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An amateur is all I can think of, but I can’t see how they’d think they had something to gain. And I can’t see why he’d have kept quiet about it. He’s hardly the only person here who’s in danger if someone starts getting jumpy about things with teeth, and he could have sent a message out anonymously if he needed to. I’ve not seen anything to that effect.

[ He’s moving about now, and the audio reflects it. Footsteps and clatters as he moves around and gathers things. ]

The fuck are you trying to be sneaky about giving him medicine for?

Hell do you think we're going to do instead, just hand it to him and say "Oh, by the way, figured you might need this dead thief skull hand cream for those burns you're hiding"?

[Oh, boy, we may be gearing up for an ADVENTURE.]

So either somebody thought he was a threat, or some amateur thought they could — fuck, I don't know, practice on him.

[He can't quite restrain the snarl that escapes him at that; he's been doing well at hiding his feelings, but that one gets away from him.]

How long does it take to make a Belmont contraption like those cuffs?

Yes, obviously. Anything else would be weird.

[ Because the alternative? Totally normal. Here, have this skull paste. He catches the snarl, but doesn’t bring it up. There’s no sense in it. He doesn’t know the details, but he knows that Alucard and Jotaro are fond of each other. Of course he’s pissed. ]

I don’t know for sure. I don’t know how half the parts work. There’s a magic component that you’d need a specialist for. Then there’s the oil itself, and getting together the ingredients for that. Then getting that blessed. And you need a properly trained silversmith for the cuffs themselves- there’s a lot of parts, and unless you have a magical-smith-merchant-priest you need more than one person to prepare all of them.

Someone would've had to plan a long time to make something like that, in other words.

[And Trevor is right, it doesn't make sense that Alucard wouldn't have said something if that were the case. If the threat were still present, he'd act, wouldn't he? He's not the type to hide and isolate himself. That's more like how he was acting when he first —

...When he first showed up. Right after he'd killed Dracula. Right after he'd had to kill his father to save Wallachia.

Maybe that's not just from hurt, the weeping and the isolation. Maybe it's...grief? Something happened, something that's over, and this is the aftermath? Someone hurt him, and he doesn't want to talk about it — he doesn't want to talk about it, he wants to bottle it up and shove it away and go to sleep.

He'd seemed exhausted, too. Low on chroma. After just five days, he shouldn't have been that depleted, and he'd assumed it was just from trying to heal, but maybe...]

Where would those cuffs have been? The ones your family had.

Right. Anywhere between weeks and months, depending on how hard it was to come by all the parts.

[ He pauses when Jotaro does. There’s a quality to the short silence that he can recognise, a thoughtfulness. He doesn’t know what’s clicked into place, but he can tell that something has. ]

If any sets survived, they’d be in the hold under my old house.

[Yeah. Yeah, that's the answer he was afraid of hearing, and also the one he was halfway expecting.]

The hold you gave him, right? To...protect or whatever. Where he would've been, the last time you saw him in Wallachia?

[...]

Where he would've been alone?

...shit.

[ It’s his turn to pause. More clattering. Something scraping against the ground. A huff. ]

I’m headed to- whatever the fuck they call a boneyard around here. A rockyard. That Solemn place.

Fine. I'll meet you there.

[He falters a second, falling silent safe for the scuffing of shoes on carpet, and the faint creak of a hinge.]

...Yeah. I'll meet you there.

[ It’s difficult.

Because the solemn grounds aren’t all that close to the city, and while there probably are forms of transport available nobody is willing to offer it to someone who is clearly going there intending to smash things up. He knows better than to ask. Getting arrested is going to help exactly nobody. Which means going by foot.

Which means a couple-hours walk across a chroma-draining landscape.

Which isn’t ideal.

He makes it about a half hour out of the city before he needs to stop to rest, and then that just a second to catch his breath becomes full-on sitting on the floor huffing with exertion. Almost like he didn’t think this through and just tried to take action, any action, as immediately as possible to avoid thinking about that last exchange too much.

Pretty much exactly like that, really. ]

[It's lucky, maybe, that there's really only one way out of the city toward the Solemn Grounds, and yeah, it's a long way to travel, but hell, so was Egypt. At least he's got his motorcycle, even if riding it swamps him with memories of that time he'd been out for a drive and time had begun to slow, and he'd skidded out and fucked up his leg and Alucard had to come for him —

No, he's not thinking about that right now. Fuck.

He stays focused on the road instead, which is a good thing, because it means he spots Trevor taking a breather on the curb fairly easily, and brings his motorcycle to a halt near where he's sitting. The road is all but deserted; nobody comes this way in the off-season, so they're relatively alone. That's a good thing, too.]

...Were you really going to walk there?

[Who needs "hello".]

The alternative would be trying to get a lift to the 'no smashing things please' place with a hammer. So yes.

[ Pride is a powerful thing. He shoves himself to his feet with significantly more ease than he might have had about 2.3 seconds ago, huffing. So maybe he thought that chroma deprivation was like being long-day-trudging-around and instead it's no-food-for-a-week-no-safe-place-to-sleep tired. Quickly becoming turns-out-fighting-mermaids-underwater-was-a-bad-move tired.

Doesn't matter. He fucked up, he knows he fucked up, and so he has to fix is. Especially now that there's an audience who knows that he fucked up. ]

No fucking clue how to get in there. The locks here don't place nice with picks. I'll figure it out once we're there.

Well, c'mon, then. We're going to the same place. If you can stay on a horse, you can stay on one of these. I'm driving, anyway.

[He's also not wearing a helmet but like. Who needs helmets? If he falls, Star will protect him. A helmet would just get in the way, anyway.]

You can stay on a horse, right?

Of course I can stay on a fucking horse. Probably.

[ Look he's not ridden in actual years. Horses are expensive.

But you know what? Don't look a gift horse (or motorbike ride) in the mouth. He looks the bike over quickly, trying to figure out how one goes about riding one. It doesn't take long and- fuck, his limbs are heavy- he manages to climb on behind Jotaro without too much difficulty. ]

Just don't lean too far one way or another and throw the balance off. And hang on, I guess.

[It'll be like carting Polnareff, he tells himself. Fuck, he misses Polnareff.]

It's going to go fast. And be loud.

[And once Trevor is sufficiently holding on, they'll be off.]

[ It- fuck. It helps, if he's being honest. The chroma drain is still unpleasant, but it helps. Holding on like this.

And, blessedly, he does manage to keep his balance. ]

It was- shit, I think it was that road?

[Moonlacing lately is always...complicated. Of course it's going to happen whether he likes it or not, just by virtue of interacting with people like this. The problem is that it feels good, like it always does, and he doesn't really want to feel good right now. He wants to be angry, he wants to feel that drive and aggression that come with tumultuous emotions. Moonlacing puts a soft damper on all of that, blurring the sharp edges of rage down into something comfortable.

But it feels good, nevertheless. It smooths down his raised hackles, and loosens the tightness in his chest.]

What — that one?

[Fuck. All right, let him just get this bike turned around and heading back toward the road that leads to the bus park where the tourism ferries had let off their passengers back last fall, just a short distance from the gates to the Solemn Grounds.]

[ For a little while, it's calming. Calming is good. Keeps his mind from racing too much. Keeps him focused on solutions, rather than how he probably fucked up.

He'll consider the implications of moonlacing being so similar to being intoxicated later. And by later I mean never because fuck if that doesn't sound uncomfortable to think about. The bike slows to a stop, just out of the way enough to avoid arousing suspicion.

Because unfortunately, they're not the first ones here.

It'd be a pretty shitty cemetery if they were, but also the people who've been here lately have been- well. First there were people up to mischief a month ago, when everything went dark. Then more recently, when everyone started listening to the bad idea king. The point is, people have been doing stupid shit here recently, as opposed to the very okay and sensible and normal shit that they're planning.

Which means that there are a frankly unreasonable and disproportionate number of people patrolling to keep random moonblessed from causing trouble. ]

Fuck. Just how badly do they want to keep their skulls?

I figure probably about as much as anybody else.

[Like, what the fuck, did people in the West in the Dark Ages just go around stealing skulls all the time? They don't teach shit like this in schools!!

He drops a leg to the ground, keeping the motorcycle balanced while they scope out the gates of the cemetery from a distance. It's not like they're technically doing anything wrong right now, which is good, but it would definitely put a damper on their future efforts if they were to be spotted doing recon and then later apprehended.

Also, it's a shame there's no way he could retrieve a skull in five seconds or less. Maybe Star could fetch one, but — what the fuck, how is he even considering this.]

...Wait. What if they don't execute thieves here, to begin with.

[HMM MAYBE SOMEONE SHOULD'VE CHECKED WITH THEIR LOCAL LEGAL COUNSEL OH NO]

...then that would be a problem. Shit.

[ He pauses, taking a moment to poke at the weird moon-bracelet. Then huffs and, after thinking for maybe four seconds, and then climbs off the bike. ]

Fuck it. Not like dying around here sticks. I go try to steal bodies until they have to get stabby to stop me, you grab the skull when they do.

[ 'So you should rip my head off and make it into medicine for your boyfriend' is a perfectly normal and reasonable thing to suggest because Trevor Belmont is a perfectly normal person. ]

...What the fuck.

[The thing is — the thing is, it doesn't actually matter what Jotaro's personal feelings about Trevor Belmont are in that moment. Sure, they've got a tentative cease fire going, since apparently Alucard is the one thing in the world that they can both vaguely agree on. And sure, the guy's a bastard with a punch like a home-run swing, but he's smarter than he lets on and he's...like Alucard said, he's had a weird life, and the more they're around each other, the more Jotaro can see it.

But his reaction to Trevor's idea — no, that has nothing to do with Trevor himself, and everything to do with Jotaro. His history, his past, his destiny. And the last thing he's willing to do is sit around and watch while someone runs off to die heroically just so that he can complete a mission.]

That's your plan. Go get them to murder you for stealing so that you're the skull of an executed — what the fuck.

[WHAT THE FUCK]

I'm not turning your skull into burn salve!

We know I have a skull, which is better than anything we'll find there.

[ He- honestly wasn't expecting a negative reaction to that. Which is weird, because he's never done anything in his life that didn't get a negative reaction out of someone. ]

I'll just be a rock for a while while it grows back. [ Skulls grow back! ] May as well get some advantage out of this place being weird as shit.

Why are you so — why do you think that's even okay?

[Except...maybe he already sort of knows why he thinks that's okay, doesn't he? Part of it is clearly just that Trevor Belmont is an unhinged, deranged maniac. But how had Alucard put it, when they'd talked about him?

A man full of flaws, who has grown up hated and despised by his own people. Misery was the only thing he really knew well for a time.

And isn't that almost like how Alucard had acted himself, when he'd first gotten here? Determined to just go to sleep and wait for death. Brushing off the idea that anyone might care, until he'd had it hammered through his thick skull. It's not identical, not by any means, but damn if it's not close enough to make him stop and think a minute.

So is everyone from Dark Ages Wallachia like this, he wonders? Or does he just have a knack for running into all the people who are completely blind to the value of their own lives?

Or maybe it's him. Maybe he's the one oversensitive to it, after Kakyoin. After everything.]

I don't care if you'll come back. Your life isn't a fucking means to an end. If that's the only thing you can think of, then you do what you want, but don't expect me to help you.

[ He's ready to argue. Of course he's ready to argue. There are very few times when he isn't ready to argue with anyone about anything. ]

Fine.

[ But he doesn't. He huffs again, as if he's just been told that he can't have dessert rather than that he can't get his skull taken away. Because nobody's ever told him that his life isn't a means to an end. It's not true, of course. But it catches him off-guard, and that's enough to shut him up. Even if it wasn't, it's not like he can drag his own skull back to town. ]

Still leaves us with the problem of finding a skull.

Is that how you used to do it in Wallachia? Just go find a cemetery and dig one up? No wonder he named the raccoon —

[...Wait a minute. The raccoon. Alucard's raccoon. Trevor the Raccoon.

What had he said about it? I used a charm from the shop and it brought me a raccoon. That guy Lumi has stuff like that, doesn't he? Those orbs and whatever, the charms. He'd used the one at Christmas to get his guitar from home.

...And there aren't any skulls here, but there clearly are in Wallachia...]

Did you have a skull like that, back home? Like in your family's hold, maybe?

Probably? I don't remember if we ever needed to go looking for one. I've never really had a reason to. Doesn't often come up, making medicine for vampires.

[ He considers it, for just a moment. Probably not. He doesn't like to think of his family as graverobbers. But he doesn't like the alternative either, that they'd have used their influence to convince town officials to hand over the bodies of criminals. He just shrugs. ]

We'd have had the ingredients on hand. You'd be able to find just about anything in the hold, I'd think.

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GUESS WHAT DUDES IT’S ACTION NOW

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