Re: [Penny Dreadful(s): Mina, Vanessa and Victor.]
[Mina laughed, the sound bright like bells, and mad like hatters. She laughed, because there was no deity.] Nothing waits after death, dearest sister. There is nothing. No warm arms to encircle you in love, no family waiting to usher you to a better life, no fires burning your skin with licks of red tongue. There is nothing. No matter who you harm, who you wrong, who you kill. There is nothing, and no reason to do good here, in this place that insists we walk about in corsets. [Here, fingers pressed to belly, white over lavender and bone.] This is all there is, and why abide by society's ridiculous rules? [She asked it uncaring, because it was all out now, all the ugliness laid bare. She was maggots and flesh fallen off bone, even if she was outwardly lovely, pale and starved and all the more haunting for it.]
You knew? [She giggled then, more madness in the face of a non-existent God.] You knew I lived with him. You knew I was thus. [She glanced from Vanessa, then to Victor, and there was childish madness upon her features.] You knew? I didn't. I'd no idea until he came to me, told me, informed of all the things I did not recall. [Her expression turned betrayed, a hurt thing with gaunt cheekbones.] Things you did not tell me, though both of you knew it well enough. [Sweet again, sugar and how many lumps do you take in your tea?] Didn't you?
[Vanessa said Alexei did not love her, and Mina's eyes were beryl and fixed, dark upon the sister of her childhood.] Dracula, for that is his name, loved me. You understand nothing dearest sister, there with your fear of things that make you feel. Both of you, fearful of flesh and feeling, trapped by your own trepidation.
[Don't, Victor said, and Mina's gaze slipped to him, silk, and back to the woman in the church. She stepped close, close, and for all that she was dead, hungering, she smelled alive and too sweet. Much, much too sweet, like deathbeds, and that was the hunger. But she didn't grab, nor did she make a move to sink fangs into pale skin.] Victor will not save you, dearest sister, should you be expecting it of him. He is weak. [Her gaze then, back over to Victor and fond and fond, like the sun shining on Spring's new grasses.] Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget. Is that not so, Victor, my darling?