Final

So... here we are again. You're dying and you have no idea who you are... This isn't the first time for us you know.

You may not be able to hear me, or see me, but I know you can feel me, deep down in this blackened mess that we call a soul.

So, how about I impart my final memory before we see if fate spares us?

The year, was October 31st 1893, one hundred and twenty-five years ago, a time where I still walked the earth... though not for long.

I was old Charlie. Far older than anything had a right to be, I still remembered sitting in the grand hall that wasn't so grand anymore, knelt before a painting i'd torn from the wall which I had been staring at for days, in quiet contemplation.

As I settled in the ruined corpse of my once beautiful second castled, thinking on it's broken battlements, looking at the shattered stain glass that was discoloured by the abyss of time, I thought on its namesake.

"Rosaria." I whispered, the name of my wife, the Mother of Daughter, and my son who in turn named his daughter after her. That Castle, in which we would spend the summers together. We'd send the staff away with purses full of gold, it was just us, little Alexander and my baby girl, how we drinked and we danced the night away, living and uncaring.

I tarnished that memory, millions of times, until that man with the black hair and the smile on his youthful face, was as a tale that is told.

Even before Draco died, my heart was taken, it was taken with my sweet Rosaria when my mother took her head. But after Draco was killed by the humans for pretending to be a member of my family, that is when I truly lost my soul. I butchered women, children, dipped bread in their blood. Burned their towns and all without drinking a single drop, I was so full of hate, that on the way, I had forgotten what Draco had taught me.

"Even the worst of beasts can be human, Vlad."

So I sat, in my wife's broken castle. Banished by the twisted thing that was my son, my granddaughters abandoned, my clan seeped in the darkness I put them in, and my plans to take my evil overseas to Big-ben and the Englishmen tarnished. I sat in my wife's broken castle and waited for my enemies to come, as I surely knew they would.

That painting that I looked at, red-haired, blue-eyed, beautiful as the sun as it peeked over the mountains, it was that greying, broken old monster that had left, so I stared until the sounds of the doors opened; the sounds of my freedom.

Images flashed through my mind, gentle images with gentle faces. His wife's face when they danced in the sun, his son laughing after he hid his sister's favourite book, the way she'd scrunch up her nose at him. Little Rosaria with her quiet exhilaration as she finally beat him during training, Val in the corner, flushing as she spoke to Draco, the way Liz always smiled even as she worried or feared; the smile she had inherited from me.

The doors opened, I did not lock them, the rusted portcullis left open for any to enter, not that they closed anymore.

I counted the coming footsteps of the Trio, like the ticking hands of a grandfather clock, telling of the time I had until my end.

"Count." The first voice was one I knew, shallow, hoarse where I had made him scream for days and nights immemorial for my ambitions.

"This old varmit is the Vampire King? Legendary Dracula who insults god with his very existence." This one was new enough, though, from the names that I had heard whispered on the winds, I knew this Texan tone belonged to Quincey Morris, a man of God and a real American, I found them... distasteful, funny isn't it, that I would one day become one, thanks to Draco, and thanks to you.

"Do not Be underestimating him, Mr Morris, quick, ready the stake, the devil seems to be intranced by this silly painting." The accent was thickly dutch, one that I found insufferable, just like the man who spoke them.

The fires of my determination were long gone, not even embers remained, the ashes were cold and that thing inside of me that told me to fight, told me to get on the battlefield and command my followers, it was more than dead and buried, it was maggot food.

But no one would Insult my love.

"Rosaria." I felt them jolt behind them as my voice echoed around them, low and melancholy. Slowly, I glided to my feet, my embroidered cloak of red velvet and black silk crawling to follow, and slowly I turned, looking at them with my cloudy red eyes, my cheeks gaunt and wrinkled, face calm and peaceful. They seemed taken aback at the time, the old Dutch vampire hunter, the tortured englishman, Johnathan Harker, his hair prematurely grey because of the stress I had hammered into his body... and the American, in his filly chaps and leather hat, a long shining silver stake gripped tightly in his hand.

"W-What did you say, monster?" Morris asked.

"Her name was Rosaria Alexa... we met in a poppy field one day, where the sun lit up the valley with magenta. She was picking them for me, trying to find a way to begin conversing with me, so we danced as the petals flew through the warm air..." My whispers seemed to confuse them, maybe it was because they could hear just how ready I was to move on, so little was the fight in my voice.

They cried angrily, accusing me, hating me, nothing new. I was thinking on how those petals looked as they floated around us, following our movements as we pranced the day away under the sun.

"Say something you, brute, answer for what you did to me! For what you planned to do to my beloved England!" Harker demanded his face red with blood, I contemplated how that would have made me thirsty once... but the only thing I had taste for now was rest.

"I have nothing to say." I whispered, taking a deep breath as I looked up to the dusty grey ceiling, once painted with beautiful murals long cracked into ruin.

"It's time for ****, you god damn motherfucking mon-"

I looked up at him; an old, tired old man "The moon is stained with red is it not?" I asked softly, they puzzled at me, "Is the rain red as it falls from the sky?"

Van Helsing, the eldest of the Trio, seemed to began to understand, his hostility fading. "Ja. Tis indeed." Helsing nodded.

I smiled a little to myself,"then I will step out of those doors as a man ready for ****, and you will kill me... and there will be peace."

I remember the way Quincey Morris glowered at me, like a child robbed of something precious, but I would not fight, not this time. "Hell, if you are-"

Helsing hushed his compatriot and gestured for the two to step aside. Harker studied the old man's face and seemed to see in me with the same eye. "You have no right... but make your peace with god, if He remembers your time as Vlad Dracule who headed the Holy Order of the Dragon, then maybe the gate of heaven will open for you?"

I did not reply, there was no point in talking about god, or that order that I had forsaken so long ago. I only stepped carefully down the hall, through the doors of the castle that barely hung on to their rusted hinges and into the night.

There was something about my blood moon that I always loved, feeling it's crimson gaze upon me, gave comfort. The rain was stained red as it fell from the starless sky, drowning my cloak, running through my grey hair, painting my face as I stood in the desolated courtyard, staring up with a warm satisfaction.

I felt the three close in behind me as I untied my fine cloak, tossing it aside, pulling free my silken jacket weaved with aged gold and let it fall to the dirt. My arms raised as the warmth of the splashing rain seeped into me, and I prayed beyond prayer that the one who would become me, over the oceans of time, would find the peace that I had now, at the threshold of the end.

I felt the sharp point of a stake press just above my heart, the trio, Harker to the left, Helsing to the right and Moriss at the centre, holding a hammer as he readied to impale my black heart "Time for you to die... Monster."

My eyes closed... for the last time. "**** is just another adventure, and hopefully, if fate is kind, my Rosie will be there with me"

There were seven heavy hammers, it was the fourth that pierced my heart, the flesh did not regenerate, it was too tired and too old, and so as I lay in the dirt, feeling the seventh hammer drive the stake through my back and into the mud, I gave one last smile, as my body, mind and soul began to fade into my Final ****.

You see that's the thing, about us Charlie... our wish... it came true. Here we are, young and strong and new, with our Rosie by our side. It's probably why I'm stepping in because we are not one who let's fate decide our path, the only one that can do that... Is You