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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[ The woman isn’t being kept prisoner. He can trust that much. And that leaves questions - she isn’t, near as he can tell, from any of the old families. Doesn’t seem to be a hunter at all. Doesn’t seem to be any of the sorts who ought to be treating with vampires, any of the sorts who have business important enough to be worth painting a target on ones back like that. He knows she’s a mage, but there are easier, safer places to go to learn that than the heart of this new, fucked up, American version of a vampire’s court.

And she’s sheltering him. Encouraging him. Telling him comforting things and letting him escape from the way that things are.

There has never been a bloodless transition of power. Not between vampires. Even well-meaning ones. Especially well-meaning ones. They tend to be the ones who aren’t willing to take the measures needed to keep themselves in power, and the ones who don’t see themselves as capable of doing the kind of harm that they end up doing. It was well-meaning vampires who refused to crush Bluebeard when he was still small enough to crush, let him gain the kind of power and influence he had. ]

You’re coddling him.

[ Alucard is- about as out of earshot as a vampire can fucking be in the same building as you, which is to say he’s in another room with the radio on. He left after dinner, off to go sulk over the latest bullshit, bullshit that is absolutely bad fucking news but that Sypha seems determined to convince him he’ll weather somehow, apparently through sheer force of him meaning the world to her. Sypha’s been left to re-ice his ankle and wrist. ]

It’s not going to help him one fucking bit, letting him ignore this shit.

[She's still not altogether happy about the prospect of a Belmont being here, for a number of reasons. One is that, to be perfectly simple about it, Belmonts kill vampires, and Alucard happens to be one, and so that's really just a bad combination straight from the get-go. Another is that this particular Belmont is...volatile, to say the least, and the world of vampire society is so incredibly perilous, so desperately in need of immense control and precision, that unpredictability like the Belmont's is nothing short of anxiety-inducing.

Then there's the fact that the man himself is stubborn, bad-tempered, smells, swears, always thinks he knows best, and quite possibly has a death wish, and sometimes it's hard enough as it is just carrying Alucard's issues, without the added complication of trying to pick apart the snarled, dirt-caked knot that is whatever the Belmont is carrying around with him.

And yet she's noticed things, from her place one step removed from vampires and their society, that make her wonder about him. His blue coat from the distant war, the muddled accent he slips into, the way his vowels and consonants sometimes hit in a way that tells her things about where he's been, the places he's assimilated into himself.

When Alucard came to her, his scar was visible, and physical. The Belmont, she thinks, bears a different set of them, and hides his better.

But here she is, subjecting herself to his Opinions, and resisting the urge to "accidentally" freeze his feet to the floor on the pretense of seeing to his ankle.]

Is that what you think I am doing? "Coddling"?

[She doesn't roll her eyes, but it's a barely-restrained thing.]

You know very little of what you're talking about, if you think he is ignoring anything. Stop moving your foot, please.

Coddling would be the polite word for it, yes.

[ He says, as if being polite has been a priority this whole time. Enabling him. Outright fucking deluding him. He tries his best to hold still. It's hard, because this shit is both painful and cold abut mostly because he's furious. He's furious with a vampire for not being enough like Dracula, which is kind of new. Dracula would have crushed all of these dissidents the second they spoke up. It would have been brutal, would have left no ashes for anything to rise from. ]

Fine, he's paying attention. He's just not doing anything but sulking. [ Otherwise known as mourning. Becoming overwhelmed by terror. Luxuries that Trevor has no patience for. ] Any vampires shirking Dracula's old rules need to have examples made of them, no matter how minor.

You are a vampire hunter, and you object because you think he is not being enough of a monster?

[It would be petty to poke him in the ankle, and she doesn't, but she thinks about it. His injury is at a point now where repeatedly packing it in ice will ultimately do him more harm than good, which means she has to be a little bit more creative in how she treats it, but that's no great issue. It would be better still if he would stop trying to walk around the house on it and surrender to a few weeks of sheer bed rest, but the likelihood of that happening is essentially nil, too.

She blows lightly on her fingertips, then braces the opposite side of his leg with her other hand while the first comes to stroke lightly down the length of his ankle. Her fingers are cold, but it's a dry, tempered chill instead of the strong sharpness of ice outright.]

You realize that you very likely owe your life to the fact that he is not his father, don't you?

[ He’s walking with a crutch, and that’s the compromise. He can’t stay still. Can’t.

The cold is- cold. But it helps. It brings the swelling down again, makes the bruising just ugly rather than ugly and also lumpy. He’s being an ungrateful shit, and he’s kind of aware of that. But then, this is gratitude, from him. He’s trying, trying very hard to care. Which is why he does not say how fine that would have been with him. ]

Sometimes you need a monster to get shit done.

So he should allow this city to eat him alive, for the sake of "getting shit done".

[Honestly, with the way the Belmont is acting, he almost doesn't deserve the courtesy of the prototype walking cast she's got with her, but, well. She was raised not to let her own opinions get in the way of people in need of help (however they might color her own demeanor when engaging with them), and it'd be a waste of the apparatus if she didn't try to fit him with it anyway, so.]

This will feel a little strange. There are screws in it that need to be tightened, so you might hear the noise of those, but the only thing you should feel is a little pressure around the ankle. Lift up just slightly; an inch or two.

[But anyway.]

He sacrifices so much already. He should not have to give even more.

Yes. Absolutely.

[ He lifts his leg, and he’s fairly steady like that even before he plants his good arm against the wall for balance.

It’s fucking laughable, that a whole city of people ought to be put at risk so that one person might be a little bit less sad. This shouldn’t even be a discussion. ]

He should give what his birthright fucking asks of him, and not an inch less. He isn’t the one who’ll be the first to suffer, if he doesn’t.

Are you sure you're angry that he's not acting enough like a vampire?

[The cushioned footplate (makeshift, a bit lumpy, but there's room to refine it) goes underneath his foot, and she takes a bit of time adjusting it before motioning for him to lower his leg again; the side pieces will snap in and around after the fact.]

Because it sounds to me like you are angry that he's not acting like enough of a Belmont.

[ How dare you call him the fuck out like this?????? Aka shit Sypha guessed it in one.

He tries to disguise the too-long silence that follows that by lowering his foot into the cast. And then he goes still, and doesn’t really make any attempt to disguise it at all.

This is about more than vampires and Belmonts. This is about playing one’s fucking role. This is about Alucard having the luxury to at least play at making choices, here, in a spoiled fucking country in a spoiled fucking decade. This is about a little princeling being spooked by the one responsibility that’s ever been expected of him. This is about people with power over people’s lives making selfish choices and letting others shoulder the consequences.

But it is also. Very much. About vampires and Belmonts. About sunk costs and 900 years of sacrifice. ]

He doesn’t need to be a Belmont to care that people’s lives are worth more than being a little bit less sad.

If he didn't care about that, he would not have stepped into this vacuum of power at all. He would simply have left, and abandoned this city to the others, uncaring while they tore themselves apart.

[She sets a back piece up against his leg, rising up about as high as a sock might, and then adds on a bracing piece on either side, fitted to cover his ankle and keep the whole of the area reasonably immobile. It's a fairly clever design because it's better than just a splint; the combination of the wraparound and the padded sole means less room for slipping and wobbling, and a means of redistributing his weight when he walks to take the brunt of it off the injury.

She didn't invent it, and neither did Alucard. She knows precisely where it must have come from, and why no one in the house is likely to ever mention it.]

And in that you are both better than me, who abandoned my birthright to be a little bit less sad. So if that is what you are hating people for, then hate me too.

[ It's- impressive. The device. He can't say that it isn't impressive. He probably won't abandon his crutches until he's certain about it being able to keep his weight off the injury safely, but even having it on at all is helpful, better than the splint from earlier.

His tone is tired, though. ]

If you insist. Who did you leave to die, so you could be a little less sad? So that I can hate you for it properly.

To hear Alucard tell it, what was left to die was my future.

[Now, the screws. It's assembled; it just needs to be fastened on. The fasteners are made for small fingers — a woman's fingers. She lines them carefully, screw and bolt, and starts winding them together.]

You came here to kill Dracula, or so you said. We came to save the story of his wife, when she had died. I am not sure where the rest of my people, my family, are right now; I know that they were heading west by train. But I abandoned them, and our calling, and now I am here. And they are not.

To save the story-

[ He's heard that exact phrasing used before, hasn't he? ]

Wait, shit. Speaker?

Yes. Well — perhaps former Speaker, now. To hear vampire society tell it, I am Alucard's witch. I suppose it all depends on which version you hear. Try taking a step, carefully, and see if those braces wobble at all.

[She sits back, dusting her hands on her knees, but stays crouched in case she needs to adjust it again.]

Which is also why I am still here helping you regardless of whether you deserve it, Belmont.

Of course it is. And so I know you'll keep helping no matter how shitty I am, so that's nice.

[ Not that he was exactly holding back. He takes a step. The whole thing is stable, though he doesn't take his hand from the wall to risk falling. ]

For example - you're as shitty a speaker as he is a vampire if you think there's no story worth remembering here.

Perhaps the next time I will simply gag you before I start my work, then, and spare myself such treatment.

[Good. The design holds up; that should improve matters. Not that making the Belmont more mobile is actually that great of an idea objectively, but he's going to be mobile whether they like it or not, so. Here they are.]

Did I say I thought there was no story to remember here?

Neither of you have actually tried asking me to shut up, you know.

[ He takes his hand from the wall this time, taking another step. He's unsteady, but the thing on his leg holds up. And so he sits down, leaning forward to talk. ]

Said you abandoned your calling. Isn't that the same thing?

I don't want you to shut up, I want you to stop being awful. If you are not capable of that, then yes, I want you to shut up. Next is the wrist; I have an apparatus for that, too.

[It was, perhaps, strategic that she decided to work on his ankle first. She has a suspicion that the wrist will be a harder sell, somehow, for a man who does his work with his hands. Hopefully the success of the ankle will make him more amenable to having a good portion of his arm immobilized.]

Whether there is a story here or not, I didn't stay for the purpose of collecting it. My intent matters. It was not to be a Speaker, that I stayed.

Mm-hmm.

[ Someone finally gave him fucking instructions, thank you. So he falls silent while he tries to figure out how to not be awful, holding out his arm without much fanfare at all.

It takes him a few moments to figure out something not awful to say. ]

Knew speakers, back home. The traditionalists. Constant fucking struggle with my family, we've always been fond of writing shit down and they've always been- not fond of that.

[...did that

did that actually work because that is a surprisingly benign thing to come out of the Belmont's mouth and — what the fuck.]

...Yes. I've heard that's how it is in the old country. Europe is a place of history, stuck in its old ways, and so the Speakers there had little reason to adapt their own ways. Only oral stories, always.

[She blows on her fingers again, and when they wrap gently around his wrist, again they're cool without being painfully cold.]

Here we focus more on how to preserve the stories as living things. We retell them in words, but we also know them as dances, as songs, as theater. I could dance for you the story of the raven that stole the sun.

You could. Dance it.

[ Yeah he doesn't sound convinced. Sorry, not a patron of the arts. If that wasn't obvious. ]

They did good work. Came to the front lines as medics, but they did- anything that didn't mean taking up a gun, just about. Took messages from side to side, to try to make everyone see each other as people. Took last words from people, figured out how to get them home. Even started delivering letters and photographs, though I can't imagine they were happy about that one.

Stories can be danced. Some of them are all the more beautiful for it.

[She keeps her eyes on the swelling on his wrist, even as her thoughts turn back to that long blue coat.]

You were on the front lines? In the war.

Yeah.

[ There's an element of 'of course????' to that, that he's trying to bit back. Because she told him to not be awful. It never really occured to him that there are people who weren't. ]

They tried to keep the Speakers out for the longest time, everyone thought they were everyone else's spies. But they kept people alive.

Mm. They would not have cared about sides. Their only side would have been against the war, and against all the lives it claimed.

[There. That's ice enough; now for the brace.]

Is it true there was a truce, on Christmas? I don't know if you were near there, wherever it was. But we heard that they had managed it, for just one day. The newspapers didn't report that it was because of the Speakers, but we learned of that part of it on our own.

They knew it was coming. That's how my family knew them. They knew there would be a great disaster, but not how it would come about. They had us hunting for a supernatural cause, and all along it was just- a lot of individual stupid things, becoming a big stupid thing.

[ The swelling's gone down. He'd be glad to have his movement back, but that's not going to last. At least it hurts less once it's cooled. ]

There was. Only the first year. I wasn't there for it, few months before my time there. Wouldn't surprise me if they were involved. Good at getting people to listen, and all.

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