Lucy groans in her sleep.

A kind a fearful mewling, causing her hand to tighten ever so slightly on Mina's hip. Shifting to avoid the pinch, she reaches up to place her own hand upon Lucy's cheek. A simple action that silences her companion, who nuzzles into the touch, but never wakes.

Mina wonders what she's dreaming of. What a creature such as her, could possibly fear in the recesses of her own mind. Her thumb strokes idly, taking the smallest pleasure in the smile that becomes of her touch.

Lucy's eyes peer open, the smile growing as they come into focus, looking as if she will close the gap between them. She doesn't, however, but continues to look pleased at their proximity.

"You were dreaming," Mina says softly.

"Was I?" comes Lucy's reply.

"You don't remember?"

Lucy thinks a moment.

"Afraid not."

Instinct tells Mina it's a lie, but doesn't press, knowing she herself would not want to confess her own nightmares should someone become curious.

"Probably best," Mina concedes. "It didn't sound pleasant."

Lucy's bottom lip catches between her teeth, the gesture reading of guilt at her omission.

"Good or bad," Mina continues, finally removing her hand and shifting back. "I find myself envious."

"You still haven't-"

"No."

Not a single dream.

Not since she died.

/\

Despite how it may feel most days, they do not spend every waking moment together. Lucy disappears of her own volition, without a word as to where. Mina never asks,due to the guiltiness of her own similar actions, but there are some nights Lucy does not return until minutes before sunrise. Concern grows at such recklessness, but a full week passes before Lucy slips into a particular dress, and Mina tells herself that tonight is the night for answers.

As a child she feared some heights, finding that she could only climb a tree so far, or poke a head out a certain window, but now she glides gracefully along rooftops as she does a dance floor.

Lucy walks the streets with that familiar confidence, radiating an aura that warns danger for any miscreant that sees a lady such as her and wishes ill will. After several blocks, cutting various zigzags through back alleys and side streets, Mina no longer recognizes the borough they're in.

The halt of motion is abrupt.

So much that Mina nearly looses footing on a loose shingle, regaining balance just in time to hear a peculiar knock on a well hidden door, and watch as Lucy enters with a quick glance behind her. She counts to fifty, before descending to the alley below, reciting the knock with hardly an effort.

A girl no older than she opens the door, regarding her with a cautious tilt of the head, crimson curls brushing a pale white shoulder.

"Who sent you?"

Mina pushes past the doorway, capturing the girl's eyes with her own.

"The blonde," she says, voice smooth as silk. "Which way?"

The girl points a finger toward a stairwell off to the right.

"Upstairs," she replies evenly. "Third door on the right."

"I'm an apparition," Mina whispers. "I was never here."

The girl nods in agreement, and Mina moves quietly up the stairs. It doesn't take vampire senses to smell what is in the air. Places such as this discussed only in gossip of a philandering husband, or symptoms of syphilis in Professor Van Helsing's class.

It does, however, take such senses to realize there are no hapless grunts typical of men in the act. Rather, all she hears are the soft and subtle calls of women practicing discretion. The realization as to her friend's purpose here hits with a catch of her breath.

She knows it's none of her concern.

That she should turn and flee, never to speak of it, but whether it ignorance or arrogance in regard to Lucy's feeling for her, she had assumed it singular in its affection. A small ping inside her chest keeps her feet planted in front of the third door on the left, leads a hand to reach for the knob, twisting it just so to dare a peek inside.

Lucy is seated at a table, hands folded neatly in her lap, eagerness and anticipation written all over her face. A woman steps into view, all dark hair and ruby red lips, with teapot in hand pouring into an awaiting cup.

Cream and sugar are added, before Lucy places a hand on the woman's face, the following kiss causing that ping to echo.

Mina steps back without a sound, turning to flee into the darkness of night.

/\

Yet another lavish party.

She has since stopped wondering just how Lucy comes into the knowledge that they exist. The assumption that they're invitations are garnered with a simple focus on the eye, her attendance always insisted upon, and denial of it never forthcoming.

Champagne flute in hand, Mina strikes up a conversation with the server refreshing her glass, a green eyed girl around her age trying desperately to hide a cockney accent. Here as a favor to a friend, but not complaining about the money, she smiles in a way that reaches her eyes causing something inside of Mina to twinge.

She was this girl once.

Pleasant and bright eyed with the whole world in front of her.

The monster inside would be delighted to make a meal of such a girl, but Mina will deny it sustenance. Not this one, not this night. She eyes Lucy across the room, surrounded by suitors who have little clue to her true desires, three of them in fact. Wondering briefly who Lucy will choose, the bespectacled one, the mutton chopped one, or the one laughing a bit too obviously at the Westenra charm, Mina looks back to her server who's face has dropped.

A man in white gloves and a stern disposition stands next to them, disapproving eyes that the help dare converse with a guest, radiating clear. He's about to convey as much, all parties involved bracing for the act, when Mina places a firm hand on the man's wrist.

"I'm aware of the etiquette," she says evenly. "But I would have found it far more rude had this lovely girl chosen to ignore me."

The man eyes her warily, an arched brow telling that, despite her interference there will be consequences.

"I should think," Mina continues. "That the enjoyment of a guest would carry more weight than an act of the staff."

The man's disposition does not change, and Mina knows she will not go hungry tonight.

/\

Nearly two weeks pass before Lucy puts on the particular dress again, as Mina fights the urge to hint that she knows the where and why of it, distracting herself with a book taken from the bag of a victim somewhere in Tottenham.

But a voice in her ear is not content to let things lie.

"Lucy," she calls, closing the book and setting it down on the bed.

"Yes?" Comes the reply, as she fiddles with a difficult button.

"What do you dream of?"

Lucy casts a glance over her shoulder. "I'm sorry?"

"What do you dream of?" Mina repeats, rising from the bed. "When you cry out at night." She steps closer. "When you cling to me so desperately."

Lucy's actions halt immediately, the long white glove on her right arm bunched at the wrist.

"I don't-"

"No, no." Mina insists, fingers pulling that glove up to the elbow. "No hidden truths. Not tonight. Not from me."

There's longing in Lucy's eyes. Fear and pain that do not wish to loosen her tongue.

"I-" she starts, blinks, and looks away. "Dream that-that one day I'll reach for you and find nothing but air. That you'll leave me without word or reason. That some cold morning I'll wake to find you gone."

"Is that all?" Mina isn't sure why she expected much more than that.

Lucy laughs brokenly.

"Isn't it enough?"

Mina presses their foreheads together.

"She's very pretty," she whispers. "Of course she would be, looking so much like me."

Lucy pulls back abruptly. "I have to find my pleasures," she reasons. "It's not as if you-"

"Enjoy yourself," Mina interrupts, bopping a finger on her nose. "I will be here upon your return."

/\

Sitting in her old seat, just as she had every day without a single absence before Alexander Grayson came along, she thumbs through the latest medical journal of Dr. Van Helsing's replacement. The text illuminated by a single candle, she recites the latest theory of Louis Pasteur softly aloud, her voice flickering off the walls as the flame on the wick.

Of all the things in her former life, this is what she misses most, the pursuit of learning and the power of knowledge. Disease, pain, death. These things no longer affect her, but the desire to put scientific application to each and every one, still persists.

Ears catch the sound of a distant door opening, one quick sniff of the air and she knows the perpetrator isn't human, two clipped footsteps and she knows it's Lucy giving chase as always. She continues reading as the steps grow close, turns the page just as the door to this room creaks open.

"There you are," Lucy says approaching. "Becoming quite the expert at disappearing without a trace."

"I fed," Mina replies, never taking her eyes off the page. "I left. Isn't that the whole point of these excursions?"

"Not entirely," says Lucy. "Fun and celebration can go hand in hand."

"Fun," Mina repeats, finally lifting her head from the journal. "Is that what we have?"

"I should hope. Otherwise what would be the-"

"Point?" Mina finishes. "Yes, I do find myself wondering that quite often. We have eternal life after all, why not spend night after night doing the exact same thing?"

Lucy's eyes widen, her lips a thin line with no reply forthcoming. Mina closes the journal, lifts the candle from the table and steps closer.

"This is not living," Mina goes on. "I fear I cannot keep existing for the sake of it."

Lucy's hand reaches for Mina's cheek.

"Do I really make you so miserable?"

Quite the opposite actually, Lucy being the sole reason she hasn't simply welcomed the sun, but Mina doesn't say as much even if it feels like she should.

It's a kindness she does not seem capable in the moment.

"I exist because of you," Lucy says quietly. "For you. And if that existence has become tedious, then I do apologize, but there are no guidelines to this. I admit to falling back to what I know, because it is all I know. Just as you come here to keep with your studies. We cling to the life we had because we don't want to admit it has escaped us."

Mina's eyes fall closed, that ridiculous ping reverberating in her head and heart.

"We can leave here if you wish. Travel the world. Any place you like. Anywhere at all."

Her fingers wrap around Lucy's wrist.

"Say something," she implores.

Mina's lips answer in a different way.