Alucard \\ Adrian F. Ţepeş (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
cryptsleeper) wrote2018-11-11 04:32 pm
cryptsleeper) wrote2018-11-11 04:32 pm
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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But they won't act without her, not this time. And maybe on some level that's for the best, when paradoxically enough she's the one best equipped to be objective, even despite also being the one wounded most directly by what the necromancer had done. Alucard's need for vengeance has its roots in the losses of others he's loved before her, and the outrage that this man had nearly taken her from him, too. And Trevor — Trevor was so badly shaken by what was done that he'd begged her to carry his gun because of it, knowing full well what it meant and what making that choice would mean for her.
And yet deep down, she wishes this didn't fall to her. If she had her way, what she wants, what she would want, really, is —]
I want to have never met him.
[At first blush, it sounds almost like a regret — a little burst of melancholy whimsy, pining for a road not taken.
But she is a Speaker, whatever else she might be. And they've known her long enough that they might just recognize a Speaker's curse when they hear it.]
I want no one to remember him. Every bit of him, forgotten. Forever.
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Alucard's understanding of the world of Speakers has only ever been through the lens of Sypha. But oh, he understands what her words mean. He can make them happen.]
That can be done.
[It is in his power to make that happen among the vampires. But right now there's something else. Something moving.
Alucard's sword can't come out, he's still too affected by the smoke. But he lets out an alarmed noise, something close to a wolf's snarl, and he immediately faces the direction the noise is coming from.]
Belmont.
[There's so much alarm in a single word.]
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Hard to come by. Harder still to keep without his powers.
Another hand launches out, this one at Sypha. Magic. He needs magic. Human magic. Something that can take control of his twisting, roiling powers and use them to defend him. If he can get one of those hands into her, use her as a puppet...
Another icy dart flies into the hand. The sound of rustling cloth is clearer now, audible even to human ears. And then, then they are close enough to see.
There are three of them. Each carries - or 'carries', none have complete hands - a censer, filling the room with that blinding smoke. The first is the easiest to make out the details of. The lower jaw is gone, and the teeth torn out of the gums of the upper one. The eye sockets are hollow, the head shaven with very little care for the risk of catching chunks of flesh in the blade. It has one arm to the wrist, ending in a stump, and one to the forearm, and then two more limbs sprouting from its hips. They're legs, technically, and the colours of the skin match neither each other nor the skin of the speaker attached to them.
And it is a speaker. An amalgam of flesh in long, blue robes stained with old blood, with holes torn into them to make space for the extra limbs. Its companions, perhaps thankfully, are still too obscured by the smoke to see in their entirity. One looks to possess three of those jawless heads and one arm ending in a palm with no fingers. Another is short, its torso horizontal to the ground and suspended between four pairs of legs like a spider.
A sound comes from the first one, a horrible moist rasping noise, as it addresses Sypha, pushing past both her and Adrian to move between her and the dying necromancer. ]
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That's not the realization that makes her start screaming.
She starts screaming when it occurs to her how close she came to being one of them, herself.]
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Even like this, they are Speakers. There is violence a foot, and they have moved to protest it in a way only a Speaker could. The necromance deserves harm brought upon his head. He can no longer live. He ought to have died at their hands three times over, and they've failed every time. Maybe Carmilla should have dispatched him instead, politics be damned. Yet it's politics that have spared him for now, and it is the Speakers and their code of pacifism that prolongs his life even now. They are between Sypha and the man. A shield, protecting one of their own, but also allowing him to endure for a few more terrible moments.
They have too much to deal with. The necromancer. The speakers. Sypha, because all three of them know the simple fact: had they failed, Sypha would be here too. Alucard's arms wrap around her. Pull her close because that scream is too much to bear, and if the late Speaker who's pushed past him once takes issue with it, then so be it.
There's no words. Can't be words. Everything is drowned in Sypha's screams.]
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No, it's not just a blessing. He couldn't strike them if he tried, because even without the way they wear their hair, even with the robes torn and stained and blue instead of white, he knows full well what they are. He couldn't have done a thing to them even had they meant harm. ]
Chimeras. [ He provides, probably not entirely helpfully. It's more than clear what they are, and putting a name to them doesn't change a thing.
The next hand isn't lanced through with ice. Instead, the white smoke gathers together into a hand of its own, pale and softly glowing and outstretched. It catches the shadow, wrapping its fingers around it and holding it. There's no violence in it - Trevor knows the movements it's making. It's the way they would take people's hands to ground them during painful treatment or delivering bad news. But it holds the hand still. The shadow doesn't break apart this time, and so the fragments of it don't return to their master.
The next one, then, is smaller. There is less to work with. And again, it is caught and held, and that hold is soft and comforting, almost, but also uncompromising. They would not forego painful treatment and allow someone to die. They would not keep a man ignorant of terrible news. There's comfort in it, but no escape. It continues, until all of the smoke in the room is gathered into those glowing hands and there are no shadows left to use.
There is just a broken man in the middle of the room. A broken man with the consequences of his actions, and the people he hurt most giving him what comfort they can. Holding his hands, all of his hands, through the pain of whatever comes next. ]
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Because it's the same steady kindness that came naturally to her grandfather's hands, the same to the elders of her caravan who took the place of her parents as she grew. She knows those stalwart hands from how they'd clasped onto her little fingers as they led her through smoky cities filled with people who shunned them; she knows that steady dignity from the set of shoulders that bore up even under the danger and threats of the little towns filled with suspicion and homegrown justice.
She doesn't know these Speakers, doesn't know their names, but Speakers have never prized individuality over identity, and so deep down she does know them.
How could she not, when they are her?
Her knees wobble, and she leans heavily against Alucard, slipping almost to the point of falling, if he weren't there to hold her up. Her tears come fiercely now, streaming down her face even as she stays silent, watching the ones wronged most by the necromancer still offer the small sliver of mercy that she herself can't find in herself to give.
But of course, she's never been a very good Speaker, has she.]
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They are still full of kindness. Mercy. Their ways unchanged even as chimeras, because they are still fundamentaly themselves. Alucard knows in that horrible way, in the deep pit of his stomach, that he does not have it in him to be the same person.
Yet in this horrible situation, there is an even worse question. These chimeras. What is to become of them? This existence cannot be an easy one, and yet to even think the words death is a mercy is wrong. They're innocents, far more than the three of them may ever be. For that reason, killing them is...
...they've been in such horrible situations before, but oh this, this is beyond anything else.
Alucard finds words. Somehow.]
He goes to the House of Justice for now. Until...until decisions are made.
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[ That's. An odd way to say 'yes'. The presence of speakers always messes with his head like that. Vampire Killer is put aside in favour of Vampire Inconveniencer, and he sets about replacing Carmilla's bindings with it, tying the necromancer to immobilise him. As he does, the glowing smoke hands pull. Not violently, but insistently, leading the last of his magic out of him. One by one, the shadow hands are pulled clean away from him, fading away, and the necromancer is left with nothing.
Trevor pushes the man's head forward, letting the tonic spill out from his mouth so he can breathe before gagging him with the Inconveniencer and tying it again. Which just leaves one more thing. He approaches the speakers, holding out his hands. ]
Right for 'yes', left for 'no'. Will you speak with us?
[ The first speaker's arm, the one that is present up until the wrist, rises and comes down against Trevor's right hand. ]
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[She says it softly, because it's hard to watch the way he treats the once-Speakers with such tenderness, such care despite what they've been twisted into. It unsettles her, somehow, for reasons she couldn't begin to pick apart here and in a place like this, and it takes her a minute to realize that her inherent rejection isn't on the part of the former Speakers themselves, but from a compulsion inside her that wants to reject the whole of this as wrong to begin with. She's dealing with it badly because it never should have happened in the first place; she wants it to have not happened, for none of this to ever have happened to these people of her culture and her kin. She doesn't want to have to know how to deal with this. It shouldn't be something that needs be dealt with at all.
But Trevor knows. Trevor, with his outstretched hands. Trevor, who knows Speakers without being one; Trevor, who already has a complicated relationship with Speakers as it is, so perhaps even this isn't all that much moreso.
It aches to watch. But she has to watch, because this is a story, too, and that of these Speakers should be remembered, no matter how much it hurts to take it in and carry it inside her. So she leans on Alucard more heavily, drawing on his support the way she's extended it through his own traumas in the past, and holds on to him with shaking hands.]
They still — they can still understand...
[Which means that the people they once were are still somewhere in there — trapped in prisons more grotesque and horrible than an ankle manacle and a magic-leeching sigil. It's awful to contemplate. She has to contemplate it anyway.]
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His eyes remain on the necromancer though. One of them just keep watching him, should the condemned try any last desperate attempt to free himself from death's door. The Speakers, the lasting proof of the horrors he's worked, it almost feels inappropriate for Alucard to witness. They are Sypha's people, thus he cannot feel anything but affection for them, just as they represent a truly complicated part of Trevor's life. It's that second part that makes him want to turn, as Alucard's own intimacy with the group is nothing in comparison.
He listens. Lifts his eyes from the necromancer every so often. But he doesn't dare do more than that, because he cannot rightfully interfere. The emotions at stake, Sypha's and Trevor's take the priority.
To Sypha's words, he only murmurs:]
Then they can tell us what their wishes are.
[It is the only mercy here. That what happens next can be according to their will.]
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Are you in pain?
[ Arn asked that of people, and it always seemed a stupid question. Of course it fucking hurt. Everything hurt. He'd always said something about having to ask it anyway, because people needed to understand that not being in pain was still a possibility.
It still feels like a stupid question, especially as the first speaker's wrist settles against his hand. His right hand. He swallows and nods. ]
Is there anything that can relive it?
[ That's a question that Arn never asked, because he always fucking knew what could be done. Trevor doesn't. Nor, it seems, do the chimeras. The first speaker's wrist falls into his left palm. ]
Do you want-
[ His face scrunches halfway through that question, as pained as if the words were needles in his throat. 'Do you want to die'. It's an easy question. It's a solution. It shouldn't be difficult. But he doesn't need to finish the sentence, because the speaker's wrist remains in his left palm. He has his answer. No.
As if to elaborate, the first speaker makes another of those moist, rasping noises. And it takes Trevor a while to understand, because he's already consumed by trying to come up with something other than euthanasia that might help at all. And then it clicks.
They're trying to speak. ]
You have stories left, don't you? To tell before-
[ He can't finish that, either. In understanding, the first Speaker cuts him off with a wrist in his right hand. Yes. Stories to pass on. They can't die while they still have stories that will die with them. ]
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[It's like the horror never ends, as each new revelation drags them deeper and deeper into the understanding of just what a vile thing was done. Speakers save their stories and protect them, carrying them inside them like secrets, where they'll be safe. She knows that all too well, herself; it was the same reason her own caravan had come to New Orleans at all.
(She'd told it to Trevor, hadn't she? They'd had to come to New Orleans because the memory of Lisa Ţepeş had to survive. That preserving that story even justified a break from their other traditions to serve and assist, because it was too young, too precious, and couldn't be allowed to die with them.)
What stories must these Speakers know? Perhaps they're as important as the story of Lisa Ţepeş, but perhaps they're not. They don't have to be, because what matters is that they're precious to someone.
That much is enough. That much is more than enough to spur on these chimera to try to live on, even after everything else was taken from them. The choice to die isn't their own, not when there are still stories trapped within them. They have the right to snuff out their own lives; they don't have the right to take those stories with them.]
There...there must be a way. Something that can let them speak. Something that will let them discharge their duty, and rest...
[She looks toward Alucard, expression crumpling like paper kissed at the edge by a flame.]
In the castle...could there be something? Anything...?
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Morse? Some other kind of code that relies on hand gestures?
[They're the first things that spring to mind. They might not know such a thing, even if Trevor is likely to. He's shaking, absently, trying to find the correct solution in all of this horror.]
I. I think I remember something, but I don't know how far my father ever got in developing it. It involved finding another way for vibrations to leave the throat, and they were amplified by a sound system so that words could be understood. I remember it required a surgery though, and that's...
[It's too cruel. It demands too much.]
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[ Sypha might be able to, but neither of them could. It would be asking a lot even from her. It's difficult. There are solutions, but all of them involve doing this one letter at a time. For a whole story, that just doesn't seem practical. ]
But- that bullshit you just said- [ He understood 'sound system', and that's it. But it's enough to think on. ] -Sypha, does a recording count as writing something down?