Lady Godalming. No doubt, either, that Arthur seems lighter these days. More and more now, he sees Arthur's face lit up with the old warmth of his smile when they're together; hears the deep, rich sound of his laughter at shared jokes. After all the losses Arthur has suffered, it makes Jack's heart ache with joy to see it.

And if Lady Rosamund gives Arthur such felicity, what can he be but happy at that?

"At least we're not courting the same woman, this time!" Arthur says with a grin, and Jack smiles tightly in response. He has no eyes for Lady Rosamund, it's true. More and more, he realises, he has eyes only for the man in front of him.

But Jack has always known of his own abnormality, somewhere deep and unacknowledged. Arthur is quite another matter. Arthur is strong, hale, normal manhood, vital and true, and he must find love with someone who matches him.

And Jack will never be anything but happy for him when he does.

----

Arthur has always been a romantic at heart, quick and fulsome in his love, and so when Jack inquires politely after Lady Rosamund and is told that Art has news, he knows what to expect.

I will be happy for him. I will be happy for him. I will-

"I've broken it off with her," Arthur says, with a quiet shrug of his shoulders.

Jack can feel himself openly gaping, and the expression on his face must be rather comical, because Arthur nearly laughs.

"Is it really so surprising?"

"Well, I thought- the two of you seemed to get along so well-" he stammers.

"We do. I like her very much."

"But then why-"

"Liking and understanding are two very different things," Arthur says simply.

Jack smiles. "Is the lady such a very tough nut to crack, then?"

"No. I am."

Arthur sits down next to him, and the expression on his face is so sombre that the smile abruptly dies on Jack's lips. It's clear that his friend's mind is troubled, but Arthur says nothing more for a few long moments.

"I drove a stake through the heart of the first girl I ever loved, Jack," he says at last, his voice thick with misery. "Who could understand such a thing?"

The true answer, Jack knows, is that there is no understanding it. The sheer horror of the memory defies all logic and understanding, all the more so because it was not enacted by one cold-blooded killer against another, but between the two kindest and sweetest people he has ever known.

He knows this, but he also knows that it isn't the answer Arthur needs, and so he simply takes his friend's hand and grasps it in wordless sympathy.

"Someone will," he promises.

----

The first time they travel together again - hiking through the Scottish highlands, when Arthur manages to tear him from work for a few precious days - Quincey's absence is a constant and tangible thing beside them. Jack continually feels as though he might turn and see him, with his familiar bold strides and eager smile, urging the two of them further and higher. The empty space where he should be is something physical, and the silence without his laughter seems to echo through the mist around them.

Jack knows, without needing to ask, that Arthur feels it too, and when their eyes meet he feels comforted somehow by that silent understanding.

At night, in front of their campfire, they toast to the ones they've lost as they share a flask of wine. The ghosts still seem to linger around them, and yet as the night goes on, Jack finds the sense of melancholy fading. Before long he and Arthur are talking easily, laughing and joking together as they used to in the old days.

No- not quite like the old days, he thinks. Things are still quieter than they used to be, without the brightness of Quincey's presence. And perhaps he and Arthur are quieter too, more weighed down by grief and cares than they were in those days. And yet the easy warmth of each other's company, hearing Art's laughter as the campfire sheds a rosy glow across his face, is as joyful and familiar as it ever was.

As the hours pass by they somehow migrate closer to each other without ever seeming to make a conscious movement, until at last Arthur drops his head against Jack's shoulder and nestles against his side, their bodies fitting seamlessly as their fingers tangle together in their laps.

Jack goes still momentarily, mind racing, but after a brief pause he tightens his hold on Arthur's hand and resumes their conversation. They stay that way as the night lingers on, casually entwined together, reluctantly separating only when it comes time to prepare for bed.

And then Arthur is back at his side again, slipping next to him under the blankets and curling up against him as if it were the most natural thing in the world. Jack is acutely aware of the hammering of his heart in the quiet darkness around them, and it brings a flush to his skin to realize that Arthur must be able to feel it, with the two of them pressed so closely together. He almost wonders if Arthur can hear his thoughts as well, because they seem to clamour as loudly as his heartbeat.

Is this something we do now... ?

They've never hesitated to be physical with each other, affectionately clasping hands and squeezing shoulders, sharing occasional embraces. They've even slept in the same bed at times, but never... wrapped up in each other in this way. This feels different somehow, a level of intimacy they've never breached.

After a breathless moment, Jack gives in to temptation and reaches out to run his hand through Arthur's hair, gently combing and twisting the curls around his fingers, and Arthur's answering sigh seems to reverberate against him.

This, too, is something that they never do - or rather haven't done in years, since they were just boys at school together. Long years ago, in a time that felt at once more innocent and deliciously full of possibilities, a time when he didn't understand yet why his heart was pounding as though he was on the edge of doing something forbidden.

He's tempted to ask if Arthur remembers, but to do so feels like a confession he isn't ready to make.

----

After that night, something is indefinably different between them. The touches grow more frequent when they're alone, Art's hands trailing freely across his arms, his waist, the line of his jaw. Jack hesitates at first, uncertain what to make of it, but before long he starts reciprocating in kind.

That isn't even the real difference, though, he thinks. It's something in the very air between them that feels different, somehow comfortably domestic and electrifyingly charged all at once. He does his best to close himself off from the places his mind wanders sometimes when Arthur's hands are on him. Such a thing would not only dishonour Lucy's memory, it would no doubt shock and disgust Arthur himself to even know of such thoughts.

It's merely that Arthur is lonely, he knows, and seeking comfort from a friend as best he can. After all that he's suffered, such a thing is entirely understandable. And how could Jack possibly deny him whatever comfort he has to offer?

----

The only real difference between a madman and a sane one, Jack thinks sometimes, is in knowing which rules cannot afford to be broken.

He has always had his fair share of mad thoughts and madder desires, but he keeps such parts of himself in check, and so the world sees him as a sane man, a respectable one, qualified indeed to guide others from madness to sanity.

They are all raised to understand such rules, written and unwritten, but a madman is one who has lost his ability to understand what the consequences will be for crossing those lines; or else lost his ability to care; or perhaps to control his behavior and choose differently at all.

More and more, Jack wonders if he can truly call himself a sane man anymore.

It makes no difference that whatever is between him and Arthur does not feel like madness, but something utterly natural. Does every madman's lunacy not feel natural to him? Is that not the very essence of what madness is, for the absolutely bizarre to seem normal and logical?

Sometimes he feels himself tipping ever closer to the brink, and he wonders whether some things might be worth breaking the unbreakable rules for, whatever the risk might be.

----

"Do you ever actually play music on this thing?"

Arthur traces his finger along the edge of the phonograph as he peers at Jack curiously, and Jack fights back an inexplicable urge to blush.

"That wouldn't be professional," he mutters. "In an asylum... "

"Nonsense! It would do the fellows good. Music can be used for therapeutic purposes, can't it?"

Jack blinks at him in surprise. "How did you know that?"

"I read things, Doctor." Arthur glares in mock-offense. "I suppose you think I'm good for nothing but deep pockets and a pretty face?"

"It is quite pretty," Jack says, before he can think the better of it.

His gaze drifts back to the phonograph, mulling over the idea. Arthur is perfectly right - the technique has been seeing increasing success at many asylums. Some of Jack's own patients keep musical instruments in their rooms, but he knows that some asylums go even further, having the patients form bands or choirs, or holding concerts for them on occasion.

One particular patient comes to mind, a lanky young man who suffers from hysterical fits. The fits seem to come less frequently when he's calm, Jack has noticed, and he has a pronounced fondness for music. If he brought the phonograph down to the young man's room from time to time, he wonders...

"It's a good idea," he says aloud, turning back to Arthur.

"Is it?" Art positively beams at him. "I'll have to buy you some music, then."

"I do own some," he protests, and promptly regrets it when Arthur takes it as an invitation to start perusing the cylinders on his shelves.

"Oh? Anything good?"

"You know my tastes."

"Yes- it tends to be the musical equivalent of a thundercloud," Arthur teases, before his fingers dart out to grab something off the shelf. "Aha! What have we here?"

He bounds back to Jack's side, evidence in hand and a grin across his face.

"A romantic after all, I see!"

Jack glances down at the damning specimen, and feels a blush start to warm his face again. The cylinder is a recording of the waltz from Sleeping Beauty.

"I'm fond of Tchaikovsky," he offers weakly.

"I'm rather fond myself," Arthur agrees. He busies himself with the phonograph, movements quick and practiced, and a moment later the first powerful bursts of the song fill the room.

A smile lights across Arthur's face at the sound. "It really is incredible, isn't it? Do you remember-"

"The night we saw it together?"

It had been on a trip to St. Petersburg in 1891, and Jack had been enthralled with the ballet from the first chords of the prologue. Almost as enthralled, perhaps, as he had been by the two men sitting on either side of him.

He can't deny that the pleasant memories played a role in his choice to purchase this particular record.

"Yes." There's a wistfulness to Arthur's smile, but something else as well, a lingering warmth that Jack can't quite place. Something that seems to look towards the future as much as the past.

Jack swallows against the sudden thickness in his throat. "I could never forget."

The music slows into gentler, steadier sweeps, and Arthur starts to sway in time with it. "It does make you feel as though you were in a fairytale," he muses, seemingly to himself as much as to Jack. "Dancing in an enchanted castle, or a fairy glen..."

He waltzes around Jack's study, arms held out as though holding an invisible partner, and Jack can't quite hold the smile back as he watches. Art always feels like a fairytale prince come to life, he thinks - handsome and noble and true. And yet he also knows the deep sadness in his friend's heart, the dark places in his mind that no storybook character could fathom.

"You don't have a partner," he objects.

"Ah, but I do!" Arthur waltzes over and sweeps him a courtly bow, graceful and poised as always. "May I be your Prince Désiré, my beauty?"

You always are, Jack thinks, as he slips his hand into Arthur's.

He's never been a naturally graceful dancer like Arthur, and the unfamiliarity of being led in a waltz instead of leading makes it worse, leaving Jack stumbling over his feet and clutching awkwardly at his partner. But Art has no word of complaint, just smiling as he guides them through the steps, until at last Jack relaxes enough to let Arthur whirl them around the room.

It does feel like being in a fairytale - transported to a magical realm where anything is possible and any curse can be broken. Perhaps that's why in this moment he isn't thinking about the propriety of what they're doing, or what it means. He simply enjoys the feeling of being in the arms of the man he loves and imagining a world where his impossible dreams could be real.

It would be easy to blame what happens next on that: to say that he was caught up in a dream or fantasy or the spell of the music. The truth is that it is nothing less than an inevitability.

The music speeds up again, and Arthur spins him out before pulling him close in turn, at a dizzying pace that leaves Jack's heart racing. For a moment they rest against each other like that, and then as naturally as though it were the next move in a memorised series of steps, they lean in together until their mouths meet.

He ought to have been shocked, it will occur to Jack later, but in the moment all he can feel is a sense of joy and relief so intense that his knees almost buckle from it. He clings fiercely to Arthur, the two of them moving eagerly together until they stumble back against the edge of the desk.

Perhaps it's the momentary pain blooming in his hip that brings Jack to his senses, enough for him to finally disentangle himself from Arthur's arms.

"Jack--?"

Arthur stares after him in sudden bewilderment and Jack thinks how beautiful he is in that moment, with his mussed curls and red cheeks and his chest heaving as he catches his breath.

There are a thousand questions that he should ask, Jack knows. Questions about the law and the church and Arthur's legacy. But when he looks at the expression of hope and terror mingled on Arthur's face, he finds himself unable to ask a single one.

Instead he reaches out and takes Arthur's hand in his, and his heart swells as he watches the tension melt from his friend's face. The kiss he presses to Arthur's lips this time is brief and chaste, yet deliberate - a reassurance and an answer.

"Wait here," he says softly, and it must be a statement of Arthur's trust in him that the tension doesn't return, even when Jack turns and walks towards the door.

The lock turns into place with a decisive click.

#dracula #arthur holmwood #john seward #jack seward #holmward #arthur and jack #fanfic #fanfiction #love #romance #dracula fic prompts #my fanfic #bram stoker #dracula spoilers

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see-arcane · 2 years ago

Text

Meward

Summary: Within the mad and macabre months caught in Dracula's fangs, we have seen wolves and bats and rats forced to work toward evil results.

Now let's see the difference a cat can make.

For a proper visual for the eponymous Meward, head to Tumblr user @myroomismytardis' amazing blog and take a look at all the cat-ified characters from classic literature on display. Jack Meward, the little black cat with the gigantic eyes, is just one of many fine furry friends in The League of Extraordinary Kittyfolk. Thank you for making such an inspiring design, friend.

Ao3 link here

“Intolerable, unacceptable, and utterly, irrevocably insufferable. That’s you, you pretender. Yes, I said it! Pretender! Fraud! The most insidiously false example of your kind there ever was or will be! No, don’t you dare deny it. These last few weeks have been more than proof enough that you are entirely unsuited to the task required, to say nothing of your whole line. Nay, your full genus. And look at you there gloating! As if you were as proud to disappoint your bloodline as much as me! You little cad!”

Dr. John Seward had been standing outside the door with two attendants for the past five minutes listening to this and similar diatribes concerning some unknown traitor to a joint cause. There had been insults flung their way and apparent insults implied in silence as the man scoffed and gasped over his affronted sensibilities, stalking the room as he did. So far there had been rants and rancor and richest ire thrown about in such a way as to make the most churlish heirs pale before their fathers. Indeed, there was such a lilt to Renfield’s aggravation that it spoke of an almost paternal disappointment. He had worked and he had slaved and reared this unknown other up with his own two hands, and for what? Disobedience! Abuse! Mockery!

And so the ramble would circle around again.

John passed a glance to the men bookending the other side of the doorframe as if he might read an explanation on their faces. But no, his own confusion was reflected there. It was a strange twist in a madman already so full of sporadic facets, but this one doubly so for its seeming divergence from the major habits of his illness. Whether he was plying John for bait and animals to feast on for power’s sake or hailing the sudden religious apparition he had crowned with the imagined ability to bestow nameless gifts, there appeared to be a central focus on acquiring new strength for himself as constant motive. An impetus that always involved turning his gaze upward to cozen or coax for boons.

Now here he was inventing some entity to berate; an accomplice responsible for deceiving him or spoiling some goal outright. It wouldn’t be an entirely shocking result in other patients. Even ordinary prisoners of long sentences were known to either seek out or manifest some subordinate other to exercise authority over. But Renfield, he of the legion of flies, spiders, and birds, oh my, was already a veritable Cronus lording over a throng of tiny lives at his mercy. Perhaps he’d assigned some personification to one them..?

But no. That way laid the issue of many a new farmer or butcher who found themselves abruptly unable to take the blade to whatever livestock they’d made the mistake of naming and petting as they fattened.

“Look at this!” Renfield suddenly barked, stomping his way to another corner of the room. “Just look how simple I made it for you! Sitting there, whole and ready, and still you go for only a sip and nibble of what’s brought in the other way! Disgraceful. Wholly disgraceful. What? Oh, don’t you pretend it’s a matter of inability. You’re well past drinking alone. Yet even with what you’ve gained, still, still you are a mere mote. A speck. A crumb among the veritable giants that slink and prowl so efficiently on their lonesome. I could flick you right back out, do you know that? I could! You are that laughable a specimen!”

Renfield stalked and stomped and huffed. Then, in a conspiring tone:

“In fact, I will. I will flick you out. But not by the way you slunk in, oh no. You’ll not break in again, you cheat, you burglar of time and effort. There are authorities about who can deal with you in expert fashion. You are evicted as of today. Oh? Think I’m bluffing?” There was a sudden pounding against Renfield’s side of the door, so quick and heavy it rattled the thing in its frame. “Doctor! Get Dr. Seward here at once! There is an intruder in my room! Doctor!”

The attendants looked to him. John nodded. When they unlocked the door, Renfield was in his usual safe distance from the threshold, his arms crossed in a manner that seemed more fitting for a landlord smug at the sight of the police coming to remove an itinerant tenant.

“Well, what fair timing that you were passing by.”

“So it was. I heard you have someone here you want to be rid of?”

“Most expediently. I have tried, Dr. Seward. Most earnestly and most fruitlessly I have tried to wring the results and compliance I’d hoped for from this lost cause of a fellow inmate, but I can try no more. The cause with him is hopeless because he is hopeless. Mad I may be, but at least before him I did not suffer the madness of one trying to grow a tree from a beansprout or, more aptly, trying to yield a full harvest from a field of salt. If ever there was an entity made on this Earth who could order their very anatomy to be an instrument of sabotage, it is the preening villain who has imposed on my hospitality and patience.

“Weeks! Nearly an entire month I have tried to make progress with the thing, and I’ve barely an ounce of proof to show for it on him! And his stubbornness! His stubbornness, or else sheer weak-willed cowardice in the face of instinct, has frustrated me as I never thought possible for so insignificant a creature to inflict! I cannot tolerate his presence any longer and I plead, no, demand you excise the lout before I am forced to take my own measures.”

John nodded cautiously at this. Inwardly he was ticking over the possible responses he might have to make to appease the man without sparking some new fury. Did he expect them to pantomime carrying out an invisible intruder? If so, where were they meant to grapple the air? It was as John was pondering this that his eye happened to fall upon two glints of color shining under Renfield’s bed. A pair of emeralds twinkling in shadow.

“Renfield—,”

But his patient had followed his gaze already. With a mix of triumph and irritation, the man darted down and swiped at the dark. Then plucked a piece of the dark away as if scooping up a ball of cinders. The cinders mewed thinly.

“Ah, thought you could hide from your ousting, did you? Think again. This is the criminal himself, Dr. Seward. A thief of potential and promise and, as you can see, a clear failure as a cat. Look!”

With his other hand he gestured to the corner of the cell nearest to the door. A freshly dead bird laid there. As did a small saucer that looked to be of the kind used for the patients’ meals, with some bits of nibbled food still present.

“Again and again, he chooses the plate over the prey! I tried only giving him birds, but he refused anything more than a sniff before he went sulking and starving away. I had no choice but to suffer his spoiled wants and feed him from my own meals or else lose the opportunity entirely. An opportunity that was itself a lie. He is too small, Dr. Seward, and he seems determined to remain so despite my best efforts. Even if he were a veritable rugby ball of a cat it would not matter, for he has no lives in him but his own useless nine! Oh, I know, I know, you will say, ‘But he is only a kitten, Renfield, growth takes time, Renfield, even stray cats will turn to scraps before they deign to hunt, Renfield!’ I tell you, he is an exception. He conspires, Dr. Seward. With his own body, he conspires. I shall suffer him no more.” Then, in a voice so small John almost did not catch the addendum that seemed almost to choke him, “I cannot risk it.”

Before he could register it, John found Renfield had cut the distance between them and thrust the tiny handful into his custody. The attendants tensed to act behind him, but Renfield shot just as quickly away to make a show of glowering out the window with his back to the lot of them. His arms were crossed again and his hands gripped his elbows so tightly they shook.

“Take him away, Doctor. Foist him on some pampering lady or other with room in her reticule for the ridiculous little thing. I wash my hands of him.”

“…Of course. I’ll see what I can do. Thank you for bringing this to our attention, Renfield.” The kitten gawped up at him. Then tried to turn and wriggle to face Renfield. Another half-mute mew escaped. Renfield bristled at the sound.

“Get it away, Doctor. Please.” John gestured to the attendants. They all retreated into the hall, locking the door after them. Almost the instant the bolt slid home, there was another shout, “Dr. Seward! Doctor, are you still there? There is one thing more! It’s important!”

“Yes, I’m still here,” he called through the door. “What is it?”

Then, quite clearly, so that the attendants could hear it too and only half-succeed in stifling their grins when they caught it: “His name is Meward.”

“…Pardon?”

“Meward. Doctor Meward in full, but we know each other well enough to dispense with titles.” John would swear he heard a smile in the man’s voice. “That’s all, Doctor.”

This was, naturally, not all.

Not when word of ‘Dr. Meward’ had circulated first through the staff, then the patients, and even to the occasional visitor to the asylum before the week was out. For reasons that defied logic, Dr. Seward found he did not have the heart—or, more pressingly, the appropriate opportunity—to donate the creature to another caretaker. He had thought perhaps there was a chance that Lucy might take him on. It really was a spectacularly pitiful animal and so was prone to pulling heartstrings with the power of his massive evergreen stare.

In fact, he had expected himself fully in the clear when he made a somewhat red-faced return to the Westenra estate in tow with Arthur and Quincey. Lucy, at first showing a slight pale strain under the ruddy vigor she had shown on their last encounter, had bloomed anew with delight on seeing the scanty mound of fur in his palm. Her jubilation doubled on hearing the creature’s regrettably unchanged name.

“Oh, that is a perfect choice, absolutely perfect!” she cooed as she cradled the bundle now purring in her hands. “He’s got much the same eyes as you, John.” But as soon as the compliment dared to light a blaze in his cheeks, her next words doused it: “I do wish I could keep him all to myself, but my mother always falls into hacking fits around cats. I’m afraid I can’t have him here.” She looked plaintively from Meward to John to Arthur. “Maybe..?”

“The dogs are amiable enough,” Arthur admitted, if sheepishly. “Though they’d need to get acclimated. They have a habit of chasing after any little thing that moves. But I’m sure once they got used to each other it would work out well enough.” An unspoken, ‘Maybe,’ hovered at the end of his words and glowed doubtfully in his face.

It was much the same as Quincey’s expression had been when he admitted, “Well, sure, I had a few old mouser cats as a boy. Only, I don’t claim to know anything about raising a kitten. I wouldn’t trust myself not to botch it, Jack.”

Regardless of these snags, Lucy spent the visit thoroughly enraptured with Meward to the point that she took one of her own hair ribbons off her head for him to play with. Once he’d tired of it, he allowed her to fasten the thing about him as a collar.

“You can’t have him going around bare, John. Otherwise they won’t know he’s anything but a stray. You must get him a proper collar soon.”

John had promised to look into it.

Some short and endless months later, the ribbon would remain. Meward would be too fond of it to let it go. Likewise for John.

But that was for later.

For now, John had to reconcile with his tiny shadow. More, with the unignorable fact that his presence seemed to have a positive effect upon the atmosphere of the asylum. Almost irritatingly so. What had begun as him simply running out of friends to trust with the animal, combined with his not having any personal home staff to entrust with the minding of him on top of household duties, was now a matter of ‘improving morale.’ So he languishingly informed his phonograph. Whether in his office or in the hall, Meward’s perching on a shoulder or chasing his feet seemed at once to quell anything from ire to melancholy to simple boredom in onlookers.

Often with shouted cries of, ‘Afternoon, Dr. Meward. And associate.’ Or else just, ‘Hello, Doctors,’ always nodding first to the kitten. Renfield appeared to be in much repaired spirits upon catching wind of this, now demanding to speak with ‘his’ doctor before offering any word to John.

“Ah, see?” he hummed to Meward as the animal stared at him. “Is it not wise that I shooed you from your lacking status as a failed catalyst for my purposes? Clearly your chicanery has endeared you to the medical profession.” Renfield gestured broadly at John. “You even have your own nurse.”

The obvious jab did not land as well as it might have on an earlier date. He had too much of curiosity and worry for the man to feel any real brunt of insult now. From the increasingly wild swings in his mood to the lapses of haunted lucidness, R.M. Renfield now stood nearly even with John’s distress for Lucy’s condition. Though if even a fraction of Arthur’s worry proved as true as his latest message implied, his own worry was due to triple. Laconic though Quincey may be, it was Arthur who was the fellow of infinitely fewer words in their trio. Whenever he deigned to offer a phrase in speech or text, it mattered. For the moment, he shelved such thinking in favor of his patient who sought to agitate to hide agitation.

“And have you anything you wished to share with doctor or nurse tonight, Renfield? You seemed upset over something from what the attendants implied—,”

“No!” Renfield gnawed his tongue so hard that it bled. He sucked at it, his face convulsing between exultation and concern. “No. I was mistaken. Or, no, I cannot say. And I cannot say why I cannot say. Never mind.” He gnawed, sucked, paced. Meward turned his owlish gaze up to John. A small paw swung gingerly at his mouth while his tongue flicked out and tapped his black nose. As he did, a whiff of briny breath puffed out on the air. Memory prickled. John cleared his throat.

“I’ve discovered something he likes to hunt. Other than bootlaces and pens.”

Renfield slowed in his pacing.

“Oh? What is that?” He cast a sidelong glance at Meward, who paused in his assault on John’s lapel to gape back. “He certainly doesn’t look much bigger. Though I suppose his coat is better.”

“As it should be. He’s taken a liking to fish.” He coaxed Meward’s claws out of his shirt collar and moved him to another hand. “It’s only an occasional treat, but he seems to be aware enough of where it comes from that I have caught him trying to prey on market displays of seafood when we’re out. Which I believe shows a clever choice on his part. Marine life is consistently healthier for the plate than any cattle or pork. And,” he was careful not to look directly at Renfield, but in a nigh scheming way into Meward’s eye, “they are almost always bloated with the nutrition of animals they’ve eaten prior to finding themselves in the fisherman’s net.”

Renfield’s pacing slowed to a stop.

“Is that a fact?”

“It is. I don’t often go poking beyond the edges of medical sciences, but recent reading from a French naturalist, Professor Pierre Aronnax, has been most illuminating. While hardly all of the ocean’s livestock are carnivorous, the bulk of sea life we collect for our own dinner is redolent with underwater hunters of little lives versus the farmland’s bevy of coddled cows, pigs, and hens.” He still did not look up any higher than Renfield’s frozen feet or Meward’s glistening stare. “Which is all without mentioning the miracle a man devours whole every time he treats himself to a crustacean. Lobsters especially. Not only are they fellow omnivores, but this Aronnax fellow theorizes that they may have properties suggesting an extraordinary longevity. It is only a hypothesis, he writes, but he believes that if the creatures are left to their devices without a fatal attack by a predator, they can live well over a hundred years.”

“Do you take me for a child?” Renfield snorted. “I am well grown out of such fairy tales as immortal beasts. Especially supposed immortals one can boil and set on a platter with a side of butter sauce.”

“Not immortal, simply endowed with an anatomy that lasts longer than the expected norm. I found it a strange supposition myself, but he makes a fair case, especially in tandem with the examples he’s put forth in the article—,”

“What article would that be? Some journal of quackery? You must not believe everything you read, Doctor.”

“I don’t. I only thought it an interesting concept, and one with impressive enough evidences that it was worth wondering about. Imagine tucking into a bit of shellfish only for taste’s sake, not realizing you were eating an animal who might have had more than a man’s whole lifetime ahead of it before you swallowed it all down. It is almost sad to picture.”

“Yes. Terribly.” Renfield fidgeted another moment. From the corner of his eye, John saw he was eyeing the window suspiciously. Perhaps searching. Apparently satisfied, the man donned one of his more familiar sycophant performances, sidling near enough that the attendants stood up straighter. Then, “Again, Dr. Seward, what article might you refer to? I am certain it will at least be good for a laugh and it would be such a welcome diversion from the usual softcover twaddle I flip through…”

John provided a copy of Aronnax’s piece a quarter of an hour later. That morning, he heard that Renfield’s latest crop of spiders had disappeared—flung out the window in a skittering spray that nearly scared a pedestrian out of their wits when a harvestman landed on his shoe. Not long after, Renfield had started wheedling the attendants to ask the kitchen if there wasn’t any seafood to come on the menu. Summer’s seasonable window was well past, he knew, but he had just now been struck with a terrible craving for seaside cuisine. He would trade every spider in the world for a crabcake and every bird for a lobster tail.

Hearing this, John had looked to Meward. The kitten had his own paperwork to ponder on the desk now; quite blank, but he refused to leave John, his forms, his pen, or his beleaguered hand alone until he had his own work to attend to. His unblinking eyes lifted up to find John’s.

“My thanks for the consultation, Doctor.” He set down his pen. Taking the sign, Meward trotted across the desk and bunched himself up under his palm. “A brilliant idea.” Meward purred his agreement.

A note was made to make inquiries as to budget and ability in getting the kitchen a stock of fresh seafood. He would see to it once this trouble with Lucy was taken care of.

Lucy’s trouble was taken care of. Twice.

R.M. Renfield’s only once.

It was not until after the Harkers’ trouble was seen to—this time finally, finally by seeing to the end of the one seeding trouble all along—not until after Quincey Morris went into the ground as a last miserable toll, that John could bring himself to visit any of the graves alone. Lucy’s. Quincey’s. Renfield’s.

On visiting the last’s simple plot, John brought along Meward in his coat. No longer quite a kitten, but still petite enough to fit in an inner pocket. The cat stared wonderingly at the marker for a time. He then paced away, seeming to search for something among the other graves. He returned on dainty steps with that something in his mouth. A dead bird. He laid it on Renfield’s plot and then curled himself around John’s leg, staring up.

If asked, even by Van Helsing, he could not have explained why this was the moment that burst the dam anew.

Nor why this eruption was so horridly raw compared to his past collapses. He had wept whole oceans since the loss of Lucy, it seemed. For twice dead Lucy, for Mina and her damned undying, for Quincey bleeding his life out on the snow, and now, here, last and so criminally considered least until it was too late, Renfield. Renfield who had died as a man neither comprehended nor heeded in his last desperate throes. Renfield who had died to shield a young woman he had befriended for all of an hour over simple kindness and equal regard. Renfield who Dr. John Seward had never healed, only housed or hindered or harkened to for study’s sake.

He crumpled to his knees there among the dead who’d died ill and insane for lack of understanding. Face in his hands, all the horror and hate of self folded back on itself a hundred times over. Arthur did not need his shoulder. Van Helsing did not need his confidante. The Harkers did not need his brave face. His staff and his patients did not need his professional posture or imposture. Nothing was needed here, for no one was alive to need anything.

So out it came. All those deepest acidic tides of unshared grief that could never be dared in the audience of friend or phonograph or the fierce eyes of those who saw and judged the faintest failure of mind as failure of soul, because that was what he was, a failure of psyche and ability who was nothing, who could do nothing but look on, be a warm body, a recorder of others’ misery while he sat and stared and failed and failed and failed them—

A warm ball of fur was worming its way onto his lap. Then up under his jaw, trying to squeeze itself between his hands and his tears.

John looked down. Meward looked up. Blinked once, slow. Then resumed trying to grate himself against John’s face and hands and neck and anywhere else he could reach, purring like thunder as he did. John snuffled and swallowed back another hoarse noise. He laid both hands on the cat to stroke him. Minutes passed on and on until they became an hour. John picked himself up, cat in hand.

“Thank you, Doctor,” he breathed, pausing to tidy the skewed ribbon. “You have a true talent.”

Meward mewed. It was a purely affected sound. The kind he made either to win another round of petting or a treat or a dash of catnip. John supposed he could pay for his services with a medley of all three at home.

A year later, with the asylum behind and the future ahead, the private psychiatric practice of Dr. John Seward was making elated waves through the medical grapevine. It was recommended by most anyone in the Purfleet area—likewise for even the most distant neighbors—that Dr. Seward was the man to go to before anyone started throwing around panicked thoughts of sanitorium stays or the druggist or a mesmeric cure. Go to Seward first, comes the suggestion from all walks.

Talk to him. Talk until you’re blue. Let him hear it all, however strange, however haunted or haunting, and he will neither balk nor sentence you to a straitjacket. Dr. Seward actually listens. More, he keeps confidences. He lays out alternatives the patient themselves might take before being flung headlong to the pharmacy or a locked room. Talk. Be heard. Be helped.

And don’t mind the cat staring in the corner.

He is a colleague and he’s there to help too.

#taking a break from tormenting Jonathan Harker for fluffy kitty fic time :3c #Now Back to the Horrors #really though little bitty Jack Meward's design is ridiculously charming #I made my own plushie of the little guy I loved him so much #and now he's got his own fanfic #fanwork turducken #jack meward #meward #jack seward #john seward #r.m. renfield #dracula #my writing

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