[ The next few weeks are spent in preparation. They go through Leon's journals, and through Enid's writings on the geography and politics of France at the time. Since their eldest sister's near-turning, Leon's story (and in particular that stone, the one that could draw the vampirism out of a body) had become a keen interest of hers. Leon's journals are written after the fact, based upon memory rather than the emotions of the moment, and biased by knowing what would happen. All 'I should have known's and regret, with only the slightest clues that Mathias had ever been a dear friend to him.
Which makes it easier, because it disguises the depth of the betrayal. There's no change in the way he speaks of Mathias after Sara's turning, only the slight tone of disgust (with Mathias, yes, but also with himself) throughout.
The old Trantoul estate - likely abandoned after the massacre, though it's hard to say if it remained so for four centuries after - seems as good a place as any to start. The childhood home of Leon, taken in by the family after his father died in service to them. The first place to offer Mathias shelter and work as a brilliant young doctor whose methods scared a few too many people. The birthright of Sara, only child of the first cousin of the King of France. The base of operations used by Mathias, Leon and their whole company. It would be the best place to work from but the mirrors won't even show it, let alone allow a way to be opened there. ]
Your father warded the whole place after Justine's attack. [ While he was still tending to Sara, to keep anything from finding her and harming her more. ] Even Enid had no fucking clue what half of the spells he used were.
[ Sypha has been trying to figure them out, of course, but it's difficult when all they have to go on are Leon's notes and the fact that the mirror just reflects their own frustrated faces. ]
Only makes it a better place to work from, if we can't be spied upon. We can start from a few days' travel out from it and go on foot the rest of the way.
[Perhaps it is right that this has happened, in all the horrible parallels the three of them have now become accustomed to. Two fucked up families. The unfuckening recent, and so to go over all these old wounds is to ensure that they are well and truly put to rest. Ways to ensure the past does not repeat itself.
Or else a prelude to exactly that, which is a thought Alucard refuses to entertain. They're agreed on that much: the past is gone, all else is built anew.
Besides, there's a greater logic to this. The east of Europe is settled now. Belmonts are back to enforce order, Tepes has absolutely no desire to deal with the things of the night. So west, west is where there is no order. West is where these two fucked up houses fled from. Let all the night things go home to roost.
There is no prophecy to guide, only the sense of real danger if they do not act quickly enough. Research in Leon's journals is fundamental. Alucard scrambles to get a sense of what France's current situation is like and where they must tread carefully. The estate is an old landmark for those who live near by, it seems, and considered a place to keep well away from. Good. Privacy. Or else whoever's responsible for this theft is also using the place because if you're going to re-release a hell on the west, why not spite the people involved at the start?
Alucard's other priority is ensuring home is secured in the mean time. Trevor and Sypha will go through the mirror, then he'll follow in another way so the distance mirror can be packed away and come with him. Other spell work is in place. The castle and hold are obscured: just a part of the forest now.]
That will have to do. If the place is in use by opponents, then it gives us time to consider other bases of operations.
[He's found a few abandoned spaces to make use of: a small abandoned hunting shack that was perhaps a part of a neighboring estate. Ironic, naturally, but it is well and truly abandoned and in the middle of the forest. No one will notice smoke coming from the chimney for the still cold spring nights.]
Whatever spells we break, we apply here when we return home. Better for us all.
[Safer for them all. Alucard still sleeps closest to the door. He's pressed almost too close to Sypha at night, makes a point to ensure that there's one arm resting on Trevor somewhere, because this is the kind of work that demands hardness. It needs to be tempered with affection.]
[ They're close. They can tell they're close, because the horses keep trying to turn back. At first he'd thought that it was Useless living up to his name (though Sypha keeps trying to convince him to answer to 'Ulysses' instead). But even the slightly more competent of the horses seems intent on turning away. Another half mile, and Trevor can feel the same charm start to affect him, as well. That knowledge, deep inside him, that they ought not be here and they should turn back.
(And it is a very odd feeling, knowing that that feeling means they're at the right place and ought to go forward. He believes both entirely, and he doesn't usually care enough about anything to feel conflicted like this.)
They first gave up on the plan of Sypha driving the horses and instead turned to the less dignified 'Trevor tries to drag the fucking beasts' option. When that also threatened to result in the two idiot horses tearing their wagon apart, they have instead turned to bribery, Trevor walking backwards with an apple in each hand, leading the stupid things forward. Which means he has his back turned to the road, and only notices something might be amiss when Sypha's jaw hangs open in wonderment.
And so he turns.
A little way away from here, the late winter stops. It just stops, the frost on the ground replaced with thick grasses and wildflowers and trees with leaves only just starting to turn from green to gold. ]
Shit. I heard that there were places where the seasons're all backward. [ Sypha had told him stories of such places, once, faraway places that saw the heaviest snows in the heights of summer. ] Didn't think they were in France.
[Being compelled away from this place effects even Alucard. That chills him, because compulsion is something he's far more immune to than most. But this is the work of magic and not vampiric nonsense, and there's a point where fighting against the charm is a matter of principle because this will not impact him.
He has no opinion on the horses, other than the whole thing with bribing is absolutely hilarious.
They break through the barrier. The world around them is nearly to the brim with magic. Sypha says it first, and Alucard can only nod in quiet agreement. He's thinking about the journals, about the timeline of things, and there's a soft hiss as he realizes what this place means.]
This isn't a backward season.
[He says it with his usual gravity, crouching down in the grass to feel the warmth there. His glove goes of for good measure.]
[ There are concerning signs. When Sypha holds a frozen palm to the back of his head to reduce the swelling, he asks three separate times why his head is cold. He complains when Alucard tells him to remain alert of needing to splash water on his face, only to look uselessly around for a sink that isn't in this kitchen, as if he thinks he's still in the castle. When Alucard sighs and draws close to kiss his forehead he narrows his eyes with a low, wary 'Fangs, vampire. Away from me.'
He also still isn't capable of walking steadily across the room, apparently Sypha's test for whether he can sleep safely unassisted, by the time that short summer night comes and goes and the hour grows so late that he can't physically remain awake.
It's a powerful paralysis spell that she uses in the end, to immobilize him and keep any injury from becoming worse, and that might have been more distressing even than his brief failure to recall the last four years spent with Alucard. He can't remember why he's being held in place like this, no matter how gently Sypha holds him and whispers that he's safe. His eyes are wild with horror even as the rest of his face seems calm. His fingers twitch only slightly against the spell. Exhaustion finally overtakes him after a half hour of it and he finally falls asleep.
And then the waiting begins. Because he can't be left unattended like this. ]
[Alucard's only satisfaction in this situation is that he's right: Trevor's never had as bad a fall as this before. Cold comfort because the way he acts, the things he forgets hurt far more than any actual injury. It is a thing that he knows not to take personally (the fangs comment stings hardest), but when Trevor is finally asleep, he at least lets Sypha see it. They sit for a while in gentle silence, her hand playing with that one stupid, silly curl that sits near the part in Alucard's hair, and then the sleep watch begins. Sypha first. Then Alucard.
In all likelihood, it's a mistake to still sleep with Trevor in his arms after all the day's comments. Alucard doesn't exactly care at the moment, this entire day has been an emotional roller coaster and he will cling to whatever precious normal things he so chooses, up to and including being literal about it.
[Sypha is both disgusted and delighted by vampire dick jokes, and that makes the morning go by so much easier. In the servants' quarters there are no surprises, save for a few comfortable mattresses that get brought down into the kitchen come midday. (Trevor is forbidden from carrying anything. He supervises the vampire.) The afternon is spent going through the east wing, which is really just a few rooms meant for public use. A great hall because this all still involves the goddamn King of France.
So the afternoon finishes early. Sypha goes back to the lab to see if there are any details missed, Trevor's given free reign, and Alucard picks up the notebook that is his assigned reading. He doesn't like it. His father's notebooks are often full of nightmareish thoughts and he expects this one to be no different.
The theory of a cure is...it's trying to find a way to purify blood through some kind of filtering system. At least that's how it starts out. Then it's what if it is some kind of magnetic concept (not articulated as such, this is before his father knew all the future things), and then just every progress note on the stone's development.
Handwriting betrays emotion. When it becomes wild, Alucard can picture his father's face and the fury in it. Young and human but still with that horrible rage. He closes it a few times and puts it aside. There's something familiar and alien at the same time. He doesn't fucking like it.
And when he reaches that last page, there is a blessing and a curse.]
[ This is a familiar process. Almost the same as it was four years ago, except warmer and with more dick jokes. Dracula didn't have the good manners to write his notes in French, favoring a combination of Latin and those ancient forgotten languages that Alucard and Sypha like to squabble over sometimes. He understands enough Latin to have avoided too many canings from tutors, not enough to read an alchemist's research notes.
And so Alucard reads and Trevor tries his best to form battle plans with horribly incomplete information. The best, most useful thing he can do is to wrap his arms around Alucard when to becomes too much and he's forced to close the book, to push slices of bread spread with honey in front of him when the angle of the sun looks lunchtime-ish, to put tiny thin slices of venison into his hands and guide them to the eager little yappy dog to be thoroughly licked and nibbled at or to occasionally suggest with mock-horror that the horse is going to tell everyone. ]
Can you tell when it was that that one ended? This fucking place is full of books. I get the feeling he didn't leave his clinic after Sara was hurt. If it's after that, it'll be there. Otherwise it could be anywhere in the house.
[ The prototype doesn't work quite as well as he'd like, which is to say that it fails at the first test. It's a repurposed iron helmet, hammered into a sphere and welded shut by Sypha. Inside, he's placed a pebble and a sealed note for Sypha to test how well the iron fares in obstructing magic. The sealed note is- mostly safe. Sypha can't tell the actual word written upon it. But she can tell describe it in other ways, guessing accurately how many times he folded it and that he did so while the ink was still wet, leaving smudges.
The pebble is the greater failure of the iron, as she can move it about in there with only some stain. It clangs against the sides of the makeshift container.
It's going to need some work.
It is, however, still whole the next day, even as the helmet that they took to make the thing seems to have returned to the armory. Other things, like the bedding from the servant's quarters and Mathias' notebooks, have not been replaced. Materially changing the item seems to be what results in it counting as being 'consumed'.
They can use materials from here and he can safely ascend the stairs now, and that means that a more thorough search is in order to see what they have to work with. None of the rooms upstairs are protected as drastically as Mathias' lab, and Trevor goes first, opening doors with a shallow cut on one thumb.
The rooms that the current door opens to are perhaps the brightest of all of them. The first is a living space, clean but with the air of being well-used. Vases are filled with cut flowers, cushions are worn just enough to have become familiar and comfortable, but not enough to need repair. Wear at the spines of a few of the books in the bookcase indicates that they've been pulled out and replaced many times. A sketchbook lies open on a table, filled with pictures of that yippy dog and of the view from the windows of this room and of two people, one pale-haired and noble and the other darker-haired and impossibly, impossibly kind and warm for who Trevor knows this must be.
There is a second doorway at the opposite side of the room, blocked off by a long curtain. And there is a large cushion on the floor, which the dog immediately runs past them all to flop down on. ]
[Alucard keeps notes on how the house functions. He's brought spare rag paper with them for the task, and their own supply of ink and the like. Everything he writes is in Wallachian, not Latin or Greek or any other scholarly language. They must be able to read this, especially if some ill happens. The margins are messier than the main text, comparisons to the castle mused out. He's always understood the castle's mechanics. He had to in order to build under Gresit. But the development of his father's work, that's a very different beast.
And it all comes from blood.
That's not a surprise.
The particulars of what defines consumed goods are noted too, and while it feels strange to be outside of developing spells with Sypha, Alucard's pleased that Trevor gets to experience the joy of it. Because it is joyful, yelling about this change or that, tones getting louder and louder and more and more delighted to have hit into a solution or furious for a new problem.
Night passes. He makes breakfast in the morning, and then it is upstairs to explore what remains of the house. Alucard moves cautiously behind Trevor, not for alienation in the house but out of lingering concern for the concussion. (Trevor's not a swooning madien, but he will be damned if he misses the opportunity for that joke.) The rooms they've gone through so far are unremarkable, and then, then there is this one.
Alucard lingers in the threshold for a moment or so before walking in. Sypha's looking at the bookcase, and Alucard goes in that direction too. In theory, nothing should be printed. He opens a volume and finds that he's correct: everything here is a handwritten manuscript, produced at stunning cost.]
Doubtlessly. [He places the volume back where it was, eyes trailing over to the second doorway.] Another side room, I'll guess. Status would allow for several apartments before the bedroom.
[ Their first return to what-it-still-felt-odd-to-call-home had been. Strange. Difficult. Emotional. Most of the castle was still unsafe. It wasn't ready for them. Alucard hadn't been ready for them either, Trevor suspects. The castle never saw a Belmont twice, up until then. And maybe its master hadn't been expecting them to return either. They'd spent the night outside, that night, in the late spring air and on the same bedrolls they'd been dragging around on the wagon. And he wasn't sure if he'd ever seen anyone so simultaneously joyful and anguished as Alucard had been when he'd watched Sypha curl up into his arms to sleep.
Because he and Sypha made a different shape, these days, and they still had to work out how to fit Alucard against it.
It had been simple enough in the end. Or rather, it had been simple enough for Sypha. She was good at this shit. She mediated, and she slept between them, and they both adored her. They set up the room where they would sleep between them, and Alucard figured out which areas of the castle were safe and things were- whatever fucked up kind of thing passes for normal in his life nowadays.
Sypha isn't here now, called off to aid one of the caravans with some kind of magical bullshit that he doesn't understand, and so once again they've been left with a pair of shapes that don't quite fit together so much as they both fit against her. ]
You don't have to pretend to sleep for my sake. That shit must bore you out of your mind.
[ It's the early hours of the morning, and it's a deeply weird feeling, after a few weeks of the three of them being piled into a definitely-not-large-enough-for-three bed, to be sharing a bed with someone and determinedly not touching them. And he still has his eyes closed, his back turned to Alucard, but he can hear the way he's breathing. And he's still a Belmont who Must Observe the Vampire. He knows what awake-Alucard's breath sounds like. ]
[There hadn't been particular notification that the two were coming back to the castle. Had there been, Alucard would have at least been able to eck out a spot for the two in all the glass and rubble and millions of repairs that needed to be done. The list was so long, and that didn't even include the Hold. (He hadn't even touched the Hold. He could float and getting in and out of it was still a pain.) He had barely enough food to feed three. In truth their coming back was a real surprise. (Sypha probably figured that one out in two seconds.)
So that tree it had been, and there had been half a dozen awkward parts that went with it. The same strangeness in the next morning, and a few days in, until Sypha made a simple decision and that was that. Alucard had managed to find at least a small set of rooms that were undamaged and not terribly deep into the castle's depths (the other two would get so lost so fast). And that had been that for a brief time.
It was a weird shape. He didn't dislike it, it felt nice when his brain turned off and he just enjoyed the weight of Sypha either curled up in his arms or trying to tug him close. He didn't really sleep, so he focused on her warmth instead. And on trying not to brush up against Trevor too much, because there were far too many questions. They couldn't demand Sypha mediate everything.
For that reason, her absence is keenly felt. The bed is weird, Alucard has his own he could just use instead, but he isn't because that'd be weird too. So he lays there in silence, his face turned towards the door. Expecting nothing.]
Anything I want to do at the moment would be extremely loud and wake you.
[A week goes by. Observing the estate where the stone resides through the viewing mirror gives precious few clues. Whoever is responsible is a vampire. That's the only thing that can be certain, as come nightfall there are shadows visible through the curtains, and sometimes the screams of those who are about to become food instead of respected guests. (Alucard cuts off the viewing mirror the minute he hears them.)
But that is the only thing they have. Exploring the estate leads to more notebooks, which have now piled up in the part of the kitchen that is now the research corner (they could move into the servants' quarters, but none of them have.) Sypha has found enough old research to begin to develop new spells, and hidden away in that bedroom has been one journal of Leon's that never quite made it to the Hold. It's all the beginning signs of turning, and notes on the first horrible attempt to engage the vampire responsible for it.
Alucard's read it once, and only for one reason: to figure out how far the location of Walter's own home was, and how far it is from the estate.
If we fail in this, then we should know how to fight him.
Which was why he and Trevor were walking through the forest now, March closing and a few precious spring flowers under foot. Sypha's spell development was in a whirlwind, which meant not coming along. Alucard didn't like it, but they'd need those spells in the future. Better she do that.
[ It's very strange to see the Forest of Eternal Night in daylight. But then, it hasn't been known by that name for some four centuries, and the sun returned to it when Walter's influence faded.
But clearly it didn't fade entirely. This place isn't protected by the same spells as the estate, no, but it has a similar air to it, driving away everything from travelers to wildlife to wind. It's silent, and that's- probably appropriate, but it's still strange. The place where Dracula had been human is trapped in eternal life, bright and warm and devoid of humans but filled with whatever had been there before, the horses and the dog and the animals and birds that ran wild in the land around it. The place where he had died as a vampire is trapped in the strangest place that it could be and the warmest place that he can imagine, filled with love.
And the place between them, where he had ended and begun, not trapped anywhere by anything and yet deathly silent. ]
The trees bent away from Walter's castle, because it was the source of the darkness. That was how he navigated.
[ He's committed Leon's journals to memory. What else can he do but to keep himself sharp and to learn what he can? The information isn't as useful four hundred years later, with the trees growing used to the sun being in its normal place and growing upward as they ought to instead. But some of them, the oldest, still bend in that strange way. ]
[They go back to the estate, laden with paper. It is impossible to tell the mood, for the amount of whiplash between dire seriousness and horrible dark jokes has yet to settle. All that can be said is that there is real relief in returning back to Sypha. She's been doing experiments of her own in that lab, and so she shares everything while Alucard makes dinner, books and paper aside for the time being.
(They are beginning to run low on a few things. He'll go out tomorrow and fix that.)
Sypha's discoveries dovetail into new theories about who it may be that resides in the home the mirror is set on. Among the many notes in that lab, a list of other vampires was discovered. Walter's victims, the hand Leon's rather than Mathias'. It is a fantastic thing, it allows them to narrow down who it is they could be against. The Belmont list of active vampires is likely helpful enough.
The boys do not share their information back until after dinner. While Alucard's doing the dishes, because he can explain and cut in even as he is distracted with the art of scrubbing. Sypha's face grows dark at each new additional horror of the castle, and it is agreed that the thing must be destroyed. Tomorrow, when there's more daylight to make sure it's wrecked properly. Alucard registers no protest.
Night falls. He sits with his father's notes, everything spread out. The ones from the basement, they're the ones with no order. He has to start with those, they're the bigger challenge, and he stares down at them for what feels like ages until a scrap of writing in the lower right corner catches his eye. It isn't notation. It's as much an entry of a journal as anything else.
That's the order. Find the narrative. And so he begins to shuffle the papers around as quietly as he can. Sypha's already dozed off. Trevor's not, and not inclined to after today, but there is respect for well earned quiet.]
[ It's- tragic, in a way, that the castle has to be destroyed. In the same way that it was tragic, tragic for humanity as a whole, that Dracula had to die. There's worth in it, true worth. Discoveries that cost many lives that must be thrown away because of the terrible nature in which they were made. There was never good in it, the same way there must have been in Dracula even if he never saw it himself, but much will be lost with it nonetheless.
But then, such comes with his family's work. Preservation is important, but it's no reason to endanger human lives in the present. And that place, that evil place is a terrible danger.
He's cross-referencing the list of active vampires against the list of Walter's victims. There's a deep horror to this process, more for the names that aren't here than the ones that are. Most of the list consists of adults, and it's nowhere as long as those dormitories would have implied. Because they have the names of those who were confirmed to be missing. And the process of turning his child soldiers wiped out any who would have gone looking for them.
They're not relevant to this, though. They were chosen because the process of turning would keep them from ever becoming mentally mature, and this whole thing isn't the doing of a child.
He's a good way through by the time the process really starts to get to him, into the speculative part of the list where Leon simply lists unexplained disappearances in the area from a century back. And it does get to him a little. It's hard to explain, but there's something terrible in how Leon's normally overly flowery writing is reduced to simply 'Name. Age. Last seen. Uncomfirmed.'. It seems so unlike him., and he can almost feel how much this quest anguished the three of them.
He'll finish this later.
In the meantime he comes to bother Alucard, settling next to him. He doesn't say or do anything more just yet, but looks impassively over the pages and pages of shit he'll never understand. ]
[It is halfway through April. They have two weeks left, and progress has at least been made. Sypha's figured out a myriad of ways to attack the estate outright. Sypha has also totally destroyed Walter's castle, and so there is at least one demon put to bed in this mess.
Names have been narrowed down. Alucard has managed to go to the area around the estate and back (he travels the fastest now, what with the lightning), confirming that there are missing persons every so often, and livestock problems with a similar pattern. How to understand and interpret the information is in Trevor's very capable hands.
There has also been a quiet prodding at theory, as his father's notes are now arranged and Alucard has come to understand what that stone was. It's intent might as well have rendered it a philosopher's stone, the thing the alchemists of Near East and Europe want most of all. But what it is is an incomplete understanding of blood and of magic and of science and of vampirism. Something that could have only been refined with his father's age.
The stone was for immortality. Not to remove vampirism. It was doomed to fail.
But the thought behind it, there's still merit there. It's for that reason that in downtime, Alucard tinkers with the theories. It's why he sits in the kitchen now, face screwed up in concentration, blank notebook page in front of him.]
Trevor?
[He has no idea if Trevor's even around at the moment.]
[ Names are narrowed down quickly. There had been a great culling of those vampires still loyal to Walter in the weeks following his defeat, at the hands of Mathias and Leon alike - even in conflict, that mission remained shared between them. The name of Dracula had first seen use some years later - he had been uninterested in the conflicts of vampires and unwilling to lead rather than simply to dedicate his new endless life to his love of knowledge until they proved too troublesome. When he took on the name of Dracula and demonstrated himself to be the most powerful force in Europe, there had been countless more deaths. Those other vampires who had been sired by Walter himself became dangerous rivals, and thus targets.
The only vampires sired by Walter who remained were those who had sworn loyalty to Dracula - not just failed to oppose him, but truly sworn loyalty. That could be narrowed down quickly by records brought from the castle itself. The rest was a matter of checking names against the Belmonts' own records.
It's narrowed down to two names, now. Maybe three - Alucard had recognized one of the names as an ally of theirs, one who had sworn loyalty to him during Carmilla's campaigns. From here, it's a matter of using the mirror to identify who they're facing. Which has to wait, because using the mirror to observe the estate is liable to draw attention enough. Using it to observe an individual is practically announcing their presence and what information they have.
He's only just entered the kitchen now. Mathias' apprentice kept a small home not far from the estate, close enough to be kept within the spell, and he's returned from it with whatever he could find from there - interpretations of Mathias' work from a different mind. Maybe helpful. At the very least, more distant. ]
Hmm? [ He puts the stack of papers down on the table. ] More reading material for you, by the way.
He'd planned for everything. They'd spent the last week in the nearest town, watching at night for the servants of Jules De Rais and picking them off, keeping them from dragging people off for feeding. No doubt he'd still have animal blood, but he wasn't like Alucard, he'd suffer in combat for the lack of human blood. They would attack at dawn, on the clearest day that the late spring would afford them.
They entered the estate through the window of the uppermost floor, with the help of Sypha's ice. Not for the sake of secrecy- that was long lost to them, but so that there was only the roof between them and sunlight. A roof easily punctured by the morning star, or by Sypha's ice. It had worked. It had worked. They had the upper floors of the place near as taken, with no injuries to show for it. They had the ability to leave the way they came and go unfollowed if they needed to.
But then the sun had gone out.
Which had been a problem for every conceivable reason, not least that two thirds of them couldn't see in the dark. Sypha had immediately provided light, of course, but in doing so she'd made herself stick out as the easiest target. Something emerged from the shadows and tossed her from the balcony above the stairs, and Alucard gave chase to catch her-
And just like that, they were separated. Alucard and Sypha still on the lower levels, and he on the upper level and effectively blind. Something struck him in the ribs - a fist, perhaps, with force enough to send him flying back into one of the rooms they'd yet to go through. Whatever it was that struck him follows, and the door slams behind.
His head is spinning from the impact still as he pushes himself to his feet, desperately trying to figure out what the fuck just happened and adjust his plans accordingly. The darkness- that had been a spell that used Walter's blood as a component. But it's too early, a full two days before the day that Sypha had given as their deadline. Walter can't be revived, not yet.
It strikes him again, knocking him back further, and he pushes himself to his knees. And then it occurs to him - his spirit doesn't need to be present for his flesh and blood to be back. Whoever is behind this revival doesn't want Walter himself to return. They want a collection of useful parts-
-But he can't finish that thought. He can't finish it because, as he hears Alucard and Sypha recover and give chase, something lifts him by the hair, clean off the ground. There are a pair of teeth at his neck. They bite down, and he doesn't quite yell out because whatever part of him would be carrying the sound is torn through, and he can't even feel the pain so much as he can feel the upper and lower jaw meeting below his skin.
[Top down. The estate was small enough to allow for such an approach. A small estate for just one vampire, living as modestly as a vampire can all things considered. It was a quiet, fascinating, frusterating thing to discover because this was the kind of vampire that generally was left alone. Disappearances were limited. Nothing untowards was ever done. Which meant this kind of behavior was about making a point, and Alucard had a horrible, sinking feeling about what it could be.
None of them had accounted for spells this powerful. It was stupid of them, and for this, they've all been separated. Sypha thrown to the darkness one way, and then down, down and he cannot not run after her. They're both human. She can't survive a fall.
Vampiric speed is the only reason he catches her. Sypha's spells have fired in every direction but the right one, and it scares him to see her so off balance. She needs that moment to recollect herself, so Alucard has her ride his back. Has her hang on as he runs back to where they were before, and then takes hand in hers to guide her through the dark.
Trust. That's all that hand is right now, trust that Alucard's eyes can see what must be seen. He heard something slam through the upper levels, and there is a madness of opening every door that he can. Nothing's locked.
Nothing's locked because whatever is being done to Trevor is meant to be seen. The thought occurs to him as they start to run out of doors, Sypha saying something about there being another wing, Alucard hissing back that he knows where the sound came from and then....
...then they reach the right door, and blood runs cold.
There are teeth where there should never be teeth. Hands that should never touch that head. And Alucard cannot run in recklessly because it might cost Trevor's life. Have his throat ripped out, the blood everywhere, everywhere but where it should be. It's all he can imagine, and in that horrible moment, it is Sypha who acts. Sypha who sends a horrible spike of ice as a warning shot, because she too knows that to hit the vampire is to let Trevor die.]
[There's nothing else said for a long while. There are only arms that are much too cold, and the dread feeling of time slipping by. But to break the silence, to say anything at all, that is to acknowledge the horrible haunting truth of it all. None of them can manage that. Not now.
Somewhere in all of it, Alucard knows that there's tears streaming down his face. He buries them and the rest of his face into the top of Trevor's head and he does not move from that spot. A barely strangled sob escapes from time to time, and the worst part in all of it is that he loathes himself for sitting here and weeping. They might have time yet to try the experiment. To see if any of it will work. But they are all trapped here by the knowledge that loss will dawn over them in just a few more hours, and the terrible farewells are more important than forcing more pain into a situation that overflows with it.
Alucard's fingers dig into Trevor's too cold flesh as the moon rises higher and higher in the sky. Sypha's found some words, loving ones, ones said with devestation but no cracks to her voice. If not now, then soon. Terribly soon.
They will pack everything up in the morning. Send it through the mirror. Sypha will go home ahead, he will follow riding the same arcs that brought them to this place. For a few terrible hours, Sypha will be alone in that castle, and Alucard cannot help but hate himself for forcing that upon her.
He'll be home soon enough. They'll both collapse from grief and exhaustion, and the castle will be all the emptier for there being only two people in it. They'll abandon their bed, for it will be too large for only two people. Find a new wing of the castle not scarred by memory, and rebuild yet again.]
[ He can't tell if the pain has faded or if he's simply grown used to it after the last few hours. He doesn't care.
He does speak, after a while, and it's all mercilessly practical. Instructions to Alucard and Sypha to find the Renard and Lacarde branches of the clan, in hiding (he would never have been able to make contact with them. Alucard ought to be able to find them easily.). The Gandolfi family (last known to be in Florence but likely exiled from Italy now for their work in alchemy). The Morris clan (Ireland, if he recalls correctly). Any of them ought to be able to use the whip, even if the cost of it upon themselves might be horrifying. If the worst should happen, the two of them won't be left without a hunter. Only without him. Instructions to leave both whip and stone here, behind the many layers of protection that Mathias put on this place. Along with him. And he will wait here, and he will live (and that is his compromise for talking strategy now, of all times, that he will live for as long as he can remain himself), until either whip or stone are needed. And when they are, he will join one or the other.
And then he goes silent again, only holding them, because that's all he can do now. Even that seems like too much. He's disgusting, more so than he ever was before. He can't kiss away their tears, because his mouth is all full of fangs.
It must have been about three hours since sunset. He doesn't know that because he has any particular concept of how the time is passing - he doesn't know if it's racing past or dragging, and he has no heartbeat to measure it by. But there are noises now, quieter than Alucard's occasional sobs or Sypha's whispers. He's heard them before, but he can pick them out more clearly. The bottles and containers that had their contents used on the stone shifting slightly as their contents refill. It's midnight, and the day is beginning again.
And his heart beats.
And after three hours without a heartbeat, it feels rather like being punched behind the ribs. He recoils back, because he doesn't know what the fuck this is but Sypha still has that awful bruise from the last time something happened and he's not going to hurt her again. And the worst of the pain is back, his skull reshaping itself again. Things inside of him that have been deathly still for the last few hours forcing themselves violently back to life. His lungs are burning and he can't understand what he's meant to do about that until he takes a great, gasping breath and then chokes it out again and-
[ Trevor's idea of 'bed' has been the ground or big enough tree for most of his life. Sometimes the carcass of a night creature. Sometimes piles of dried leaves. A little too often, a gutter or the floor of a tavern.
And so he finds it just about impossible to understand Alucard's complaints about a straw mattress being too uncomfortable. Until he'd come to the castle, that represented the peak of luxury to him. It was what he had slept on at home and, as Alucard had proven to enjoy reminding him, his family were nobility. And certainly it wasn't as soft as the feather mattress that their shared bed used, certainly there was the odd sharp poke from a piece of straw that refused to lie properly with the others, but it was soft and pleasant enough to sleep on and firm enough that one didn't just feel at risk of disappearing into it at all times the way one did with feathers. ]
Sypha told me a story like this.
[ And maybe he's just a little sore about the fact that Alucard spent the night reading rather than lying next to him because the inn's mattress didn't meet his standards. And that's why he's still going on about this almost a full day later, now they're almost back at the castle. ]
About how a king and queen had to determine their daughter from an impostor. And you know what they did?
[ He probably knows what they did. It's certainly mattress-related, because that's all Trevor has been getting at Alucard about for the last half hour and because the grin on his face means this cannot be about anything other than 'continuing to get at Alucard'. ]
Oh, is this about putting some small rock under the bed, because a young woman raised with true luxury would be able to pick it out?
[Alucard knows full well he has been spoiled for comfort in his life. Not for wealth, although that is a massive factor in it, but for his father's knowledge and understanding of the world. No other child grew up with electric lights and heated floors. Few would grow up with telescopes to look at the sky with such refined eyes. Not even boyars, it seems, get to have plush bedding. It shows in all ways. Even his coffin under Gresit was plush.
So maybe he's hypersensitive about where they sleep. Most nights, it isn't a problem, he barely sleeps anyway. But there are some times when he simply cannot deal with straw poking through threadworn mattress, just like last night. It happens, and he deserves all the shit for it.]
You can drop it now, you know, you've done enough vampire shaming for the day.
[The theory Alucard held in private has been proven distressingly true. At the same time as the actual attack happened, the turning begins anew. Walter's blood (his father's blood, his blood) enters Trevor's system, because the timeloop cannot prevent all of this, and the horror unfolds yet again.
It is not easier on the second day. If anything, it is worse, because they all know how it plays out. They know that to attend to every scream of agony is to deny precious moments of trying to make this stone work, and it is needed more than ever. They keep Trevor in the lab because they have to have him there to test the damn stone and that may actualy be the worst part of it all. They have to listen to all of this because they have to monitor the turning. Pinpoint the key moments.
(Alucard takes goddamn blood samples, and he knows, he knows it's horrible but they need the information. He takes hurried notes while looking at the stuff under a microscope. He has theories now. Better ones. But he still flinches when there's a new and terrible noise.)
By the third day, they at least know what to expect in terms of timing and in terms of volume. It is no comfort. It is only terrible, terrible knowledge that lets them all brace. And it is in that moment that Alucard thinks he's come to understand something of this terrible turning, because he's got both eyes pressed into the microscope viewer, delirious and delighted because this might be the key to all of it and---
--and there is a new noise he hasn't heard before, and he looks up in terror of the new.]
[ There's a pattern to it, now. Trevor likes patterns. He likes things that he can measure and watch for and have it all make sense to him. Not magic, or creatures too small to see that somehow carry illness (magic), or poisons in the blood (magic). Sunset is about three and a half hours before midnight, and he turns. For half an hour, the agony is too great to think. For three hours, he has fangs. At midnight, he is human. Between dawn and somewhere around noon, he is able to walk outside in the sunlight. At noon, the sun becomes too bright and staying out in it bursts the tiny blood vessels (Alucard calls them caterpillars, or something like that) under his skin and leaves him covered in little marks like red spiderwebs. Between noon and sunset, he is in the late stages of turning. And then three and a half hours before midnight, he turns again.
Sypha is uncomfortably close for this turning. His jaw is wedged open, molars biting down on a thick piece of wood, so that she can see the fangs as she observes the changes to his skull as best she can. Something something, magic bullshit, something something, spell to help with the worst of the pain by either preventing the changing of the bone or making it go more smoothly. She pokes at the fangs with a measuring ruler, taking note of how far they push out, where the teeth that they displaced are forced to.
He hasn't eaten more than about a mouthful at each meal since before the battle. He physically can't. The process of turning twists the parts of himself that are for eating into something different, built for an entirely different sort of sustenance. The process of turning back undoes all of that, but leaves the insides of him ruined, withered away and incapable of more sipping at water and broth and warm milk with honey stirred into it (Alucard has taken to giving him that, when he can't stomach anything else, and he suspects that it's as much for Alucard's comfort as it is for his own). And it's- fine. He'll need more sooner or later, Sypha's already commented once on how his skin seems looser on him in places as his body starts to consume muscle to fuel the constant turning and turning back. But- with any luck, there won't be a later. His body has always been forced to consume itself to survive every winter until coming to the castle, he has a fairly strong idea of how far this can go and still be reversible with a few weeks of rest and decent meals.
Only now, now there's something else inside of him. He almost wants to call it survival but it isn't. He knows survival. He's good at survival. This, all of this, is survival and this thing is darker. It's- he wants to call it selfishness, but it's crueler. It's survival through terrible means, the drive to destroy something else to ensure that he continues. And it's powerful, so powerful, strong as the compulsion on this room's door had been. And Sypha's hand is right there, the blood so close to the skin from that bruise he'd left her with two nights back. And he can't warn her, because his mouth is wedged open and the desperate shouting just sounds like more of his screams from the turning process, earning only a pained smile and attempt at comfort.
The first sound is Trevor biting clean through the wood holding his mouth open. The second is Sypha yelling in alarm as he pounces her, all teeth and claws and very little Trevor at all. ]
[It is after Trevor is Trevor again on the ninth day that a wild thought hits Alucard. Their experiments with the filtration have come with mixed success so far: Trevor's own human blood, a little transubsantiated wine, a lot of actual science, and pure will pushed through the sapphire stone (what else is sapphire but opposite of crimson?) work in fits and starts, but it eventually all fails. Different amounts of each have suggested that there is a formula that can work, but the exact one is still a mystery.
(The ethics have been discussed. Two weeks is all any of them can bear. It is a fair agreement.)
Spit. Trevor's specifically, because in the end this is about returning blood to a neutral form through not only science but the weird metaphyiscal level that all things unwordly exist on. Vampires included. They have every agent needed except for a neutral form, because nothing else is. Alucard remembers what it was like when Trevor mixed communion wine and his own fluids to reset all the holiness of the things from the Hold. It makes sense here. The spit is Trevor at his baseline. It is the way to indicate to all other components that this is how things ought to be, here is the pattern to follow.
The rest is magic. The rest is science. The rest is faith. The rest is sheer fucking will, and that last part must come from all three.
It is painful, using Trevor as a science experiment. Miserable because every attempt has come with failure. There's no optimism in Alucard today as they all prepare for the next round of fighting the first sign of turning, the part that happens during daylight. It is a third night, so at some point Alucard will have to go out and get blood, as the third day means Trevor's body has eaten too much of itself in this struggle.
Two minutes to go. Sypha is holding the stone in her hands, speaking the words that charge it and prepare it to work. Alucard tries to send his own will up through the tubing of it as he puts the firt of two needles into Trevor's arm. (He makes sure it's the opposite arm that Trevor didn't nearly tear to shreds.) There is minimal incense now, because Alucard needs a clear head. Too much and he's fogged over. Useless when he ought to be in his element.
Both needles are in place. One minute to go. Sypha brings the stone down between all three of them, and Alucard wraps his hands around it.]
If this works, and you start calling it the 'Magical Stone of Death' afterward, I'm going to fucking bite your arm off again.
[ He probably shouldn't joke about it, this being a third day. But deer's blood sufficed to keep him under control on the sixth day, even if it didn't stop his body from consuming itself the way that Alucard's did. There's less incense - he wouldn't be able to make threats at all if there were any more, even joking ones. But there's a bottle of holy water, and Sypha's given her word to use it and her ice to restrain him should the worst happen.
It's the first time that he's joining in with this shit, which is why he's so quick to complain. He does not do magic. It's a wonder the the transubstantiation works for him (moreso now. He did it in the morning, before the bite set in). Magic is another fucking matter entirely. But they're running out of time. Five more days. Five more days until they leave and he's left alone here. He's willing to try, no matter how stupid it seems.
The arm with the needles in it is frozen to the side of the bed at the wrist. The ice is made with holy water and it already burns even now, but it'll stop him from thrashing that arm about and knocking the needles out of place once the turning sets in (this, they tested on the seventh day, once it became clear that they'd need Alucard as sharp as possible - if Sypha was going to be close to him during the turning, they needed some other form of protection for her. It works, it works well enough that he'll be incorporating it into plans from now on).
He lays the other hand on the stone. ]
So I just have to want really hard to not be a vampire. [ It's a question as well as a probably-unfair dismissal of his role in this whole thing. ] I don't know if I can manage that. I've been enjoying it so much so far.
Trevor still has a long, long way to go before he's in anything close to the shape he was in before the bite (he may not ever be, not quite, always just a little more fragile and quick to succumb to illness than he was before, but they're all trying to focus on his improving health for now rather than the fact that there may be a limit to those improvements), but he's at least in decent health again. It was after about two weeks that it was deemed safe to let him wander about the area around the castle without supervision, which was good, because much as he adores the other two he does also like being left to himself an not cooped up in the castle when it's perfectly nice outside.
He's been spending a lot of time at the old Belmont house, since then. The other two tend to leave him alone, there, and he can work in peace. And he is working. It's easy to tell that he's working on something because he's taking a frankly uncharacteristic amount of baths to hide the evidence of it. The rest of the evidence- hiding that relies upon trusting the other two not to pry into his business. Which even Sypha is fairly respectful of, at least as far as the old house is the business in question. It's kind of an open secret between the three of them - there's no real hiding it properly, but Alucard and Sypha just refrain from asking or from looking.
(The only room that sees any use that overlooks the old Belmont house is Dracula's study, because of course even in being captured and dragged across Wallachia the castle would position itself so that Dracula could watch over his old foes, and that room's thick curtains were always drawn closed.)
But he's inside today, even though the day is bright and dry, with a cooler breeze than is common this time of year that makes it perfect for work. And he is, of course, inspecting his old friend. The floor. ]
The floors are warm in winter. [ He says as Alucard walks past, apparently having given up on trying to figure this shit out himself. ] How does that work?
[There had been an order to things after getting home. Alucard, in spite of his exhaustion, did not sleep. He stayed up for the hour when the turning would have begun, and then lingered until midnight when a reset would have occurred. There was nothing, glorious, beautiful nothing, and then out he went to talk to the local wolf pack.
A long discussion. They had noticed he was not home (his den was gone entirely), and there is assurance of food to be brought to the front door. The sun rises before all is agreed to, and at that point, Alucard decides that he ought to just go to town and take care of matters at the market. There is no food at all in the castle, and all three of them need to eat so terribly.
It is only after returning, laden with groceries and meat and milk and everything else that the castle lacks, that he goes to bed. And remains there for four full days, asleep and refusing to let Trevor go. Sypha has to gently undo those too possessive arms for the important things, like bathroom trips, and perhaps Alucard shouldn't have slept because that means four days of Sypha's cooking.
He's given the speech to the rest of Europe's vampires. Made it clear that any additional fuckery will not be tolerated, and he's done it with the Crimson Stone in his hand for nothing more than a bit of theatre. They've had visitors now, those making it clear that he has their loyalty, and as much as Alucard hates to become even a fraction of what his father was, he knows that this is better than what the three have endured otherwise.
The rest is simple. It is caring for the two again as intensely and lovingly as he ever has, a greater emphasis placed on recovery. Hardly the same type that he underwent (that scar game is a ways away), but he knows the outline of it now. The benchmarks for improvements. And he watches Trevor meet each one with such a relief that he nearly cries from it every time.
Best of all is Trevor's outside. Outside and doing...something...most days, except for here. And now. Because he's on the floor, because goddamnit the man loves floors too much.]
Steam and vents. The Romans did it a millennia ago. [He's more than a little concerned by the question, and he walks over to where Trevor is.] Why?
It's late autumn now, and the blackberries in the woods are waiting for next year, but the ones in the greenhouse are growing strong. Trevor's rearranged some of the flower beds in there, made the walls of them wider so they can be used as benches because the first thing Sypha wanted to do in that little room filled with sunlight and the smell of green things and soil was to sit in it and read. It's even more tempting now the weather is so much cooler, because it's warm in there. Warm like the castle is, but surrounded with so much light and life.
But Trevor is not there right now. He's in the study, which is an unusual place for him to be, and staring out of the window (the curtains are open now, because nobody here is sensitive to sunlight and it overlooks the garden. Their garden) and ignoring that mirror while waiting for Alucard to finish his work in the kitchen and come up to meet him. ]
[It has been a very long summer. Blessedly long. Quiet. Alucard has spent enough time in the garden that it has flourished. He's found his mother's notes on canning (because of course the future meant sterilization and thus canning), and there are at least enough preserved fruits to last them to January. Other things have been pickled, others salted, and he has been hunting with the local pack lately to get enough meat to cure for the winter.
Just apples today, foraged from one of the last trees in the woods. He makes his way back through the garden, stopping to check on the bees before he heads back into the castle itself. Just apple and honey cake today, the fire is burning brighter in the kitchen and that means just enough heat for it. He has everything ready, but the cake's best eaten warm. He'll start it at supper time.
He's done, and that means finding Trevor. Trevor who is not in the usual haunts, which take Alucard half an hour to check even using vampire speed. He catches a scent eventually though, and...the study?
It has gone unused lately. There's no strategy to tend to, and even checking in on Hector has lessened of late. The only reason Alucard comes in is to refresh the flowers beneath his mother's portait.
So he actually knocks to announce his presence and stands at the threshold rather than walk in.]
[Winter settles in earlier than it ought to. It's no matter, not in a castle with heated floors, not when there's a bed with Sypha in the middle and too many blankets to keep out the chill. Truly, the only time it is felt is when going to the greenhouse to ensure all is well there, returning with a small basket of what's needed. Or when Alucard needs to go to the markets to get a few extra staples because he is out of flour for making bread.
There's planning. Of course there's planning. There's sewing to do, there's finally introducing the wolf pack to the other two which goes well. They've suspected that Alucard's pack is human. Trevor's and Sypha's scents are distinct and the wolves have smelt them for some time now. They inter Sara where she ought to be, and there's been no Leon in Alucard's dreams for some time now. The anniversary of Dracula's death goes by with only a momentary dip into the more somber state of of the vampire.
Spring creeps it's way into the countryside. Snows melt a bit more slowly this year. Little promises of greenery poke up through the snow, and the greenhouse may as well believe it to be summer. There's more to do with dates nearing, with...
...with other anniversaries nearing as well. Which is the point of doing this all in May. Alucard's not sure if he catches it first or if Sypha does, but there's a greater quiet from Trevor. Which means only one recourse.
They wait until there's a misty evening. The snows have lingered into early April, and tonight the light rain has created such a blanket. It is, Alucard imagines, how his father wanted the castle to be seen. Shrouded in mist. A new moon overhead, so the sky is so very dark. And in their room there is a fire, there is embroidery the vampire is working on, and there is wondering when Trevor will join them both.]
[ There is work to be done. There is always work to be done. Trevor is very good at finding work to do when he would rather not be in his own company, so much so that a heavy head and sore back may as well be the contents of a bottle these days. His idiot student comes to see him every few weeks, and he suspects it to be less for training these days and more for the fact that he's always sent away with whatever vegetables and leftovers they have to spare because a vampire hunter cannot be just skin and bones. A winter lasting this long means that people are hungry.
The effort to reclaim the castle continues slower now, because he has reached the rooms that Carmilla used as barracks for her soldiers, all full of the personal effects of every vampire in Europe, it seems. Some of it must be taken to the hold and sorted, and he would rather not force Alucard to sort through the things of his own torturers. Some things need to be moved to the old feeding cells, which requires Alucard's absence for a prolonged period (he cannot access the feeding cells via the study, and to the wall must be opened and reclosed, and that is not the work of a few hours), And some of it, shittily enough, is personal enough that it probably ought to be returned. Which is going to be a little awkward, considering the tone of Alucard's last interaction with all of these vampires, but none of them are so unkind to even foes as to deny them old letters from family, pictures of old friends from their days as humans, a wedding ring.
Work makes more work, and even with the garden largely controlled by the late frosts it isn't difficult for him to find things to do. He leaves the bed early and returns to it late and takes his meals at odd times and he doesn't have to think at all. He can do his thinking when this is done, a little way into May, when he can only have better things to think about.
It's late when he returns to the room, already cleaned (which isn't so rare these days, because he's working and work makes him filthy and he likes the bed too much to make it filthy) if not quite as well as he could be. He always misses the fingernails, and there's blood under them. He gives a 'mmph' of acknowledgement and just flops into the bed. ]
[ The thing is, the stone floors are more comfortable to Trevor than anything else sometimes. More familiar than plush sofas and soft beds. More solid and reliable. Less like he's going to just sink into nothing at any moment. It helps that now that the summer is here in earnest the stone is blissfully cool.
(Alucard is blissfully cool in this heat, as well, and that's certainly one good thing to come out of the outburst last week, but he can hardly spend whole days wrapped around him.)
There is work to be done, though much of it is infuriatingly reliant upon Alucard because you can't make steps from the top of a thing downwards and getting in and out of the hold under his own steam is a task that would take half the day in itself, but all of it is the kind of hard work that's made hellish by the heat. He's taken to working from dawn until the heat becomes too much, and then from late afternoon until dark. By now it probably isn't a surprise, even if it not being a surprise doesn't make it any less weird, that he's just lying on his front on the ground, shirt discarded somewhere to one side, head resting on his folded arms until the heat starts to pass with the afternoon.
Actually, the sheer amount of blood was the enemy at first, because there was so much blood to get rid of at a low elevation that Alucard was going to actually scream. Most of it was sunbaked onto the stone, but there were still puddles! Of night creature blood! And poor Sypha had to make it all rise up before they could work on the stairs.
(He spent a long time drafting the stairs, which was the fun part. He hadn't designed anything since Gresit.)
But now heat is the enemy too, at least for the other two. Alucard does not feel the problem as keenly, but here? Now? Looking at Trevor sprawled out? Heat is the enemy is so many ways.]
(He does not. If he intended to succeed, he would have brought more than an iron spike for a stake. Would have stopped at a church for supplies. Would be here during the day. Probably would not have indulged in a little pre-drinking for courage before he came to fight Dracula. He intends to die, to be done with all of this shit, and to maybe get a stake into Dracula's heart as he does.)
His family put Dracula aside when he left Europe, focusing instead upon the prophecy that a terrible disaster would come to pass, would rend empires apart and bring terrible monsters of fire and steel into the world and kill half the men in Europe and leave only a lingering darkness that would coalesce into something terrible. It had come to pass. It had come to pass and they had failed to protect the world from it, and now all but one of them were gone, and all that was left to do was to complete that first terrible mission that they had taken on nine centuries ago.
And he looks the part of Dracula's killer either very much or not at all, depending on how much importance one gives to a uniform (because he has few other clothes, and none so appropriate for fighting). A drunken Romanian man in a french infantry uniform with a stake. No whip, because that hadn't been in the ruins of his home. Taken by looters, no doubt. He could have found a replacement, just any old bullwhip treated with chism. But he didn't come here to do a good job and he didn't come here to stand a fucking chance at survival.
He knocks on the door of what had once been Dracula's castle. ]
[Five weeks. It's only been five weeks. Centuries feels like the more appropriate passage of time from where Alucard sits, sits in a home that is occupied only by himself and the Speaker who was willing enough to help with the horrible thing slashed across his chest.
There have been no prying eyes on his father's home. No one has dared to intrude on their grief. Occasional casserole dishes from the Church Ladies (he leaves the empty ones out by the road where they drop the fresh ones off, after all, the castle is shrouded and hidden deep from the world even as it resides near a major city). The space has been required, for what would be done if the city was aware of exactly how bad that damage inflicted was?
Rest has been Alucard's primary occupation, punctuated with reading when his body has decided that no, it cannot sleep for another five days. He walks little, and when he does, it's simply to move to the library so he can occupy his thoughts with anything but reality. The radio is always on when he sits there, some pleasant music playing.
He keeps the viewing mirror there too. (It's how he checks on the cassaroles.) Useful for checking on doors too and...
...and he hears something faint at the door. From his space on the armchair (he's not getting up), Alucard wills the mirror to show who it is knocking. There's a pause, then Trevor's words are heard.
At first, he thought that it was just Alucard. It would make sense, if that were the case, even if he didn't like it. He was the one with fangs, and so it was perhaps natural that when his hands or hair or breath brushed over the side of his neck that still had sensation, this bullshit would happen. And it was bullshit, but Alucard had always been careful about their necks anyway. It didn't change much.
Then it happened with Sypha, as well, and the look of hurt and guilt on her face was almost worse than the suffocating, gurgling feeling of not being able to take in breath and the wrenching, cracking one of his skull reforming and
He likes to think of it as more inconvenient and annoying than distressing, but he likes to think a lot of things that are not true.
Now, it's become so bad that he can't even wear clothes that brush against his throat. Which is inconvenient, because the beautiful cloak that Alucard gave to him as a wedding gift falls into that category. And, seeing as how it's the middle of fucking winter, he'd quite like to wear it. The castle might be heated, but the garden is not. ]
Adrian. [ He doesn't always use his husband's given name, even now. When he does, it's usually a precursor to saying something sickeningly saccharine. Which also meant it tends to be a precursor toother things. But even though they're in bed, Alucard's head rested on his chest while he reads, the tone is wrong for that. Too heavy.
It's vulnerability that using that name signifies, not just saying some bullshit that makes the vampire kiss him. The two just happen to overlap a lot. ] I want you to feed from me.
[Necks were always perilous propositions. Alucard knew that from the outset of this, now more than three years ago, and he took great pains to be careful about necks that were not his. He always asked permission, and even then he was terribly delicate, and always made a point to not brush against veins unless told to do so. (Usually by Sypha.)
So after everything, it was only natural that he intended to give Trevor's neck a wide berth. That never excluded accidentally brushing against it, and the reaction it got was gutwrenching. Alucard hated it, and that only fueled his desire to be cautious. But when the matter happened with Sypha, it was clear that this? This was another part of the psychological fall out of the awful events of spring coming home to rest.
And it's gotten worse. Alucard and Sypha have spoken quietly when Trevor hasn't been around, debating and pulling their hair over what to do. It's an ever too elusive solution, and the question has come to occupy most of Alucard's thoughts when he's silent. Even reading doesn't free him from worry.
The garden helps though. It's warm and bright and far too sunny even in winter, and Alucard reads there during the daylight. In bed, listening to Trevor's heartbeat (their miracle of science and faith) does much the same.
His eyes go up from the book when Trevor says his name. Alucard knows all of Trevor's tones now, and the weight in this one already has him worried.
The worry is justified. The right response doesn't exist, but Alucard has theories.]
[The meeting concludes. All have walked away from the table: the vampires of Styria, the hunters of Styria, and the abiding team of Sypha and Trevor. The third of them is not in sight, his presence likely to be taken as a threat of sorts by those same hunters rather than a mediating force. For the past several days, Alucard has taken to his bat form, careful to be out of sight as the three traveled.
It's from within the fur of Trevor's cloak (that he can now at least stand to wear) that there's a soft, slightly distressed squeak. It translates to I'm cold, as the three of them worked out certain audio cues up to the Rhine. (They are meeting in neutral territory outside of Styria.)
Alucard hates this. He hates being in bat form for any longer than he must, as to be in bat form is to be too small, too vulnerable, too easy to come to harm and far too difficult to protect the others. But in mediating what the right balance of blood drinking, population, and destruction of Styria's new vampires (and there has been an explosion of them in the past three years since That Woman's death), he had to be.
They'll go back to their lodgings tonight, a tiny inn with only two bedrooms and working on the assumption that there's only two people staying in the one room. Alucard will remain a bat there too, unhappy and trying not to let his displeasure at the situation be known.
But for now, a squeak. A need for something warmer, as the wind has picked up and there is a bone wrenching chill with it.]
[ Find willing donors, and see them repaid in work and protection. Hunt only when these rules are violated.
And if you cannot control your thirst, House Belmont will control it for you.
Sypha is the mediator among them, not Trevor. She navigates her way through dissent with easy grace, while Trevor crushes it. They make an efficient team. There is more work ahead, far more. Pomanders to be crafted for those turned unwillingly who wish to live peacefully but cannot trust their self-control, agreements to be mediated between new vampires and those who might be willing to make some trade to support them, rules about turning to be decided upon and enforced by Styria's hunters, training of those hunters and weeding out those who only want to hurt things-
For now, though, they are on the wagon again, Sypha curled up in the back of it while Trevor leads the horses. ]
Cold again?
[ There's not much point in asking, with the answer that Alucard is unable to give being so very clear. He gathers the reins in one hand, tugging a warm glove from the free one so he can lift it up to his shoulder, using it to block the wind from Alucard. ]
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cryptsleeper) wrote2018-11-10 11:26 pm
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Which makes it easier, because it disguises the depth of the betrayal. There's no change in the way he speaks of Mathias after Sara's turning, only the slight tone of disgust (with Mathias, yes, but also with himself) throughout.
The old Trantoul estate - likely abandoned after the massacre, though it's hard to say if it remained so for four centuries after - seems as good a place as any to start. The childhood home of Leon, taken in by the family after his father died in service to them. The first place to offer Mathias shelter and work as a brilliant young doctor whose methods scared a few too many people. The birthright of Sara, only child of the first cousin of the King of France. The base of operations used by Mathias, Leon and their whole company. It would be the best place to work from but the mirrors won't even show it, let alone allow a way to be opened there. ]
Your father warded the whole place after Justine's attack. [ While he was still tending to Sara, to keep anything from finding her and harming her more. ] Even Enid had no fucking clue what half of the spells he used were.
[ Sypha has been trying to figure them out, of course, but it's difficult when all they have to go on are Leon's notes and the fact that the mirror just reflects their own frustrated faces. ]
Only makes it a better place to work from, if we can't be spied upon. We can start from a few days' travel out from it and go on foot the rest of the way.
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Or else a prelude to exactly that, which is a thought Alucard refuses to entertain. They're agreed on that much: the past is gone, all else is built anew.
Besides, there's a greater logic to this. The east of Europe is settled now. Belmonts are back to enforce order, Tepes has absolutely no desire to deal with the things of the night. So west, west is where there is no order. West is where these two fucked up houses fled from. Let all the night things go home to roost.
There is no prophecy to guide, only the sense of real danger if they do not act quickly enough. Research in Leon's journals is fundamental. Alucard scrambles to get a sense of what France's current situation is like and where they must tread carefully. The estate is an old landmark for those who live near by, it seems, and considered a place to keep well away from. Good. Privacy. Or else whoever's responsible for this theft is also using the place because if you're going to re-release a hell on the west, why not spite the people involved at the start?
Alucard's other priority is ensuring home is secured in the mean time. Trevor and Sypha will go through the mirror, then he'll follow in another way so the distance mirror can be packed away and come with him. Other spell work is in place. The castle and hold are obscured: just a part of the forest now.]
That will have to do. If the place is in use by opponents, then it gives us time to consider other bases of operations.
[He's found a few abandoned spaces to make use of: a small abandoned hunting shack that was perhaps a part of a neighboring estate. Ironic, naturally, but it is well and truly abandoned and in the middle of the forest. No one will notice smoke coming from the chimney for the still cold spring nights.]
Whatever spells we break, we apply here when we return home. Better for us all.
[Safer for them all. Alucard still sleeps closest to the door. He's pressed almost too close to Sypha at night, makes a point to ensure that there's one arm resting on Trevor somewhere, because this is the kind of work that demands hardness. It needs to be tempered with affection.]
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(And it is a very odd feeling, knowing that that feeling means they're at the right place and ought to go forward. He believes both entirely, and he doesn't usually care enough about anything to feel conflicted like this.)
They first gave up on the plan of Sypha driving the horses and instead turned to the less dignified 'Trevor tries to drag the fucking beasts' option. When that also threatened to result in the two idiot horses tearing their wagon apart, they have instead turned to bribery, Trevor walking backwards with an apple in each hand, leading the stupid things forward. Which means he has his back turned to the road, and only notices something might be amiss when Sypha's jaw hangs open in wonderment.
And so he turns.
A little way away from here, the late winter stops. It just stops, the frost on the ground replaced with thick grasses and wildflowers and trees with leaves only just starting to turn from green to gold. ]
Shit. I heard that there were places where the seasons're all backward. [ Sypha had told him stories of such places, once, faraway places that saw the heaviest snows in the heights of summer. ] Didn't think they were in France.
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He has no opinion on the horses, other than the whole thing with bribing is absolutely hilarious.
They break through the barrier. The world around them is nearly to the brim with magic. Sypha says it first, and Alucard can only nod in quiet agreement. He's thinking about the journals, about the timeline of things, and there's a soft hiss as he realizes what this place means.]
This isn't a backward season.
[He says it with his usual gravity, crouching down in the grass to feel the warmth there. His glove goes of for good measure.]
It's a place isolated in time. Like an island.
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He also still isn't capable of walking steadily across the room, apparently Sypha's test for whether he can sleep safely unassisted, by the time that short summer night comes and goes and the hour grows so late that he can't physically remain awake.
It's a powerful paralysis spell that she uses in the end, to immobilize him and keep any injury from becoming worse, and that might have been more distressing even than his brief failure to recall the last four years spent with Alucard. He can't remember why he's being held in place like this, no matter how gently Sypha holds him and whispers that he's safe. His eyes are wild with horror even as the rest of his face seems calm. His fingers twitch only slightly against the spell. Exhaustion finally overtakes him after a half hour of it and he finally falls asleep.
And then the waiting begins. Because he can't be left unattended like this. ]
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In all likelihood, it's a mistake to still sleep with Trevor in his arms after all the day's comments. Alucard doesn't exactly care at the moment, this entire day has been an emotional roller coaster and he will cling to whatever precious normal things he so chooses, up to and including being literal about it.
He remembers the effects of sleep spells too.
He doesn't care.]
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So the afternoon finishes early. Sypha goes back to the lab to see if there are any details missed, Trevor's given free reign, and Alucard picks up the notebook that is his assigned reading. He doesn't like it. His father's notebooks are often full of nightmareish thoughts and he expects this one to be no different.
The theory of a cure is...it's trying to find a way to purify blood through some kind of filtering system. At least that's how it starts out. Then it's what if it is some kind of magnetic concept (not articulated as such, this is before his father knew all the future things), and then just every progress note on the stone's development.
Handwriting betrays emotion. When it becomes wild, Alucard can picture his father's face and the fury in it. Young and human but still with that horrible rage. He closes it a few times and puts it aside. There's something familiar and alien at the same time. He doesn't fucking like it.
And when he reaches that last page, there is a blessing and a curse.]
There's more than one notebook.
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And so Alucard reads and Trevor tries his best to form battle plans with horribly incomplete information. The best, most useful thing he can do is to wrap his arms around Alucard when to becomes too much and he's forced to close the book, to push slices of bread spread with honey in front of him when the angle of the sun looks lunchtime-ish, to put tiny thin slices of venison into his hands and guide them to the eager little yappy dog to be thoroughly licked and nibbled at or to occasionally suggest with mock-horror that the horse is going to tell everyone. ]
Can you tell when it was that that one ended? This fucking place is full of books. I get the feeling he didn't leave his clinic after Sara was hurt. If it's after that, it'll be there. Otherwise it could be anywhere in the house.
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The pebble is the greater failure of the iron, as she can move it about in there with only some stain. It clangs against the sides of the makeshift container.
It's going to need some work.
It is, however, still whole the next day, even as the helmet that they took to make the thing seems to have returned to the armory. Other things, like the bedding from the servant's quarters and Mathias' notebooks, have not been replaced. Materially changing the item seems to be what results in it counting as being 'consumed'.
They can use materials from here and he can safely ascend the stairs now, and that means that a more thorough search is in order to see what they have to work with. None of the rooms upstairs are protected as drastically as Mathias' lab, and Trevor goes first, opening doors with a shallow cut on one thumb.
The rooms that the current door opens to are perhaps the brightest of all of them. The first is a living space, clean but with the air of being well-used. Vases are filled with cut flowers, cushions are worn just enough to have become familiar and comfortable, but not enough to need repair. Wear at the spines of a few of the books in the bookcase indicates that they've been pulled out and replaced many times. A sketchbook lies open on a table, filled with pictures of that yippy dog and of the view from the windows of this room and of two people, one pale-haired and noble and the other darker-haired and impossibly, impossibly kind and warm for who Trevor knows this must be.
There is a second doorway at the opposite side of the room, blocked off by a long curtain. And there is a large cushion on the floor, which the dog immediately runs past them all to flop down on. ]
Sara's, I imagine.
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And it all comes from blood.
That's not a surprise.
The particulars of what defines consumed goods are noted too, and while it feels strange to be outside of developing spells with Sypha, Alucard's pleased that Trevor gets to experience the joy of it. Because it is joyful, yelling about this change or that, tones getting louder and louder and more and more delighted to have hit into a solution or furious for a new problem.
Night passes. He makes breakfast in the morning, and then it is upstairs to explore what remains of the house. Alucard moves cautiously behind Trevor, not for alienation in the house but out of lingering concern for the concussion. (Trevor's not a swooning madien, but he will be damned if he misses the opportunity for that joke.) The rooms they've gone through so far are unremarkable, and then, then there is this one.
Alucard lingers in the threshold for a moment or so before walking in. Sypha's looking at the bookcase, and Alucard goes in that direction too. In theory, nothing should be printed. He opens a volume and finds that he's correct: everything here is a handwritten manuscript, produced at stunning cost.]
Doubtlessly. [He places the volume back where it was, eyes trailing over to the second doorway.] Another side room, I'll guess. Status would allow for several apartments before the bedroom.
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Because he and Sypha made a different shape, these days, and they still had to work out how to fit Alucard against it.
It had been simple enough in the end. Or rather, it had been simple enough for Sypha. She was good at this shit. She mediated, and she slept between them, and they both adored her. They set up the room where they would sleep between them, and Alucard figured out which areas of the castle were safe and things were- whatever fucked up kind of thing passes for normal in his life nowadays.
Sypha isn't here now, called off to aid one of the caravans with some kind of magical bullshit that he doesn't understand, and so once again they've been left with a pair of shapes that don't quite fit together so much as they both fit against her. ]
You don't have to pretend to sleep for my sake. That shit must bore you out of your mind.
[ It's the early hours of the morning, and it's a deeply weird feeling, after a few weeks of the three of them being piled into a definitely-not-large-enough-for-three bed, to be sharing a bed with someone and determinedly not touching them. And he still has his eyes closed, his back turned to Alucard, but he can hear the way he's breathing. And he's still a Belmont who Must Observe the Vampire. He knows what awake-Alucard's breath sounds like. ]
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So that tree it had been, and there had been half a dozen awkward parts that went with it. The same strangeness in the next morning, and a few days in, until Sypha made a simple decision and that was that. Alucard had managed to find at least a small set of rooms that were undamaged and not terribly deep into the castle's depths (the other two would get so lost so fast). And that had been that for a brief time.
It was a weird shape. He didn't dislike it, it felt nice when his brain turned off and he just enjoyed the weight of Sypha either curled up in his arms or trying to tug him close. He didn't really sleep, so he focused on her warmth instead. And on trying not to brush up against Trevor too much, because there were far too many questions. They couldn't demand Sypha mediate everything.
For that reason, her absence is keenly felt. The bed is weird, Alucard has his own he could just use instead, but he isn't because that'd be weird too. So he lays there in silence, his face turned towards the door. Expecting nothing.]
Anything I want to do at the moment would be extremely loud and wake you.
[Repairs are loud and the castle does echo.]
Go to sleep.
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But that is the only thing they have. Exploring the estate leads to more notebooks, which have now piled up in the part of the kitchen that is now the research corner (they could move into the servants' quarters, but none of them have.) Sypha has found enough old research to begin to develop new spells, and hidden away in that bedroom has been one journal of Leon's that never quite made it to the Hold. It's all the beginning signs of turning, and notes on the first horrible attempt to engage the vampire responsible for it.
Alucard's read it once, and only for one reason: to figure out how far the location of Walter's own home was, and how far it is from the estate.
If we fail in this, then we should know how to fight him.
Which was why he and Trevor were walking through the forest now, March closing and a few precious spring flowers under foot. Sypha's spell development was in a whirlwind, which meant not coming along. Alucard didn't like it, but they'd need those spells in the future. Better she do that.
The forest is too quiet. He hates it.]
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But clearly it didn't fade entirely. This place isn't protected by the same spells as the estate, no, but it has a similar air to it, driving away everything from travelers to wildlife to wind. It's silent, and that's- probably appropriate, but it's still strange. The place where Dracula had been human is trapped in eternal life, bright and warm and devoid of humans but filled with whatever had been there before, the horses and the dog and the animals and birds that ran wild in the land around it. The place where he had died as a vampire is trapped in the strangest place that it could be and the warmest place that he can imagine, filled with love.
And the place between them, where he had ended and begun, not trapped anywhere by anything and yet deathly silent. ]
The trees bent away from Walter's castle, because it was the source of the darkness. That was how he navigated.
[ He's committed Leon's journals to memory. What else can he do but to keep himself sharp and to learn what he can? The information isn't as useful four hundred years later, with the trees growing used to the sun being in its normal place and growing upward as they ought to instead. But some of them, the oldest, still bend in that strange way. ]
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(They are beginning to run low on a few things. He'll go out tomorrow and fix that.)
Sypha's discoveries dovetail into new theories about who it may be that resides in the home the mirror is set on. Among the many notes in that lab, a list of other vampires was discovered. Walter's victims, the hand Leon's rather than Mathias'. It is a fantastic thing, it allows them to narrow down who it is they could be against. The Belmont list of active vampires is likely helpful enough.
The boys do not share their information back until after dinner. While Alucard's doing the dishes, because he can explain and cut in even as he is distracted with the art of scrubbing. Sypha's face grows dark at each new additional horror of the castle, and it is agreed that the thing must be destroyed. Tomorrow, when there's more daylight to make sure it's wrecked properly. Alucard registers no protest.
Night falls. He sits with his father's notes, everything spread out. The ones from the basement, they're the ones with no order. He has to start with those, they're the bigger challenge, and he stares down at them for what feels like ages until a scrap of writing in the lower right corner catches his eye. It isn't notation. It's as much an entry of a journal as anything else.
That's the order. Find the narrative. And so he begins to shuffle the papers around as quietly as he can. Sypha's already dozed off. Trevor's not, and not inclined to after today, but there is respect for well earned quiet.]
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But then, such comes with his family's work. Preservation is important, but it's no reason to endanger human lives in the present. And that place, that evil place is a terrible danger.
He's cross-referencing the list of active vampires against the list of Walter's victims. There's a deep horror to this process, more for the names that aren't here than the ones that are. Most of the list consists of adults, and it's nowhere as long as those dormitories would have implied. Because they have the names of those who were confirmed to be missing. And the process of turning his child soldiers wiped out any who would have gone looking for them.
They're not relevant to this, though. They were chosen because the process of turning would keep them from ever becoming mentally mature, and this whole thing isn't the doing of a child.
He's a good way through by the time the process really starts to get to him, into the speculative part of the list where Leon simply lists unexplained disappearances in the area from a century back. And it does get to him a little. It's hard to explain, but there's something terrible in how Leon's normally overly flowery writing is reduced to simply 'Name. Age. Last seen. Uncomfirmed.'. It seems so unlike him., and he can almost feel how much this quest anguished the three of them.
He'll finish this later.
In the meantime he comes to bother Alucard, settling next to him. He doesn't say or do anything more just yet, but looks impassively over the pages and pages of shit he'll never understand. ]
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Names have been narrowed down. Alucard has managed to go to the area around the estate and back (he travels the fastest now, what with the lightning), confirming that there are missing persons every so often, and livestock problems with a similar pattern. How to understand and interpret the information is in Trevor's very capable hands.
There has also been a quiet prodding at theory, as his father's notes are now arranged and Alucard has come to understand what that stone was. It's intent might as well have rendered it a philosopher's stone, the thing the alchemists of Near East and Europe want most of all. But what it is is an incomplete understanding of blood and of magic and of science and of vampirism. Something that could have only been refined with his father's age.
The stone was for immortality. Not to remove vampirism. It was doomed to fail.
But the thought behind it, there's still merit there. It's for that reason that in downtime, Alucard tinkers with the theories. It's why he sits in the kitchen now, face screwed up in concentration, blank notebook page in front of him.]
Trevor?
[He has no idea if Trevor's even around at the moment.]
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The only vampires sired by Walter who remained were those who had sworn loyalty to Dracula - not just failed to oppose him, but truly sworn loyalty. That could be narrowed down quickly by records brought from the castle itself. The rest was a matter of checking names against the Belmonts' own records.
It's narrowed down to two names, now. Maybe three - Alucard had recognized one of the names as an ally of theirs, one who had sworn loyalty to him during Carmilla's campaigns. From here, it's a matter of using the mirror to identify who they're facing. Which has to wait, because using the mirror to observe the estate is liable to draw attention enough. Using it to observe an individual is practically announcing their presence and what information they have.
He's only just entered the kitchen now. Mathias' apprentice kept a small home not far from the estate, close enough to be kept within the spell, and he's returned from it with whatever he could find from there - interpretations of Mathias' work from a different mind. Maybe helpful. At the very least, more distant. ]
Hmm? [ He puts the stack of papers down on the table. ] More reading material for you, by the way.
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He'd planned for everything. They'd spent the last week in the nearest town, watching at night for the servants of Jules De Rais and picking them off, keeping them from dragging people off for feeding. No doubt he'd still have animal blood, but he wasn't like Alucard, he'd suffer in combat for the lack of human blood. They would attack at dawn, on the clearest day that the late spring would afford them.
They entered the estate through the window of the uppermost floor, with the help of Sypha's ice. Not for the sake of secrecy- that was long lost to them, but so that there was only the roof between them and sunlight. A roof easily punctured by the morning star, or by Sypha's ice. It had worked. It had worked. They had the upper floors of the place near as taken, with no injuries to show for it. They had the ability to leave the way they came and go unfollowed if they needed to.
But then the sun had gone out.
Which had been a problem for every conceivable reason, not least that two thirds of them couldn't see in the dark. Sypha had immediately provided light, of course, but in doing so she'd made herself stick out as the easiest target. Something emerged from the shadows and tossed her from the balcony above the stairs, and Alucard gave chase to catch her-
And just like that, they were separated. Alucard and Sypha still on the lower levels, and he on the upper level and effectively blind. Something struck him in the ribs - a fist, perhaps, with force enough to send him flying back into one of the rooms they'd yet to go through. Whatever it was that struck him follows, and the door slams behind.
His head is spinning from the impact still as he pushes himself to his feet, desperately trying to figure out what the fuck just happened and adjust his plans accordingly. The darkness- that had been a spell that used Walter's blood as a component. But it's too early, a full two days before the day that Sypha had given as their deadline. Walter can't be revived, not yet.
It strikes him again, knocking him back further, and he pushes himself to his knees. And then it occurs to him - his spirit doesn't need to be present for his flesh and blood to be back. Whoever is behind this revival doesn't want Walter himself to return. They want a collection of useful parts-
-But he can't finish that thought. He can't finish it because, as he hears Alucard and Sypha recover and give chase, something lifts him by the hair, clean off the ground. There are a pair of teeth at his neck. They bite down, and he doesn't quite yell out because whatever part of him would be carrying the sound is torn through, and he can't even feel the pain so much as he can feel the upper and lower jaw meeting below his skin.
Shit. He fucked up, didn't he? ]
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None of them had accounted for spells this powerful. It was stupid of them, and for this, they've all been separated. Sypha thrown to the darkness one way, and then down, down and he cannot not run after her. They're both human. She can't survive a fall.
Vampiric speed is the only reason he catches her. Sypha's spells have fired in every direction but the right one, and it scares him to see her so off balance. She needs that moment to recollect herself, so Alucard has her ride his back. Has her hang on as he runs back to where they were before, and then takes hand in hers to guide her through the dark.
Trust. That's all that hand is right now, trust that Alucard's eyes can see what must be seen. He heard something slam through the upper levels, and there is a madness of opening every door that he can. Nothing's locked.
Nothing's locked because whatever is being done to Trevor is meant to be seen. The thought occurs to him as they start to run out of doors, Sypha saying something about there being another wing, Alucard hissing back that he knows where the sound came from and then....
...then they reach the right door, and blood runs cold.
There are teeth where there should never be teeth. Hands that should never touch that head. And Alucard cannot run in recklessly because it might cost Trevor's life. Have his throat ripped out, the blood everywhere, everywhere but where it should be. It's all he can imagine, and in that horrible moment, it is Sypha who acts. Sypha who sends a horrible spike of ice as a warning shot, because she too knows that to hit the vampire is to let Trevor die.]
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Somewhere in all of it, Alucard knows that there's tears streaming down his face. He buries them and the rest of his face into the top of Trevor's head and he does not move from that spot. A barely strangled sob escapes from time to time, and the worst part in all of it is that he loathes himself for sitting here and weeping. They might have time yet to try the experiment. To see if any of it will work. But they are all trapped here by the knowledge that loss will dawn over them in just a few more hours, and the terrible farewells are more important than forcing more pain into a situation that overflows with it.
Alucard's fingers dig into Trevor's too cold flesh as the moon rises higher and higher in the sky. Sypha's found some words, loving ones, ones said with devestation but no cracks to her voice. If not now, then soon. Terribly soon.
They will pack everything up in the morning. Send it through the mirror. Sypha will go home ahead, he will follow riding the same arcs that brought them to this place. For a few terrible hours, Sypha will be alone in that castle, and Alucard cannot help but hate himself for forcing that upon her.
He'll be home soon enough. They'll both collapse from grief and exhaustion, and the castle will be all the emptier for there being only two people in it. They'll abandon their bed, for it will be too large for only two people. Find a new wing of the castle not scarred by memory, and rebuild yet again.]
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He does speak, after a while, and it's all mercilessly practical. Instructions to Alucard and Sypha to find the Renard and Lacarde branches of the clan, in hiding (he would never have been able to make contact with them. Alucard ought to be able to find them easily.). The Gandolfi family (last known to be in Florence but likely exiled from Italy now for their work in alchemy). The Morris clan (Ireland, if he recalls correctly). Any of them ought to be able to use the whip, even if the cost of it upon themselves might be horrifying. If the worst should happen, the two of them won't be left without a hunter. Only without him. Instructions to leave both whip and stone here, behind the many layers of protection that Mathias put on this place. Along with him. And he will wait here, and he will live (and that is his compromise for talking strategy now, of all times, that he will live for as long as he can remain himself), until either whip or stone are needed. And when they are, he will join one or the other.
And then he goes silent again, only holding them, because that's all he can do now. Even that seems like too much. He's disgusting, more so than he ever was before. He can't kiss away their tears, because his mouth is all full of fangs.
It must have been about three hours since sunset. He doesn't know that because he has any particular concept of how the time is passing - he doesn't know if it's racing past or dragging, and he has no heartbeat to measure it by. But there are noises now, quieter than Alucard's occasional sobs or Sypha's whispers. He's heard them before, but he can pick them out more clearly. The bottles and containers that had their contents used on the stone shifting slightly as their contents refill. It's midnight, and the day is beginning again.
And his heart beats.
And after three hours without a heartbeat, it feels rather like being punched behind the ribs. He recoils back, because he doesn't know what the fuck this is but Sypha still has that awful bruise from the last time something happened and he's not going to hurt her again. And the worst of the pain is back, his skull reshaping itself again. Things inside of him that have been deathly still for the last few hours forcing themselves violently back to life. His lungs are burning and he can't understand what he's meant to do about that until he takes a great, gasping breath and then chokes it out again and-
-fuck, he needs to breathe. ]
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And so he finds it just about impossible to understand Alucard's complaints about a straw mattress being too uncomfortable. Until he'd come to the castle, that represented the peak of luxury to him. It was what he had slept on at home and, as Alucard had proven to enjoy reminding him, his family were nobility. And certainly it wasn't as soft as the feather mattress that their shared bed used, certainly there was the odd sharp poke from a piece of straw that refused to lie properly with the others, but it was soft and pleasant enough to sleep on and firm enough that one didn't just feel at risk of disappearing into it at all times the way one did with feathers. ]
Sypha told me a story like this.
[ And maybe he's just a little sore about the fact that Alucard spent the night reading rather than lying next to him because the inn's mattress didn't meet his standards. And that's why he's still going on about this almost a full day later, now they're almost back at the castle. ]
About how a king and queen had to determine their daughter from an impostor. And you know what they did?
[ He probably knows what they did. It's certainly mattress-related, because that's all Trevor has been getting at Alucard about for the last half hour and because the grin on his face means this cannot be about anything other than 'continuing to get at Alucard'. ]
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[Alucard knows full well he has been spoiled for comfort in his life. Not for wealth, although that is a massive factor in it, but for his father's knowledge and understanding of the world. No other child grew up with electric lights and heated floors. Few would grow up with telescopes to look at the sky with such refined eyes. Not even boyars, it seems, get to have plush bedding. It shows in all ways. Even his coffin under Gresit was plush.
So maybe he's hypersensitive about where they sleep. Most nights, it isn't a problem, he barely sleeps anyway. But there are some times when he simply cannot deal with straw poking through threadworn mattress, just like last night. It happens, and he deserves all the shit for it.]
You can drop it now, you know, you've done enough vampire shaming for the day.
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It is not easier on the second day. If anything, it is worse, because they all know how it plays out. They know that to attend to every scream of agony is to deny precious moments of trying to make this stone work, and it is needed more than ever. They keep Trevor in the lab because they have to have him there to test the damn stone and that may actualy be the worst part of it all. They have to listen to all of this because they have to monitor the turning. Pinpoint the key moments.
(Alucard takes goddamn blood samples, and he knows, he knows it's horrible but they need the information. He takes hurried notes while looking at the stuff under a microscope. He has theories now. Better ones. But he still flinches when there's a new and terrible noise.)
By the third day, they at least know what to expect in terms of timing and in terms of volume. It is no comfort. It is only terrible, terrible knowledge that lets them all brace. And it is in that moment that Alucard thinks he's come to understand something of this terrible turning, because he's got both eyes pressed into the microscope viewer, delirious and delighted because this might be the key to all of it and---
--and there is a new noise he hasn't heard before, and he looks up in terror of the new.]
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Sypha is uncomfortably close for this turning. His jaw is wedged open, molars biting down on a thick piece of wood, so that she can see the fangs as she observes the changes to his skull as best she can. Something something, magic bullshit, something something, spell to help with the worst of the pain by either preventing the changing of the bone or making it go more smoothly. She pokes at the fangs with a measuring ruler, taking note of how far they push out, where the teeth that they displaced are forced to.
He hasn't eaten more than about a mouthful at each meal since before the battle. He physically can't. The process of turning twists the parts of himself that are for eating into something different, built for an entirely different sort of sustenance. The process of turning back undoes all of that, but leaves the insides of him ruined, withered away and incapable of more sipping at water and broth and warm milk with honey stirred into it (Alucard has taken to giving him that, when he can't stomach anything else, and he suspects that it's as much for Alucard's comfort as it is for his own). And it's- fine. He'll need more sooner or later, Sypha's already commented once on how his skin seems looser on him in places as his body starts to consume muscle to fuel the constant turning and turning back. But- with any luck, there won't be a later. His body has always been forced to consume itself to survive every winter until coming to the castle, he has a fairly strong idea of how far this can go and still be reversible with a few weeks of rest and decent meals.
Only now, now there's something else inside of him. He almost wants to call it survival but it isn't. He knows survival. He's good at survival. This, all of this, is survival and this thing is darker. It's- he wants to call it selfishness, but it's crueler. It's survival through terrible means, the drive to destroy something else to ensure that he continues. And it's powerful, so powerful, strong as the compulsion on this room's door had been. And Sypha's hand is right there, the blood so close to the skin from that bruise he'd left her with two nights back. And he can't warn her, because his mouth is wedged open and the desperate shouting just sounds like more of his screams from the turning process, earning only a pained smile and attempt at comfort.
The first sound is Trevor biting clean through the wood holding his mouth open. The second is Sypha yelling in alarm as he pounces her, all teeth and claws and very little Trevor at all. ]
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(The ethics have been discussed. Two weeks is all any of them can bear. It is a fair agreement.)
Spit. Trevor's specifically, because in the end this is about returning blood to a neutral form through not only science but the weird metaphyiscal level that all things unwordly exist on. Vampires included. They have every agent needed except for a neutral form, because nothing else is. Alucard remembers what it was like when Trevor mixed communion wine and his own fluids to reset all the holiness of the things from the Hold. It makes sense here. The spit is Trevor at his baseline. It is the way to indicate to all other components that this is how things ought to be, here is the pattern to follow.
The rest is magic. The rest is science. The rest is faith. The rest is sheer fucking will, and that last part must come from all three.
It is painful, using Trevor as a science experiment. Miserable because every attempt has come with failure. There's no optimism in Alucard today as they all prepare for the next round of fighting the first sign of turning, the part that happens during daylight. It is a third night, so at some point Alucard will have to go out and get blood, as the third day means Trevor's body has eaten too much of itself in this struggle.
Two minutes to go. Sypha is holding the stone in her hands, speaking the words that charge it and prepare it to work. Alucard tries to send his own will up through the tubing of it as he puts the firt of two needles into Trevor's arm. (He makes sure it's the opposite arm that Trevor didn't nearly tear to shreds.) There is minimal incense now, because Alucard needs a clear head. Too much and he's fogged over. Useless when he ought to be in his element.
Both needles are in place. One minute to go. Sypha brings the stone down between all three of them, and Alucard wraps his hands around it.]
You too.
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[ He probably shouldn't joke about it, this being a third day. But deer's blood sufficed to keep him under control on the sixth day, even if it didn't stop his body from consuming itself the way that Alucard's did. There's less incense - he wouldn't be able to make threats at all if there were any more, even joking ones. But there's a bottle of holy water, and Sypha's given her word to use it and her ice to restrain him should the worst happen.
It's the first time that he's joining in with this shit, which is why he's so quick to complain. He does not do magic. It's a wonder the the transubstantiation works for him (moreso now. He did it in the morning, before the bite set in). Magic is another fucking matter entirely. But they're running out of time. Five more days. Five more days until they leave and he's left alone here. He's willing to try, no matter how stupid it seems.
The arm with the needles in it is frozen to the side of the bed at the wrist. The ice is made with holy water and it already burns even now, but it'll stop him from thrashing that arm about and knocking the needles out of place once the turning sets in (this, they tested on the seventh day, once it became clear that they'd need Alucard as sharp as possible - if Sypha was going to be close to him during the turning, they needed some other form of protection for her. It works, it works well enough that he'll be incorporating it into plans from now on).
He lays the other hand on the stone. ]
So I just have to want really hard to not be a vampire. [ It's a question as well as a probably-unfair dismissal of his role in this whole thing. ] I don't know if I can manage that. I've been enjoying it so much so far.
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Trevor still has a long, long way to go before he's in anything close to the shape he was in before the bite (he may not ever be, not quite, always just a little more fragile and quick to succumb to illness than he was before, but they're all trying to focus on his improving health for now rather than the fact that there may be a limit to those improvements), but he's at least in decent health again. It was after about two weeks that it was deemed safe to let him wander about the area around the castle without supervision, which was good, because much as he adores the other two he does also like being left to himself an not cooped up in the castle when it's perfectly nice outside.
He's been spending a lot of time at the old Belmont house, since then. The other two tend to leave him alone, there, and he can work in peace. And he is working. It's easy to tell that he's working on something because he's taking a frankly uncharacteristic amount of baths to hide the evidence of it. The rest of the evidence- hiding that relies upon trusting the other two not to pry into his business. Which even Sypha is fairly respectful of, at least as far as the old house is the business in question. It's kind of an open secret between the three of them - there's no real hiding it properly, but Alucard and Sypha just refrain from asking or from looking.
(The only room that sees any use that overlooks the old Belmont house is Dracula's study, because of course even in being captured and dragged across Wallachia the castle would position itself so that Dracula could watch over his old foes, and that room's thick curtains were always drawn closed.)
But he's inside today, even though the day is bright and dry, with a cooler breeze than is common this time of year that makes it perfect for work. And he is, of course, inspecting his old friend. The floor. ]
The floors are warm in winter. [ He says as Alucard walks past, apparently having given up on trying to figure this shit out himself. ] How does that work?
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A long discussion. They had noticed he was not home (his den was gone entirely), and there is assurance of food to be brought to the front door. The sun rises before all is agreed to, and at that point, Alucard decides that he ought to just go to town and take care of matters at the market. There is no food at all in the castle, and all three of them need to eat so terribly.
It is only after returning, laden with groceries and meat and milk and everything else that the castle lacks, that he goes to bed. And remains there for four full days, asleep and refusing to let Trevor go. Sypha has to gently undo those too possessive arms for the important things, like bathroom trips, and perhaps Alucard shouldn't have slept because that means four days of Sypha's cooking.
He's given the speech to the rest of Europe's vampires. Made it clear that any additional fuckery will not be tolerated, and he's done it with the Crimson Stone in his hand for nothing more than a bit of theatre. They've had visitors now, those making it clear that he has their loyalty, and as much as Alucard hates to become even a fraction of what his father was, he knows that this is better than what the three have endured otherwise.
The rest is simple. It is caring for the two again as intensely and lovingly as he ever has, a greater emphasis placed on recovery. Hardly the same type that he underwent (that scar game is a ways away), but he knows the outline of it now. The benchmarks for improvements. And he watches Trevor meet each one with such a relief that he nearly cries from it every time.
Best of all is Trevor's outside. Outside and doing...something...most days, except for here. And now. Because he's on the floor, because goddamnit the man loves floors too much.]
Steam and vents. The Romans did it a millennia ago. [He's more than a little concerned by the question, and he walks over to where Trevor is.] Why?
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It's late autumn now, and the blackberries in the woods are waiting for next year, but the ones in the greenhouse are growing strong. Trevor's rearranged some of the flower beds in there, made the walls of them wider so they can be used as benches because the first thing Sypha wanted to do in that little room filled with sunlight and the smell of green things and soil was to sit in it and read. It's even more tempting now the weather is so much cooler, because it's warm in there. Warm like the castle is, but surrounded with so much light and life.
But Trevor is not there right now. He's in the study, which is an unusual place for him to be, and staring out of the window (the curtains are open now, because nobody here is sensitive to sunlight and it overlooks the garden. Their garden) and ignoring that mirror while waiting for Alucard to finish his work in the kitchen and come up to meet him. ]
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Just apples today, foraged from one of the last trees in the woods. He makes his way back through the garden, stopping to check on the bees before he heads back into the castle itself. Just apple and honey cake today, the fire is burning brighter in the kitchen and that means just enough heat for it. He has everything ready, but the cake's best eaten warm. He'll start it at supper time.
He's done, and that means finding Trevor. Trevor who is not in the usual haunts, which take Alucard half an hour to check even using vampire speed. He catches a scent eventually though, and...the study?
It has gone unused lately. There's no strategy to tend to, and even checking in on Hector has lessened of late. The only reason Alucard comes in is to refresh the flowers beneath his mother's portait.
So he actually knocks to announce his presence and stands at the threshold rather than walk in.]
Trevor?
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There's planning. Of course there's planning. There's sewing to do, there's finally introducing the wolf pack to the other two which goes well. They've suspected that Alucard's pack is human. Trevor's and Sypha's scents are distinct and the wolves have smelt them for some time now. They inter Sara where she ought to be, and there's been no Leon in Alucard's dreams for some time now. The anniversary of Dracula's death goes by with only a momentary dip into the more somber state of of the vampire.
Spring creeps it's way into the countryside. Snows melt a bit more slowly this year. Little promises of greenery poke up through the snow, and the greenhouse may as well believe it to be summer. There's more to do with dates nearing, with...
...with other anniversaries nearing as well. Which is the point of doing this all in May. Alucard's not sure if he catches it first or if Sypha does, but there's a greater quiet from Trevor. Which means only one recourse.
They wait until there's a misty evening. The snows have lingered into early April, and tonight the light rain has created such a blanket. It is, Alucard imagines, how his father wanted the castle to be seen. Shrouded in mist. A new moon overhead, so the sky is so very dark. And in their room there is a fire, there is embroidery the vampire is working on, and there is wondering when Trevor will join them both.]
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The effort to reclaim the castle continues slower now, because he has reached the rooms that Carmilla used as barracks for her soldiers, all full of the personal effects of every vampire in Europe, it seems. Some of it must be taken to the hold and sorted, and he would rather not force Alucard to sort through the things of his own torturers. Some things need to be moved to the old feeding cells, which requires Alucard's absence for a prolonged period (he cannot access the feeding cells via the study, and to the wall must be opened and reclosed, and that is not the work of a few hours), And some of it, shittily enough, is personal enough that it probably ought to be returned. Which is going to be a little awkward, considering the tone of Alucard's last interaction with all of these vampires, but none of them are so unkind to even foes as to deny them old letters from family, pictures of old friends from their days as humans, a wedding ring.
Work makes more work, and even with the garden largely controlled by the late frosts it isn't difficult for him to find things to do. He leaves the bed early and returns to it late and takes his meals at odd times and he doesn't have to think at all. He can do his thinking when this is done, a little way into May, when he can only have better things to think about.
It's late when he returns to the room, already cleaned (which isn't so rare these days, because he's working and work makes him filthy and he likes the bed too much to make it filthy) if not quite as well as he could be. He always misses the fingernails, and there's blood under them. He gives a 'mmph' of acknowledgement and just flops into the bed. ]
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(Alucard is blissfully cool in this heat, as well, and that's certainly one good thing to come out of the outburst last week, but he can hardly spend whole days wrapped around him.)
There is work to be done, though much of it is infuriatingly reliant upon Alucard because you can't make steps from the top of a thing downwards and getting in and out of the hold under his own steam is a task that would take half the day in itself, but all of it is the kind of hard work that's made hellish by the heat. He's taken to working from dawn until the heat becomes too much, and then from late afternoon until dark. By now it probably isn't a surprise, even if it not being a surprise doesn't make it any less weird, that he's just lying on his front on the ground, shirt discarded somewhere to one side, head resting on his folded arms until the heat starts to pass with the afternoon.
Because it's too fucking warm. ]
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Actually, the sheer amount of blood was the enemy at first, because there was so much blood to get rid of at a low elevation that Alucard was going to actually scream. Most of it was sunbaked onto the stone, but there were still puddles! Of night creature blood! And poor Sypha had to make it all rise up before they could work on the stairs.
(He spent a long time drafting the stairs, which was the fun part. He hadn't designed anything since Gresit.)
But now heat is the enemy too, at least for the other two. Alucard does not feel the problem as keenly, but here? Now? Looking at Trevor sprawled out? Heat is the enemy is so many ways.]
She'll be back tomorrow. We'll have ice then.
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(He does not. If he intended to succeed, he would have brought more than an iron spike for a stake. Would have stopped at a church for supplies. Would be here during the day. Probably would not have indulged in a little pre-drinking for courage before he came to fight Dracula. He intends to die, to be done with all of this shit, and to maybe get a stake into Dracula's heart as he does.)
His family put Dracula aside when he left Europe, focusing instead upon the prophecy that a terrible disaster would come to pass, would rend empires apart and bring terrible monsters of fire and steel into the world and kill half the men in Europe and leave only a lingering darkness that would coalesce into something terrible. It had come to pass. It had come to pass and they had failed to protect the world from it, and now all but one of them were gone, and all that was left to do was to complete that first terrible mission that they had taken on nine centuries ago.
And he looks the part of Dracula's killer either very much or not at all, depending on how much importance one gives to a uniform (because he has few other clothes, and none so appropriate for fighting). A drunken Romanian man in a french infantry uniform with a stake. No whip, because that hadn't been in the ruins of his home. Taken by looters, no doubt. He could have found a replacement, just any old bullwhip treated with chism. But he didn't come here to do a good job and he didn't come here to stand a fucking chance at survival.
He knocks on the door of what had once been Dracula's castle. ]
Show yourself, vampire!
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There have been no prying eyes on his father's home. No one has dared to intrude on their grief. Occasional casserole dishes from the Church Ladies (he leaves the empty ones out by the road where they drop the fresh ones off, after all, the castle is shrouded and hidden deep from the world even as it resides near a major city). The space has been required, for what would be done if the city was aware of exactly how bad that damage inflicted was?
Rest has been Alucard's primary occupation, punctuated with reading when his body has decided that no, it cannot sleep for another five days. He walks little, and when he does, it's simply to move to the library so he can occupy his thoughts with anything but reality. The radio is always on when he sits there, some pleasant music playing.
He keeps the viewing mirror there too. (It's how he checks on the cassaroles.) Useful for checking on doors too and...
...and he hears something faint at the door. From his space on the armchair (he's not getting up), Alucard wills the mirror to show who it is knocking. There's a pause, then Trevor's words are heard.
Wearily, Alucard sighs, and he does not get up.]
You must be joking.
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Brushes the dust off this post
At first, he thought that it was just Alucard. It would make sense, if that were the case, even if he didn't like it. He was the one with fangs, and so it was perhaps natural that when his hands or hair or breath brushed over the side of his neck that still had sensation, this bullshit would happen. And it was bullshit, but Alucard had always been careful about their necks anyway. It didn't change much.
Then it happened with Sypha, as well, and the look of hurt and guilt on her face was almost worse than the suffocating, gurgling feeling of not being able to take in breath and the wrenching, cracking one of his skull reforming and
He likes to think of it as more inconvenient and annoying than distressing, but he likes to think a lot of things that are not true.
Now, it's become so bad that he can't even wear clothes that brush against his throat. Which is inconvenient, because the beautiful cloak that Alucard gave to him as a wedding gift falls into that category. And, seeing as how it's the middle of fucking winter, he'd quite like to wear it. The castle might be heated, but the garden is not. ]
Adrian. [ He doesn't always use his husband's given name, even now. When he does, it's usually a precursor to saying something sickeningly saccharine. Which also meant it tends to be a precursor toother things. But even though they're in bed, Alucard's head rested on his chest while he reads, the tone is wrong for that. Too heavy.
It's vulnerability that using that name signifies, not just saying some bullshit that makes the vampire kiss him. The two just happen to overlap a lot. ] I want you to feed from me.
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So after everything, it was only natural that he intended to give Trevor's neck a wide berth. That never excluded accidentally brushing against it, and the reaction it got was gutwrenching. Alucard hated it, and that only fueled his desire to be cautious. But when the matter happened with Sypha, it was clear that this? This was another part of the psychological fall out of the awful events of spring coming home to rest.
And it's gotten worse. Alucard and Sypha have spoken quietly when Trevor hasn't been around, debating and pulling their hair over what to do. It's an ever too elusive solution, and the question has come to occupy most of Alucard's thoughts when he's silent. Even reading doesn't free him from worry.
The garden helps though. It's warm and bright and far too sunny even in winter, and Alucard reads there during the daylight. In bed, listening to Trevor's heartbeat (their miracle of science and faith) does much the same.
His eyes go up from the book when Trevor says his name. Alucard knows all of Trevor's tones now, and the weight in this one already has him worried.
The worry is justified. The right response doesn't exist, but Alucard has theories.]
...What's brought this on?
[Not what?, all indignation. Why?]
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It's from within the fur of Trevor's cloak (that he can now at least stand to wear) that there's a soft, slightly distressed squeak. It translates to I'm cold, as the three of them worked out certain audio cues up to the Rhine. (They are meeting in neutral territory outside of Styria.)
Alucard hates this. He hates being in bat form for any longer than he must, as to be in bat form is to be too small, too vulnerable, too easy to come to harm and far too difficult to protect the others. But in mediating what the right balance of blood drinking, population, and destruction of Styria's new vampires (and there has been an explosion of them in the past three years since That Woman's death), he had to be.
They'll go back to their lodgings tonight, a tiny inn with only two bedrooms and working on the assumption that there's only two people staying in the one room. Alucard will remain a bat there too, unhappy and trying not to let his displeasure at the situation be known.
But for now, a squeak. A need for something warmer, as the wind has picked up and there is a bone wrenching chill with it.]
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And if you cannot control your thirst, House Belmont will control it for you.
Sypha is the mediator among them, not Trevor. She navigates her way through dissent with easy grace, while Trevor crushes it. They make an efficient team. There is more work ahead, far more. Pomanders to be crafted for those turned unwillingly who wish to live peacefully but cannot trust their self-control, agreements to be mediated between new vampires and those who might be willing to make some trade to support them, rules about turning to be decided upon and enforced by Styria's hunters, training of those hunters and weeding out those who only want to hurt things-
For now, though, they are on the wagon again, Sypha curled up in the back of it while Trevor leads the horses. ]
Cold again?
[ There's not much point in asking, with the answer that Alucard is unable to give being so very clear. He gathers the reins in one hand, tugging a warm glove from the free one so he can lift it up to his shoulder, using it to block the wind from Alucard. ]
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