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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Only good thing he ever did was force me to take you in, which is something I had months to head off at the pass anyway.

[The sentence is muttered, and Alucard realizes he shouldn't have said it but. He sighs at the gesture. It's stupid and tender and everything they don't get to be right now.]

Don't apologize for doing the smart thing which was exactly this. [This is good information to know for the future anyway.] Call me when you're at Agatha's.

...Oh, on that note, there is one more thing I'm bringing back. You can wait and see what that is.

[ On the note of 'he never did anything right', anyway. The book of letters in which he blames his first failure to levitate as a new vampire on only drinking chicken blood instead of eagle is delightful, and he's petty enough to not care much for speaking ill of the dead in this instance. They can laugh at his misfortune. ]

I will.

[ He doesn't, in the end. It's Agatha who calls, because Trevor just about passed out the second he entered her house. He's alive, everything he retrieved is safe at the church, and goodness no she will not be waking him up.

Come evening he's still exhausted and sore, but he's also scrubbed raw with more salt to wash away the worst of the stuff he's doused himself in for protection. Sypha's gone through his protection spells, unraveling each one carefully, and he's been piled into the back seat of her car. The demon is well enough, if highly offended, and the car stalls three times before Sypha manages to threaten it into action.

He doesn't make any attempt to seek out Alucard when he returns home, instead heading straight for his own room and toppling into his bed. Sypha'll let Alucard know he's home and safe. ]

[After Trevor dismisses the mirror, Alucard returns to bed just long enough to ensure Sypha isn't facing too many hours alone. She curls atop him immediately, and Alucard holds her tightly until the first rays of sun pass into the windows. At that point he tucks her in, replacing himself with a pillow, and then goes about getting ready for the day.

He's just walked in from grocery shopping when Agatha calls, and Sypha's the one who ends up at Agatha's house. Alucard hates that dearly, and it means he spends the day pacing and waiting. Waiting and pacing. Eventually he forces himself outside, searching for yew trees, only to realize there's old furniture made of the stuff inside. And maybe it feels good to destroy and burn something after this shitty morning.

Alucard knows Trevor is home because the house tells him so. There's already a jar of yew ash on the bedside table, and soon enough, there's a vampire in the doorway too. One polite enough to knock and ask:]

May I come in?

Mmbph.

[ That's apparently the sound of 'yes' when one's face is buried in a pillow. He turns onto his back instead, gasping in air through gritted teeth as doing so agitates the great nasty cut on his side.

(He's become a little better at expressing when shit hurts, now that the castle is home, and his response to just moving is about as dramatic as his muted reaction to packing the cut with salt was when he was somewhere less safe. It's probably a mixed blessing for Alucard and Sypha. On the one hand, they know what's going on. On the other, there's a lot of shit he's been really good at hiding that he isn't anymore.) ]

Yeah, come in. Just promise you'll leave if you catch fire or something from being close to me.

[He was inside at the first noise. Alucard hasn't had any foresight of what to bring with him, but he has on a thick pair of gloves (unbearable in the south but they have their uses.)

That gasp has him at Trevor's side in a moment. There's a terrible whiff of something that makes his eyes water (oil is terribly hard to get off, after all), but he chokes down any further reaction.]

Let me see.

[The wound, he means.]

These are the kinds of gloves I wear for hauling around wood after storms. I don't own anything thicker.

Oh, for fuck's sake. You're not planning to-

[ At least he has gloves on. Trevor sighs, pulling up his shirt (it's clean. Since they gave the city his name, he's got into the habit of leaving a set of clean clothes basically anywhere he might end up going in an emergency) to reveal the bandaged injury. It's- the medical term would be 'a big fucking mess', even just the parts visible around the wound itself, still dressed and bandaged. The skin is an angry red in the area immediately around it, and then discolored by what is hopefully bruising across that entire side of his body, anywhere that that chill touched. ]

-be careful. Anointing oil is powerful stuff when it's from a good church.

[There's a sharp gasp of horror as Trevor lifts his shirt. Alucard's own terminology would be that's disgusting if he had to put a fine point on it, but for a moment, he just stares. Even from beyond the fucking grave Damien's found a new way to make their lives hell, and this is truly remarkable.

Alucard reaches over to just touch at the bandages, he wants to change them, but then there's a horrible hiss from himself, followed by a full recoil.

Powerful through thick work gloves.]

...Yes. Seemingly.

[He spits the words out. Good that this works, horrible for this injury.]

[ He sighs. ]

I just told you-

[ But the scolding dies on his lips, because honestly he deserves this kind of telling off far more often than Alucard does and he'd rather not make it the norm. He looks up in concern. It's lucky that he only touched the bandages, but that still sounded awful. ]

How bad is it?

Your arrow wound? It's hard for me to tell, but you should be changing the bandages anyway.

[Alucard has to back up a few feet before he takes off one of the gloves. What greets him is the smell of slightly burnt flesh, all pink and raw from the little bit of contact he endured.]

My hand has a second degree burn, it seems.

I meant the hand.

[ He has a strong understanding of how bad the arrow wound is, thanks. It's fucking horrible. ]

Shit. Sorry. The effectiveness of this shit comes from how well the church it's from serves its people and- well. You've seen how hard the babas work for the church's congregation. [ Every Sunday School lesson. Every cake baked. Every lonely person visited or hungry person fed makes their tools stronger. There's a reason that it took a group of nosy old do-gooders to act as the city's most feared hunters. ] Good to know how badly it'll fuck someone up, at least.

That's the only comfort here.

[He puts the glove back on rather than focus on the disgusting result of the oil. While Trevor's right, it is good to know how effective the stuff is, it is a huge issue at the moment. Alucard breathes out, using his non-burnt gloved hand to rub at the bridge of his nose.]

I was able to find enough yew that if we need to clean the wound out again, we can, but...it needs to be sewn shut, doesn't it?

[ No sense in lying. Even if this is inconvenient in every possible way. ]

Yeah. It's- Needed to change the dressing three times today, not counting after the bath. Probably best to sew it.

[ He really, really should have asked Agatha to do it while he was with her. He's regretting not doing that now. ]

Fucking hand won't fucking move right, though.

[Alucard is all set and prepared to comment about getting the wound sewn shut, but he's cut off by the hand comment. To hell with the scent of the oil, this is concerning. He walks back over, looking at Trevor's hand.]

Elaborate.

[Because if his hand isn't working, he can't do much of anything. That renders all of them vulnerable.]

[ And he turns his right hand over, the same side that the arrow hit, revealing more of that discoloration travelling down the inside of the arm, up until about halfway up his fingers. It had been all the way to his fingertips earlier, so it's definitely improved. ]

Nothing worth worrying over, just inconvenient. Been improving over the day, but I couldn't hold a needle with it right now. And I can't reach well enough to sew it with my left.

Is that how far the sensation of the iron reached?

[Alucard moves to take the hand, not to hold it, but to examine it. He stops himself, and this is another reminder of how much he loathes their current situation. There's a curse on his lips, and Alucard moves to sit on both of his hands for it.]

You can't sew, and I can't touch you at all. Sypha's managed to sew me up but she was also burning my flesh...

No.

[ It's flat. He's not budging on that point. ]

I'd take the burning flesh, honestly. But I'd sooner not contaminate her. It's-

[ -an emotional thing. At the end of the day, Alucard needs physical contact more than he does. He needs to be able to touch at least one of them. This isn't emergency enough to justify taking that from him. ]

-the fucking car. It wasn't happy just having me in the back seat. Imagine the fuss it'd make if she were trying to drive it with this stuff on her hands.

While it's good to know the car is a reasonable detector of danger levels from your defenses, that doesn't leave us with a solution of how to fix this situation.

[He sounds stressed. That's because he is, and there is no hiding it from Trevor.]

Fuck.

Shitty situation.

[ He smiles in sympathy. It's not been that long since the situations were reversed. The wounds were just internal back then, and the lack of touching enforced only by words and not by pain. ]

It'll be fine. We can leave it for tonight, I can just keep changing the dressing, and you can ask one of the babas to come here in the morning. They want to talk to you anyway, about all this Carmilla business.

Yes, let's leave you with a gaping side wound so you can turn in your sleep and make it bleed worse in the night.

[He's sinking into angry sass, which says everything about the situation. Alucard's hands are grabbing at his own shirt sleeves now, pulling much too tightly. Anger's easy right now, and it means Alucard misses that smile.]

And yes, Agatha called to make sure you got home, mentioned it then but...

[Alucard snaps his fingers suddenly.]

Stay where you are.

[He's...nyooming. At vampire speed.]

[ He just sighs, starting work on undoing the bandages. The dressing will need changing no matter what, and he can ask Alucard to bring him a fresh one once he's done with- whatever he's doing. Dramatic fucking vampire.

The cut is messy and jagged. It should have been cleaner, but he was reaching around his body using his wrong hand to try to fish out an arrowhead because fucking vampires using fucking bows and fucking arrows in the twentieth fucking century. The skin around it is a furious red from the scrubbing and the salt, and the cut itself is closed by dry blood, but opening to weep a little with any movement more dramatic than lying back on the bed. ]

Half of me is actually paralyzed right now. I think 'stay where you are' goes without saying.

[ ...he says that, but he was still going about a vampire's house while half paralyzed. ]

[Alucard returns with several things. The first is a bucket of water, steaming hot. It is for sterilization. With him on his belt is a kit of bandages and gauze, and hovering over his shoulder is a tiny needle already threaded. His stupid experiment worked. Which means he can at least fix this stupid problem without touching Trevor.

He kneels at Trevor's side, motions for him to inch closer. The bucket is placed down on the floor, Alucard grabs the jar of yew ash just in case.

From where he sits, he can at least assess the wound better than before. It's worse than he expected, and it looked pretty bad earlier. Salting a wound will do that, and so will iron.]

I cannot articulate how much I hate this right now.

[The needle is dipped into the bucket to sterilize it properly.]

I'm going to make a paste of the yew ash and ask you to apply it first, understood?

You've been articulating how you can't articulate it for a while, now.

[ He shuffles closer as best he can, until he's as close to the edge of the bed as he dares to get when he can't stop himself from falling off and Alucard will almost certainly burn himself trying to catch him. ]

Understood.

I suppose I have, haven't I? [He says it softly, with a twinge of embarrassment. It's a sign of how stressed he is, repeating himself like a broken record.

Alucard moves on from that, reaching for the ashes. He then realizes he needs something to mix them in, and he leaves the room for just a few minutes more. He returns with a small, shallow dish, and he dumps the ashes into it first. Then adds just a little of the sterile water, and takes off the glove of his non-burnt hand. Mixes it all carefully, then holds it out near Trevor's hands.]

Smear this on both the skin around the wound and into it first.

[ He takes the dish, taking care not to let his skin get too close to Alucard's. The paste is similar to ones Enid used to mix for them (blackthorn ash and holy water, to be smeared in a thick layer over injuries from a vampire's claws and allowed to dry before being peeled away and buried in a churchyard). It's- all of this is familiar, in truth. Comforting in the stupidest way possible.

Less comforting is the task of working the paste into the cut. It's a highly unpleasant process, made moreso by the fact that he needs to use the most distant hand for it. He gasps and swears, but finally succeeds. ]

Fuck. Done, I think.

[Alucard watches Trevor's hand carefully. He has to sit on his own so he doesn't try to help. There are moments when his arms twitch, compulsion to help. Because this is forcing more pain onto Trevor, and he shouldn't be doing this.

But here they are. Trevor doused in annoited oil, Alucard repelled, and injury making the matter too complicated.

Once Trevor's done, Alucard gets as close as he can. Observes the work, then nods.]

Okay. I'm going to start sewing. You need to stay still, because this is all mental for me. I can't hold you steady.

[The needle floats up out of the sterlized water. It dangles over where the work must begin.]

Ready?

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