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 wasn't an idiot with magic, spells could still be in place to protect it.

[Which is not to say that it's a bad idea. It's a brilliant one.]

Follow instinct. I'll look into legal code about what happens with the estate, anything that you get seen doing will be cloaked in following that particular set of regulations.

[He breathes out, worried.]

Tell me if I'm following your logic. Plan one was to use Damien to prove I'm unfit for office and oust me. It's failed. Plan two is to come here and do the work herself.

He wasn't an idiot with magic, but I doubt he developed his own. If it's based on Dracula's work, it shares its weaknesses.

[ He allows himself a little grin at that. It's been a while since he got to do proper Belmont things, and this is the kind of shit he was born to do. ]

Something like that. If we're lucky, we're on plan two and she's wrongfooted as we are here. If we're not, then that bishop shit [ And, you know. Everything else Damien pulled. Which he cares less about unless it's inspiring big gestures of possessiveness. And those are likely off the table for a long time right now. ] was part of a bigger plan and it's still on track.

Do what needs to be done.

[That's carte blanche to do whatever needs to be done. Words Alucard that will be saying again and again.]

Both are likely options. If it's the latter, then we need to catch up. [Alucard is quiet for a long time. There are other things he must do after this, when the other two are not around to watch him.] Damien might've pitched it as an idea, perhaps, and was given free reign to put it into action.

You- may need to stay away from me for a few days. If there's a chance of running into a vampire that old, I'll be taking precautions.

[ It's a problem, but he really doubts that Alucard will object to him taking measures to remain safe. ]

It's possible. Perhaps he was acting as her agent here, but only on orders to try to throw you off balance.

[ Awkwardly- ]

Sorry for being a part of that.

I will survive a few days away, even if I hate it. Your life is the priority, sentiment must be put aside.

[Alucard is terribly angry about having to say that.]

It was out of your control, and my fault besides. [He kicked Trevor off his doorstep. There's a tired sigh.] Inwards and downwards, it seems.

After I've been dismissed from your meeting with her, then. It'll be good to be able to know her location for a few hours, at least. I'll prepare at Bunicuta's house and ask her to drive me.

[ Because there he can't go in Alucard's car, that Alucard drives, while covered in anointing oil. And he can't go in the demon car, which is made of demons. ]

In the meantime, we should probably go through the records, as well.

That'll have to do. I had been wondering where you'd go after I have to...do that, so I'm satisfied with that answer.

[Alucard nods in approval, and he stands.]

Let's start then. Which records do you have in mind?

An old world vampire her age- your father would have been keeping record of her entering and leaving the city, and of her actions here. Anything she's done in his territory that hasn't escaped his notice will be noted down. He- likes writing things down a whole lot.

That would be the easy part.

[ He sighs, and this one just seems to be sighing out all the life in his body. ]

The hard part is going to be the newspaper archives in the library. I'll narrow them down as best I can, but that's still- a lot.

I can start in on those, they're easier to search and I know what I'd be looking for. [It's work. That's how he handles going into the records.]

Your theories about numbers should just be made into a general compulsion. You have evidence for it now.

[Alucard doesn't like that sigh. He goes very still at it.]

If what you need isn't there, the public library also has archives of papers. What...

[What don't you want to look for?]

Oh, he's always been the numbers sort. Not so much counting, but always keeping records. At least one ancestor - a Richter - survived a fight with him because he'd written the name as 'Richard' and needed to correct it immediately.

[ And he nods. He'll offer to go through the nastier records - the executions and such - himself. But later. ]

Any mention of Carmilla, any mention of trouble in Canada's vampire communities, any mention of shit started down here with no known culprit, any mention of unidentified old world vampires- and that's just the archives of vampire newspapers. Then it's the human ones. Obituaries for times when Carmilla's been suspected to be in the city, to check for anyone who might have been sired by her, any disappearances- anything that matches up with those times.

[At that? At that there's just a very tired sigh because Dad for fuck's sake.]

Sounds like him.

[The smaller details make it easier to just miss his father as nothing more than his father. Not the king of vampires, not the horrible creature that left Alucard this lot in life, just his weird nerd of a dad who he'd get into weird technical arguments with when it came to doing things like trying to fix one of the appliances.]

If our archive of the local paper is missing, tell me and I can request a copy. I believe the gossip columnist will be more than willing to help on that front. I've never had to dive this deeply into research before, but I understand that there's more indexing done by newspaper publishers with their own clipping system. Going down to their offices and asking might help if you get well and truly stymied.

I'll keep it in mind, but if we do that we'll need to assume that Carmilla knows that we've gone looking and knows exactly what information we were given. Human papers will be safer from that, at least, but I'd rather not take chances if we don't have to.

[ Ugh, he's always this paranoid and even he's finding it exhausting to be this paranoid. He sighs again, letting his voice soften just a little. ]

We'll keep you safe. You know that, right?

Then let's hope that this house's record keeping gives us what we need and that none shall be the wiser for it. So far as I'm aware, the extent of records here are fairly unknown beyond the fact they exist.

[That softness is, perhaps surprisingly given the vampire, met with something firmer.]

I'm sturdy. I'm much more worried about you two. If anything happens, you do whatever you feel is right. I'll be taking care of legal matters later today.

We'll be fine. I was born for this shit, and I'm a lot better at it sober.

[ To his side, Sypha snores lightly. She's been trying, bless her, but she was awake until maybe a half hour before Alucard came home waiting for him. ]

We won't let anything happen to her.

No. And if it's between duty and her...

[He's serious, but he can't make it a command. That's horrible and unfair.]

It's too much to ask her to say good-bye to us both. She gave up a world to stay in this city in the first place.

So one of us has to survive this bullshit.

[ And there- that's his official opinion on how bad this could get. That any of them not surviving this bullshit was a possibility. ]

I'd initiate the squabble over who that has to be, but it'd probably be more productive if I just made more coffee.

It'll just become setting odds, and I think we should avoid doing that.

[Alucard leans back in his chair, then decides fuck it. He stands up slowly.]

Just make the coffee for yourself, I'm fine.

If you're sure-

[ He shrugs. ]

I'll just deal with myself and start going through the newspaper archives, then. If you can start on your father's records, I'll check on you to demand breakfast once it's an appropriate hour.

[ And he'll just take Sypha back to the room while he's back in the part of the castle that is their home. Because she's not going to be useful to anyone like this. Best for him to sort through the newspapers to find the relevant ones and for her to go through them all once she's awake properly. ]

At this point, I've accepted that the next twelve hours are going to be fueled by anger.

[Alucard is the first one at the door. He pauses just long enough on his way there to swoop down and kiss Sypha's forehead, because he didn't do that before hand, and know she'll wake up covered in blankets because neither one of them are in bed with her instead.

He feels badly for that, Sypha's sleep is always worse if she's alone. But. Work. And beyond work, safety, which has always been his focus with the other two.]

[ His own next few hours are- a lot of coffee, a lot of sorting through papers. Lots of things to look into, though he's certain most of them will be false starts. But they only need one that isn't.

By the end of it he has no results, but the start of a large pile of potential information sources that he'll need to go through with Sypha. He is also exceptionally grateful to Enid for developing and teaching him the indexing spells she used to cut her workload in the archives. Because the alternative would be reading over every last newspaper here and- no thank you. ]

Alucard? It's normal-people-morning.

[ He arrives at the record room after the first round of sorting through papers, a few hours later. ]

Good a time as any to wake her and start on breakfast. [ And to start calling him by name again, for the first time today. ]

[Usually the records are Trevor's domain. There's something profane in that, probably, that it's a Belmont who manages the records instead of Dracula's own son, but it is the right kind of profane. Alucard does not know the system well enough yet, and it takes him some time to find the right books to start with.

He spends the next few hours on the floor, surrounded by books, reading everything carefully and taking notes of his own. There is a vague awareness in him that he ought to shower (there is still blood on him), but he's too focused, he's finding things and...

...and at some point the floor is just a bed, the ledger he has open is a pillow, and Trevor walks in to find this absolute vampire disaster slumped over on the floor, asleep with his head in a book.]

[ Oh.

Well.

The blood. The blood needs to be washed off before he can take him to lie down next to Sypha. He picks Alucard up carefully, running a hot bath with salt and rose oil to neutralize the vampire blood.

And so Alucard likely wakes up to either being undressed or being lowered carefully into the bath. ]

[He stirs slightly at the cooler morning air against his skin, but Alucard doesn't wake up until there's water up to his knees. Then there's a sudden start, eyes snapping open, because God forbid vampires wake up like normal people.

(He fully admits that it's one of the weirdest and worst parts of sharing a bed with him. Alucard just kind of snaps awake and that's that. Absolutely like a corpse coming to life.)

Alucard's long since figured out whose hands are whose at any given time. So just relaxes in Trevor's arms instead.]

Sorry. I should have walked myself to somewhere that wasn't the floor.

It's a perfectly good floor. Record room is for work, though.

[ He's used to it by now. It's just kind of funny, when he's awake enough to know that nothing is actually wrong.

He lowers Alucard the rest of the way into the bath, reaching for a washcloth they're not too attached to. It'll be fine, but- it won't feel like it. Even if it makes no sense, it won't end up being used again for anything but this sort of thing. And softly, he begins washing Alucard down. ]

You can do this yourself, if you'd prefer.

Should've taken you up on the coffee.

[It wouldn't have changed much. All it would have changed would have been what time Alucard conked out.

He's careful not to move and displace the water too much. Splashing Trevor with contaminated water is strictly not allowed, and even that washcloth has Alucard worried. There's a hand on top of Trevor's, stilling the motion.]

I can do this much. It's...a little spoiled, otherwise, I think.

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