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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I did.

[ He sighs, and he hides his face in Sypha’s hair. She wears it the same way. They all fucking wear it the same way. ]

They didn’t fucking care for the idea. And then they died. And they were the last of their caravan, so nobody came to claim the body.

...You know that, too.

[He knows the significance, knows what it means to have no one left to take a Speaker's remains. It means they died alone, with no one, and faded from history because there was no one there to remember the important things. No one to take the Speaker's name, their last story, their dying words. No one to remember where they were laid to rest at last. No one. No one.

Alone.

It's the worst feeling in the word, sometimes, to be alone. To die alone is even worse.

(She remembers the bloody blue scrap of fabric in the necromancer's basement. The way the sigil was built right into the floor to steal away her magic. The way he would change his vocal cadence when he talked to her, singsong syllables and thoughts in threes. Speaker tricks, to make things easier to remember. To make the things he said impossible to forget.)

She doesn't realize she's shaking until after she's already been at it a while, and when she tries to stop, it doesn't work very well.]

Not even you? You didn't...claim it.

[There's a tense retort that stays on Alucard's tongue. Happily he doesn't snap back, because there's still a part of him that recongizes this tension is because of how they react to the same situation. Trevor's too workman, too Belmont, too trained for this. Alucard's nothing but a spoiled fucking princeling who runs far too hot.

He takes the jar, not looking at it. Refusing to register it. The ash is easier.]

It should assist in examining distance as well then.

[There. There, he'll latch onto that, and he'll leave the room. It's his legs moving him to the room used for tracking, and there's two thuds on the table in that room once Alucard enters. One jar on each side. Alucard's palms resting flat on the table, trying to work out the coil of tension that has replaced his spine.]

What is there to have to forgive?

[Guilt is going to eat at all of them in this aftermath. That much is clear already. Alucard knows it, he's already started, and to see Sypha following after him on that path is sobering.

Her hand can stay where it is. Alucard carefully scoots both of his arms under her (under knees, around her mid-back), then pulls her close. Closer. Closest and then up out of bed entirely, the sheets sloughing off like when snow slides off a tree branch.]

Couldn’t. He didn’t want me in his story. Last thing he ever told me.

[ The speaker has gained a gender, and that was a slip. A too-emotional one.

She’s trembling, and- fuck it. There’s more cake. He can make more tea. He can clean up the mess and tell Alucard to just fucking deal with the broken dishes. He kicks the tray off the bed so that he doesn’t have to worry about it, then (carefully, so carefully) pulls Sypha so she’s on top of him, so he can coil his body around hers like armour. ]

Bad time for that story, maybe. We’re here. We’re both here. You’re here with us.

[ He’s not been able to focus it down himself. The spell that was uesd on Alucard has been cast all over the city, and he can’t differentiate a place that it’s been used from the place that it originates. Checking each place induvidually isn’t an option - they’ll be spotted, the necromancer will know how he’s being tracked, and he’ll move Sypha somewhere else. But Alucard can. If Trevor is a font of magic, Alucard is a font of determination. All of the sheer intent that Trevor can’t muster himself.

Alucard’s hands take a brush and ink from the table in the room, finding an empty sheer of paper and drawing out that rough, ugly map of the city. No runes this time, not on Alucard’s version of the map. The spell itself is all on Trevor’s end. Alucard’s hands simply take the skin from one jar, emptying the ashes upon it. And then pour them from the skin onto the paper map. The ashes gather first at the morgue where they faced the construct, and then form the shapes of tiny hands attached to long, wispy arms moving across the city like snakes.

They meet, eventually, hands joining and coiling into each other until they just form a pile of ash. Alucard’s hands finish putting away the skin and take the brush again, circling the point that they marked. ]

Found her.

[There are a number of disconcerting things about this experience that Alucard will later list as his least favorite aspects of the spell. Touching his own skin that is in a jar does rank highly up there, but the act of drawing the map, of making the magic happen, that's worse.

He's watching from a back seat from somewhere inside of himself. Alucard is present, but there's another power that has elbowed it's way to the forefront. It has a Trevor like shape, all wide chested and smelling of natural musk mixed with alcohol and the faintest hint of something older, and it has a Trevor like manner. It marches in and gets itself down to work, using whatever it can to complete the task. The aura it exudes though, that isn't a natural Trevor thing. It's not calming, not exactly, but it isn't the thing from the circus tent either.

His eyes drink in the ugly map, the way the ashes comb through the city, and then he swears.]

Residential area, high traffic. Everything is built close together though, it's an older part of town so there are...[he hisses softly] more shadows cast in the area due to density.

[It probably comes as no surprise that she cries out softly when the dishes and tea go cascading to the floor and shatter, practically jumping out of her skin at the sound, and it's only Trevor's arms circling around her that keep her steady as he pulls her in close. There are moments, sometimes, when this is the only way she feels safe — when someone has her wrapped up and held, and she can still see, and there's something soft beneath her that isn't a curse etched into the floor.

She doesn't say anything for a little while, letting herself calm down as best she can. It doesn't work very well, but he's trying, and so she is too.]

...I can show you. How we. We have a ceremony, for when there is no body to save.

[They can do it together, she thinks. Trevor for his mud dove. Her for the ones who died in the necromancer's basement, afraid and alone, and no one ever found them.]

Someone has to sing. I did it once, for a Speaker from another tribe. We joined their train, to be there for it.

[ The faint ‘then we set the fucking place on fire, no more fucking shadows’ that Alucard hears is probably not a deliberate vocalisation, because Trevor is saying something completely different. ]

I can deal with shadows. Let me test-

[ Let him see what more he can do with Alucard’s intent. No weapons to hand, so he just uses the brush instead, Alucard’s hands picking it up and clasping around the handle of it. Immediately the ink that it was dipped in begins to glow, as if the brush were used for painting with starlight. ]

-not ideal, compared to no fucking shadows at all. Combined with Belmont shit on the sword, it might be enough.

[ Okay, so maybe the sudden clatter was a bad idea. But at least it was a controlled sudden clatter, rather than one of them knocking it off out of nowhere. ]

...what would you need to know of him? He wouldn’t want me involved, not for him. But there were others, and I can sing for them, if you need me to.

You make ashes for them. Wood to start with, but then anything you might have left of them, anything that was theirs. It is not a necessary part, the possession, but if you have it, then it is done. The song is an old one, about how mankind was scattered after the fall of the Tower of Babel — it's not difficult to teach.

[She'd learned it quickly, after all. It's a haunting melody, yet an oddly beautiful one. It sings of the stars and the moon, the trees and flowers, the lakes and rivers. Mankind, scattered across the world, and the yearning to come home again.]

There is a place in the song for the Speaker's name. You...you are singing it to them, you see. Calling them back to you, and guiding their memory to the ashes you have made for them. So that when they are scattered again, it is not from being lost. The ritual finds them, so that there are remains to be treated properly.

[He's actually in agreement about setting the place ablaze. It sounds like a great idea right now, and given the source of the opinion, that says a little too much about Alucard's state.

Testing magic though, that's much more important. The sensation of the spell adds to the sense of tension in Alucard. It doesn't resist Trevor's commands, but it is present and a weight that probably is not useful for magic.

Then the ink is glowing, and Alucard blinks.]

We can test it with the sword. Let me...the basement. Basement is safe enough for a test like that.

That I'm like this. Too scared to be left alone for even a second.

[And not even left alone. Too scared to lose contact with him for even a second, as though anything could snatch her away in the fraction of an instant between his letting go and his reclaiming her.

But perhaps it doesn't matter much, right now. Now she's scooped up into his arms, carried like a princess up and out of bed in the safety of Alucard's hold.]

I know it's burdensome.

Was my grief burdensome, in the beginning?

[Alucard has no problem walking into their bathroom. It's all terribly modern, shower stall and bathtub kept separate, the castle's heated floors having the option to be cooled in the worst summers. A concept stolen from the Romans, and one not turned on at the moment. It is February, cold as it really ever gets.

Sypha is placed on the edge of the bathtub (it fits two, in theory. They've managed three before with a lot of effort and a lot of water being dispelled.]

Do you need me to undress you, or would you rather do so on your own?

[Choice. Choice.]

You have never been burdensome. Not once.

[It's a fair question, though, with at least one easy loophole built right into it. She doesn't need it, perhaps, but...

But.]

...I want you to.

Arn. His name was Arn.

[ He brings up a hand to stroke Sypha's cheek softly, resting his chin on top of her head, enclosing her as best he can like some sort of Belmont-shaped stacking doll. ]

He didn't have many possessions. Too much of a fucking traditionalist for that. But- I have some things that might work.

[ There's a difficulty to it, doing this when Alucard is so ill at ease with it. Trevor is molding his intent, putting real power behind it. But the only reason this can work without vampiric blood is that Alucard is, at least theoretically, willing to allow this. The moment that his intention turns to getting Trevor out of his body, the spell will be broken. ]

I'll let you walk there yourself. Speak when you're ready. I'll hear you. And take the skin. Now we've found her, I can use the last of that spell to test that we can counter it.

Well then that is my response to you.

[It isn't as if Sypha has that much on in the first place. When they had returned home, it was easiest to rely on a nightgown rather than one of the scrappier pair of PJ bottoms. Less to fuss with. Easier to check if they have to.

So Alucard kneels and works the fabric up Sypha's legs first. His hands are careful, borderline reverent for what he's being allowed to do right now.]

You'll need to stand up in a moment.

We'll find wood, and some white cloth. And then whatever else feels right to add. It will be enough.

[That much, she can say with confidence. If only it were so easy to say that about all uncertain things, and not just this one.]

It's an old ceremony. It came over from Europe. He...would've certainly known it, especially if he was as traditional as you say.

[She doesn't take her eyes off of him, while he works. She can't, and it might just be the first time since the ordeal with the necromancer that every last thought of it leaves her, just for a second, because of how utterly preoccupied she is with the sight of him.

The skin is still purple-yellow with bruising around her ankle, where the manacle had sat for a week. She presses her hands against the edge of the tub, wishing it were easier to grip, and keeps her eyes on Alucard instead of on the sight of her own body.]

Tell me when.

Very well.

[Alucard walks, and he adjusts to the additional presence. It's like having another weight, one he adjusts to as he walks. His sword is in the room they've been in sleeping in, so he has to go there first. With it in hand, Alucard goes down, down into the basement.

When Alucard says ready, Trevor gets to see the state of the Tantrum Room in full. While the room itself is not large, it is covered in shattered furniture right now. Big chunks, tiny splinters, clawmarks etched into stone. It is not a pretty sight, and Alucard can't find himself caring that Trevor's seeing this.]

Do you need target practice as well?

Now, please.

[Alucard's careful to note where the bruises are at the their worst. He needs to get some ice to that, most likely, and check his mother's notes for what other comforts can be used.

With that, there's nothing left to do but to tug up the rest of the garment, fingers gathering up more and more fabric. Knuckles brushing against her sides, and Alucard smiles for that contact. It's precious, so precious right now.]

Arms, please?

[ Fucking monster. Fucking monster. I kill the things that do this., Trevor does not say. But oh, his thoughts aren’t nearly so private as they ought to be right now. ]

Not as such. Just want to know what you can do. You told me once that salt-based purification magic doesn’t harm you. Stull true?

[She gets up slowly, more from trying to take it easy on her injuries than out of any attempt at being sultry, and doesn't even realize that she's begun to hold her breath as she continues to watch him.]

I don't know if I can.

[It hurts to lift them, a little. Still, she tries, slowly easing them up and over her head and trying not to let the motion make her feel vulnerable.]

[Alucard cringes at those thoughts. He bites back a response, but the words fuck you still filter through down the line.]

Still true.

[Alucard takes the sword out of it's sheath and holds it down at his side.]

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Page 57 of 141

20s AU Post

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