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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[Alucard shouldn't have her in his arms like this. It isn't safe, it isn't good for her recovery. That swoon is all the indicator that he needs to know better. But oh, she's in his arms, snug and warm and safe. He doesn't move her from his arms, he has her there.

(It's always been the opposite in the past, hasn't it?)

The French that spills forth from her lips is kissed after every breath.]

I know. This house was not the same without it's hearthfire, it was wrong.

[Safe. She's safe. Alucard is holding her and she can see, she can breathe, there are no claws bared, no stink of magic in the air, no shatter of mirror shards. She's safe, and he is holding her, and he's not going to let her go. He's not going to have to.

This is where she belongs.]

And now...?

[She laughs softly, a weak and wryly stuttering thing.]

I'm barely an ember right now, if that.

But you are home.

[Everything else can be fixed. Alucard buries his face in the top of her head, breathing in the smell of her. Letting hair tickle is nose, feeling himself trying to memorize every inch of her. (He has it committed to memory already.)

He shifts so that she can lie down again. But he goes down beside her, refusing to release his grip.]

Tomorrow I'll carry you to the library.

I can hardly hold a fork, much less a book.

[But when she's lying down again, the sigh that escapes her is one that seems to take all the tension in her body with it, causing something in her to deflate and leaving her pleasantly boneless in his arms.]

...Do something for me?

A different set of walls to look at. More windows.

[It is a fright to see her like this. Soft and boneless in his arms is one thing, welcome and happy and lovely when he or Trevor or both are the cause of it. But for simply sitting up and kissing him, that's so very wrong.]

Whatever you ask, it will be done.

Touch me. Like you did before.

[She lets her head list to the side, looking at him softly.]

So I know that it's you, and you're here.

Sypha.

[He breathes out her name. It is a sigh lost to the happiness of the request, and oh, he knows better. His mother would yell at him for doing any of this, because it is too much exertion.

But who is he to deny that request? His hands move as she asks, one starting at her middle and then moving carefully down to her hip. The other, it can only go to caress her cheek. To run under her jaw, to let him tip it up just slightly so he can press kisses there.

He's here. He's here, he's here, he's here.]

[He's here. He's here, here, here, and so is she, it's a mattress beneath her and not an oiled wooden floor, blankets and not evil magic, Alucard's hands on her instead of a manacle on her ankle. He's here, the brush of his hair on her skin, his fingertips tracing circles against her, his lips pressing kisses to her cheek.

He's here. He's here, he's here, and she's home. She's not missing any longer. She's safe, she's not lost, she's not dead like the other Speakers who'd laid atop that same sigil and wasted away, sapped of everything they had and then ripped to pieces for the rest, scared and alone and separated from the people they loved.

The people who love her are here. Alucard is here. Trevor is here.

A breath hitches in her chest, chokes up to the back of her throat, and all of a sudden she's crying and she doesn't want to be but she is, and there's no helping it.]

[When they are beyond this, when the physical part of recovery is complete, Alucard will sit and vow the necromancer's destruction with too much of his father's anger in those words. He will acknowledge that fact, put his trust in Trevor to prevent the worst of it from surfacing, and this matter will be seen to once and for all. The man will be, in the end, Sypha's to do as she sees fit, but he will do everything in his power to make it possible.

For now the only requirement of what he must be is all that Sypha demands of him. Himself. Present and attentive and now kissing the flow of tears from her eyes, ignoring the taste of salt and just letting his presence be known. It won't make them stop, they need to come out in one go for Sypha's own well being.

He can't offer the right words. Alucard is not a Speaker, he never will be. Action, action is all he is good at and that means making it clear how stupidly devoted the vampire is.]

[At first, her weeping comes soft and silent, the sort of crying that they could both pretend wasn't really happening, were it not for the taste of salt on his lips when he continues to kiss her cheek despite them. Then, gradually, it escalates, moving down from her eyes and into her throat, shuddering breaths that drag whimpers from her lungs, that gather up all of the pain and the fear and the misery of the past week and force it out of her, trembling the whole way down.

She hadn't cried, not once, when she was taken. She'd barely even made a sound, and he'd mocked her for that — a silent Speaker, cat got your tongue, little bird? — but now she is home and her words have been given back to her, and it's finally safe to cry because Alucard is here, she can reel from the horror and let it make her as sick as it deserves to, and she's safe because Alucard is here.

Eventually, the crying turns into sobbing — full-throated, heaving, ugly things, and when that happens she musters up all her strength and rolls into him until she's able to bury her face against his chest, head tucked beneath his chin, and let him surround her. Crying like that, she knows she must be near the end of the emotion that's prompted it. Now it's just a matter of letting it all out, and knowing that Alucard's hands will continue to hold her together even as she threatens to fall to pieces, just for this little while.]

[There is a point where all of Sypha's tears become impossible to kiss away. There are too many, and she shudders and the real pain is let out.

His arms are still around her as the first sob shudders. His face is buried into the top of her head, kisses pressed into wherever he can reach. Alucard remembers when things were reversed, when he sobbed himself hoarse from grief and she moved her hands over him, warming and soft and reassuring, powered by her intent not to simply keep him warm, but keep him tethered.

He does not think of payback or fair exchange, but he thinks of those moments all the same, his hands cooler, his embrace pressing her as close to him as possible. She will likely sleep after this, all spent from exertion, and then he'll hold her fast for a few hours more. Trevor will join them because that's how these moments always go.

Alucard rubs her back at some point, traces gentle and calming circles, doesn't dare do anything else.]

Don't let go of me.

[It's such a horrible thing to say to him, she realizes belatedly. It's such an awful thing, when so much of his guilt is wrapped up in precisely that, in trying to hold on to her and failing and hurting her on top of it. Now he'll be thinking of it, now he'll be reliving it, maybe, and yet she couldn't stop if she tried, couldn't make herself keep from curling her fingers into his shirt and pressing up flush against him if she tried.

She's not alone. Every understanding of safety and family and purpose that she has comes linked to the state of being connected with others; every fear has its roots in isolation. Alucard is with her, holding her, and she needs that more than anything. He loves her, and she needs the sort of love that only he can offer, the possessive snarling love that keeps her so close that she couldn't possibly dream of believing that she's alone.]

Say my name. Say something, anything. Be real. Be here, so I can't forget.

[Don't let go of me she says and he doesn't. Sypha is flush against him, close as they can be without venturing into more physical embraces. Don't let go of me she says and his arms are as tight as he feels is safe. Don't let go of me and Alucard finds it the easiest thing in the world to set aside the guilt he has for putting those terrible clawmarks on her arms because Sypha has asked this of him and he cannot deny her anything. Not that it wasn't true before, but now, now it has a new and greater urgency.

But she asks for words, and for a few moments, the only thing he can say is her name. Sighed with every breath, the intonation still so scared, still so relieved at her presence, still so caught up it is as if he is reliving the moment of finding her again and again and again and again and.

It is unfair to force that thoughts upon her. So Alucard tries so hard to say something. Anything.]

I'm not one of your people, I could never say the right words. Compose an aretalogy of all your deeds and have it read correctly, with epitaphs that suit you and only you. Call you the right things that become story, become legend, because that's how this ends for you after a very, very long life. [Nothing ends here.] I can say you're the only fire I'll hold so tightly and maybe that's all I can manage in a poetic enough way. Everything else falls away and forces me silent because you are beyond every word I could hope to even think of afixing to you.

[He breathes out, repeating her name again.]

[It doesn't matter if the words aren't right. (They are, but it wouldn't matter even if they weren't.) It's enough to hear him breath her name like a sigh, Sypha Sypha Sypha, not a thing and not an it but a girl with a name and a home and a heart big enough to hold two families in it.

But he gets them right, not because they're carefully crafted the way that a Speaker would but because they aren't. They're clumsy and trip over themselves like he always does, like the look in his eyes when she'd tricked him into holding her hand.

(Because what she'd really needed is to know that it's him, and he's here. Perfect words couldn't do that. Alucard's words could.)

Her head is tucked pleasantly under his chin, her lips near his collarbone. It's easy and natural, somehow, to part them and mouth lightly against his skin.]

...An aretalogy.

[After all the crying, her humor is wrung-out and thin. But there's a spark of it there, like the last glowing ember in a coal that still stands a chance of rekindling itself into a blaze.]

...An epic was too basic.

[He isn't a poet, but he is well read thank you very much Sypha.

That isn't the point (but it is, if he's going to have to do this it is going to be as obscure and pretentious as he can be to make up for a lack of skill). The point is that she can give him shit. Tears will keep coming, he's accepted that, it'll be true for some time yet but she is giving him shit. Actively and with a laugh trying to claw it's way to the surface.

It is a wonder.]

I don't question the form, only the implication.

[It's half-mumbled, preoccupied as she is with her slow open-mouthed kisses that are more about a need to touch him in some small and insignificant way than any attempt at escalating into passion.

The conclusion comes at length, but eventually it comes.]

You're calling me a goddess.

[Alucard cannot mind anything half mumbled when it is for the best reason. He holds his own mouth open, careful as he moves because this always requires careful attention so that fangs do not draw blood. Sypha's current state means that she is far less alert for these things than she ought to be, so he has double the responsibility.

(And it lets her be in charge. Set the pace. Make the world work on her terms. Alucard can't imagine anything she needs more in this moment.)]

Too high of a pedestal?

Is that how you think of me?

[She closes her eyes but doesn't draw away, leaving her lips resting just barely against his skin.]

Your goddess?

Maybe not quite the right word but...

[There has been a very quiet revelation in all of this. Alucard takes one of Sypha's hands and moves it up his chest gently. Presses it to over his heart, and he makes sure it stays there. It must be there for this.]

You have had my life in your hands since you bid me wait at the crossroads. Everything is yours. I don't think there are known words for something like that, what to call someone who holds every fiber of yourself so completely.

...You told me once that I couldn't give up my life just to stay by your side.

[She nudges lightly against his jawline, mouthing along the sleek line of it, as she lets him bring her hand to rest over his heart, over his scars.

Two scars, now. One from his mother. One from her.]

I won't let you give me your whole life. You have to keep some for yourself.

[...]

And for Trevor.

[It's the first time her hand has brushed against the new one. There's no tenderness from the wound, it healed as soon as the ichor still stuck in it was removed. It is as dull and as dead as the one from his father, without the extended recovery period.

She's right, in the end. The hand that guided hers there linger, thumb stroking over the pulse point of Sypha's wrist.]

Of course.

[But Trevor wouldn't be here and as loved as he is without those crossroads either. It's never escaped Alucard that of all the places to meet, the Speaker had picked a place that couldn't be drenched with more symbolism.]

But you wanted me to answer your question. Did I?

So long as you don't start to worship me.

[But then she hesitates, just for a moment, and a faint spark of that same attempt at levity struggles to make itself known.]

Well. At least...not most of the time.

[With her free hand, she reaches up and catches him by the back of the head, drawing him in close to her neck in unmistakable invitation to kiss.]

Like this...perhaps.

[Like this, and he can only do as Sypha asks. He never kisses either of their necks without their say so, although he is far more cautious about the matter around Trevor than around Sypha. When he does do so, he is as careful as he can possibly be.

Now is one of the moments for such care. Alucard's lips brush over Sypha's skin, lingering in one spot for just a second or two before moving on. To venture up or down is not something he does, not yet. He lingers over where her pulse sounds the strongest, and kisses with each heartbeat.

She's alive and she's here and he can hear that organ beating strongly. And then all gentle kisses become something stronger.]

It's all right.

[It feels as though she has to say that somehow, the same way she had to invite him to hold her, the same way she had to guide him to kiss her. Alucard is being so careful with her, so respectful, and deep down she knows that his moderation here is more than just deliberate — it's a gift to her, the agency to control how this goes even if it's on some very slim level to affect.

He's holding back, and part of her wishes he wouldn't, and part of her recognizes the sweet courtesy for what it is. So she has to invite this, encourage this, so that he knows. So that he won't stop, because she doesn't want him to stop.]

Please. I don't need you to be perfect. I only need you to be real.

How else would you ask me to prove it?

[Sypha is not wrong. All of this, asking, having her guide, it is ensuring she has control back in her hands after being so long without. It feels as if it is the easiest place to attend to unseen wounds, to not only assure her she is back in an environment that loves her to the ends of the Earth, but to make it clear she has control over it.

He's trained the castle to let the two of them in even when he is not home. Vaguely, Alucard wonders if something tangible would be in order, but the thought is dislodged. His kisses finally move beyond the pulse point on Sypha's neck, they travel up to her jawline and then down again.

The other reason he is holding back is to not overwhelm her. Even affection has to be carefully managed at first. There are things she's not strong enough for, not yet, and that's when the whole of this shall be let out.]

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