oneman_onevote | Extremely melodramatic AU: The revenge!

The castle is chill, in the hallways, and dark apart from pools of light created by torches placed at wide intervals on the walls.

Havelock is moving, if possible, even more silently than usual. He'd be twitchy if that wasn't a surefire way to mess up your stealth. The shadows are blending obligingly around him, more strongly here than they had in the bar.

Puck can take care of himself, he knows that, but also holds out no hope that any of this is going to be particularly pleasant.

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She slides the sword away with care and turns to face him, still close, her own stance poised, but like the cultured host of a party, not a combatant.

"You are quite velcome to leave or stay whenever you care to," she says coolly.

"Havelock may not go, of course. But do not get in my way, and I shall not stop you."

Puck's smile is absolutely unshaken.

"Havelock may not go," he repeats thoughtfully, giving each word equal weight as if they were stones in the palm of his hand.

His smile spreads, and for a moment it is--whether by accident or design-- apparent that his own teeth are. Quite. Sharp.

"And what shall I say falls under the category of 'getting in your way,' madam?"

"Not until his training is completed to my satisfaction. And his."

She smiles back politely.

(Only the tips of her teeth are visible against the red of her lower lip, but Puck might still get - aha - the point.)

"Oh, let us say... anything hindering his progress. He has forever to live and grow accustomed to vampirism, of course, but only a little time before he must return to his city. I vill not have that time wasted."

Puck sniffs, folding his arms over his chest.

"'Tis Havelock's satisfaction I look to, and no other's. I shall make no promises to you."

Her smile doesn't waver.

"I think you shall find we agree on this. He has not tried to escape me, nor will he until we are done."

(Up to a point, she is right.)

Then she shrugs.

"I care not for your motivations. That we understand each other is enough."

He laughs.

"And I care little for yours. Though I suspect my understanding of you, mistress, somewhat surpasses yours of me."

"Is that so?" she asks, eyeing him askance.

"Vell, ve all have our illusions."

Puck blinks, looking wounded.

"So far as bluffing rejoinders go, madam, I admit by now I expected better of you. You are so able with a blade, after all."

"Should I have vainly attempted to demonstrate how wrong you were? Perhaps ennumerative the things you could not know?"

She turns sideways absently, stretching out her hands to warm them in front of the fire.

"You know vhat you know, I know vhat I know... It matters little."

He laughs again, leaning forward against the back of the armchair with his elbows resting atop it.

"Ultimately, perhaps. We are not, I suppose, enemies in the traditional sense."

"Not traditionally, no," she says dryly. "Else ve should surely be duelling to the death even now, and that does grow tiresome."

Heroic types do tend to get irritating, even for lady vampires.

"Rather," Puck agrees, wrinkling his nose.

"Besides which, despite Havelock's attempts to instruct me, I am afraid I remain a rather abysmal pupil in the combative arts."

That is pleasant to hear.

"Just as vell then."

She glances up.

"Ah."

The door swings open on a wary-looking Havelock, now in unsliced clothing.

...

The room is ominously quiet, but they both seem to be in one piece.

Puck turns, and permits his expression to brighten because Margolotta can't see his face from where she is.

(Yeah, yeah, he knows he's not fooling her. Sometimes it's about the principle of the thing.)

"--Oh," he says.

"Hullo."

"There you are, Havelock," says Margolotta, turning around and raking him with a critical eye.

Apparently he passes muster, as she continues briskly on.

"It seems your friend may be staying for a time. Find him somewhere?"

Havelock distrusts this deeply.

For the record.

"Certainly," he says, however, and inclines his head at the door, eyes going to Puck.

Puck pushes off lightly from the chair and goes to him, throwing Margolotta a backward glance and a beatific smile.

"Ought I to be worried?" he says under his breath, smile unmoving.

She just raises her eyebrows back at him as if in innocent incomprehension.

"Call for Igor to settle him in when you find somevhere," she tells Havelock. "Then come back here for an hour and we vill run through an exercise or two."

Havelock nods to her silently, and holds the door open for Puck.

Puck sighs, and rolls his eyes, and drifts through the door with an absent sort of grace.

Havelock gets a realer smile.

Havelock doesn't smile back yet, but some tension visibly goes when he closes the door behind them.

(The fact that he can't smell any blood on Puck also helps. He had worried, against reason, but persistently about that.)

"Do you want to stay?"

Because if now, now would really be the time to make an exit.

Puck makes a bit of a face at the prospect, though the face is mostly anxious enquiry.

"Do you want me to stay? I shall be happier where you are, but she implied I should be more hindrance than help."

"She would," Havelock replies stonily, heading up a flight of stairs.

"...I honestly feel you would be safer elsewhere," he says. "I doubt she plans to murder you in your sleep, but she does like to make use of people where she can."

This doesn't actually address the question of what Havelock wants, but perhaps that's too much to ask for.

"How lucky, then," Puck says lightly, "that if I must, I either need not sleep, or may do so in a discreet cobweb."

A tilt of his head.

"Do you think she shall make better use of me than you will?"