[The compliment gets only a twitch of his lips when, on a normal day, he would absolutely flatter her back -- Sypha is a beautiful woman, after all, and he finds both her bubbly energy and her work with magic fascinating, especially when he is still such a novice with the latter.

Today is not a normal day, nor is this a normal visit.

Finally he reaches for the wine, having started the conversation, and swallows it heavily, missing all its fine hints of fruit.]

I don't know. Honestly, I wanted to tell him I don't know how this would help. But... having someone who was there, who understands it, is relieving, in a strange way. [Not that he's happy she was there, that she had to aid him in this... it was a mission, was it not?] I've spoken to Hector about him. Dracula. Er. [He starts pulling a string out of his coat.] I don't know if you've met. He worked for Dracula, for a time. As he told me. And I know bits of him from Hector, and even less from Alucard, and I suppose... I want to know what made him that way. In the moment I saw him, he sounded terribly weighed down with regret. But Alucard did not hesitate to end his life anyway.