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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.

Then I know how we can get it.

[Well. How Trevor can get it, at least. Probably. Maybe. It's a wild, out-there solution, but it's at least not as crazy as killing Trevor and harvesting his skull after he's stolen something.]

There's this guy, Lumi. He sells...weird shit. The kind you don't find in stores. One of the things he sells is this orb, you can use it to get stuff from where you came from and bring it here.

So if it's in your hold, one of those orbs could probably get it here.

[amazing how literally no one has yet questioned the merits of RUBBING THIEF SKULL POWDER ONTO VAMPIRE BURNS TO TREAT WOUNDS but that is neither here nor there]

So I go find a guy and pay him to steal shit from myself.

[ Look, his plan involved talking to less people and thus was the superior plan. But he huffs. At least this version of things means that Alucard doesn't need to find out he was involved. He'd probably want to know what the fuck happened if he died. Maybe. ]

Yeah, sure. I'll go looking for him once we're back.

Technically from your family back home, but sure.

[And thus the graverobbing plan gets amended into the time-traveling graverobbing plan, but you know, sometimes you just have to be flexible like that when your life is a bizarre adventure.]

Is there anything else in there that might be useful? Might want to think about grabbing that, too.

[ Oh. Awkward. He doesn't know, does he? ]

Technically, technically from Alucard. His basement full of trash now.

[ He brings a hand to his face, to one eyebrow, feeling at the bone beneath it. Perfectly good skull, right there. Heck, they were playing fast and loose with bones when they were trying to figure out if crystals would work. Maybe he could just lop off a hand and try that. ]

I'll think about it. Most of the shit down there was for- you know. The other thing. We didn't have that many vampire allies.

Right. His castle and your basement, wasn't it?

[Which. Reminds him that maybe it's time he showed a little more of his hand, since they're now tentative allies instead of bastards at odds. He hasn't forgotten the reaction Trevor'd had to the things he'd said in the grocery store; clearly the events of Back Home™ are a hot-button topic for this Belmont.

Maybe it's stupid. But hell, if this goes bad, he can always just make Trevor walk home. Asshole.]

He talked about you and Sypha, before you got here. What you all did. And I saw — Dracula. How that went.

[He waves a hand at the sky, vaguely.]

Moon bullshit, for that one.

He asked me not to talk about Dracula. Sorry. I take that shit seriously.

[ Promises, he means. And maybe Dracula. There's not a lot he takes seriously, but they made a deal. He's not going to be an asshole about Alucard's father and Alucard won't be an asshole about his drinking. ]

I believe him. When he says that he knew a man worth mourning. That's all I'll say.

Yeah. I'm not surprised.

[At being asked not to talk about it, he means. Whatever Trevor Belmont's feelings are on vampires — and he'd had a taste of those already, the day with the turnips — they're probably even more abundantly so about Dracula himself.

And the Wallachians had called him the opposite of Dracula. Not even his own identity, separate from his father's. Just, what Dracula wasn't.]

You don't get to pick the family you're born into. What the people before you did. Sometimes you get stuck with it because of what they did.

[Sometimes a vampire wants to kill you for no other reason than what your last name is. Sometimes the first time you ever lay eyes on him is also the last time you ever lay eyes on him.]

C'mon. If you want a ride back, let's get going.

...Yeah.

[ Jotaro gets it. And that's- that's a strange thing. Even Alucard and Sypha have never just understood like that.

He climbs back onto the bike, sitting behind him. Sighing. ]

He didn't tell you, did he? Why he got stuck with a runt who never finished his training.

He said there was some kind of legend. A hunter, a magician, and some bastard who slept a lot. He was the last one, obviously.

[There's a particular knack for saying the word "bastard" like it's a term of affection and camaraderie. He's good at saying it that way; Polnareff is that kind of a bastard. So was Kakyoin. So is Alucard. The kind of bastard who's your bastard, who you'll shit on every hour of the day but god help the third party who says even the slightest word against him in your presence.]

I know he was asleep, and you and Sypha found him. ...How he got the scar, too.

[They're not talking about Dracula, so he doesn't elaborate. He gets the bike started instead, pulling back out onto the road that leads back to the city.]

Not that why. Why it was me who was his bullshit hunter, not someone who didn't need to hide behind a fucking fledgling.

[ Not that that's what Alucard is, really. But the point stands. Alucard shouldn't have needed to be there. ]

There havn't been Belmonts. Not for a long time.

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