[ 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. ]
[Alucard has not looked up from the papers. The second he figured out the key to the order, he has done nothing but read line after precious line, horrified by the contents and the fact that he must keep reading them in order to put this all together.
(This is the writing of a man still, a man stressed to bursting. The organization is so off on the pages (the stone is everywhere, even on the castle's engines), the fact there's personal notes at all, it's disturbing. And yet there's still clarity in it, whereas Alucard had none of that in his own imprisonment.)
The reason the narrative is there becomes clear. There's the expectation of not surviving. There's the guess that this is meditation, that it will keep some humanity if he does. (Alucard knows how that story goes.) But the reason for the writing 400 years ago versus what shines through in the present could not be more striking. Or terrifying.
Alucard had always tried to see his father as two people. Dracula, and all that entailed, and simply his father. But with Mathias now, now those two things have combined. And a so-called witch atop of it.
He barely registers Trevor's presence. He's too caught up in the work.]
[ For a while, he lets him work. There's a temptation to just curl up with Sypha and sleep and see what new and interesting nightmares his mind is going to make out of the materials it's been given, but Alucard is exactly the type of asshole who would choose not to wake either of them if something was wrong. And this- this isn't work that lends itself to nothing being wrong.
He's quiet, when he does speak, and the speaking is only so that he doesn't shock Alucard into dropping anything when he brings a hand softly to his. It's been a long day. ]
[With his free hand, he moves another piece of paper back to where it ought to be.]
He copied Leon. There's a journal in all of this, and that tells me the correct order of the pages. On some there's a paragraph, on others maybe the continuation of a single sentence.
[He's too serious when he responds. It means he's either caught up in the work or the content is the source of the issue.]
[ He nods, looking over the pages again in thought. It takes a lot of searching among the notes that mean nothing to him to find the one or two sentences that he might understand.
A journal. The first thing that comes to mind is that it could be a message to Leon or to his apprentice, a means to decipher the notes that they would understand but that Walter would not. And if it was a message for Leon- ]
Show me what to look for. I've already had to memorize every detail of these fuckers' lives. May as well put it to some use.
[Which is to say, no. Alucard moves another few pages, lips moving without saying anything. He can guess where sentences go when he does this, the writing here is another version of his father's speaking. He can anticipate what comes next.]
[ He disagrees. But there's no sense arguing about it now. He won't win - this comes too close to a family thing for that - and the attempt will only break Alucard's focus and make the task take longer. Instead he just watches him sort through the papers. It's relaxing, at least from the outside, watching him almost glowing in the torch light and listening to the sound of papers against each other. ]
[There's five minutes of silence. Five minutes to finish the narrative. Five minutes to declare a thing complete, stack the papers ever-so-neatly on top of each other, and then resting his hands on both sides of the pages. A completed manuscript, born of torture and madness and horrified desperation. A completed manuscript that leads back home. In it, a greater farce.
A smile that is not flicks across Alucard's face.]
Too many things between our families come from the word witchcraft.
Fuck, I hate that word. If everyone could just agree to not use it unless someone's actually stuck a handle into the neck stump of someone's severed head to use it as a mop and turned anyone who said it was a bad idea into a frog, that would be wonderful.
[A hollow, bitter laugh rings out. It's pained, and there's a horrible, crooked smile on Alucard's face when he finally stops. (Sypha's seriously out of it, even that doesn't get her attention.)]
[ He knew a little of this. Not a lot. Leon's journals glance over how they came across Mathias (probably out of respect, in hindsight), mentioning only that Sara had taken a keen interest in the work of this doctor and that there had been some peril but that his work had been brought back to the estate mostly intact and he himself only slightly less so. ]
Leon didn't mention any witchcraft. Not specifically.
Well, it wasn't, and I'm sure that the finer technicalities were mostly listened to but never recorded in full.
[Alucard is not Trevor. He is not going to memorize the passages here, and there's a lot of reasons for it. The biggest, the most important, is because his father never shared any of this. He did not want his son to know. (He probably never told Alucard's mother either.)]
There was an outbreak of the plague.
[He flips through a few pages, and taps in the lower right corner with where it all begins.]
And he knew the source, or at least had a very good guess. Rats. Dog, whose real name by the way is Aurelius, helped to find nests, while somehow never catching the plague himself. [The dog may just be magic.] Going in, having no illness, it was too suspicious. Worse that Mathias was a stranger to the place with no reputation as one of the cunning folk otherwise.
[He sighs, flipping another page and running his finger along a passage.]
And he would have escaped scrutiny had he responded to questions from town officials with anything but the claim that this was a part of natural history and knowledge. That he relied on no saints or church blessings to find where these rats were and to ensure his own safety.
[ That's what he's choosing to get out of all of that. And no, it's probably not the most pretentious name he's ever heard given to a dog. Because the Belmont family had a lot of dogs and quite a few pretentious types. But it's close. And also it's DRACULA's dog and so it gets judged more harshly. ]
Leon mentioned the plague. I'll spare you the long version, but he said that Sara had taken a keen interest stopping its spread, but that no doctor was willing to speak to a woman about such things.
[They're as bad as each other, just in opposite directions.]
Mm, this one did only after she stepped in at the last second. This particular interest in burning was less directed by the church and much more a mob, but here we are again. Fire and witchcraft.
But yes. Even if we all know the difference between magic users who use the art for good rather than ill. The only word that anyone cares about is witchcraft.
[There's a heavy sigh, and Alucard's eyes remain on the page.]
The rest becomes theories on removing vampirism from the blood. The stone's genesis, because the terror and grief was too much, and we both know rational thought was not his strong suit in those moments.
[ He drops it, though, and just follows Alucard's gaze to the page. There's not much of it that he understands, but he nods. And he listens. ]
And we know what happened from there. Shit.
[ A long pause, and then he extends his hand. ]
Show me your hand.
[ He doesn't have anything particularly comforting he can say, because actually fuck the fact that this is a recurring theme in their lives. The least he could do is check on the silver burns from earlier. ]
What I expect is more screamed revelations, before all is said and done. [Alucard's eyes remain down, fingers tracing over diagrams.]
That shall all spill forth at the estate we must invade, I am sure. But...[Alucard pauses as he reads. He holds out the hand that was burnt by the silver absently, because there's something else on the page that has his attention.]
I'd like to think we're running out of revelations, by this point. Unless we're going to find out that the fucking dog is behind all of this, I don't think I can be surprised any more.
[ He takes the hand and examines it, running a thumb over the fleshy parts of the palm where the burns were earlier. They are, indeed, gone.
He's half debating whether it would be appropriate to lay his lips to Alucard's wrist (aka Wallachia Man's favourite part of local vampire to kiss), but settles on no when it becomes clear that his attention is on work. ]
Something else? I was joking/i> about the dog thing.
[Alucard's hand tries to hold onto Trevor. Even as he's reading. Even as his mind is racing because he's caught something his father didn't when the stone was first developed. Magic is about intent. He didn't know that, he didn't account for that at the outset.
And what else might be wrong?
He puts the thought aside for a moment. There's nothing more he wants to do than to run into this thought not only for fear of forgetting, but because it allow him to avoid sleep for the night. Instead, Alucard turns around so that he's facing Trevor. Knees against knees. And he puts his hands on both of Trevor's cheeks and kisses him on the lips for a very, very long moment.
(It is a terribly inappropriate time, but at this point, every time shall be terribly inappropriate.)
And when he breaks that kiss, it's to say only one thing:]
You are never allowed to claim that I am too overprotective of you both.
You say that like I've ever cared whether I'm allowed to do something.
[ He's breathless when Alucard breaks the kiss, mostly from surprise, but he's never let a silly thing like needing air keep him from making an unnecessarily combative remark. He does need a few moments to get his composure back after that, though. Congratulations, vampire, you have successfully slightly-flustered the Belmont. ]
[Alucard's hands do not move. He sighs, resting his forehead against Trevor's, nothing else visible beyond Alucard's face and the fire's glow illuminating strands of hair.]
[ He gives a quiet 'hmm' at that, because fuck if it doesn't get to him when Alucard gets like this. The constant affection is one thing, and it's wonderful, but the sudden intense bursts of it like this-
-well, he's going to have to be a contrary asshole just to deal with it. And so he presses his lips to one of Alucard's wrists, whispering softly- ]
[The blush is just a normal reaction now, when lips are pressed to wrists. Made all the more intense because he can feel the words being said against his skin as well as hear.
If Trevor's going to be contrary, then Alucard's going to just say the only thing he can.]
So are you.
[It just shows in such different ways. With Alucard it's constant. Like affection. They're hand in hand. With Trevor it's more situational. Both are good. Both are needed.]
I'm- [ and he presses his lips against Alucard's wrist again before pulling his hands away so he can lean forward and rest his head against Alucard's shoulder. ] -the perfect amount of protective.
[ Okay so this isn't actually as comfortable as he thought it would be but he doesn't care. It's still nice. ]
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
cryptsleeper) wrote2018-11-10 11:26 pm
no subject
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. ]
no subject
(This is the writing of a man still, a man stressed to bursting. The organization is so off on the pages (the stone is everywhere, even on the castle's engines), the fact there's personal notes at all, it's disturbing. And yet there's still clarity in it, whereas Alucard had none of that in his own imprisonment.)
The reason the narrative is there becomes clear. There's the expectation of not surviving. There's the guess that this is meditation, that it will keep some humanity if he does. (Alucard knows how that story goes.) But the reason for the writing 400 years ago versus what shines through in the present could not be more striking. Or terrifying.
Alucard had always tried to see his father as two people. Dracula, and all that entailed, and simply his father. But with Mathias now, now those two things have combined. And a so-called witch atop of it.
He barely registers Trevor's presence. He's too caught up in the work.]
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He's quiet, when he does speak, and the speaking is only so that he doesn't shock Alucard into dropping anything when he brings a hand softly to his. It's been a long day. ]
What news of the 'terrible metal beast'?
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[With his free hand, he moves another piece of paper back to where it ought to be.]
He copied Leon. There's a journal in all of this, and that tells me the correct order of the pages. On some there's a paragraph, on others maybe the continuation of a single sentence.
[He's too serious when he responds. It means he's either caught up in the work or the content is the source of the issue.]
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A journal. The first thing that comes to mind is that it could be a message to Leon or to his apprentice, a means to decipher the notes that they would understand but that Walter would not. And if it was a message for Leon- ]
Show me what to look for. I've already had to memorize every detail of these fuckers' lives. May as well put it to some use.
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[Which is to say, no. Alucard moves another few pages, lips moving without saying anything. He can guess where sentences go when he does this, the writing here is another version of his father's speaking. He can anticipate what comes next.]
It's all personal. Not expected to be read.
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[ He disagrees. But there's no sense arguing about it now. He won't win - this comes too close to a family thing for that - and the attempt will only break Alucard's focus and make the task take longer. Instead he just watches him sort through the papers. It's relaxing, at least from the outside, watching him almost glowing in the torch light and listening to the sound of papers against each other. ]
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A smile that is not flicks across Alucard's face.]
Too many things between our families come from the word witchcraft.
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This, those three, it started with that word.
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[ He knew a little of this. Not a lot. Leon's journals glance over how they came across Mathias (probably out of respect, in hindsight), mentioning only that Sara had taken a keen interest in the work of this doctor and that there had been some peril but that his work had been brought back to the estate mostly intact and he himself only slightly less so. ]
Leon didn't mention any witchcraft. Not specifically.
no subject
[Alucard is not Trevor. He is not going to memorize the passages here, and there's a lot of reasons for it. The biggest, the most important, is because his father never shared any of this. He did not want his son to know. (He probably never told Alucard's mother either.)]
There was an outbreak of the plague.
[He flips through a few pages, and taps in the lower right corner with where it all begins.]
And he knew the source, or at least had a very good guess. Rats. Dog, whose real name by the way is Aurelius, helped to find nests, while somehow never catching the plague himself. [The dog may just be magic.] Going in, having no illness, it was too suspicious. Worse that Mathias was a stranger to the place with no reputation as one of the cunning folk otherwise.
[He sighs, flipping another page and running his finger along a passage.]
And he would have escaped scrutiny had he responded to questions from town officials with anything but the claim that this was a part of natural history and knowledge. That he relied on no saints or church blessings to find where these rats were and to ensure his own safety.
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[ That's what he's choosing to get out of all of that. And no, it's probably not the most pretentious name he's ever heard given to a dog. Because the Belmont family had a lot of dogs and quite a few pretentious types. But it's close. And also it's DRACULA's dog and so it gets judged more harshly. ]
Leon mentioned the plague. I'll spare you the long version, but he said that Sara had taken a keen interest stopping its spread, but that no doctor was willing to speak to a woman about such things.
no subject
[They're as bad as each other, just in opposite directions.]
Mm, this one did only after she stepped in at the last second. This particular interest in burning was less directed by the church and much more a mob, but here we are again. Fire and witchcraft.
[Every single fucking time.]
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[ It's when you have multiple dogs, all called 'Dog', that it becomes an issue. ]
Well shit. That's- what it always is, isn't it?
[ How it began and how it ended, for both families. Born and lost and born again in fire and fear and tragedy. ]
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[YOUR FAMILY, BELMONT.]
But yes. Even if we all know the difference between magic users who use the art for good rather than ill. The only word that anyone cares about is witchcraft.
[There's a heavy sigh, and Alucard's eyes remain on the page.]
The rest becomes theories on removing vampirism from the blood. The stone's genesis, because the terror and grief was too much, and we both know rational thought was not his strong suit in those moments.
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[ He drops it, though, and just follows Alucard's gaze to the page. There's not much of it that he understands, but he nods. And he listens. ]
And we know what happened from there. Shit.
[ A long pause, and then he extends his hand. ]
Show me your hand.
[ He doesn't have anything particularly comforting he can say, because actually fuck the fact that this is a recurring theme in their lives. The least he could do is check on the silver burns from earlier. ]
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That shall all spill forth at the estate we must invade, I am sure. But...[Alucard pauses as he reads. He holds out the hand that was burnt by the silver absently, because there's something else on the page that has his attention.]
The burns are gone.
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[ He takes the hand and examines it, running a thumb over the fleshy parts of the palm where the burns were earlier. They are, indeed, gone.
He's half debating whether it would be appropriate to lay his lips to Alucard's wrist (aka Wallachia Man's favourite part of local vampire to kiss), but settles on no when it becomes clear that his attention is on work. ]
Something else? I was joking/i> about the dog thing.
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[Alucard's hand tries to hold onto Trevor. Even as he's reading. Even as his mind is racing because he's caught something his father didn't when the stone was first developed. Magic is about intent. He didn't know that, he didn't account for that at the outset.
And what else might be wrong?
He puts the thought aside for a moment. There's nothing more he wants to do than to run into this thought not only for fear of forgetting, but because it allow him to avoid sleep for the night. Instead, Alucard turns around so that he's facing Trevor. Knees against knees. And he puts his hands on both of Trevor's cheeks and kisses him on the lips for a very, very long moment.
(It is a terribly inappropriate time, but at this point, every time shall be terribly inappropriate.)
And when he breaks that kiss, it's to say only one thing:]
You are never allowed to claim that I am too overprotective of you both.
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[ He's breathless when Alucard breaks the kiss, mostly from surprise, but he's never let a silly thing like needing air keep him from making an unnecessarily combative remark. He does need a few moments to get his composure back after that, though. Congratulations, vampire, you have successfully slightly-flustered the Belmont. ]
-Should I ask what brought this on?
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[Alucard's hands do not move. He sighs, resting his forehead against Trevor's, nothing else visible beyond Alucard's face and the fire's glow illuminating strands of hair.]
Thank you.
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-well, he's going to have to be a contrary asshole just to deal with it. And so he presses his lips to one of Alucard's wrists, whispering softly- ]
You're too fucking overprotective of us both.
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If Trevor's going to be contrary, then Alucard's going to just say the only thing he can.]
So are you.
[It just shows in such different ways. With Alucard it's constant. Like affection. They're hand in hand. With Trevor it's more situational. Both are good. Both are needed.]
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[ Okay so this isn't actually as comfortable as he thought it would be but he doesn't care. It's still nice. ]
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