Chapter 1: You Are the Old Enemy, The New Victim
Notes:
In which Ron becomes a man
Chapter Text
Ron had grown less submissive, which was a problem for Willy. Willy had grown complacent, which was not a problem for Ron.
As Willy derided him over the long dining room table of Castle Ravenloft, Ron only noted the tone. Anger, fear— Ron was not providing what Willy needed in daddy magic. Willy was scared.
Willy was not providing what Ron needed if Willy was scared. If Willy was afraid of him—
Willy threw a plate that broke in front of Ron, and a piece snagged against his cheek to rip skin. Blood trickled down as Ron watched his father’s rage and fear blankly.
If Willy could no longer teach him how to be a man, Willy was not worth the extra mouth to feed.
Ron thought through inventory in the castle as the blood dripped from his cheek onto his black collared shirt and trousers. Willy ate as much as him, drank significantly more alcohol in that Ron did not drink any. Milk was cheaper. Water from snowfall was free.
If Willy could not provide any more lessons, what was his use?
If Willy was afraid of him, then Ron was the man of the house now.
Ron watched Willy’s hatred of him with impassive attention as his father heaved angry breaths in his own exertion of simmering rage. He was thinking what to do to Ron as Ron had been thinking what to do to him.
Everything Willy had done and said to him had been to teach him how to act like a man: stoic, precise, utilitarian. Now he was a man.
Ron stood from the table and walked out of the room, ignoring Willy’s shouts to stay put and dodging the attack that followed.
Another character flaw, Ron thought. Willy had grown predictable.
.
Willy had been drinking.
Ron would have time later to wonder if Willy knew he was waiting for him. Whether the alcohol was an intentional obscuring of senses or a dismissal of him a threat– the threat Willy had formed him into realizing as a man.
Sedative or denial.
Sad as a word registered in his mind like a label on a jar for him to observe and not feel when he sees Willy’s lack of perception. Not a feign, but a true lack of sensing him in the shadows of the hallway. It didn’t matter. It only solidified the conclusion that his father should die.
Ron stepped from the hallway door’s shadow and silently drove a dagger into Willy’s spine, cutting off usage of his legs and stunning him. His father cried out in surprised pain. A shortsword slipped into Willy’s heart from behind as his legs collapsed from underneath him.
Willy screamed, and Ron recognized his name in it. Like a Message, Ron heard his father’s wordless fear.
But Ron no longer made decisions based on what his father wanted. The anger Willy had felt was not an anger Ron could feel for him, no matter how badly Willy wanted him to.
Ron stepped around in front of his father and watched the life leave his eyes. In turn, Willy saw him.
Ron tried to smile. It was hard to manage even a small smile he didn’t feel, but he tried to move the muscles properly. He squinted his eyes and remembered to tilt his head slightly like he used to do— try to do— as a child. Reassure his father that he had succeeded.
Ron gave up. It was a poor replication. He had forgotten how to emote properly.
Instead he asked, voice soft– an old childhood habit to fall quiet around his father returning for hopefully the last time as his father’s lifeblood leaked out, “Are you proud, sir?”
Ron understood. He had learned his father’s lessons. Willy would no longer worry about him surviving in the world, if the man ever did worry amongst his own enjoyment of power. Ron had realized several years ago some of what his father did to him was out of his own amusement.
When his father’s life faded to wherever it went without a soul, Ron pulled his shortsword and cast Create Bonfire. The purple bathrobe caught despite the blood damping it. Flames licked around the steel of the dagger still embedded in his spine.
He had done it.
He was free.
He felt no different.
To feel anything at all would be childish.
Ron sighed with tiredness at the finale and went up to his room. He cleaned the shortsword. He washed up. He brushed his teeth. He went to bed and closed his eyes, waiting for sleep to come until it came.
.
For a week, he lived alone without greater purpose.
He awoke at dawn. He made breakfast. He ate. He explored the castle’s previously forbidden passages. He culled the monsters remaining— the eldritch remnants of his father’s early pact with The Doodler.
He made lunch. He ate. He read through his father’s documents in the uppermost study. He learned where the money came from. He understood his father better and found evidence of the man’s decline. His panic to escape death had turned him foolish.
He made dinner. He ate. He had a glass of milk. He washed. He went to bed and closed his eyes, waiting for sleep until it came.
At the end of the first week, he acknowledged his mind was crushing under the weight of silence.
Nearly three decades of learning to recognize his father’s faintest sounds, and he couldn’t hear him now. He was stuck waiting for an attack that had yet to come.
Ron did what he understood now his father had done, except less direct. Less time commitment. Less disappointments until the success.
Ron placed an ad.
Chapter 2: Violence is Permissible Even Desirable Occasionally
Notes:
In which Samantha and Ron meet
Chapter Text
Samantha Harker stood in front of the arch of Castle Ravenloft, studying the lack of visible life. She had circled the castle, made a quick study of the interior rooms she could see. One room seemed akin to a great chamber. The other showed a potential study. There were scrolls across the ground as if someone had recently searched through them. Samantha made a note to collect the documents later.
If there once were heavy doors to seal the granite arch, only the door hedges remained on either side. Flakes of dark woods were embedded to show what once existed, what once was destroyed or neglected. It was late afternoon, and the cold had grown with the wind, making it more likely to drive the inhabitant of the castle inside.
She stood at the front entrance of the castle on foot now as if she had approached from the bridge.
“Hello?” Samantha called into the dimly lit main hall room. With Darkvision, she could see the large empty space, one long rug stretched across the center. There were small pieces of ivory white poking out of the wall– skeletons tucked into the stone wall itself. Fun. “I’m here regarding the ad?”
She waited, clawed fingernails curling in her traveler’s cloak pockets. The wind was too swift to carry smell from inside the castle effectively despite its numerous windows. To an extent, sound was muffled as well. Two of her senses hindered by the weather, Samantha was left watching the interior of the room for any movement.
She saw a figure in a purple cloak– small, humanoid descend the stairs far inside the castle and then crouch. He had a small dagger in his hand, but a hood shaded his face.
“Willy Stampler, I presume,” Samantha identified, knowing the man could hear her without needing to speak up.
After a lapse of a few seconds, a gruff voice shouted with irritation, “What? Fucking pissing me off, standing there like that.”
It sounded like the man rumored in his upwards of two hundreds, but the figure on the steps remained crouched in the dark, unmoving. He likely did not know that she could see him where he was fingering the dagger.
Samantha smiled but could feel her fangs and nails sharpen. “You said you were interested in receiving children. I was wondering if we couldn’t talk business.” She kept her voice friendly. “May I come in?”
Another lapse in silence for a few seconds. The figure on the stairs stood and walked back up the stairs. The gruff voice hissed from in front of her– Dramaturgy then. “You don’t have a child with you. If you come in, you will not come out.”
Samantha smiled. There was always some appreciation when her prey understood why she was here. No falsehood. No begging. No pity to feel. Only hunting those who deserved to die.
She answered back in a growl, “If I enter, neither will you leave.”
The voice laughed, harsh and mocking. It edged Samantha’s teeth for usage. The laugh died down. The voice said with amused acceptance, “Then enter, Guest, and meet death.”
Samantha snapped forward, boots cutting across the rug and her cape falling behind her to increase mobility. She dropped down to all fours, aiming for the staircase Willy Stampler had ascended.
She heard a click and looked above in time to see daggers halfway down onto her in a thick rain, shot from the ceiling. Samantha used one of her three legendary actions to turn into her mist form before the first struck her.
The daggers swept through her, whisking the air she now was. Samantha hovered immaterial, watching the carpet become porcupine-ridged until it was unwalkable from the small blades stuck to wood. She acknowledged that she might have rushed in a bit too quickly. Smart trap.
She looked up in her immaterial form and perceived the figure, crouched in the darkness of where the staircase met the wall, likely having descended suddenly from the curve of the staircase winding upward while she was distracted. His back was pressed against the wall, and from the tilt of hood’s edge, Samantha could see herself being watched. Samantha floated over to the stonewall lining the hallway.
The figure had shifted further towards a left bound passage during Samantha’s movement and paused as Samantha materialized. She clung to the wall of skeletons with her Spider Climb. The figure’s back remained pressed against the wall where he thought he wasn’t perceived. Samantha smiled at him and relished the moment when he realized his mistake. Very faintly, Samantha heard a, “Fuck.” By the time he was running, Samantha was pursuing.
The figure entered the next room and ran a few feet more before dropping down and skidding a trousered knee against the floor to arrest his movement to swing a shortsword upward towards Samantha’s abdomen.
Samantha had caught the change in movement and stopped out of the swing’s reach. Seizing the opening left from the figure’s half-second adjustment on the sword, Samantha struck his head with her fist, knocking eight health out of him, before attempting to grapple him. The figure ducked out of her reach with a strongly rolled dodge backwards. The figure’s follow-up swipe narrowly beat Samantha’s attempted dexterity.
The cut across her chest only took six health, but Samantha sensed in the flicker of time before the second attack that the shortsword was magical in some way and the wound would not heal. The second attack proved to be a feign, and the rogue, which Samantha now realized he must be, slipped out of reach and began to sprint down the hall again.
Samantha growled and followed after the hooded figure.
This likely wasn’t Willy Stampler.
The rumors from the Barovian townsfolk were that the warlock had taken over the region from Strahd von Zarovich approximately fifty years ago but ruled the valley through proxy. Occasionally there would be purple lightning that arched across the sky and the boom of voices, but if anyone from Castle Ravenloft had entered their town or the surrounding area, they did not know. Samantha had dropped her inquiry when they began asking too many questions about her hood protecting her from the pale winter sunlight.
Regardless of who this was, Samantha thought, matching the rogue’s pace but unable to gain ground to close the thirty feet separating them, he was very short and very quick. More than that, he was an associate of Willy Stampler. That was enough to pry information from him by her teeth.
The figure reached the door at the end of the hallway and opened it enough to slip through, shutting it behind him.
Samantha hit the door two seconds later and began to wrench it from the bolted lock. She metaphorically had a successful leverage against the door and heard its solid wood creak underneath her strength. She stuck a foot against the stone wall and attempted to wrench again. Critically failing in another metaphorical way, a bolt of electricity shot through the door handle and caused twelve health damage.
Samantha yelped and shook the damage off with her regeneration. She checked behind herself to ensure there was not a separate trap set in place, but no object stood out. The side room to her left had peppers strung along a twine line, clustered together to dry. A pair of high boots with dirt crusting the sides sat underneath them. Samantha felt the temptation to roll another perception check to discern more details of the room, but the man was behind the door. He was possibly already escaping. She would be left wandering booby-trapped rooms of the castle once she lost track of the associate of Stampler and lose advantage as well.
She began slamming into the door bodily, four- five times until the door popped open, and she caught herself from stumbling. She stepped through cautiously and took in the room.
The ground in front of her was covered in soil, contained by a wooden barrier around the sides. Low, ground-dwelling plants rested in front of her with what looked like an amalgamation of three plants growing together further down. There was a pathway going around the sides to give access without stepping on the soil, and Samantha began to frown and study the overhead dome of the building through her Darkvision. Despite the plants, the roof was sealed off by shutters, it seemed. She sniffed the air and found the rich earthy scent contained, which meant the man was still trapped here too. She saw everything miscellaneous and was left wondering if the figure had simply come in here to hide.
Samantha tried to be Charming. “Listen, I just want to talk.”
“I know what you are.” The angry growl came in front of her, behind the tallest plants.
Samantha pondered leaving the door available for escape. She decided it didn’t matter. He was cornered in an enclosed space. She would eat soon.
She launched herself through what, hitting, she realized was corn and beans. There was no smell of the other person.
“Don’t break the plants!” the voice hissed, now where she had been standing.
The door clicked shut as Samantha straightened from the rows. She could still sense the man in the room, still not having run. She wiped the vines and dirt off herself and answered, “It seems your fault for leading me to the plants.”
That did not earn her an immediate reply, so she tried, “You didn’t run.” Neither did that.
Samantha huffed and said, “You say you know what I am, so say so, I entreat you.”
She heard a soft voice from the door answer, “A vampire.”
When she was halfway to the door where the hooded figure stood, she heard a click and an overhead bulb Created Sunlight. She let out a strangled cry as the first rays hit her, and then sprinklers Created Water.
She suppressed an agonized noise as the acid and radiant damage burned her– kept her unable to heal. Struggling to focus amongst the pain, she saw the hooded figure watching as he unstrung a ring of daggers, reflecting light in their metallic polish. “Don’t-”
A knife struck her chest where the skin was peeling from the heat. Samantha screamed in agony and then anger as she reached to remove it. A second knife embedded in her right shoulder blade.
She had to get out. She spent the time he took to unhook another twin pair of knives in search of an escape. The wooden door was behind her, locked through what looked like a series of levers, and she began to tear the wooden latches apart as knives struck against her back in accord with the pain of flowing water and sunlight.
It was useless. She dugged her fingernails into the wooden door that remained sealed as her body shook in pain. She turned back towards the figure and shouted to Charm, “Stop!”
A knife aiming for her face nearly landed, and its twin was caught by Samantha’s raised arm.
“Stop!” Samantha shouted again to Charm as she burned. She did not have time to destroy the light and water sources instantly like she could if the fucker would just be Charmed!
Just one Charm, Samantha thought, squeezing her eyes between the pain of radiant, water, and daggers. Once.
She opened them and evaded the knives into a miss and a cut across her cheek. She repeated pleadingly, “Please. Please be Charmed by me.”
The hand drawing a dagger from the wire began to rise before wavering. Samantha couldn’t see the man’s face, but the hood tucked forward as he fought the Charm inwardly. Samantha remembered the feeling the man was trying to fight— the vampire guised as her husband saying her name. She felt no empathy.
The figure straightened and shut off the lights and water. Samantha collapsed in relief in the mud, just breathing away the pain she could with only the barest of healing beginning.
“You weren’t winning,” a soft voice said.
Samantha blinked at the hooded figure, straightening in their loss against being Charmed. Samantha realized the voice they had been using was not this person’s own.
“Take off the hood for me.”
The hand around the knife shifted before it was set back in a thigh holster. “I can’t. You have to wear the hood when in the house with other people.”
Samantha was trying to form any resemblance of logic around the statement, the rule, when the voice added, “You would have died. I wanted you to die, but…”
They sounded like they snagged on the why.
Samantha did not bother to help. “Can you unlock the door? I’ll feel safer when you aren’t within reach of the switches.”
The figure stood for a few more seconds in silence before saying, “You should have broken the uppermost glass. It is weak metal. Or turned into mist and slipped out. Or-“
“I get it.”
“Or attacked me directly. If you had bitten me, I would have panicked and acted erratically. I don’t want to be a vampire. I don’t know how vampires work. I have started gardening for fresh produce, and I can’t garden if I get hurt by water and sunlight.”
“I- okay. Can you open the door now that you listed everything I should have done? And why being a vampire is awful? Because, trust me, I know.”
The hood bobbed, and the figure walked over to pull different panels down and up in a certain order on the door before it clicked open.
“Cool,” Samantha assessed dryly, too fried to fully enjoy the door’s complicated mechanics.
“Yes,” the figure agreed. “My father had a well-known alchemist build it before killing him. I killed the Mind Slayer to put in the raised beds.”
Samantha frowned at the short figure’s back, uncertain how to feel about the news or how talkative they suddenly were. She opted for strengthening the Charm. “What’s your name?”
“Ron F. Stampler.” The figure was fidgeting with the end of the cloak, facing the hallway they had run down.
“Stampler,” Samantha repeated, searching her memory for any mention of a son. “Related to Willy Stampler?”
A nod. “He was my father.”
“Was?”
Another nod, running the cloak through his fingers, before his head turned to look up at her indirectly. Some magic was obscuring the face. “Where were you?”
“Where was I when…?” Samantha prompted. She gave up on standing and sat down against the wall of the hallway. The figure continued holding the robe, watching.
“When I wanted another person here.”
Whether the man was trying to connect with a specific event or a general loneliness, Samantha didn’t know. What connection the Charm had manufactured to tie her to him as a friendly acquaintance was not her doing. Her arms were badly burnt, several layers red and peeling. Samantha winced with the pain persisting across any exposed piece of skin. She looked back up to the son of Willy Stampler and knew she would need to eat him.
“Ron, remove your hood.” Samantha repeated and added, “I’ve already removed mine.”
The man hesitated before his hand dropped. He answered with a small amount of firmness. “I do not want to. I do not have to when I am the man.”
Samantha sat in pain from the strange fool. She gave up coaxing. “Ron, take off your hood.”
The man flinched at his name. He held onto the sleeve. “No. I…” He said more firmly, “I won.”
“Ron,” Samantha said with increasing frustration, and the man stiffened. “Take off your hood.”
Ron Stampler wrapped his arms around himself and stepped backwards to press himself against the wall. “Don’t yell at me,” he whispered, broken and soft. He curled slightly and held himself tighter. His hands slid in his sleeves as he curled inward.
Samantha sighed at the Charm breaking and leading to the collapse of this poor little man. Of course being raised by the Tyrant of the North, he would have issues. She eased herself up to her feet stiffly, deciding to slip a Charm over him and feeding, regardless of his feelings.
“Listen, Ron-”
A steel crossbow’s bolt slammed through her stomach and exited out her back, knocking her off her feet. Samantha had the concurrent thoughts as she fell backwards that everything was happening very fast, he had been acting, and she was going to die. Her head hit the stone floor. Opening her eyes, she saw the man’s face clearly the second before the silver knife slipped into her heart.
Up close, his facial bone structure was stone-cut— small chin, but the high cheekbones and eyebrow ridges were stone artistry viewed from beneath in the shadow he cast over her face. His forehead and curve of his skull were noble. The black button-up collar and sleeves slipped out from the garish purple robe had no accents or adornments. His hair was cropped neatly short. His face lacked expression like killing her— defending himself— was an unpleasant necessity, and Samantha felt grateful her death was being treated professionally.
After a quarter-second glance to the blade for alignment, Ron Stampler met her eyes. His were a pale brown flecked with green. Hers were long past inhuman red.
“You’re beautiful,” Samantha breathed as the blade entered her heart. She made an unintentional noise of pain, involuntarily opening her mouth where her fangs were useless blunt tools, but she closed her eyes for death to take her.
Terry, she suddenly remembered and fought against blacking out at the last moment. Terry Junior was at home, waiting for her.
“What did you say?” a voice asked above her. The blade was out, she could feel. She wasn’t dead yet. Maybe she could get better. She needed to get better.
She winced at the burning traveling through her where the silver had eaten into her. Her heels scraped against the ground in pain and to ground herself. She opened her eyes. Her vision was hazed, but Ron Stampler remained over her head. Amongst the pain wanting to curl her body into itself to fill the pieces, Samantha saw a desperate openness in his eyes.
“What did you say to me?”
Samantha couldn’t tell if the man was angry or panicked. The pain was too much, her vision blurring too much to see. Samantha squeezed her eyes and wanted an escape from the paralyzing pain.
For what felt too long, a few seconds in unreality, she suffered. Then a cold magic knocked the pain out of her suddenly, and she was left gasping in relief.
The man continued pouring a blue bottle onto her. His expression had returned to stoicism. Samantha soaked in the sudden alleviation of pain, exhaustion of the near-death experience, and the fight ending with both of them alive as it overwhelmed conscious thought.
Once the bottle had been emptied, the son of Willy Stampler furrowed his brows at her. He turned away, and Samantha followed the movement, vision swimming. Firm and detached, he said, “Get out of my house.”
The ground was spinning underneath her with a growing tilt. Her eyes searched for where the man went, mouth trying to form the words to ask why he was leaving, but everything was swallowed by darkness as the floor rose up.
Chapter 3: The Only Way to Be Pure is to Stay by Yourself
Notes:
In which Ron and Samantha talk
Chapter Text
Samantha blinked awake, registering that her chest hurt a bit and then that she was under heavy sheets.
She tilted his head down to identify the stone room and saw a man, small and attractive, watching from the foot.
“Don’t move,” the man she had been fighting said without inflection.
Samantha didn’t, only blinked and trusted her half-awake expression to carry over how confused she was.
“Why did you call me ‘beautiful’?” He- Ron Stampler was angry. Samantha had misinterpreted.
She didn’t have a good answer. There wasn’t a good answer.
The man pressed with growing tension in his voice, “Were you trying to emasculate me?” It shook a bit over the last two words, but his expression remained flat.
“No,” Samantha answered with some confusion at where the interpretation was coming from.
The man blinked, and his shoulders lowered. The body language shifted back towards stoicism. “Why did you say what you did?” It wasn’t relaxed as much as it was neutral. The tone from the fight.
Samantha tried to think how to answer. The truth was an embarrassment. This conversation was a confusion. She needed to go home to Terry Jr.. Instead she was studying the man’s lips and face. His shoulders and chest. Seeing him still and in the light of what must be daybreak, he remained more beautiful than his speed in motion.
Masochistic of her maybe, she answered, quiet with honesty, “It slipped out.”
Man silently watched her. Samantha shifted to sit upright, and the man snapped, “Don’t move.”
Samantha fell back again. “Sorry.”
The man watched her. How old was he? Samantha’s estimate lowered from 30s to late 20s the longer he stared. She was questioning mid-20s when the man spoke. “Was it a bid for your life?”
Samantha felt the embarrassment again that when she should have pushed against dying for Terry Jr.’s sake, she was caught by the other man’s movement and her own loneliness.
“It should have been,” she answered ruefully and then wondered if the answer didn’t come across as flirtatious in the awe it unintentionally carried.
“You found me pleasing as I carried out actions to kill you?” Samantha felt grateful the tone was clarifying instead of mocking. The man tilted his head slightly, owlish. Her expression must have given her away. “Do you find me attractive now?”
Samantha winced. She avoided watching the man see her answer. She realized, glancing back, that looking away gave the answer. Maybe a false one depending on interpretation. The man was studying her blankly. She clarified, “You are attractive. I… possibly was off-guard. I was not thinking.”
Ron Stampler seemed to ponder this and minutely leaned back in the chair. “Who sent you?”
The thought pinged in her mind that this was an interrogation, abet one being conducted with her lying in a bed. The presence of the man was the implied threat, but she felt like dismissing him as a threat even as she processed how he must have carried her when she was unconscious.
She answered, “No one.”
“Why come if no one sent you?” His voice was agitated slightly at what he thought was a lie.
She had the option of submitting or holding her ground. Holding her ground could provoke him into action. Submitting would give permission to antagonize her.
She was a vampire. For all the pain it had caused, she was a vampire. She answered with a calm voice, studying the daybreak, “An ad was placed which was addressed from this location.”
She glanced back after a moment and found him frowning. “Why would the ad cause you to come?” It was a mixture of accusatory and confused.
She studied him, feeling her own question forming. She ventured, “You placed the ad?”
With no hint of denial, she felt her original incentive upon arrival curl in her mouth, her elongated teeth, and the tight spring that was her body. She was half-recovered, but she could fight him if needed. If there were not any traps he had set in place. She left the tension where it was. “You were requesting children sent to Castle Ravenloft.”
Ron’s brow wrinkled at the tone. “Yes?”
Samantha sat up, making him tense. His mouth opened to object but closed. She let a glare emerge. “For what purpose?”
Ron returned it darkly. A stiffness in his shoulder meant he was clenching a dagger. “For my own purposes.”
Samantha weighed what the purposes could be with what she knew of Ron Stampler– nothing. She had mistakenly underestimated him once. Misattribution a second time, shame on her.
She tested before she launched towards him a third time to kill him or die in the attempt, “Do you not imagine killing children an incendiary?”
He seemed to consider the thought. She questioned again what world he had existed within where the question was not rhetorical. He answered, “Homicide was not the purpose.”
“What was?” she pressed.
“Adoption.” Ron pulled a slight face, finding the idea unpleasant though it was his.
Samantha stared at him, utterly lost.
Ron stared back blankly before glancing to the side and back to her. “I’m not saying for what purpose,” he repeated stubbornly, like she may argue.
“Adoption,” Samantha repeated to confirm she had heard correctly. Ron pouted slightly like he did not find the situation as confusing as she did. “As in, taking care of a child? Allowing them to grow to adulthood? Protecting and feeding them?”
Ron looked back at her steadily. “Yes.”
He had a conviction that Samantha found difficult to view as faked. Of Ron’s behaviors, lying about emotions did not seem a skill he cared to master. Even the earlier breaking of the Charm was not faked so much as unshielded behavior.
Samantha relaxed against the headboard of the bed. She could see Ron’s shoulders easing out of the tension with a caution she no longer cared to take advantage of. She had returned to not understanding the man.
Ron Stampler, son of Willy Stampler known as the Tyrant of the North decades ago, had killed his father within the last five years. A month ago, he placed an advertisement through mercenary channels for a child to be brought to Castle Ravenloft in payment. Now, he sits in a small chair in front of her and says that he intended to adopt and raise a child but refuses to say why.
“You weren’t intending to kill the child? Or sacrifice? In any way bring harm upon the child?”
Ron shook his head, the question now resting more visible upon his brow. She examined him and gave him time to ask, “Is the request truly unusual?”
Samantha thought through how to convey how the advertisement was interpreted. “To advertise for? Yes. There are Bull-E-Wugs or- or quite any village you come across will have people desperate enough to sell their children to a better home, especially on the promise they will receive care and adequate protection.”
Ron looked genuinely stunned by this, and suspicion took its place. He opened his mouth to argue but seemed uncertain what to say as he first frowned at her and then the wall. He returned the focus on her again after several seconds. “Daddy magic is the most powerful magic. If parents give up their children so willingly– give up the greatest source of potential power so easily…” Ron seemed uncertain what to say next, what the conclusion was.
Samantha could see the idea was something essential to him. There was a measurement of disappointment she felt towards him that parenting was simply a means to an end rather than a kindness. “Ron, there is no such thing as daddy magic.”
Ron stared at her, and she could not fathom what thoughts he was having. Then, he set his head down in between his hands in silence. The idea was potentially dealing psychological damage.
Samantha not unkindly looked over to the window of the room and calculated how quickly she could leave if she decided killing him was not worth it, as she was beginning to.
At the slight shift on the bed of her moving a leg, Ron said, “Don’t move.”
He kept his hands over his face for another few seconds before he sat up again, the neutral expression and tone returned. “Your advice then is to cancel the ad and retrieve a child myself, presumably at the nearest village or a ‘Bull-E-Wugs’ then?”
Samantha frowned slightly, unhappy or uncomfortable or both, at his dogged hope that a child would lead to power. Still, there were worse fathers. She shrugged in answer. It was whatever he wished to do to the extent no child was harmed.
Ron considered this before nodding to himself and meeting her eyes. “Pleasure doing business with you. You may leave. If you do leave, I ask for you not to return.”
“What if I don’t leave?” Samantha asked out of a wizard’s curiosity and intuitive caution for loopholes. The closing sounded like a practiced part rather than his true words.
For a second, Ron’s expression wavered to show someone awkward and lonely as his eyes ducked away from hers.
She could stay here, with him, she thought even after he recovered and said stiffly, “I think you should leave.”
She could stay here and make him better, show him there was a gentler world than he has been living in. She could stay and fully explore the openness that came across his face when she called him beautiful in a momentary spur of reaching out for another adult and finding him receptive. The previous conversation on how she viewed him remained open.
He was trying to maintain a serious, unbothered expression as she studied him, but there were a growing number of slips to show his true age or personality or both. When his gaze wavered and he glanced to the side or past her, it felt like he was making himself act the role of neutral lord of Barovia.
Samantha watched how his face wanted to slip into someone younger underneath her gaze. Someone who, from the brief information he gave and context clues, had recently killed his abuser after years spent alone in the castle with him.
Should she kill him? Was the world better with Ron Stampler in it? Was whatever plan Ron had decided to attempt with a suspicious sounding advertisement through mercenary channels a good sign? Would Ron listen to her concerning what he should and shouldn’t do and cancel the ad?
Probably no to all but canceling the ad.
It wasn’t hard to conclude that some milestones that should have been reached about empathy, or knowledge about how to treat people, never was and never would be reached without extensive effort and time.
Ron was not going to undergo that change without initiative. He might undergo that change for her.
She didn’t have time to change him— not when she had a child at home. Between caring for Terry Jr. and pursuing a relationship with Ron Stampler, it was not a difficult choice to make.
She stood, and his attention immediately snapped to follow her path to the window, where she looped a leg over the sill. “Goodbye, Mr. Stampler. I hope you give me no reason to visit again.”
Ron pondered the professional farewell as she waited. He nodded. “Goodbye- uh.”
“Samantha Harker,” she supplied. Any negative consequences for giving her name, she would be more prepared for now than previously.
Ron Stampler seemed sad for a moment around the eyes but nodded again. He said, “Goodbye, Samantha.”
Then she was gone, and he was alone again in the ruins of his father's house.
Cinnimania on Chapter 3 Sun 15 May 2022 07:04AM UTC
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OddKid42 on Chapter 3 Mon 16 May 2022 01:30AM UTC
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