cryptsleeper | 20s AU Post

20s AU Post

Current Carmilla plot outline
--Post-fire, Carmilla and Mr. Peanut team up mostly to use each other. Carmilla's spent the past several months (since November, it is now February 1925) networking, and it's clear to her that Alucard's not suited for the position and that the other two are the obvious weakness. Mr Peanut needs something back, so this is perfect on her end. Mr Peanut can only imagine the joys of vampire blood in his work, and he'd like an army of vampires for his own ends.
--Shit stirring from Mr Peanut (all of March?)
--Mr Peanut also begins to sell mis Miracle Serum, which has vampire blood in it.
--Gang is very much trying to murder Mr Peanut during this.
--Start of April, vampire gets a call from one of the blood bank contacts that 3 patients have come in and are displaying some bizarre signs. Investigation yields the fact that they're in process of turning, and they've all taken the same serum.
--Additional investigation reveals O FUCK IT MR PEANUT
--Meanwhile Carmilla's been made aware of a familiar she didn't sire, so she knows something's up. Big fight with Mr. Peanut and thus Mr. Peanut is left depowered
--Gang commits a murder
--Carmilla's well sured up on her contacts now, and it's time for open rebellion (mid-April)
--In a more subtle attempt to let Alucard just step aside, she cuts the breaks on demon car and shows up to gloat/suggest he not pull a dad and go to deal with his grief quietly while she runs the city. The how he wants to do it is up to him (black widow joke goes here.) Treffy and Sypha walk in.
--1 week of straight up rebellion; feedings, no help from allies, need to do damage control instead of fight carmilla, every dracula rule is
--MEANWHILE IN GRAVITY FALLS, triangle shows Vlad what's up to try and psyche him out, somehow this finalyl snaps Vlad out of his depression and he heads home
--Just in time for Alucard and Carmilla to be tearing each other to bits in one of the bayous, it's not going well
--Vlad coming in means the king of vampires is accosted by a belmont with a pair of blessed knitting needles and a speaker with a fucking gun and he's just like what the shit happened to the world while i was gone
--Wards around the fight means that only demon car can break the wards, everyone has to pile in.
--Carmilla gets her ass kicked AND SENT TO THE JUSTICE DIMENSION

THEN THERE WERE FAERIES.
--Prior to all of this the vampire and Sypha have done a shit ton of research on how to get their Belmont back
--Sypha has also been practicing debating with dad, which leaves everyone Very Tired.
--When Trevor is actually snatched up (1 year after marriage, it takes fae effort. Taking Arn's shape fails, so it's a lot more kidnapping by force), Sypha and Alucard go into Faerie
--But they're playing this as politics, not as heroes rescuing their damsel, so that means the faeries are just "wait what now excuse u?"
--There are 3 gates and 3 trials (the particulars we're still bullshitting.) Each is asked to sacrifice 3 things. (Alucard: voice, his titles as bestowed upon by his father and his people, i forget the third; Sypha: her human form (she's a birb), fuck what were the other two)
--They enter the court at the end of the third trial. After LITERALLY ALL THE TITLES Sypha declares she Speaks for Trevor Belmont
--Claim debate over Trevor, turns out that the rules are in Sypha's favor.
--But that means debating to leave Fae without giving up what they've chosen.
--Sypha lawyers it all out, Alucard is a safety deposit and hangs out with Fae!Trevor
--In the end, safe passage out of Faerie consists of Sypha giving up her memory of the necromancer (billed as a great mage she studied under), the vampire gives up his immortality, and Trevor is replaced with Carmilla (dad was aware of this option and OK with it), but Trevor has his ability to swear taken. He now soundslike a rubber ducky when he tries
--Everyone gets home okay, except for the AU of this AU where the gang fails, but Trevor's on their doorstep like a bat out of Hell because time doesn't work right and he's been in Hell for a WHILE.

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[In the time between seeing Trevor wheeled off to have that horrible vein dealt with and the present, Alucard has been busy. Of course the most important phone call was the one made to Sypha (it’s dicier than I’d like, if you can bring us both clean clothes…), then the next several were to the appropriate parties. Agatha to tell her of a new interested hunter who probably needs help burning some bodies. The newspapers to start to exert influence over reporting, which took about two hours to hammer out. One of the younger vampires who he was supposed to have a meeting with (and was very understanding.)

Then it was the hospital. Speaking to the right on-shift nurses who were aware of certain arrangements and understood what could and couldn’t be reported from this incident. (Plus visiting hours were for other people.) Sypha had gotten there by the time Alucard was into the phonecalls with the newspapers, but he barely had time to say hello never mind sit with her. Or Trevor for that matter.

So when he walks in, there’s nothing but relief on his face. It stays there as Alucard sits himself on the side of the bed, Sypha scurrying to the other.]

It’s only 4 in the morning. You usually sleep for another hour or so.

[It's only a few weeks after the circus incident that the forgemaster shows his face again. Trevor's vein is healed as are all the other marks from the necro-tiger, but the scars are nasty. Nastier than they should be, for want of the magic involved.

Alucard had expected something, anything during the Mardi Gras season. From Carmilla. From their new doctor friend. From anyone looking to make trouble, because if there was an idea point to do it when the world would not notice or care, it would be in the colorful riot of festivities and excess. But there had been nothing.

February is at an end now, all dreadful anniversaries now past, and then it happens. His office phone rings, and it is an undertaker. (The one who looked after his mother.) His corpses are disappearing from their slabs, and their family members are showing up a day later. No logical leads have come in from the police force, and so to guess that it may be other forces is...logical.

There is no pairing of in twos while a third stays home. Not after last time, and not for something that suggests the dead are rising and killing their own families. There is only all three of them dragging themselves and their equipment into the demon car, driving to the undertaker's, and having to crouch low in the morgue in order to see who is responsible and to end it once and for all.

(They all know who is responsible. He got away last time. Not happening again.)

They have been crouching for hours. Trevor hates this because the indoors is not a place for a whip. Alucard hates it because he remembers every moment spent in this room with his mother's charred remains, struggling to find something, anything he could hang onto. (Hair was not an option. It was wrong to take skin or bones. He gave up, in the end, and the only surviving thing was her wedding ring. His father has it, wherever he is.) Sypha hates it because anyone posing as a doctor and using necromancy is a straight up problem.

A noise sounds. It's a lock clicking open.]

I don't mind sharing your grief.

[She sighs, eyes falling closed as his fingers thread through her hair, brushing against the nape of her neck where it's sensitive and intimate, and she's left all but purring from the way he touches her.

It's the truth; she doesn't mind it. She doesn't mind being here, being with him, loving him, having this for longer than they'd thought they could. It leaves the future uncertain — something vast and untamed, like the ocean — and yet facing it with him feels right, like something she was meant for all along.]

I don't mind sharing your everything.

[And there will be time, she thinks, for this conversation over and over again in a thousand different facets and iterations, but for now they're both clinging to those same breathless words, there's time, and right now what matters is making the most of the heat of his lips, the caress of her breath, the way the two of them so seamlessly fit together.]

[The worst part about the crouching in Sypha's opinion is the way there isn't enough room for all of them to see at once, and still stay hidden. It also doesn't help that she's the shortest as well as their best ranged fighter, which means she naturally gets relegated to the back so that Trevor and Alucard have room to maneuver in the front without having to worry about hitting her when they deploy, which thanks to the shortness means that she also can't see anything. Well, at least not without climbing halfway onto Trevor to do it, which he only accepts with a modicum of grumbling and the caveat that she's going to have to move the instant something seems to start happening.

The tumblers rattle in the door's lock, and something is now decidedly happening.

Though her vantage point is absolutely terrible, there's shuffling that can be heard. The sweep of a long coat, the squeak of shoes on the pristine bleached floor. There's a girl in the morgue tonight — a tragic young woman who wanted to be with the man she loved and wound up heartbroken by awful news, and now she's here because she'd chased her man straight into death.

It's not a story that sits well with Sypha, for a lot of reasons. Some more glaring than others.

But there are footsteps, now. Pacing. Examining. He talks to himself while he works, this forgemaster, and right now he's talking out his aims — you'll do nicely, he murmurs to himself, and silly girl, among others.

She's holding her breath, and barely even realizes it. In the shadows, she glances to Alucard, who she knows will see her even despite the darkness.]

[There is an order of operations to this. The door must be sealed first, that's a Sypha job. Ice is good for that, easy to do at a range. Trevor needs clearance, so Alucard must knock the forgemaster away from the corpse so that there is no time for his work to begin. Then the man must be dealt with as the situation calls for. An alive man is fine, but if he perishes, then so be it. Intelligence is important, but safety is paramount right now.

Alucard's hand grips his sword tightly, even if he doesn't really need to. The telepathic link takes care of such work. He's tense, worried about Trevor's wrist, worried about what kind of bonus tricks a man like this could have up his sleeve. Intelligence was hard to gather - he spent much of his time hocking fake potions in the tourist districts that didn't work. A necromancer making a living.

He can see Sypha move. Her breath is too shallow, he doesn't like that. But more than that, now is the time to start moving. He nods at her, then to the door.

No words, but they don't need them in situations like this.

Now.]

[They move like a well-oiled machine, the three of them, and in the end the only pitfall to it is that there's three of them, and one of the necromancer.

Enclosed spaces really aren't good for multi-man melees. It means having to be all the more precise in everything they do, with no room for error as they fan out and deploy, and they are very, very good — but there's still three of them, and one of him.

They emerge; she sweeps to the left, seeking out an angle that will let her blanket the door in a sheet of ice. Trevor scrambles to the right with Vampire Inconveniencer in hand, focused on gaining ground position that will assist them in the middle game of this skirmish. And that leaves Alucard to go up the middle and over the top, wide open to lock onto the necromancer, who has come to the morgue in a top hat and monocle —

And who doesn't look surprised in the least to see them.]

[Alucard knows this plan. They don't like fighting in basements (primarily because you're fighting in a basement was Trevor's strategic explanation, which translated into issues of range), and there's too much equipment here. Alucard's already vaulted himself over a metal tray meant to hold tools for autopsies, and he's really trying not to think about that.

Easier to focus on how he needs to attack at an angle, so that when the necromancer falls back, it's 45 degrees left where there's a wide space that Trevor can take full advantage of.

Said necromancer moves before Alucard can reach him, before Alucard's sword can find purchase in necromancer's body. Instead there's a warm laugh, the kind of thing that would sound friendly if it wasn't so terrifying.]

Well met, gentlemen! And you've brought a friend with you! I wasn't aware that there were Speakers within the city. I heard that the last caravan here was heading west.

[Then there's something else. A gesture from the necromancer's hand, and shadows rising up and behind Alucard. They don't grab his limbs, they grab his torso, and when they meet his skin, there's a terrible crushing weight in them that makes him gasp for breath.]

What can I say? Apparently that whole shit was a very energising experience.

[ God, his voice sounds small and pathetic. He’s managed to figure out where he must be in the time since Sypha left to collect their vampire, and he doesn’t entirely like it. It’s been a bad few weeks for getting the shit kicked out of him, really. At least the tiger wasn’t made of cold iron.

Sypha is working on orders from the nurses, propping Trevor up on a few pillows and handing him a covered cup of water to sip at. He takes it in his left hand, not quite able to move his right as he would like. There are peices of fruit, after that. A lot of fluid and sugar, to start to replace everything that’s been lost. ]

I really, really need to stop fucking up my right hand. I need that hand.

You need a shield.

[It's an idle thought, said mostly to keep Trevor awake and talking. This is bad. This is bad because they're at a disadvantage like this. Trevor's skill with that whip, they need it. Alucard can't even touch it, and Sypha's own skills lie with magic, not with weapons.

There are a dozen things Alucard wants to do in this moment. They start with apologizing for causing this even if it wasn't anyone's fault except for how the battle went, they end with taking Trevor in his arms and holding onto him fiercely. None of them are options, because the first starts an argument and the last is impossible, what with the IV still getting blood into Trevor's system.

So Alucard settles for the comfort of the practical.]

They said you won't be released until tomorrow, to ensure that what's holding the vein together doesn't collapse. It's safer that you be here should that happen, rather than home.

[Home, after all, would be too far away. He'd be dead before even getting to the hospital.]

Everything else is seen to. Florence loves the new kid.

[ Trevor looks up in genuine horror at that. ]

But I’m the new kid!

[ Yes he’s being jealous of a teenage girl. This seems to be bothering him more than the almost bleeding to death. He’s finally lost his novelty! He’s going to be replaced! By someone who can do much cooler flips! ]

A shield or less tigers. Less tigers also sounds like a wonderful option.

[Of all the reactions in the world, that is one Alucard would have never expected. There is a short, sharp bark of laughter from Alucard, and he covers his mouth to try and stifle it.]

Trevor!

[Sorry it's...a lot. But he takes a sobering breath, and Alucard is better for it.]

We'll also try for less tigers, although I'm afraid that it isn't something I get the final word on.

They’re going to like her better! She has a gun! And does tricks!

[ aka the two documented favourite things of little old ladies. But there’s laughter, even if it’s at his own expense. And that is nice, at least.

He feels around for Alucard’s hand with his mostly-functional left one, though even that is weak from blood loss and just flops around the bed uselessly until it lands on somthing hand-ish. ]

We won. We still won. I’ll be more careful next time.

Your priorities are terrible, do you know that?

[He's still laughing, face in one of his hands. It feels good to laugh, it helps the tension of the day break. Sypha's laughing too, which is far better than having to look up from the phone yet again to see her face worried and unhappy that Alucard's still bound to all of the clean up of the situation.

Alucard's hand moves so that they're resting on the shitty hospital bed and shitty, starchy sheets. Better to keep things confined at the moment.]

We'll have less tigers next time. And know we're working against a forgemaster, which should help considerably.

[It won't, but Alucard can't know that yet.]

Did your family have much on the concept?

My priorities are fine! I want to keep my grandmothers!

[ He’s pouting now. How can you all not tell that this is a big deal? He’s always been a youngest child, he doesn’t know how to deal with having a little sister! ]

On forgemastery? It’s a rare skill, we could never find a practitioner willing to answer questions. Most of our information came from encounters, but one tends not to encounter a forgemaster so much as one encounters his work. It’s a form of magic that allows one to control the flesh of night creatures, to make them into shapes more appropriate for one’s needs. But it can also be used to corrupt the flesh of the dead, to turn them into night creatures.

[ He shrugs with his one good shoulder. ]

I wish I could tell you more, but- forgemasters are secretive. Even we had trouble rooting one out to get answers.

[This is new and honestly it's amazing. Alucard stuffs the last of his laughter though, vowing to return to this point. Being an only child, this entire pouting about sibling things is a novelty to him. And he is sooooo telling Trevor's grandmothers.

What the Belmont's had amounts to so very little. Alucard's lips set in a thin frown, and his free hand drums unhappily atop his own knee.]

So to divine the motives of one is more likely to be wild guessing instead of anything we can go forward with with any kind of confidence.

[ YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND he has always, always been the baby. The baby of his family. The baby of the soldiers. The baby of his grandmothers! The three of them are the only group he’s been in where he hasn’t been the little cute one. NOBODY WILL LOVE HIM IF HE IS NOT LITTLE AND CUTE! ]

To divine the motives of any one of them who’d show themselves so brazenly? Near impossible. Any that we’ve encountered were working to keep people away from them. It’s- not a skill that lends to being beloved by many.

[CONSIDERING VAMPIRE THINKS LITTLE AND CUTE ARE WHATEVER THE OPPOSITE WORDS ARE GOOD FOR DESCRIBING HIS STUPID BOYFRIEND WITH GIANT TIDDIES this is never not going to be funny.]

Well obviously, anything coming back from the dead is going to put people off. But our situation is something that means we have to figure out motive, if he's allied with anyone who'd see greater harm, or if he's simply mad.

He made an undead tiger. I think that ‘mad’ goes without saying.

[ He sighs. ]

Let me come back to this when I have a sensible amount of blood in me? Not to ruin the great display of bravado I’m undoubtedly maintaining, but it’s like thinking through fucking knee-deep mud right now. I think brains might need blood to work right.

Of course.

[It's bad form, this, jumping into work rather than worrying about Trevor's well being. Some of it is confidence, the fact Alucard knows that the Belmont will make a full and perfect recovery. The rest is quiet fear and knowing he can't hop into the bed beside Trevor and smother him with affection.

He'd really, really like to do that one.

The next best thing is to lean over and kiss Trevor for just a moment. Not because he's worried (he's worried) but because what else can he do right now?]

[ Oh, normally he’d be more than happy to jump into work in a situation like this. He appreciates that it’s an option. But this isn’t something he’s ever been trained for, and he can’t think right now, and the last thing he wants to do is to give them bad information.

He settles into the pillows he’s propped up on at the kiss, smiling. This is an ongoing fucking theme in their lives these days, isn’t it? The two of them not being able to offer as much comfort as he wishes that they could because he did something stupid, like covering himself in annointing oil, or getting hurt badly enough to need all these fucking tubes in him. ]

So- tomorrow. [ And he smiles, and he’s a little too tired for it to be as awful a smile as he’d like it to be. ] When we’re home. Tell me what we do tomorrow.

[When they get home (and he and Sypha will have to go home at some point, if only to shower and to change and to make sure that they have what they need for the next few days), there will be a moment of guilt from the vampire because as far as he's concerned, this is on him. He miscalculated in an attempt to deal with the forgemaster, and he's rendered Trevor like this. His fault. Forcing Trevor to take more damage than he should.

Alucard pulls back from the kiss, and his own face is just worn thin. He'll nap for a few hours later.]

We follow any and all doctor's orders first. I'll cook a backlog of meals today that way we can microwave whatever whenever we're hungry. Then we sit and figure out where the forgemaster is operating out of so we can track his movements.

[ God, he looks tired. They both do, and Trevor is certain that if he could see himself he’d look just as shit. But none of them are TOO tired for just a little ribbing. ]

...not that I mind getting back to work. But I give you an invitation to say romantic shit, and that’s the best you can manage? I should have asked Sypha.

...Fuck.

[That's how tired he is. He missed the obvious opportunity, and Alucard just rests his forehead on the terrible hospital mattress so that Trevor can't actually give him more shit.

(Trevor's going to give him more shit, he deserves it.)]

So tell me more about sexy microwave meals and necromancer-hunting. I’m practically seduced.

[ This misunderstanding is his new favourite thing. ]

How long are you going to hold this over my head, exactly?

[He. Fucked. Up.]

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Page 47 of 141

20s AU Post

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