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 can do this himself.

It's been two days. Everything still hurts. Worse, somehow, now, as if the pain needed time to sink into his skin. He's only a little less dizzy and the world still spins around him when he stands and standing up straight is still asking too much. But it's just going to the kitchen to get a glass of water. He's done that in the dark before. He's done that after having the shit beaten out of him before. It shouldn't be impossible.

It takes too long. If he wanted to make excuses he'd say that the castle is twisting itself around him - it can do that. He spends a good ten minutes fruitlessly fighting with the door to the deeper parts of the castle, the parts that the stories are told about, not the parts that are their home. He knows what it is, and he shakes at the door anyway until what he's doing sinks in and he stumbles away from it in horror and shame. The task of two minutes becomes one of a half hour.

And then, at the end of it, there is the sound of breaking glass. Trevor is there on hands and knees, unharmed by it, but he's behind a wall of water and broken glass that he can't see. He's fucked up again. He's fucked up the simplest of tasks. ]

[She's not...well, not yet, but she's better. Some aspects of healing come more quickly than others. Her forearms are scarred but mostly recovered by now; she's graduated from bandages to soft cloth guards that fit from her elbows to her wrists to help protect the still-tender skin from subsequent damage. She still does badly in rooms filled with long-cast shadows, but that's been easy enough to remedy. More and more now, the boys are allowing themselves to leave her alone, rather than hovering solicitously at her side. That's how they managed to create this whole great mess to begin with, she knows, and is irritable about it, but doesn't mention it aloud.

...Much.

Alucard is deep in the recesses of the library when the glass shatters, which is why Sypha is the one to overhear it. It also comes from the direction of the kitchen, not the library, which means the sound can't be Alucard to begin with, which means —

Which means it's Trevor, and Trevor isn't supposed to be up, but apparently he is.

That's the revelation that makes her hasten her pace, hurrying through the corridors until she makes it to the kitchen and can pause in the doorway, startled and taken aback at the sight of Trevor on his hands and knees, and glass and water all over the floor — a milky way of sharp-edged danger gleaming on the floor between them.]

Trevor...!

[ He looks up in the direction of the sound, and he's shaking. Sypha is- somewhere. Somewhere ahead. And there's glass. There's glass there. There shouldn't be glass there but there is glass there because he can't manage the simplest fucking task. A task that every fucking creature on the planet can achieve. He can't move water to his mouth without failing and making everything worse.

The air feels cold in his lungs. He's breathing too quickly. He doesn't feel like he's breathing at all. ]

-there's glass. [ He manages, and it's the smallest his voice has ever been in Sypha's presence. ]

— Yes, there is.

[She only just barely bites off the words that are her instinct, which are don't move, because he's shaking and he's small and the last thing she's going to do at this point, the last thing, is trap him behind words as well as behind broken glass.]

Trevor, I'm going to come to you. Please, will you stay still for me? Please.

[ He swallows, nodding. And he tries. He tries not to shake, and he tries not to breathe too fast. And there's glass. There's glass and he should know what to do about glass. But he doesn't. There's glass and water and it may as well be fucking Dracula himself for all that he can do about it.

He just nods again, squeezing his eyes shut, for all the difference it makes right now, and trying to breathe slower. He's going to suffocate. He knows he's going to suffocate. ]

Trevor.

[She's barefoot, which is going to be a problem when it comes to the smallest grains of glass shards, but she's not about to leave him and go find a pair of shoes at a time like this. She looks around briskly instead, finding a chair that she can drag into the middle of the shard river, and clambers up onto it to create herself a safe bridge over to him.]

Trevor, I'm coming.

[She's watching his shoulders, his torso; she can see the way it's wracked with his erratic breath, and how hard he's fighting to keep it steady, and how badly he's failing at it.]

I'm almost to you, Trevor. Here I come.

[She shuffles around in a crouch, extending her leg as far out as she can as she crosses over to his side of the kitchen floor, moving closer step by step with shuffling footsteps to avoid bringing the bottom of her foot down onto any sharp shards.]

[ Something scrapes across the ground, and he flinches at the noise, and then he can hear her voice coming closer. Her voice is coming closer and that means that she's trapped, doesn't it? Like he is. Because she doesn't wear shoes in the house. Because he's still in his bedthings. And because there's glass.

He wants to tell her to be careful. To- there's a way to deal with glass, he knows it, he just can't make his brain find it right now. He isn't existing in a world with dustpans and brushes, not right now. Just one with glass. Glass that he put there because he can't drink right. Because he can't stand up without overbalancing. Because he's useless.

He's trying. He's trying not to shake, but the effort only makes him tremble more. His lungs are burning and cold and he has to stay still but he can't. ]

Sypha- glass.

I know. I won't step on it, don't worry.

[She gets herself free of it at last, over onto the clear spot of the floor away from the shrapnel left over from the glass breaking, and carefully lowers herself down onto the ground near him, unwilling to touch him just yet but more than close enough to, once he'll let her.]

Trevor, I'm going to put my hand over yours. Your right hand. You'll feel my fingers in just a second.

[Carefully, carefully, she edges her hand across the floor, first bumping up against the side of his, then creeping up and over it until her smaller one is covering the back of his like a blanket.

She holds it there a minute, just so that he can feel her hand there, and then slowly she starts a cadence of barely-there squeezes to his hand, just enough pressure to be felt, timed to the beat of her heart.]

[ The warning is good. The warning helps. He knows that Sypha's hand is coming, and he doesn't flinch when it touches him. For a while, it's too much. Strangling. Suffocating. But he's suffocating anyway, isn't he? (There's glass. There's glass. There's glass.) Slowly, slowly, he tries to time his breaths to those squeezes. It's painful. This can't possibly be the right amount of breathing to do. But Sypha wouldn't lie to him. Wouldn't let him be hurt.

His breathing settles. Carefully, he moves back, shifting so he's sitting instead of resting on his hands and knees. ]

...-fucked up again.

...Well. Perhaps just a little.

[She keeps her fingers on his arm even as he shifts, careful not to break the contact so that he can still track where she is. As he sits back, she lets her hand run up his arm toward his shoulder, then over the top and down until the flat of her palm is resting against his chest.]

But I am here now. I'm going to keep you safe.

[She lets her voice go a little lower and smoother, like velvet.]

You are always, always there for me when I need you. Now I'm here with you, too.

[ Sypha's presence is calming. Soft and steady, like sunlight-warmed earth. He keeps timing his breath to the movement of her hand on his, trying to match her own. Tries to will his heart to stop racing. It's working. Slowly, slowly, it's working.

The panic leaves a vacuum, though. There's nothing there when it fades. No bravado. No training. No determination. Even the self-deprecation that he's clinging to only fills it halfway. There's just a raw, empty place where it was. His steadier breath becomes ragged. His body curls in on itself. He's not realised yet that there are tears beginning to trail down his cheeks. ]

I'm sorry. [ How many times has he said that these last few days? It feels like that's just what it sounds like when he exhales, by now. Does it even mean anything anymore? ]

It's only a little broken glass. No great harm done.

[She's aware, of course, that that's probably not what he meant — certainly not what he's apologizing for. But it seems kinder, for the moment, to avoid remarking on his sadness and distress. Better, perhaps, to keep from calling attention to it, lest it come back in force. Better, instead, to remain calm herself, in the hopes that he can follow her to find a calm of his own.]

Did your hand slip, when you were filling it?

[She doesn't take her hands off of him. She won't, not when that connection is his lifeline to knowing she's still there. One hand comes to settle on his arm, near his elbow, while the other leaves his chest and skims back up to pet at his hair.

She tries to make it idle, incidental, kind when her fingertips drift down to gently brush his tears away. She doesn't know if it works.]

[ He makes a few attempts at answering, and isn't successful until the third. ]

Dizzy. Needed- hands. To not fall.

[ His shoulders sink with the effort when the last of those words leaves him. And he doesn't speak for a while longer, just trying to concentrate on Sypha's hands. The're in his hair. And then they're not, and- oh. He hadn't realised that there were tears there. Was he crying? (Pathetic.) ]

Can't- can't English. French?

Oui.

[It doesn't take many words to work out a picture of what must have happened, really. A glass in his hands, a dizzy spell. He tried not to fall, the glass did; perhaps he fell anyway, to have ended up on the ground. And then in the aftermath, the weight of the realization — trapped. Glass on the floor, water on the floor, and no way out. Trapped.

The switch to French is more than just easy; it's a hollow sort of ironic. It hadn't been so long ago that she'd been the one resorting to it, wrapped up in bed with bandages on her arms, because her head hurt and words were so hard and French slides out of the throat so much easier than English does.]

Shh. Can you try to focus on me, matou? That's all I do, when you're close to me. I want to pet you and pet you as much as I can.

[ It's easier, French. The language he spoke at home, the one his family would use. Even after years, even after using it in the trenches, even after everything, it's still the language spoken in the Belmont household first and foremost. Romanian is the language of cycling into town for errands, of playing with friends. French is the language of coming home in the evening.

It helps. It helps a lot. There's a (weak, anemic) hint of a smile at the pet name. ]

'll try. You're- [ He follows Sypha's arm until he reaches her shoulder, and then tries to turn his head in her direction once he's found her. ] -you're here.

Yes. I'm here.

[Carefully, she takes his hand in both of hers, running her fingers over his palm in a surreptitious means of checking to see if he'd cut himself when he dropped the glass. It's only after that she guides his fingertips up to her cheek, letting him feel the curve of her cheekbone, the slope of her nose, and finally down to the soft cupid's bow of her lips, upturned at the edges.]

C'est moi. Can you feel my smile?

[ For once, for once in his fucking life, there are no cuts. No blood. He's unhurt, for once. Just stuck. Stranded and lost in a place that feels like a demon castle for the first time since he came here (less, now. A demon castle wouldn't have Sypha in it.) and so, so far from home. ]

I can. [ She's soft. She's soft and too-warm and beautiful even like this. Even now. The smile is small and fragile, while it lasts, and then his face twists with pain and his head hangs. ]

I hate this. I hate this so much.

You're afraid.

[She says it so he doesn't have to. Because he can't, because it would be too much, because shaping it into words makes it real and strips away the ambiguity that bottling it up inside would still afford him. She kisses each of his fingertips, carefully, following the same rhythm that her little squeezes of his hand did before.

This is a dance, almost. Everything in its time, everything measured and following the unspoken cadence. There's predictability in a dance. Music doesn't need the eyes; most of the time, it's even better without them.]

Will you tell me what you fear most?

I- yes. I'm-

[ He can't even say the word. He holds his hand still, letting her kiss. It's calming, helps him keep time. His hand doesn't fall, when he starts to speak again, but he ceases to hold it up himself until it's just a weight in her hands. ]

I'm- useless, like this. And the two of you won't throw me away. Even if I asked you to. Even if I begged. Even though it'd be the best thing to do.

[ His voice grows thick and rough with tears again, face scrunching up. ]

I'm going to be worse than useless. A burden.

Trevor.

[She guides his hand back to her cheek, holding it there with both of hers, leaning into it so that he can feel the weight of it against his palm.]

When you gave me your gun, when you begged me to take it, you said you knew what you were asking of me. What you were asking me to give away, by taking it up and learning to keep myself safe. But you begged me, because you knew it was what I needed, and I trusted you.

[She draws a breath, and it comes sharper than she meant it to, stuttered right at the tail end.]

So I understand. I understand what I'm asking of you, now. Because I spent my entire life being a Speaker, and you spent yours being...useful.

[She turns her face into his hand, kisses his palm.]

I'm asking you to trust me to know best. To try to believe me, that I need you and it has nothing to do with how useful you are. That Alucard needs you, and it has nothing to do with how useful you are. I know what I'm asking of you, Trevor, and I am begging you to believe me, anyway.

I-

[ There's nothing he can really say, in response to that. In asking him to accept what she says as truth, she's asking him to give up the world he knows. The understanding of it that he has, where everything can be easily defined by what it can and cannot do. The understanding that made Alucard a spoiled princeling for not taking his responsibilities in stride, because of course he was capable of them. The understanding that leaves him uneasy when he's still, because he could be doing so much more. The understanding that makes everything make sense, makes it all painful but makes it all make sense, that lets him answer any difficult question with 'because someone wasn't good enough' and be done with it. The understanding that he was raised with. The only thing he has left of his family other than a whip and the language they're speaking.

But he's asked her to give up everything, before, and all she asked in return was stories. And those, those she's already given willingly. ]

-I trust you. I'll try.

I know it's my fault.

[She holds his hand a little tighter, squeezing it just slightly between both of hers.]

You and Alucard, you...you did this because of me. Because I was taken by that monster. I know you didn't want me to find out what the two of you had been doing.

[She lets out a slow breath.]

I'm sorry, Trevor.

It's not!

[ His head snaps up at that, eyes trying so hard to focus on where Sypha must be. For a moment, the despair, the exhaustion, all of it is gone from his tone, replaced with a horror he didn't know that he had in him even now, one that quickly fades to his normal, certain-of-everything tone. He pulls his hand away, following her arms until he finds her shoulders, then pulls her against him. ]

It's not your fault. I'm the one who fucked up. That asshole is the one who took advantage of it. I could probably blame the vampire as well, if I wanted. But it's not you. Never you.

Oh —

[She'd anticipated a reaction, certainly, but not one as fierce as this; caught off-guard, there's no resistance as he pulls her toward him, and once she's against him she quickly settles, already instinctively familiar with how it feels to relax and go boneless when he holds her close.]

What...happened? What did he do to you?

It's- one of Dracula's spells. For making a person act as a familiar. You can see through their eyes, control their body. And make them form intent. Adrian and I were using it to fight together. I can't dispel his magic easily on my own, but I know the spells needed for it. And Adrian isn't- like this.

[ Adrian's good at wanting things, and Trevor isn't. He can't use magic like the two of them can, but can want things so, so powerfully. Trevor keeps Sypha close, as if there were some threat. When really, there's just glass. Glass and water and everyone blaming themselves for shitty luck and shitty people. ]

But I let Adrian get hit. And he's a sturdy fucker, but I'm just a human.

20s AU Post

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