Alice hadn't returned to the Necropolis.

Not even after she woke and pulled herself out of the ground.

Not after she listlessly wiped her cheeks and called Lyssa to bring her a thermos.

Not after she fed, and not after she saw to her duties as Seneschal.

Alice didn't know what to do. Robert wanted space. Time. But what was Time to a vampire?

How long would he need to tell her officially that whatever they had had was irrevocably over - that they were simply not meant to be?

Alice hoped it would be soon.

No matter her own prayers, she knew her lot in life un or otherwise, she was small and insignificant in the grand scale of things, and it was just better for everyone if the band-aid was pulled off quick.




Unlife returned to a tedium, like it had when she was alone in the Below.

With two glaring exceptions.

She still hadn't returned to the Necropolis and, when she knew she wasn't needed at the Nox, she'd let Lyssa dress her up and she'd find a club with a single string of words ringing out from within.

'what would vivian do?

On those nights she tried to be as far from Nosferatu as possible.




She ignored it at first.

Despite her knowing that a clean brake and a quick tear were better, she still ignored it.

She wanted an illusion of hope to last just a little while longer.

Eventually she had to listen to what Robert had decided she deserved. Maybe it was a farewell she could keep for a while.

Everything crashes down around her.

She shakes, and cannot believe -

She's gasping for breath she doesn't need.

Aphrodite had heard - no. She had answered her plea.




Alice makes her way over untended uneven terrain, familiarity makes the trek easier, but hope and other things makes it hard. When she she arrives in front of a ruined house that sheltered the kingdom below she doesn't climb the rotting wooden steps, she doesn't push open the crooked front door and she doesn't find the shadowy corner with it's heavily padlocked door.

No, Alice steps around the steps and into the barren and strangely overgrown yard, kicks off her shoes, and digs at the dirt with her toes.

After a moment, Alice calls on the Blood, and slips into the earth.