[In the distance, the wolf keeps pace, trying to decide the best action available to him. It is his instinct to stay away. If he does that, then the only hurt that comes is from the stinging bitterness and disappointment that Trevor and Sypha never came back to the castle. Never wrote, never tried to find something like the distance mirror to contact him, never made an attempt to communicate. There is only the pain of what could have been, if they returned and Alucard admitted how important both were and how much he wanted them to stay, if only for a time.
But secrets will out. There are those that know his name here, and she'll become furious if she finds he is here from another. Hector, maybe, because the necromancer would. Geralt would not be a source, the man is as tight lipped as anyone Alucard has ever met. And...well, who knows what else might happen. In those moments, she'd be all fire and fury, how dare you not come find me? Were you that wolf I saw in the desert? and they'd be fighting about something else instead.
That fighting about something else instead is a deep temptation. Anything but the actual root of the problem, a heart wrenching mix of why didn't you communicate? and revealing what happened in the absence of the other two. How badly he had wanted company and how disasterous that desire had turned.
The wolf speeds ahead, until it is far, far apace of the wagon. There's a water refill station some miles ahead. It is there that Alucard waits, lingering and refilling water skins that he probably really should take into the wilderness with him.]
in which Alucard realizes that this is going to be a bad meeting no matter what
But secrets will out. There are those that know his name here, and she'll become furious if she finds he is here from another. Hector, maybe, because the necromancer would. Geralt would not be a source, the man is as tight lipped as anyone Alucard has ever met. And...well, who knows what else might happen. In those moments, she'd be all fire and fury, how dare you not come find me? Were you that wolf I saw in the desert? and they'd be fighting about something else instead.
That fighting about something else instead is a deep temptation. Anything but the actual root of the problem, a heart wrenching mix of why didn't you communicate? and revealing what happened in the absence of the other two. How badly he had wanted company and how disasterous that desire had turned.
The wolf speeds ahead, until it is far, far apace of the wagon. There's a water refill station some miles ahead. It is there that Alucard waits, lingering and refilling water skins that he probably really should take into the wilderness with him.]