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's grown more comfortable to be around since the first talk, where Sypha has asked him not to be awful. Sadly he's resumed being awful from time to time but since coming out of the casts and starting attending church and meeting the local hunter groups, he's at least softened a little. The best indication of this is his willingness to generally exist in the castle proper rather than camping out in the room he was granted. The other indication is that he's started following something of a schedule.

Sunday is church and he attends early morning service. He walks to the road and takes public transport rather than troubling his hosts for a ride, partly out of not wanting to owe them, mostly because the two of them are rarely awake in time after a Saturday night. Late morning service is afterwards, with a half hour between them, and that time is for helping Agatha set things up for the sunday school children while Florence complains about the misadventures and posturing of the younger vampires in a neighboring district and the hunters there that refuse to keep them under control. There is an hour and a half of quiet knitting in the next room while Agatha teaches her class, and then another half hour of talk of strategy.

He comes home just after noon and takes a seat in the chair furthest from the sofa that his hosts like to use. Sypha's radio play begins at one, and she looks forward to it all week, enough to be in here and staring at the thing expectantly almost a full hour in advance. It's been the same for three weeks in a row now, every Sunday going the same way, with the difference today being Alucard's absence.

He takes his seat as usual, and the quiet sound of knitting needles clicking against each other begins. ]

[Sundays are days of rest, for the most part, where Sypha is concerned — things have reached a point where she's just come to expect that Fridays and Saturdays will be marathons of this event or that one, of places to go and people to see and images to live up to. It wears on Alucard more than it does her, which makes sense; he is the one with eyes on him, always, and half the time that she's with him, she's going out of her way to try to draw attention onto herself, just to spare him those few extra moments in the spotlight.

It's a set of circumstances that lends itself to almost always sleeping in on Sundays, simply by virtue of how late they'd gotten home the morning before (Saturday parties always run late, pushing the envelope almost up to the darkness just before dawn), and so usually she sleeps comfortably until some form of brunch rolls around at about the same time as Trevor arrives home, and then it's just an hour's worth of time to relax until she commandeers the front room, the sofa, and the radio for the week's installment of her favorite program.

It's rare that Alucard isn't here today, but there'd been a note slipped to him in the midst of the party last night, and so she suspects he's spending his afternoon doing something or other about it — it's the sort of affair where she knows not to ask, simply because he'll tell her if he wants her to know, and if he doesn't, then she'll have spared them both the awkwardness of having to shoot her inquiry down. He took the car, though, so he'll be a while.

That's fine. In five more minutes, she'll have a pleasant diversion to preoccupy her, anyway.

And Trevor is here, which is nice. He's brought his knitting and taken up his usual chair, and she's curled up on the loveseat with her nose about an inch from the radio speaker, waiting intently for the familiar introduction of this week's installment of dashing rogues and bold adventure.]

What are you working on today, Belmont?

Testing something for Bunicuta. She wants to see if it's possible to knit a protection spell into a blanket.

[ He's been a member of his church for less than a month, but he's already on first name basis with most of them. Which is a lot, because he's fairly certain that he hasn't actually got around to properly introducing himself to his hosts. One of them is expecting a baby, and the many grandmothers of Trevor are fussing dreadfully over this. ]

It would probably be more possible if I didn't keep fucking it up.

Hmm. Is the protection spell attached to the yarn, or is it worked into the knots you use when you knit?

[The ultimate dilemma: this business of knitting spells is painfully interesting, but there are now four minutes and five seconds left until her dashing rogues and bold adventures, and this might be a conversation that runs for longer than that.]

I assume the latter, if making mistakes is disrupting the spell?

It's those symbols again. Except knitted, rather than written.

It's- fuck- [ Dropped stitch. ] Meant to ward off illness. Young lady in the congregation expecting a baby just as the stormy season hits. Just something to keep the worst from happening while she might not be able to make it to the hospital.

...Oh. And if it works like she is hoping, then she'll knit one herself? You are testing the process for her.

[That's kind of a backhanded way of implying his blanket looks like shit, isn't it. Oops. On the other hand, it's not like she's wrong.]

I wonder if it would disrupt the ward, to stack another spell on top of it.

[Three minutes, now.]

[ Wow, rude. He's doing his best! He just chooses to ignore that question. ]

Not sure, honestly. It'd fuck it up if there were another written component on it, without a doubt. Don't know about other spells. I'm pretty hopeless at any that I can't write.

I made Alucard a pair of slippers that warm themselves, so they are never cold when he puts his feet in them. I could try to put it on top of your blanket, when it's done. If you'd like.

[The radio crackles; the usual show pregaming begins to roll out of the the device speaker, just as it does every week, and she visibly straightens up and gravitates toward it as the promise of the show starting abruptly draws nigh.]

Oh-

[ He looks over the blanket in thought. Because he's a european in the american south at the height of summer. Why would anyone ever want to be warmer here. ]

That sounds like the most useless fucking spell there is in this city, honestly. Could you do cool instead of warm? Overheating sounds like more of a risk, and they can always put another blanket underneath it-

Shhh! Be quiet, the show is starting.

[It'll occur to her, later, the error she's just made here. But unthinkingly, she makes a little shooing motion with her hand and offers that unintentional order, fixated on the rich, smooth voice of the narrator about to begin.]

We can talk more about it later.

[ The next few words die in his throat.

Well. Shit.

He isn't usually bound to orders quite this strongly, but Sypha's powerful. It's- honestly kind of a potential problem, but she doesn't casually give instructions with intent behind them that often. It's only been a few times, and things like 'finish your food, he worked hard on it' or 'can you behave yourself for five minutes' aren't too much of an issue.

This, though, is an instruction with intent behind it that actually might cause problems eventually. There's no inherent limit on it. But it's not a problem yet. She's listening to her thing. He may as well just wait to see if she figures out the issue.

He can't even sigh too loudly as he tries to return to his knitting, struggling to do so without letting the needles click against each other. ]

[Under ordinary circumstances, she would notice right away that something is wrong. It's not like Trevor to go so abruptly and unnaturally silent; if she weren't distracted, she would sense it immediately. But she's excited about her radio show, and engrossed in listening to it, and so for the time being she simply assumes that he's being quiet because he knows how much she looks forward to this all week, and is trying to be a gentleman about it.

It's a lively installment of the show. She laughs softly at the clever bits, sighs in delight at some of the vivid descriptions it offers up. Once or twice she steals a glance at Trevor, but he doesn't seem to be reacting much; he's barely made a peep.

Oh, well. It's her guilty pleasure, not his. Let him knit; she's excited enough to enjoy it for the both of them.]

[ He's not yet grasped the basics of knitting normally. Knitting without letting the needles strike each other is a little much to ask of him. By the end of the show he's dropped as many stitches as he's made and the best possible option at this point may well be to unravel the whole thing and start again. He would sigh dramatically (or, more likely, swear), but he can't. So he settles for just scowling at the failed blanket as he continues throwing effort at it as if he can make it become a workable thing through sheer force of determination.

The show draws to a close, and he's still silently being furious at his knitting. ]

[An hour of silence, plus a few extra seconds for the windup and wind-down. Another thrilling chapter concludes, and she reaches over with a happy sigh and switches off the radio, turning her attention back to him and his...absolute disaster of a blanket. Hmm.]

Wasn't that an exciting installment? You must've been as interested in it as I was, you've been so...

[...]

...quiet...

[Too quiet. Unnaturally quiet. Trevor is not, generally speaking, a quiet person. Yet even with the radio switched off, there he sits, going about his business and not making...a single...sound...

Uh-oh.]

Trevor?

[ Yes. Yes he has been quiet. Thank you for just now noticing.

He puts his knitting down, very carefully, and just stares at Sypha. Unfortunately, he's never played charades and probably wouldn't be any good at it if he had. He just makes meaningless hand gestures toward Sypha, the radio, and himself. ]

[Luckily, she's about halfway to sussing out precisely what went wrong here, and a mortified flush is starting to rise in her cheeks as she ponders a moment, arranges words in her head, and offers: ]

Trevor, speak and tell me what's wrong.

[ Well shit, again. He was going to start this with 'we need to talk', but- ]

This city is too fucking hot. This city has too many fucking vampires in it. Bunicuta keeps trying to get me to marry her goddaughter's best friend. The amount of fucking corpses I've seen is approaching six digits. Your radio show has plot holes. The most powerful vampire in the fucking world is missing and upset with humanity. Your boyfriend is a shitty replacement. Literally every resource I could use to help here was wiped off the map, along with my family, and now someone's going about picking the bones. The fucking blanket isn't going right. You just cursed me. Your boyfriend had urgent business, which means he's going to be moody when he comes home, which means that fucking nothing is going to get done tomorrow. I'm a fairy-

[ ...he's going to be going with this for a while. ]

[...OKAY SO THAT WAS A MISTAKE but fortunately it was an educational mistake because. Uh. Wow.]

I just cursed y—

[Oh for fuck's sake.]

...I rescind my command to be quiet. Speak or don't speak of your own free will, at your discretion.

Great. Thanks.

[ He says, not sounding like someone who is particularly thankful. He picks up the knitting again, now that he can work on it without having to struggle to keep the needles from making noise, and sets about determinedly trying to fix this horrible blanket nightmare. ]

Shit was getting annoying.

So because I said that, you were not able to do anything that might make noise.

[She's parsing the thought out slowly, more careful this time; now he's got her being firmly attentive to her own words, checking them to make sure there's no unthinking imperative slipped in while she works through this.]

...And when you said we should tell you to behave and you would behave, I said I thought you wouldn't do it, but you...knew you would, because...

[...]

Because you are a fairy and cannot help but do as you're told. And when I told you to tell me what was wrong, you told me everything that was wrong, because I did not make it clear what I meant.

There's a little more to it than that, but yes. Something like a domovoi, if my mother identified it correctly. A household fairy of some sort.

[ He sighs, shrugging. ]

Usually I'm free to ignore this shit. You're powerful.

...Because for me to speak a command is, on some level, always an expression of my intent. Perhaps not enough to compel someone who is not inherently susceptible to it, but combined with your burden of obedience...

[Well. That's...more than a little unsettling.]

I'm — I'm sorry. I don't like the thought of...having you at my mercy, like that. So if you would rather I did not talk to you, or only talked through Alucard, or...whatever you wish done about it, I will understand. And agree.

Don't make it weird. I really don't give that much of a shit.

[ There's really nothing he can do about the disaster of a blanket, so he sets about unraveling it to try again. ]

Just be careful - I'd really rather not end up forced to walk in on the two of you to give you wrist updates again - and don't go telling me to jump off a cliff or anything and it'll be fine.

I was trying to be considerate.

[She grumps a little, slouching down in her chair and pulling her heels up onto the edge of the seat cushion, which sort of flies in the face of the idea of being considerate, but also: that's a concern for a different time and place.]

Has it been like that for you since you were born? Or was this something put upon you after?

Since baptism. It's- been a Belmont thing about a century now.

[ The blanket is begun again, and with it starts the sound of needles clicking. ]

You've heard of Bluebeard, I imagine? Maybe not the vampire, but the name.

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