miraclewhip | (for cryptsleeper)

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(for cryptsleeper)

[ He remembers- maybe about half of what happened last night. A little more, perhaps. He remembers the comments that initiated the fight. Vaguely remembers being dragged back to the inn. Remembers throwing cold water on his face to wake himself up to do the terrible fucking job of stitching himself back up that he found himself with this morning (if there was ever a chance to keep that fucking cut from scarring, well, he's gone and botched it).

And he remembers telling the fucking vampire things that he probably should not have told the fucking vampire. He doesn't remember the specifics but he knows that he said too much. More than he's told anyone in a decade maybe. All for the sake of a petty victory that he doesn't even remember if he achieved.

He's uncharacteristically quiet today, even for being as hungover as he is. He forces the almost-solid porridge down his throat when it's pushed in front of him. He drinks half the water that he was using to wash himself last night and pours the other half over his head to wake himself up after maybe an hour of sleep. He only interrupts Sypha's long, long 'discussion' when she stares at him for an indication that he's still awake. It's after that that he's dismissed to the back of the wagon, either because Sypha can't stand his presence right now or because she doesn't trust him not to fall off and end up tangled under its wheels.

(Can't blame her, being tangled up under the wheels of a wagon sounds better than being in his own head right now, even without the throbbing pain.)

He doesn't sleep, mostly because he's been told not to and he is, even more uncharacteristically, on his best behavior right now. The day is mostly uneventful until sometime in the afternoon, when a particularly foolish highwayman sees a wagon driven by a single speaker woman and tries to take advantage of the situation. He's driven off within moments, of course, harmlessly to both them and himself, and the worst that happens is that the horses are startled by Sypha's display and the wagon lurches to one side, knocking Trevor onto his side against the wooden floor. It's only after everything has been confirmed okay, once the horses are calm and they're moving again, that he places a hand to his lower chest. ]

Fuck.

[ It's warm. And damp. He's gone and opened his shitty stitches, hasn't he? ]

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[ Alucard had asked about what his family's actual plan was, not what they would have done in this situation, and that, at least, is a blessing. Because he knows what his family would have done in this situation. He knows it and he hates it. ]

I don't know that there is a good solution.

Ignoring it all didn't work.

[That's how Carmilla happened. And...fuck it. There's the gaze of his mother's eyes down on Alucard that perhaps compel, or else it's the nearing anniversary of the thing that brought them together, or the thought that's been running around his head for weeks.]

And I don't want to be my father.

I know.

[ It would be the cleanest solution. The easiest. The worst. The one his family, the one lost in fire, would have wanted. The one his family, this little family of three, would never stand for. ]

I would never have loved someone who did.

[What does it say that Alucard doesn't even react to that statement off the bat? He is instead still thinking, because that path is still so very possible. After Trevor and Sypha are gone, what then?

Having Trevor help with this, it's been...not that. But that will only last for so long.

His goddamn fucking silences.]

[ The silence is too long. He waits for the stupid cheesy thing he said to sink in. For Alucard to react to this. For this to be over, because if there's any way to get the vampire out of his Moods it's to lure him out of them with affection. The second he started talking about becoming his father, it was clear that this had stopped being productive and started being a way for Alucard to torment himself. Trevor's had enough experience with stupid ways to torture oneself that they're not hard to recognize.

The silence stretches on. He reaches out a hand, placing it on top of Alucard's head. Softly, but with intent behind it, as if they were playing that stupid scar game again. ]

Tell me.

Mm. It's been a while, hasn't it?

[Alucard knows what that touch means. And he's grateful for it, even if this has nothing to do with the incident that demanded this thing's creation to begin with. He waits for the hand to withdraw, then leans back a little bit in the chair.

Name the thing. Pin it down. Then deal with it. That's all the logic was in the end, and how very Trevor it was.]

There are no good solutions, as you said. The natural one falls to me, and none of us want that. What the role requires, really requires is fundamentally against how I have been raised. [One hand gestures to his mother's portrait. Enough said.] Even if I took it on with all of my usual opinions, it is a lifetime appointment. This is the kind of work that drags one down. We all know that.

But I cannot abide the complete destruction of my father's people either. There are still parts of the Hold that I avoid or actively do not catalog, you know that's why. [Why all the vampire skulls have long been covered up with simple cloths.] And they keep so many other equally worse things at bay too, and that fact cannot be discounted.

[He crosses one leg over the other.]

So I ask about other solutions under the rather stupid idea that there will be some magic words said that creates a balance of what I wish to do, which is have nothing more than a quiet life with you both, versus what is best for this country, what is my responsibility for contributing to the current situation, and bluntly, a birthright and expectation. Not that the last two parts were ever in place or even articulated, my father's death was never anticipated that I was so prepared for the work.

The destruction is- the aim was never destruction, always no more people turned. No more people forced to suffer that. [ He sighs. ] But achieving that would always lead to a slow doom for your father's kind. There would be no way around it. Even if there was no warring, there would still be accidents. Illness. Stupid little things. And without the turning, the number of vampires would be finite.

But with the turning, this can only ever end in tragedy. People unwillingly turned, too weak to resist the hunger and control the damage they do. People willingly turned, with bad intentions, using their new powers to harm others and stirring up conflict. One way or another, the only ways this will end are the extinction of your father's kind or the complete enslavement of your mother's, else constant war between them.

[ Even with noble intentions, there would never have been a way for his family's work not to turn darker than it already was. ]

But you don't owe Wallachia shit. You are not your father. And you're also not your mother. You don't have to be sacrificed so that stupid people can be a little less afraid of the dark.

[There's a small flinch at those last two sentences. Brutal truth stings, especially over tender spots. But Alucard follows the point, because it's about being selfish rather than being Too Self Sacrificing. He probably qualifies for that part, sacrificing too much for Wallachia as it stands.]

So the goal must always be stalemate. And for that to happen, there must be forces in control, making sure both sides keep in line.

[It's also no where what he wants to hear. This...this thing he is, straddling the line of two very different worlds. It is so very tiring.]

Always. Because the alternative- Things were shittier before your father. Much shittier. I can't say most of us had any love for him, but- The man he replaced was worse. Worlds worse. If we didn't have the history we did with him, if what happened didn't happen, keeping him in place would have been the best we could hope for.

[ He sighs. ]

You've seen little Justine, in the Hold. I know you have.

[ Or rather, he has pointedly ignored little Justine. Because Trevor's talking about that one very small vampire skull. ]

[Mathias' blood. Enid's words. Ever since he heard them, Alucard had kept an eye out for the name again within the Hold's records. The matter of Belmont and Tepes was not simple hunting, that much was now achingly clear. Yet there had been no information offered. It was being kept from him, probably for good reason.

Sypha and Trevor gave him such nonsense for being protective and possessive. They were just as bad.]

My least favorite memento mori. Yes.

[He had covered that skull first. In any world where the Belmonts had gotten word that Dracula had a child of tender years, that skull would be joined by his own. That was a simple fact.]

The fucker before Dracula used to turn children. Once they're turned, they don't grow anymore. Not in the normal way, and not- in their heads, I suppose. They're always children. They could live centuries and they'd never be capable of understanding what happened to them. He'd return them to their families once the hunger first struck, let them tear them apart. And then he'd be the only one there for them. Soldiers, near as powerful as he was, but completely reliant upon him.

Justine was the last of them. Your father took over a few years after she was turned. He forbade all of that. Any vampire who even tried, he'd find them long before the Belmonts did. We didn't care for him, but at least he had some fucking standards.

[It's pretty hard for Alucard's face to go paler than it is at the moment (these conversations have that effect), but somehow it manages to happen. There's a disgusted wrinkle of the nose, and every detail hurts to hear. There's zero relief in knowing that skull's truth.]

Horribly low one, in this case. [The words are muttered. Disgusted. There's a flicker of anger but it's drowning in that disgust.]

Always has to be a vampire, and there always has to be a Belmont, always has to be a stalemate. Otherwise, that shit happens again. Fuck.

[ Does he even know where he's going with this? Hell no he doesn't. He's explaining the Belmont perspective, and he's explaining his own, and they're not the same, and the result is this stupid rambling mess. ]

But it can't be you. My family would have had you take his place, if we'd known of you. But you'd have done a shitty job of it. You look like you're about to vomit.

And this comes back to how much we must resemble our parents for the sake of so much more than just ourselves.

[At least the vomit comment gets a hollow laugh.]

Too human, I suppose.

It can't be you anyway. There always have to be a vampire and the Belmonts in opposition. You're known to have worked with us. Even if you got rid of me now, people wouldn't just forget that.

So, I suppose don't let it cost you any sleep. You don't want to do it, I don't want you to do it and you can't fucking do it.

Oh, I think we're at the point where I'm known for more than just that detail.

[Yes. That was the Alucard version of a dirty joke. He's proud of it.]

My role as designated Heavy Thinker will try very hard to accommodate a known fact, Belmont. [Thank you.]

...you know, I'd managed to forget that half the vampires in Europe have a keen interest in your sex life. So thank you for that.

[ And he elbows Alucard. Second touch. That particular concern out and boxed away and harmless. It's become more of a 'forcing each other to tell the truth' game than a scar game by now, really. But that was maybe what it always was. ]

They wouldn't appreciate my finer points anyway.

[Read: being mushy as fuck.

The elbow isn't a new version of ending this, but maybe it's the best way. All harmless and play, rather than the game's temporary tendency to end in some form of emotional devastation.

But then something snags in Alucard's thoughts, and he elbows back once more.]

There is something I've been meaning to ask in all of this, and I realize that it was probably for my own protection.

[ And then he's elbowed. Which is normally not something noteworthy, but in this context the meaning is clear. His turn. ]

Last I checked, you were an adult. You don't need protection.

[ Which isn't the same as denying it, because denying it would be a lie, and he has to tell the truth. The elbow said so. ]

Ask away.

Trevor.

[That's the bullshit detected voice. Alucard's tone sobers up, but he decides to focus his attention on the viewing mirror instead. The forest in it is all too serene.]

Your sister named my father as Mathais. Not Vlad. Not Dracula. Mathais. [His elbows rest on both arms of the chair.]

This factors into what you've already told me, and I've seen the name in the record since. [The boat. That horrible fucking dream.] What...?

[What did you spare me the first time?]

[ Well, shit. ]

Mathias Cronqvist. Count Mathias Cronqvist, though he never used the title. It was your father's name, before he was turned.

[ Which answers almost nothing, and Alucard is almost certainly going to ask for more answers than just that. ]

The older records use that name instead of the new one he took - Leon, and his sons, and their sons. Some of the family used the names interchangeably, especially if they spent a lot of time in the old archives.

I surmised most of that.

[But thank you for confirming.]

What was the personal connection?

Doctor to the Trantoul family, first. Closest friend of Leon's fiancee. When he left on the crusades, she asked Mathias to go with him as medic. He proved himself a great tactician and when they returned he and Leon had come to realize that there was more evil within France than outside of it. He stayed with Leon's company and they fought together, hunting down the vampire known as- Walter I think?

[ He pauses there for now. That's what Alucard asked for. The connection. Not how it fell apart. If he was feeling particularly obstinate he would have only told him that Mathias was doctor to Sara's family, but half-truths are only dragging this out. ]

[Doctor. Oh now that's rich, and there's actually a little snort at that detail. The rest is listened to in silence, because this? This is only part one.

But how it ends is tragedy, Trevor's revealed that much. The middle though, the how the...if he's to be honest the question of what did my father do? is the heart.]

The hunt took a bad turn. How?

The short version is that two out of three of them ended up turned, and nobody was happy about it.

[ He's going to ask for the longer version. Trevor knows he is. ]

The long version- Walter couldn't die. Not for long. He'd been killed before, but he came back. Mathias had a solution - a thing made with alchemy called a Crimson Stone. It- let me remember. It's a kind of medicine, except it's a rock. It pulls all the bad shit out of a body and holds it. And it could do that with the vampirism, too. And it would be a dangerous relic, once that happened, but then they could just hide it somewhere- at the bottom of a big fucking hole in Wallachia, for example.

(for cryptsleeper)

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