[Her deduction makes his raise his eyes sharply, staring at her. If he didn't know better, he would somehow guess she read his mind, or something similar -- that Sypha knew exactly what had happened with Ciri, with the Singularity, with the new memories of the Continent that cling to his shoulders like an unwanted ghost.]
I... yes. You've put it surprisingly succinctly, actually.
[She's hit the nail on the head, so to speak. But he doesn't want to get into it. Later, as he said. This whole visit is about Alucard, and with the dhamphir's blessing, he wants to learn of this past that has alluded conversation between him and his friend for months.
Jaskier shifts as he feels the air in the wagon sucked towards her, waiting for the story to begin. His shoulder rests against the wall, letting it flow over him. A storyteller himself, he knows far better than to interrupt. His attention is on her words, and he nods at something he's known before -- a small tidbit from Hector, or the soft tone of Alucard's voice when he mentions his mother -- and then still when it's new to him, hidden in the past of a completely separate sphere.
Sypha is a thorough storyteller though, a practiced one. A smooth voice with her prickly accent that demands to hold one's attention. The things he can imagine come easily. Pushing the words I'm killing our boy to the back of his mind, almost forcefully.
He sucks in a breath. Burned alive. Murdered, then, by the Church. And Dracula, instead of destroying the Church who had done such a thing, wrote off an entire race. (Do humans not do the same? The images he'd seen carved into the trunk of Bleobheris, painted on the walls of Oxenfurt: pigs with pointed ears, the only good elf is a dead elf, elves in chains, elves lying in the mud without breathing, elves huddling together on a ship.)
His hand goes across his chest. Yes, he saw it, after long enough, but he had known better than to ask considering the trauma Alucard had spoken to him about a few weeks ahead of the reveal. In some part of him, he'd wondered if the two things were related.
Jaskier leans back. Takes a breath that moves his shoulders up, down. His hand combs through his hair. In his heart, having heard those words in the memory, he cannot help but think -- or is it only fragile, foolish hope? -- that the man could not kill his son, not in Gresit, and not after he gave into whatever psychopathy turned him to genocide.
For a moment, he puts his head in his hands, recalling how Hector told him he'd aided in this. How Dracula, he said, had been the only person who had offered a hand to him. And he had helped Dracula kill people for misdirected revenge.]
That is completely fucked. [A wonderful, succinct way to summarize. And with dull understanding:] It is hardly a wonder he wants to sleep.
[In that crypt, he means, escaping from a lives that are over and haunt him: his parents, his lovers, both sides of his heritage.]
no subject
I... yes. You've put it surprisingly succinctly, actually.
[She's hit the nail on the head, so to speak. But he doesn't want to get into it. Later, as he said. This whole visit is about Alucard, and with the dhamphir's blessing, he wants to learn of this past that has alluded conversation between him and his friend for months.
Jaskier shifts as he feels the air in the wagon sucked towards her, waiting for the story to begin. His shoulder rests against the wall, letting it flow over him. A storyteller himself, he knows far better than to interrupt. His attention is on her words, and he nods at something he's known before -- a small tidbit from Hector, or the soft tone of Alucard's voice when he mentions his mother -- and then still when it's new to him, hidden in the past of a completely separate sphere.
Sypha is a thorough storyteller though, a practiced one. A smooth voice with her prickly accent that demands to hold one's attention. The things he can imagine come easily. Pushing the words I'm killing our boy to the back of his mind, almost forcefully.
He sucks in a breath. Burned alive. Murdered, then, by the Church. And Dracula, instead of destroying the Church who had done such a thing, wrote off an entire race. (Do humans not do the same? The images he'd seen carved into the trunk of Bleobheris, painted on the walls of Oxenfurt: pigs with pointed ears, the only good elf is a dead elf, elves in chains, elves lying in the mud without breathing, elves huddling together on a ship.)
His hand goes across his chest. Yes, he saw it, after long enough, but he had known better than to ask considering the trauma Alucard had spoken to him about a few weeks ahead of the reveal. In some part of him, he'd wondered if the two things were related.
Jaskier leans back. Takes a breath that moves his shoulders up, down. His hand combs through his hair. In his heart, having heard those words in the memory, he cannot help but think -- or is it only fragile, foolish hope? -- that the man could not kill his son, not in Gresit, and not after he gave into whatever psychopathy turned him to genocide.
For a moment, he puts his head in his hands, recalling how Hector told him he'd aided in this. How Dracula, he said, had been the only person who had offered a hand to him. And he had helped Dracula kill people for misdirected revenge.]
That is completely fucked. [A wonderful, succinct way to summarize. And with dull understanding:] It is hardly a wonder he wants to sleep.
[In that crypt, he means, escaping from a lives that are over and haunt him: his parents, his lovers, both sides of his heritage.]