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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[ There's nothing there. There had been fury- real fury, the kind that he'd only ever seen for a second when Sypha recounted her near miss with the witchhunters, that had fizzled away into desperate protection when she smiled weakly and placed her hand on his. (the table in their bedroom still has the claw marks. Alucard keeps talking about replacing it, but Sypha won't hear of it. Those marks are as much a sign of his love for them as anything else in that room, after all. There's a cloth over it, a compromise.). Now, there is nothing. ]

Alucard.

[ He doesn't have his knives, or his whip. He's- in his nightclothes, for some reason. Did Carmilla take them prisoner while he was asleep? He's a little fuzzy on the 'how' of his getting here. He turns the bodies over with some difficulty, locating a ring of keys so that he can undo the chains. As he does, he tries to speak to the vampire, unresponsive as he is. ]

Alucard- [ And then, and the name is something personal, too deeply so for him to use in anything but jest, but- ] Adrian. Can you hear me?

[Still nothing. Silence reigns over the scene, and where those bodies once were there is nothing at all. They may as well have never been. The castle doesn't whirr or creak (Sypha broke it but there's still some life in the old gears. The pipes work, there's all the mechanism for lighting, all the wonderful things of immortality that humanity is yet to discover.)

It's not death. Death would be a mess of fear. What there is is pressure, bearing ever down, down, down, forcing air out of the dim room.

Shadows play across the wall. Older scenes from when this place served it's purpose. Dracula's shadow, fierce and furious, a vampire in his all too glorious prime. THe thing that drove the Belmonts to Wallachia. It moves as vampires do, devours the shadows of others that once were.

And then there's an old thing played out. Another shadow, this one bearing a sword in one hand, stake in the other. A bearing as noble as how Alucard tries to carry himself (except in the end, when it's the three of them, that bearing falls away), except even more so. There is righteousness in it, the kind of religious righteousness that Crusaders had.

And in a way, that isn't far off the mark.]

[ His hands freeze in the process of unlocking the cuffs. He remembers what they did last time, the price that had to be paid to undo that damage. But his hands are still bound. He can't support Alucard's weight like this, not easily. And- those shadows. Those shadows. Even as only a shadow, Dracula in his prime is terrifying. He puts himself between Alucard and the wall, for all the good that he'll do.

The next shadow is almost as familiar as Dracula's is. A bearing that makes it seem tall, even dwarfed by Dracula. Radiant, as far as a shadow can be. At his hip, a long line of linked rings that Trevor knows from his own shadow. The Morning Star.

Leon. Leon Belmont, the most powerful knight of the King of France. The forger of the Vampire Killer. The man his sister was named for. The head of his family.

His shoulders slump. He relaxes, only a little. If anyone could render the two of them safe, safe from Carmilla, safe from that terrible shadow of Dracula, safe from all of this, it would be his family's head. ]

[Alucard's eyes go up to the shadows finally. Part of him seems to acknowledge Trevor is there, but he looks over Trevor's shoulder to see the patterns that play out on the wall. There's blood that splatters, there's so many impalements that never take. It's a horror to watch, and there's a weight to it too. Because there's a moment, a single moment, that it looks like his father has fallen, and for the life of him Alucard can't help but surge forward to try and do something. Anything. That's still his father.

But that vampiric shadow returns, it's fury greater than before, but the shadow of Leon is faster. Sharper. And there is a glint of real metal that is no longer just shadow that goes past Trevor's head.

There is impact.]

[ There are words now, he can only hear them vaguely. Carmilla's voice had been clear. Leon's is- he doesn't fucking know what Leon's voice sounds like, but it probably was never this, an amalgamation of Carmilla's and Dracula's and Sypha's and his and Alucard's own and so many others he can't place. They speak over each other, making the words difficult to make out.

my home defiled, my blood defiled, my last son-

He stops listening. He stops listening because at once chains snap and Alucard dashes forward and the shadow leaps out of the wall. There is metal. He waits for Alucard to shove past him, but he doesn't. Instead- instead there is the sound of two pieces of a silver choker striking the ground. The smell of iron. Something warm drips onto his back. His eyes follow the blade all the way to Alucard's throat.

No.

He- he can remove the blade. He can shove the man's stupid teeth into his neck by force. He can still make this right. Or he could, if his body would move. Blood drips down onto him. It's only now that he realizes that the sword is holding Alucard in the air above him by his neck.

There is a great, pained scream. Not from Alucard. Not from him. And the sword withdraws. It withdraws because the shadow of Leon is sinking back into the wall, consumed by the twitching, growing, furious shadow of Dracula. Trevor catches Alucard's body as best he can with his bound hands. Leon is gone, nothing of him left, and Dracula does not stop growing. The room is slowly being consumed, the bars and hooks and chains being sucked into that great, growing shadow.

Alucard has to live. He has to survive. One of them has to survive this to find Sypha, and Alucard is the only one who might, even in his current state. It's difficult to manipulate his motionless body with hands tied, but he's desperate enough to manage. He surrounds Alucard's body with his own as best he can, holding him so that his head is against his shoulder. And as the last piece of the room around them is absorbed by that terrible, choking shadow, he places Alucard's sharp teeth against his neck and pushes. ]

Edited 2018-12-04 01:29 (UTC)

[There is nothing but blackness now. Dense. Thick. Not a tomb, but ever-so-close.

Then there is another screech. It is the one Alucard made when Carmilla threatened, but deeper and more sorrowful and somehow with even more rage in it. That shouldn't be possible. And yet it is, and the sound echoes in the thick muffled dark for what feels like a lifetime.

The weight of Alucard disappears from Trevor's arms. A flash of two red eyes in the darkness, and they do not linger on Trevor at all. He is nothing in those ancient eyes right now. The shadow only wants his son's body (and it's a corpse now, more surely than anything else), and God help whatever comes next.

It's the kind of hellscape that should cause any man to bolt upright in terror. The most that Alucard does is open his eyes and heave out a truly exhausted sigh, careful not to disturb Sypha, unaware that Trevor's witnessed the whole ordeal.]

[ This is the part where normally he would fall out of bed. That's how his nightmares go- he struggles to find cooler air, away from even what little heat radiates from Alucard's body, and wakes up when he hits the ground. He doesn't wake otherwise, his consciousness perfectly content to rouse him from sleep for the most minor things and yet determined that no amount of horror should be enough to wake him. If he does wake without falling, he cannot move. He sees demons in the room, crawling over him, pinning him down. Sometimes Alucard is awake, then, and his presence drives them away. Sometimes he isn't, and he can only wait there until someone wakes.

But there's a table on his side of the bed, and it combined with Alucard and Sypha's weight is enough to keep him from moving anywhere. And he can't remain in the dream, even in the half-dream of suffocation and demons. Because it wasn't his dream. Slowly, staring at the ceiling and breathing heavily, he pulls one arm up over the blankets, holding it above his head to confirm that no, his arms aren't bound. ]

Fuck. [ It's a word that's getting a lot of use recently. His other hand, on Alucard's side, seeks out the vampire's then, to confirm that he is still there. ]

...Trevor?

[The name is whispered, dazed and unsure. Alucard struggles to pick up his head (the spell for sleep is a weighty thing, it must be to actually keep his light-sleep nature at bay.)

Then it all crashes against Alucard like a wave. He barely clocked that the dreams had a different texture to them than all the other times before. There was someone else there, there was someone witnessing all of that, and he does nothing more but lay where he is, utter shame and horror blossoming over his face. The things he's kept to himself to keep the other two from worrying. The horrorshow of it all. The guilt compiled from so many sources.

Fuck is right.]

...Your God. You shouldn't have had to witness that.

[ He doesn't answer. Not immediately. Instead his hand ghosts over Alucard's body in a way that in any other context might have been something happier. No gash or stitches at the hip. No burned flesh as his fingers brush over stomach and chest. And- he's hesitant to check but after a few seconds his fingertips rest against the man's throat. It's whole. He's whole, and Trevor's hand falls back onto the bed in relief.

It didn't happen isn't quite true. But it didn't go like that. ]

Safe. You're safe. That's all that matters.

[He freezes. And that's a wrong reaction in so many ways because even in this horrible desperate days after this experience, Alucard has thrived on touch. Even in other night terrors, he's woken and has felt safter for the arms around him. But no one else has witnessed those, and this is...

...No. He forces himself to relax. Because they're both going to worry, and there's enough of that as it is. It's why none of this has been said. Night terrors just add to an already overflowing plate.]

Some of that isn't new. Don't worry.

I don't worry. You're a sturdy fucker, you can take care of yourself.

[ Well that's a pair of fucking lies. Or one lie and a half-truth, because Alucard is indeed a sturdy fucker. He stares up at the roof, considering the rocking of the ship for a moment and then- ]

Tell me when you're ready to be touched.

[ Because he caught that flinch. But more than that, he can tell the difference between relaxing for real and forcing oneself to relax. He's silent for a moment longer to allow that to sink in and then- ]

Was that you, or her?

[ Carmilla's monologue, that is. It's not the most graceful way to bring it up, and it's untrevorlike to bring it up in the first place - he's usually a fan of letting people keep their secrets unless they choose to share them. But this is a poison that needs to be excised, just as much as the silver or the corpse-blood was. ]

You had other opinions on sturdiness a few nights ago.

[At the time, the comment had been to try and chase away all these awful things that rise at the back of the throat. Makes one gag. It is fair and right to try and do it again, but...no. It all falls flat, and after a moment, Alucard's trying to be flippant about it all. That's Trevor's thing, that's what he's good at. Never a skill Alucard's had.

There's a few moments of steadying oneself, and Alucard shifts where his hands are. Sypha's still caught one of them (it's threaded through her hair, he strokes it gently), and he rests the other on the lower part of Trevor's chest, right about the navel. On that much, he's okay.

As for the rest.]

Some of her. The rest...[Why did that have to be what was remembered? Easier to laugh off the appearance of Leon fucking Belmont because that death scene has played out for about a year in all it's variations.]

Guilt.

I change my mind a lot.

[ He's still cautious, when he does touch Alucard again, simply laying a hand on top of his. It's not quite as good for proving to himself that he's there and safe and whole as pulling him close and kissing his hair, but it's something. A little at a time. ]

'Rutting with livestock'. Was that the guilt?

[ This is the kind of conversation he usually strives to avoid. He doesn't sound hurt, more- genuinely concerned. Concerned that they've hurt him somehow, soiled him in the same way that Carmilla has soiled everything else. ]

Direct quote. Vampire perspective is...tiresome.

[He actually rolls his eyes as he says it too, which means that Alucard is not just bullshitting for the sake of feelings.]

It gets petty after a time. I don't think your ancestors have ever really noted that.

[The hand underneath Trevor's stays very still, but it relaxes just an inch more. This isn't death, it isn't trying to prevent death, and that was one of the scariest points. He's died in dreams before, quite a few times. Fangs into Trevor's or Sypha's necks? Never. Not even for the sake of his own life.]

Not a word I ever heard used to describe them, no.

[ He doesn't laugh. He wants to, because badmouthing vampires is his favourite thing, but- God. He's glad to know that Alucard doesn't regret any of this. But that makes it real. It's real that Carmilla found her way into that space that was theirs. It's real that she stood there and watched him suffer and turned the best thing that's ever happened into another knife to cut him with. ]

It was a bullshit plan, if that was real. [ Leaving them in a locked room with his hunger, that is. ] You'd just sit there starving at us. It'd be boring.

They're old. They just squabble over the little insults. Beyond everything else that's known it's...that.

[Alucard treating it as a totally serious thing doesn't help the badmouthing urge either. His mother didn't want him overly exposed to other vampires as a child, and thus even as an adult, such interactions were limited. It was why humanity was easier to come by.

Wearily, Alucard shifts so that the whole of his face is pressed against Trevor's chest.]

You don't want to know the real one. [He's blocked it out.]

It was probably also bullshit. It clearly didn't fucking work, because we're here.

[ He does raise his head to kiss Alucard's hair now. Just once, before returning it to the pillow. ]

And Leon Belmont is dead. Very dead. Buried in a robe stitched with silver, with silver nails in the coffin. They dug him up just to stick iron pins in his bones. A lot of things wanted to be the one to desecrate his body, so every precaution was taken.

[ Believe it or not, the Belmont family has earned a place on the shitlist of a lot of people who can raise, control or otherwise mess with the dead. ]

[Alucard doesn't quite laugh at that but...well. He'll confess to something:]

He's been around a few times before. I think I've stirred that spirit by accident.

[This is so stupid. He knows it's irrational. But fuck it, this liminal twilight of fear and exhaustion needs just a moment of irrationality.]

I had to check a particular inscription on a stone in the crypt one morning. You were both so very exhausted, and I wanted a morning where you weren't making comments about my hair. [Because let's be clear: Alucard's sex hair is truly amazing.] But I had to go past that tomb, disheveled, stinking of you and all, and that spirit knew and has expressed displeasure ever since.

So you're telling me that the head of my house was offended by my smell.

[ Is all he can manage for a moment. Because this is irrational. And yet Leon would not have been there if it didn't make some sort of twisted sense to Alucard. He brings his other hand up from Sypha's back, tangling his fingers in Alucard's hair and rubbing his fingertips against his scalp.

He'd really rather keep the number of people who know the details of his sex life to two. Not 'Two, a ghost and also Carmilla and her whole fucking army'. But here they are. ]

If he did disapprove - of this, of you, rather than of the drinking, or the- everything fucking else that I've done. If he did, that'd be rich, coming from him.

[ He doesn't know the whole story, but he knows the whip's name. He knows that Leon would have happily spent his life in the arms of a vampire, had that ever been an option. ]

I did not say there was logic to it. Just...it is.

[There's more to it, even Trevor's likely to figure it out. Dracula's voice was in that horrid amalgamation of rage and blood. And it is so very unlike Alucard to be irrational.

But all of him relaxes as Trevor's fingers rub gently through his scalp. It feels good, but Alucard's always been soothed when he's curled up like this. The hand resting above Trevor's belly button moves, just a little bit up and over, and his thumb softly traces the scar from the first Trevor wound he ever had to sew up. In that stupid fucking wagon.

And in that moment, there's a sense of the familiar. Not in anyway else but the knowledge that this, the memory of it, it hasn't been made profane. That scar was trust, letting a vampire need an open wound, ignoring a lifetime of instinct. Whenever they were all a pile of limbs, Alucard pressed loving kisses to it, lingered, because that stupid scar was the beginning of so much. (Easier to name the scar that than his mother's death. Because all of this was from his mother's death.)]

Forgive me, but given everything I know of your family makes the statement sound false to my ears.

[ He chooses his words carefully, because there's a way this could go badly. Dracula's first true crime. The reason for this whole crusade. The reason, he imagines, that Lisa had never been turned. ]

His wife. His wife was a vampire.

[ There's a full story to it, most of which Trevor doesn't know. But he knows some. He knows what becomes of Belmonts who are turned, how they are absorbed into the whip to strengthen it and to join the vampire woman who watches over the family. He knows that Leon had loved Sara, because if he did not then none of this would have happened. He would have stayed with her, surely, forever if he could.

...there's irony in this. That Leon's crusade against the creatures of the night began with the death of a beloved vampire, and Dracula's against humanity with the death of a human.

Alucard's hand is on that scar. It always drifts there, doesn't it? Best stabbing he ever got. ]

The Morning Star's name is Sara. [ Is what he manages, after a moment. ]

[Alucard lifts his face out of Trevor's chest just long enough to hold eye contact.]

A family of fucking librarians and you've never written this story down properly?

[There are other thoughts, thoughts about beginnings and book ends, but this one is...right. And mildly annoyed.]

It's in his journals. We can't write it down anywhere else. He forbade it.

[ He shouldn't even be mentioning this within earshot of Sypha, asleep or not. Keeping stories secret is the opposite of her nature. But she's family now, and she sleeps like the dead anyway. ]

The Trantoul family lost a daughter, he wouldn't have them lose their station as well. If word spread that the eldest daughter of the cousin of the King of France became a vampire and that her husband deserted and was exiled- He wanted to protect them.

They have silver covers. I can't touch them.

[He also never, ever wanted to read them. Not for fear of a Belmont's loathing of Dracula, that much is actually expected. It's more what his father once was, the thing that he sometimes is in dreams, that scares him more. Alucard knows what his father once was, knows the stories, but there's a difference between reconciling a second or third hand account to the man versus one vivid, which is doubtlessly what is in those journals.]

Please tell me you're joking.

I don't joke about- [ Well no, he can and will joke about fucking anything. ] -it's true. I don't know the full story, I've not read them myself. They were off-limits. I only know what my sister told me.

[ He sighs, trying to recall the details. ]

She was very ill when she was turned - a vampire called... Wilfrid, I think? Walter? - but she survived the process. Leon gave up his title and fled from France to stay at her side, but- the weaker someone is in life, the less power they have to fight their hunger as a Vampire. She chose to die, and used her blood to first consecrate the Morning Star.

[ There's a figure in that story who he isn't mentioning. And that's a downer, so- ]

-So, you know. Fucker has no right to judge us. He'd have stayed with a whole vampire, given half a chance.

(for cryptsleeper)

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I'll talk to u later about fudging the plot of LoI! in the meantime Trevor doesn't know most of it

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