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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[It takes only a moment to clock that Sypha's gone. And it takes no guesses to figure out who is struggling to his feet for the first time since he's been conscious, because this is not only unacceptable, this is terrifying.]

For how long?

[There's naked fear on Alucard's face as he struggles to put himself upright. This isn't mother hen-ing about little things. This is life and death so far as he is concerned. It can't be just two of them. They'll die. He knows it, knows it in his bones, knows it like he knew how they were the right ones to defeat his father when the door to the keep under Gresit was kicked down.]

[ He's at Alucard's side within the second, with a speed that he usually saves exclusively for battle. He hasn't quite worked out whether he needs to support the vampire's weight or push him back down and what ends up happening is that his arms are wrapped around his chest, holding him in place. ]

Fuck. Don't do that. Lie back down. She'll be back, she's probably just restless.

She is on land.

[Like that explains everything. Every little bugfuck terror running through Alucard's mind because humans? Humans are easy to torture and vampires have spent millenia perfecing the art.]

Mirror. Now.

Sit down. Promise me you won't do that again, and I'll bring the mirror.

[ This isn't reopening stitches. This is undoing vampiric healing, and he doesn't know how that looks and he would very much like to continue not knowing how that looks. ]

[Alucard backs down. He does it only because Trevor's words are way too much like what he'd be saying if roles were reversed and their God he is behaving like a child.]

...All right.

[ Sypha had the mirror stashed in her robes. She hadn't let go of it since they first got the message, holding it so tightly that her fingers were white and staring into it as if she could do something, somehow.

It was only after a day or on the ship that she'd finally let go of it, leaving it on a desk with the few other things they have. His weapons. An empty decorated bottle. Half a chair. He takes it and sits next to Alucard on the edge of the cot. ]

If you check that thing and she's in a bookshop, I swear I'm finding a tavern.

Shut up.

[They're angry words, because that's where he's settled for an opinion on their situation right now. There's fear in being this broken, and that feeds the anger so much the better. He knows who it's similar to, and he doesn't care.

The mirror in hand, Alucard knows it will take no energy at all to just use it as a simple viewing mirror. A blink of the eye, his fingers on the glass and...

...and he nearly flings the thing aside for what image pops up instead. One of thousands of moments he experienced, one of thousands to work through in dreams for centuries to come. There's no words, just the mirror parting and that stark look of terror that was on Alucard's face the second he realized Sypha was gone is back with it's own vengeance.

Very delicately, Alucard manages a soft and deeply uncharacteristic:] Fuck!

[ He hadn't seen it before. Not really. He'd looked long enough to see that Alucard was alive (it hadn't taken much to check. he had been screaming.) and moved on. Because that was what he did. That was what Belmonts do. You can't look at the horror for long because it consumes you.

Such a harmless little thing, the pomander. One of the few things in the Belmont Hold created to genuinely foster peace. A way for those who could not live without harming others to do so. A tiny fragment of hope for a peaceful resolution to their long battle. It should have been as much a symbol of the potential for true peace and progress as Alucard himself was. It was iron, for vampires. Difficult to destroy with magic, but not harmful. It should never have been hung from a silver choker.

There's hissing at first, as it's attached. Of flesh. Of breath. And then, then Alucard takes a great breath after that first cry of pain and his face changes. Softens. The pain of it is still visible all over his face, but the reaction is muted. Acceptance. He's no longer backing away from the silver needles. There's no anger, no defiance, nothing. Nothing but pain and acceptance of the pain.

He shouldn't be seeing this. More than not wanting to, he shouldn't. Not without Alucard's leave.

Trevor snatches the mirror out of Alucard's hands. For a moment, he's considering tossing it across the room. He doesn't. He puts it down on the cot, face down, covering it with a blanket to mute the noises. ]

Mirror's not working.

[ Trevor "stating the fucking obvious" Belmont. ]

[The mirror probably would be better broken now, shattered and unable to be used and a million other things besides. It's the last thing of theirs twisted against them, the thing that they were oh-so-clever for figuring out because it allowed the illusion of being together even as the countryside separated them all.

There's not a single word from Alucard. His hands are flat, resting on the cot, the thin blankets beneath. (He misses their blankets so much, for the warmth and the familiar smell of them.) His eyes are dead ahead at the wall across from them, a blank thing with light peaking through the few cracks there are. (When was the last time he saw daylight?) He's not gasping for air even though it feels like all the breath has been sucked out of him. He ought to collapse.

But instead he's frozen, not able to even respond to Trevor's brand of...Trevor. It takes a moment for him to come back to himself, shaking his head to rouse all thoughts from his mind.

There's only one important one.]

Sypha. I don't...I don't care if you have to leave to do it.

[He's going against every principle he has with those words. He's scared and he is without one third of their triumvirate, and there could be harm.]

You're sure.

[ It's not a question, so much as it is a chance to back out. He knows when to give people space, and after a few years he's starting to learn when not to. Now- now is one of the latter times. Now is a time for pulling him close, for resting his chin upon the vampire's head and watching the way his breath moves his hair. For rubbing a rough thumb around his neck over where the choker had been, so that there is no place on him that has been last touched by it. Sypha will return, no doubt with whatever she's decided that they need, within the hour.

He picks up the morning star anyway, carefully returning each knife to its place. Somehow, he doubts Alucard wants him to leave unarmed. ]

I'll be back soon. We both will.

[Both hands come up to rest on Trevor's knee. To grip it gently, because to try and take Trevor's hand would mean that means his own fingers run too close to his neck and that is apparently a new horror. For the sake of the other two he had never touched the area. A politeness and an acknowledgement of what could be very awkward, even subconsciously. Now is was terror, and that was probably a byproduct of Carmilla's thoughts rather than something directly meant to humiliate.

But Sypha has to be the priority, because otherwise this is stewing in his own pointless suffering, and he refuses that. It's why the mirror showed that scene in the first place, and Carmilla will break under his hands or that will be the death Alucard chooses.]

Just. Go quickly.

[Before he changes his mind. Before he leaps up and clings like a scared child. Before something else shows up on that mirror and he really does break.]

[ Herbs. It's herbs. That's what Sypha was looking for. That's what was worth the risk. Ingredients for a medicine used by the speakers to numb pain. There's no guarantee that it will work, but if it does-

-if it does, it will be a godsend.

They return quickly. There's no trouble. What there is is a shaken man near the docks, demanding that they leave, that it isn't safe here. That a monster came for his brother in the night. It's Trevor who almost stays on shore at that, and Sypha who drags him back. When they look again, the man is gone. It's an hour or so later that he opens the doors to the infirmary.

Dear god, he hopes that the mirror has stopped making sounds by now. ]

We're both alive.

[The mirror is quiet. And slid across the room under a spare pile of canvas just to be sure. Alucard's moved it the way he usually moves his sword (that'll need to be replaced before they reclaim the house), and exhausting as the expenditure of energy was, it was worth it.

He's also acquired another blanket in the mean time, a dark green woolen thing that is draped across his shoulders. (He hasn't laid back down.) When the doors open, Alucard doesn't jump, but there are two keen eyes watching in the dark.

Then a face that looks for all the world the brightest, most shining sun when it sees the two walk back in again. He had doubts. There's no denying it. But it came from the paranoia this experience invited, encouraged, thrived on.]

Good.

[And then he finally lays the hell back down, not questioning why Sypha did something did the thing he requested not be done. The sitting up and the worrying took most of the energy he had for the day, and even as Sypha explains exactly what kind of work she's doing (Alucard normally listens, he likes learning this wisdom), he's coming closer to sleeping again.]

[ He pushes the three cots back together. They’re seperated in the mornings, when he and Sypha awake, so that they can access Alucard more easily if anything happens. When they sleep, it’s like this. It’s uncomfortable, even by the standards of Trevor, who finds sleeping on the floor perfectly acceptable. But right now- right now it’s the closest thing to normal that they have.

Trevor sleeps closest to the door, these last few days. One hand rests on Alucard’s chest (they were worried it might reopen, but it never did and the danger seems to have passed). Sypha lies at Alucard’s other side, curled up small and cocooned in blankets. ]

[There was never any protest at the arrangements. If the situation was any different, there wouldn't be a protest either because he would still have to recover. There wasn't any other place Alucard wanted to be except between the two of them, a smaller hand tangled in his hair, a larger one on his chest. In sleep, it is a normal configuration. In recovery, it is a blessing.

But there are the setbacks. Not in medicine (Sypha's herbs have done what they can, the pain is much duller than it was), but in dreams. The option of just being blacked out is not a luxury Alucard has anymore (probably because of the medicine).

All three of them have had their nightmares over the years. Had them before the three were three, had them when they've been in bed together, had them when one or both were traveling away from home. There's always quiet attention, no prodding about contents unless there is some sign that to talk is better, there are arms around each other and the reassurances that things were just dreams. Ghosts with no more power anymore. Memories, cruel ones.

They all wake up from them differently. Sypha does't bolt upright, she curls against whoever's closest to her and then kicks the other who's furthest away. Alucard just opens his eyes all at once, moving maybe an inch. (He also wakes up that way, so some of it is just little vampire things.) The indicator of it being a nightmare is that there's a hiss as he wakes, one that begins as startled and then melts into anger at his own subconscious.

So it goes this time, but there's more to it. A louder gasp and his hands try to move up and out of the blankets, clawing at some phantom thing for a mad moment before he realizes where he is.]

[ Before he even wakes, Trevor's hand flies from Alucard's chest to the hand closest to Sypha and holds it still. There'll be guilt over that, later. He trusts Alucard absolutely, but some instincts remain. He knows the sound of vampiric hissing, recognizes the sound of claws on the blankets, and in sleep he cannot think of it as anything other than danger.

But he does wake. He's easy to mistake for a heavy sleeper, when the opposite is true. He's a light sleeper, just one who can sort between a matter that needs his attention and one that can be tuned out without truly waking. Sypha getting up in the night to light a candle (they are not candles, the lamps by their bed that run on lightning, but he still calls them that) and read - that he can sleep through just fine. Alucard getting his long hair caught uncomfortably beneath one of their bodies and having to free himself, he won't wake for. This, though- this needs his attention. ]

Mmph.

[ He looks at Alucard through his good eye. There's no frustration on his face. And it usually is frustration, if it's a nightmare, by the time either of them wake to witness it. They know that, by now, and so it's a matter of Trevor lifting one or the other of them to rearrange them so that Alucard is in the middle, of Sypha blocking the door with ice so that not being closest to it ceases to be a problem, and of the three of them lying there in silence. Terror, though. Terror is new. Terror he doesn't know what to do with. ]

-'s it hurt? [ He mumbles sleepily. To which the answer is almost certainly 'yes'. But specifically he means whether that was the reason for the sudden outburst. ]

Nothing h...[What is he saying? Everything hurts, he's still barely recovered and hasn't seen daylight in full since they've escaped by the grace of Trevor's God. (He does't know about the wine yet, but he'll have a bitter laugh about the choice of phrase later.)

There's a long exhale, the sign of gathering up a horrifying range of emotions and preparing to shove them all aside. The things that just played for Alucard's theatre of mind, they'll just make the other two worry so much more. They don't need it, his physical state is a disaster in and of itself. To pile on more is unfair. Not right.

He's already as squished between the two as he could ever be. Sypha's moved just enough to make it possible, not stirring from the comotion but still recognizing it through her own ways.]

Go back to sleep.

[ He's not fucking going to do that. ]

You know full well that I'm not fucking going to do that.

[ He loosens his grip on Alucard's wrist, not quite letting go yet, and plays at shuffling closer (he can't get closer than he already is, but trying feels correct). ]

You don't have to talk. [ The sentence is incomplete, but they've all of them said it to each other so many times that it doesn't really need to be complete. Do what is best, as selfishly as you need, whether it's talking or cuddling or just going back to sleep, and I will be here. ]

[They can't get much closer, but Alucard can shift just enough so that his forehead is rested on Trevor's shoulder. It's not a place he naturally gravitates to (in happier times when they're in bed, it's usually Trevor's chest, and there's at least two or three dirty jokes about how Trevor has the most ample bosom), but it's there and it means not looking at anyone right now.

The dream was a repeat of every horror visited, sped up, and with the phantom of his father watching there, doing nothing. Saying nothing, but the look in his eyes suggested that all of this? This was earned. Earned for the sin of patricide, earned for taking custody of all the things meant to destroy the night things, and that no one aside from two scruffy humans would bother to stop this.

It was false, of course, a phantom born of guilt and fear. His father, if he endured, if he was in his right mind, would have visited fire and fury upon Carmilla and her ilk that would be a return to what his father was in his prime. Then he'd be home, tucked away somewhere safe and left to recover. Possessiveness, over protection, that was a trait inherited and there was sorrow in that fact too.

The dream had reminded him of another detail though, a conversation blocked out because it was the worst part of the ordeal. Something about cutting his hair before it all ends. I think the Church did that to his mother.

It's reflection on that particular element that leads Alucard to hiss out, twice as in many days, another quiet and this time much more defeated utterance of:]

Fuck.

Not sure you're study enough for that yet, I'm afraid.

[ Trevor might be warm, and sympathetic. He might care, worlds more now than he's ever admit. But he is still Trevor. Even now. His laughter at his own joke only laughs a moment, though, and his voice turns soft and serious. ]

We're here. Both of us. We won't leave, not again.

You're disgusting.

[There's a tired fondness, one that wants to say so many more words but just can't. Not right now. He'd be a liar if there weren't passing thoughts of what their bed will be like when this is all over (there are other things Alucard plans besides strategies for taking back the castle and what part of the Hold to assert dominion over next), but well. Trevor just being Trevor is fine for now. Right for this moment.]

You may not have a choice in the matter.

[Because this is clearly the conversation to have right now. Alucard catches it though, and the exhale he gives is something that should come from a far older man.]

Forgive me, that was uncalled for.

Neither of us have ever done a fucking thing in our lives that we didn't want to do.

[ Logically, he should know that there will always be other things. There will always be things that are more important. Things that matter more than the three of them. Right now, logically is not in charge. Alucard and Sypha are the only things in the world that matter, the people who have helped them are a distant second. Everything else is nothing. ]

We're a couple of stubborn, selfish little shits. And we want to stay with you. So that's what we're going to do.

[Reassurances, between the three of them, are never traditional. They're so often curse ladened, loving insults, a million other things that don't sound affectionate or reassuring at all to other ears. The three of them have their own definitions of what counts as the best words to sooth, to be affectionate, to express those things which are usually impossible to say.

And that's in play now. Because it's the most stupidly borderline romantic thing that could be said, and Alucard can recognize it for what it is. He's not going to break into tears at it (Carmilla would want it anyway, and anything that denies her satisfaction must be done to the utmost), but he can finally meet Trevor's eyes.

I love you too, you stupid smelly ass.]

You're the most stubborn. [And then there's him.] I'm the most selfish. [And Sypha well...] We've run out of adjectives that wouldn't earn us a good yelling.

[ He laughs again, the kind of rumbling laughter that starts in his chest and moves through his whole body, and it's warm and fond and all of those other things that Trevor can usually only manage after being stabbed at least once. ]

Hard to come up with adjectives for her when she's like this. [ Sypha looks practically angelic in her sleep, kicking habit and occasional snores aside. ] She'll earn a couple in the morning, I'm sure.

[ Alucard's looking him in the eyes again, and that is always a good sign. He finally releases his hold on the vampire's wrist to hold his hand, bringing both of their hands down against his chest. ]

Whatever it was, she dies for it. She dies and we purge every record of her. She vanishes from history, and there is nothing left but a head in the hold with no index number or name below it.

Kicks hardest, but that's nearly stubborn. [That laugh is everything to hear, and to be so close to it, to feel the way it rumbles from deep inside Trevro's belly and works it's way out, it feels amazing.] I don't know how you two manage on the road. Your legs must be bruised nightly.

[His legs are also bruised nightly when it's the three of them, but that heals in his sleep. Automatically, because otherwise Alucard would leave them there for just long enough to indulge in a little bit of shaming. Trevor shaming is easy, Sypha shaming takes actual effort.

There's a gentle moment where Alucard laces his fingers with Trevor's, just for the sake of them being as close as possible. He doesn't like being like this, this needy and demanding of touch, but Alucard knows that it's the best way to regain peace of mind. Clarity. Focus. All the things that they need for the task ahead of them.]

Yes. [The word has it's quiet intensity, but there's too much exhaustion for it to be truly angry.]

Before it begins [Our assault, our reclaimation, our work] I will need a moment to...[Fuck it. Fuck it he may as well admit this in the twilight of the ship.] She threatened my mother's fate on me. I will need a moment to steady myself.

[And for his hair. Because that threat rankled, he'll let Carmilla know that much, and when this is done he'll have acted and looked as if he was in his mother's image and not his father's, hair and all.]

(for cryptsleeper)

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