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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[ He should apologise. He’ll be sending Alucard in alone. Alucard, who isn’t trained for this the way he is. Hardened by only a single year of tragedy and not by a lifetime of training and preparation for this. Coddled by himself and the speaker. Alucard, soft and suffering and already broken into something more monster than human now.

He doesn’t care. ]

I’ll support from the outside as best I can. Can I trust that you generally make a point of not touching the blade of your sword?

Yes, it is.

[Weight settles over her lap, and now she's got something concrete to focus on, the tray of all these good things that she absolutely doesn't want to let spill over onto the mattress and her bedmates, so she can't move around too much, or carelessly. She's not moving around much or carelessly anyway, as it is, but it's nice to have the reminder.

Especially when Trevor settles back in next to her, warm and solid, and it's so tempting to just melt against him.]

I am not...thinking very carefully about the things I say, lately. From the headache. So now you are a little more safe, in case I make a mistake. But this command, I want you to follow, yes.

This- [ And he tests the words in his mouth, because it is so tempting not to say them. Which is why he needs the order. Because he wants to only say comforting things. Soft things. But he’s a bad liar and she’s too clever by half even in her current state.

(That was the first thing he really said to her, wasn’t it? An accusation of coddling. And here he is.)

-this will happen again. This will always happen again. I could tell you that we won’t let it. I could mean it. But it wouldn’t be true.

Belmont, all of the magic....

[He knows he can't counter all the magic of a mage's workshop. There's not defeat in his voice, not exactly, but the concern is impossible to ignore. He isn't scared, not yet, but he wavers.]

But yes, you can assume that freely.

[There is a point where all of Sypha's tears become impossible to kiss away. There are too many, and she shudders and the real pain is let out.

His arms are still around her as the first sob shudders. His face is buried into the top of her head, kisses pressed into wherever he can reach. Alucard remembers when things were reversed, when he sobbed himself hoarse from grief and she moved her hands over him, warming and soft and reassuring, powered by her intent not to simply keep him warm, but keep him tethered.

He does not think of payback or fair exchange, but he thinks of those moments all the same, his hands cooler, his embrace pressing her as close to him as possible. She will likely sleep after this, all spent from exertion, and then he'll hold her fast for a few hours more. Trevor will join them because that's how these moments always go.

Alucard rubs her back at some point, traces gentle and calming circles, doesn't dare do anything else.]

[She doesn't mean to tense up, but she does. It's as though a stray thread in her left loose somewhere is suddenly grasped and pulled, and everything in her stitching abruptly goes too-tight because of it. She was relaxed a minute ago, and sleepy, and even content. But then he speaks, and she processes what he says, and even though she knows he's right about its veracity, she can't stop the way she reacts.

This will always happen again, he says. And maybe it's just that it's still so soon, that the marks on her arms are still there and she still sometimes reels from the realization that it's mattress beneath her rather than floorboards, but it leaves her afraid despite her best efforts, as though again is synonymous with now and she's about to be thrown back into that pit, even though she knows rationally that it burned behind them.

She doesn't realize that her breathing has gone ragged, or that she's pulled in on herself like a wounded animal despite their sleeping Alucard's best efforts to stay holding her.]

You are very bad at making me feel better.

[It's supposed to be a joke, maybe. Possibly. Except it's raw and it's sad and what little humor she can manage to scrape together isn't really enough to carry it.]

I- I know. I know.

[ He shouldn’t have done this. He really shouldn’t have done this. It hurts her, hearing it. He knew it would. But- what he’s going to ask of her is going to hurt her no matter how careful he is about it, and he needs to do it now. He needs to do it while this is still fresh, because otherwise he’ll never be able to make himself say this shit. And she would never order him to just spit it out if she knew what it was. ]

I need to ask something of you, before it does. And you’re going to fucking hate it. Just- promise you’ll hear me out, and then I’ll kick myself out of the bed.

No — don't leave me.

[Wait. Wait, no, that's — no, look at that, she's made a mistake already, just like she thought she would, and she knows it.]

That's not — I didn't mean it as a command. Don't treat it as one. Just please don't leave me, please don't — I don't care what it is. But don't go.

Don't let go of me.

[It's such a horrible thing to say to him, she realizes belatedly. It's such an awful thing, when so much of his guilt is wrapped up in precisely that, in trying to hold on to her and failing and hurting her on top of it. Now he'll be thinking of it, now he'll be reliving it, maybe, and yet she couldn't stop if she tried, couldn't make herself keep from curling her fingers into his shirt and pressing up flush against him if she tried.

She's not alone. Every understanding of safety and family and purpose that she has comes linked to the state of being connected with others; every fear has its roots in isolation. Alucard is with her, holding her, and she needs that more than anything. He loves her, and she needs the sort of love that only he can offer, the possessive snarling love that keeps her so close that she couldn't possibly dream of believing that she's alone.]

Say my name. Say something, anything. Be real. Be here, so I can't forget.

[ His stomach feels heavy. He fucked up. ]

I won’t. I promise I won’t. Not until you ask it of me.

[ And she will. He knows. He’s asked this of so many speakers before her, lost so many friends to this fucking request even before he lost those same friends to shells and machine gun fire and executions. ]

I want to give you my Saint-Etienne. [ That probably means nothing to her. It may as well be a fancy french euphamism for something rude. It takes him a moment to gather the courage to clarify, and in the end it’s only the order to be truthful that allows him to. ] It’s a pistol, my old sidearm. I’ll show you how to fire it.

[It doesn't really sink in at first, what he means. Not just because she doesn't recognize the name of the weapon he refers to, but because even after he clarifies, she doesn't immediately understand what he could possibly want to give her a pistol for. No, it's not until he's talking about showing her how to fire it that it really starts to dawn on her — this isn't about giving her a thing, something precious, to cherish and keep in one of the little drawers in the bedroom she never sleeps in but that's indisputably hers anyway. This is about giving her a weapon, something she's supposed to keep with her, something she's supposed to use.

He wants her to learn to use his weapon because he knows this will happen to her again. Because he thinks if she has it, then maybe — maybe it won't.

And now she understands why he already believed she would hate him for it. Of course he would, because he's known Speakers, known the ones who were in Europe running through the mud and the gore trying to bring peace in a world gone mad, and so he must know what something like this would demand of them. A Speaker with a gun and the intent to put it to use is no Speaker at all.

It does make her recoil, deep down. It rattles something deep-seated and fundamental, inside of her. But —

But she remembers, all too clearly, Alucard carrying her out of the basement, of the chaos and magic all around her, and the sound of her own voice crying Trevor, help me and he'd found a way, he'd done it, he'd given her something of himself when she'd needed it most.

(She's just not sure which thought frightens her more. The thought of being thrown back into the basement, or the thought of her grandfather's eyes as they fell on the gunpowder residue on her hands.)

It takes her a minute. But then, slowly, she angles herself as best she can to look at him, and it's very deliberate, the words she pronounces.]

Tell me why.

[Because —

Because Trevor is the one who sees what has to be done. Trevor is the one who pushes Alucard to be the regent he has to be. And even when she hates that, she recognizes that Alucard needs it. She trusts their Belmont to see, to know, and he takes on the burden of calling for the hard choices every time, when she doesn't want to, when she wants to believe in peace.

This time it's not Alucard he's pushing, but that doesn't mean she trusts him any less.]

[ It’s better than he was expecting. Worlds better. She can’t exactly walk off to her death in silent disgust, not in her current state.

(“I have never known a Trevor Belmont.” The speaker says to him, pushing the pistol back into his hands. A speaker cannot do or say anything harsher than to surgically cut someone out of thier own story. In the tale of his friend in the write robe, he never played a part. They do not speak again. He is dead a week later, and the mud frozen too hard to bury the body. It rots, just rotten meat wrapped in white linen, and it never knew Trevor Belmont.)

He breathes in and then out. It’s slow. He’s not conciously playing for time, but he is absolutely playing for time. ]

Is that an order?

[Her hand comes up, slowly; it shakes as she tries to raise it, still weak from disuse and injury, and her palm is open. For a second it might almost look as though she means to slap him, except that then her fingers slowly come to rest against his rough, stubbly cheek, moving his face onto an angle that's favorable enough for her to reach for him and kiss him.

She doesn't know why, really, that she needs to kiss him like that, right then. It's not born of passion or even affection. But later, perhaps, it'll occur to her that it's not so dissimilar a thing to when Alucard had claimed him with a similar kiss at the turn of the new year — instinctively possessive, equally uncompromising.]

Yes.

[It needs to be. He won't want to tell her otherwise, and so she takes the choice altogether out of his hands, and puts it onto herself.]

[Don't let go of me she says and he doesn't. Sypha is flush against him, close as they can be without venturing into more physical embraces. Don't let go of me she says and his arms are as tight as he feels is safe. Don't let go of me and Alucard finds it the easiest thing in the world to set aside the guilt he has for putting those terrible clawmarks on her arms because Sypha has asked this of him and he cannot deny her anything. Not that it wasn't true before, but now, now it has a new and greater urgency.

But she asks for words, and for a few moments, the only thing he can say is her name. Sighed with every breath, the intonation still so scared, still so relieved at her presence, still so caught up it is as if he is reliving the moment of finding her again and again and again and again and.

It is unfair to force that thoughts upon her. So Alucard tries so hard to say something. Anything.]

I'm not one of your people, I could never say the right words. Compose an aretalogy of all your deeds and have it read correctly, with epitaphs that suit you and only you. Call you the right things that become story, become legend, because that's how this ends for you after a very, very long life. [Nothing ends here.] I can say you're the only fire I'll hold so tightly and maybe that's all I can manage in a poetic enough way. Everything else falls away and forces me silent because you are beyond every word I could hope to even think of afixing to you.

[He breathes out, repeating her name again.]

I told you before, didn’t I? You have to choose. Happy, safe, here.

[ The kiss is- he’ll process it once this is done. He’s not really been much for emotions even after Sypha’s return.

(He doesn’t remember much of the time immediately following the rescue. The whole thing feels like a fever dream, of wanting too much and of being in too many people’s heads at once. He woke up in a room of dead flowers that smelled of rotten meat, with Sypha’s name written on the ground in her blood. And he emerged, washed the worst of the stink and the magic off himself, and found the two of them in their own bed. He distinctly remembers his reaction being a tired, numb ‘welcome home’ and then falling into the bed, and he hasn’t been any better for being outwardly emotional about this whole thing until now.)

-It makes it easier. Puts him in a place where he doesn’t have to think about what he’s doing, only trust that Sypha is asking him to do what is right. ]

You told me that you could never comprimise on ‘here’. So I’m asking you to choose ‘safe’ over ‘happy’. And- I know you. Any time you would use it would be a time that you needed to use it. Any time that you would use it would be a time where you not having it would mean that this happens again, or that someone dies.

[ He presses his lips together. He knows how much he’s asking her to give up. Alucard asked her to give up her world, once. He’s asking for something more. He’s asking for her identity. ]

Please. I’ll give you anything.

I’m going to do Belmont Shit to the blade of your sword. As long as you don’t touch the blade itself, the demon hide gloves should be enough to keep it from harming you. That should- help, at least.

Everything else-

[ He breathes in and out through his teeth. ]

I’ll find a way. Your father must have had a way.

I intended to have it hovering the entire time. It will help with the issue of range, since if there is to be a return of the house's owner, we will need to keep space between us maximized.

[He cannot be a snarling monster, as much as he wishes to. As much as there would be satisfaction in sinking claws into heart and just pulling it out.

(Alucard knows he is capable of that action now.)

(Alucard knows this is the only time he'd ever do it so happily.)

A way, Trevor says, and Alucard closes his eyes to try and think.]

What kind of magic would it fall under? His library is organized by topic.

[It doesn't matter if the words aren't right. (They are, but it wouldn't matter even if they weren't.) It's enough to hear him breath her name like a sigh, Sypha Sypha Sypha, not a thing and not an it but a girl with a name and a home and a heart big enough to hold two families in it.

But he gets them right, not because they're carefully crafted the way that a Speaker would but because they aren't. They're clumsy and trip over themselves like he always does, like the look in his eyes when she'd tricked him into holding her hand.

(Because what she'd really needed is to know that it's him, and he's here. Perfect words couldn't do that. Alucard's words could.)

Her head is tucked pleasantly under his chin, her lips near his collarbone. It's easy and natural, somehow, to part them and mouth lightly against his skin.]

...An aretalogy.

[After all the crying, her humor is wrung-out and thin. But there's a spark of it there, like the last glowing ember in a coal that still stands a chance of rekindling itself into a blaze.]

...An epic was too basic.

[He isn't a poet, but he is well read thank you very much Sypha.

That isn't the point (but it is, if he's going to have to do this it is going to be as obscure and pretentious as he can be to make up for a lack of skill). The point is that she can give him shit. Tears will keep coming, he's accepted that, it'll be true for some time yet but she is giving him shit. Actively and with a laugh trying to claw it's way to the surface.

It is a wonder.]

[That's the part that breaks her, ultimately. Please. I'll give you anything. Because — because those aren't words of obedience; they're words of intent. I will give. It's an if-then statement, an offer and acceptance, a promise waiting to be forged. He'll give her anything, in exchange for this, by his own design, by his own will.

It makes her want to cry, if she had any tears left; she's not sure if she does, after all the crying she's done already. That last plea didn't fall under the umbrella of her order to explain himself. He added that in all on his own.]

I think I told you once that...that I felt as though I had ceased to be a Speaker, when my family went west and I came back here. I felt as though I had abandoned everything I knew. And you asked me if I thought there was no story to be had here. You thought I could still be one, even if...

[The thought dies on her lips. They tremble instead, and she makes herself look him in the eyes.]

You knew better, then. You knew when I didn't. So — if I do this, am I...can I be a Speaker, even still?

I don't question the form, only the implication.

[It's half-mumbled, preoccupied as she is with her slow open-mouthed kisses that are more about a need to touch him in some small and insignificant way than any attempt at escalating into passion.

The conclusion comes at length, but eventually it comes.]

You're calling me a goddess.

Channeling, perhaps. Or- I could study that puppet. It managed to cast spells remotely. We’re not low on options, only on time.

[ Only on time. Only. ]

Three days. Give me three days. If we don’t have a solution by then, we discuss desperate measures.

[Alucard cannot mind anything half mumbled when it is for the best reason. He holds his own mouth open, careful as he moves because this always requires careful attention so that fangs do not draw blood. Sypha's current state means that she is far less alert for these things than she ought to be, so he has double the responsibility.

(And it lets her be in charge. Set the pace. Make the world work on her terms. Alucard can't imagine anything she needs more in this moment.)]

Too high of a pedestal?

I can find the correct section.

[Alucard can't know what he's really looking for. Just where it ought to be, and then Trevor says time. He hisses at the word, furious at the concept rather than at Trevor for the reminder.]

And I will help. The research cannot be your work alone, not right now.

Speakers go where they are needed. Speakers help people, no matter the sacrifice it asks of them.

[ He meets her eyes. He doesn’t move to hold on to her. Not yet. Not until this is done. ]

Dying is easy and useless, and every fucking speaker I met thought that that was what helping people demanded of them. I don’t think it ever fucking was. Dead people help nobody. Living people do, when they live to help those who need it the next day and the day after. Death isn’t the sacrifice that helping people asks of you. It’s doing what you need to live, so that you can help as many people as need it.

[ ...if he were a more introspective person, he might realise how much of this is him speaking to himself. ]

If this were the sacrifice that was asked of you, to do all the good that you could, would you do it?

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Page 53 of 141

20s AU Post

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