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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Fourteen...

[She means to be quiet and listen while he tells his story, really, but she can't help but keep up a word or two of commentary as his recollection starts to paint a picture in her mind. The great ugly things, planes — she's never been on one, either, but she can imagine how unsettling they must be, climbing into one and being launched so high off the ground with nothing beneath you. That's not the way that travel is supposed to work, not like trains and riverboats and cars where there's the security of the earth underneath.

But there's love there, too, and she pays attention to that as well. That Trevor loves the sky, because it feels like it was made for him, what he was meant to do. At least, it did back then.

If she were to retell this story, she muses silently, she would make very sure to put emphasis on that.]

What does it feel like? To...take off. Isn't it frightening, to go up and know there is nothing beneath you?

You think it will be. They prepare you for it to be. They give you rules to follow, so that you don’t have to think enough to be afraid, but just do what you’re told. And you’re good at that, so they like you. And you’re cleverer than they expected a boy with no schooling that’d give you a slip of paper at the end of it to be, and you turn out to be not-too-shitty with machines, and so they like you even more, and they put you into the sky by the end of the month.

[ He’s just letting words fall out of him, not really filtering them too much. It’s- a new experience, and it’s so tempting to hesitate and consider his words better. Find something better to say. But he made a promise, and he cannot lie, and maybe too many words is better than too few. ]

When you run, there’s a moment in each step when neither of your feet are on the ground, and if you tilt in just the slightest you’ll come down wrong. It’s- a little like that, but more. Further to fall. More time for shit to go wrong. All of your insides want to stay on the ground, and it feels a little like your brains are dribbling down into your boots, and your head goes too light to be afraid of anything at all. And it’s cold. They wrap you up in so many layers, even though it’s only just september, and you only understand why when you’re there and you see your breath come out in puffs. And the air is wrong, you have to breathe in so much more of it to make your lungs pay attention and stop fucking whining. But it’s a whole world of your very own, and that’s worth just about all of it.

...I never thought about it being cold.

[Almost instinctively, she leans more firmly into him, as if subconsciously offering the same warmth of her own body heat that he and Alucard always complain about. It's less than needed in the New Orleans heat than it would be high above the ground in a plane, perhaps. But still, she offers it, and hangs on his every word.

It doesn't escape her notice, the way he's chosen to tell the story to her. You do this. You're fourteen years old. It's not the usual way that people tell stories, naturally, and it stands out just enough that she can't help but remark on it.]

You tell stories like a Speaker.

[No, wait.]

No — like you're used to telling them to one.

It’s freezing up there, even if it’s warm on the ground. Frost forms everywhere. They make you wear three pairs of socks, until your boots barely fit anymore.

[ It’s too warm, but he pulls her tight against him. Tighter, when she finishes that thought. He can’t lie. Because of the order, yes, but also because he owes her so, so much for this. But at the same time- this is a difficult topic. The wonder at flight is gone from his voice. ]

Hearing them from one. [ He corrects, then shakes his head. ] No- a little of both.

I'm glad that they did. Your feet would look funny without toes.

[Hmmm. That sure was a shift in the tenor of the conversation, all right.]

Not the ones around here. One of the European Speakers?

Doves, we called them, because they had to bleach their robes. The blue of them was too similar to the colours of the french. They thought that people wouldn’t shoot them down if it was clear that they were here to help, that they weren’t soldiers. Mud doves.

[ But that’s not an answer, is it? It’s just information, being given to stall for time. ]

Yeah. One of the Europeans.

People always call us birds. Because we sing, and we travel in groups, and never stay long in one place. Well, except me.

[She closes her eyes, trying to imagine it. The faces of her family, wrapped up in snow-white robes instead of the blue that had taken Alucard a whole day to painstakingly match when he'd replaced hers, early on. How dirty they must've gotten, snow-white and showing every stain. The proof of their devotion to their cause, draped over their bodies.]

Why does it make you sad?

I’m not sa-

[ The last word catches in his throat as if it were covered in hooks. No lying. Shit. ]

You’re not the first speaker I’ve asked this of.

You asked another Speaker to carry a gun for you.

[There's something to that, and it'll hit her in a minute, but for the moment she's stuck on the notion on its face, and not the deeper implications.

Not yet, at least. But they're there.]

I cannot imagine that went well. That's why you thought you knew how I would react, when you asked me. You'd been through the same conversation before, with someone else.

I did.

[ He sighs, and he hides his face in Sypha’s hair. She wears it the same way. They all fucking wear it the same way. ]

They didn’t fucking care for the idea. And then they died. And they were the last of their caravan, so nobody came to claim the body.

...You know that, too.

[He knows the significance, knows what it means to have no one left to take a Speaker's remains. It means they died alone, with no one, and faded from history because there was no one there to remember the important things. No one to take the Speaker's name, their last story, their dying words. No one to remember where they were laid to rest at last. No one. No one.

Alone.

It's the worst feeling in the word, sometimes, to be alone. To die alone is even worse.

(She remembers the bloody blue scrap of fabric in the necromancer's basement. The way the sigil was built right into the floor to steal away her magic. The way he would change his vocal cadence when he talked to her, singsong syllables and thoughts in threes. Speaker tricks, to make things easier to remember. To make the things he said impossible to forget.)

She doesn't realize she's shaking until after she's already been at it a while, and when she tries to stop, it doesn't work very well.]

Not even you? You didn't...claim it.

Couldn’t. He didn’t want me in his story. Last thing he ever told me.

[ The speaker has gained a gender, and that was a slip. A too-emotional one.

She’s trembling, and- fuck it. There’s more cake. He can make more tea. He can clean up the mess and tell Alucard to just fucking deal with the broken dishes. He kicks the tray off the bed so that he doesn’t have to worry about it, then (carefully, so carefully) pulls Sypha so she’s on top of him, so he can coil his body around hers like armour. ]

Bad time for that story, maybe. We’re here. We’re both here. You’re here with us.

[It probably comes as no surprise that she cries out softly when the dishes and tea go cascading to the floor and shatter, practically jumping out of her skin at the sound, and it's only Trevor's arms circling around her that keep her steady as he pulls her in close. There are moments, sometimes, when this is the only way she feels safe — when someone has her wrapped up and held, and she can still see, and there's something soft beneath her that isn't a curse etched into the floor.

She doesn't say anything for a little while, letting herself calm down as best she can. It doesn't work very well, but he's trying, and so she is too.]

...I can show you. How we. We have a ceremony, for when there is no body to save.

[They can do it together, she thinks. Trevor for his mud dove. Her for the ones who died in the necromancer's basement, afraid and alone, and no one ever found them.]

Someone has to sing. I did it once, for a Speaker from another tribe. We joined their train, to be there for it.

[ Okay, so maybe the sudden clatter was a bad idea. But at least it was a controlled sudden clatter, rather than one of them knocking it off out of nowhere. ]

...what would you need to know of him? He wouldn’t want me involved, not for him. But there were others, and I can sing for them, if you need me to.

You make ashes for them. Wood to start with, but then anything you might have left of them, anything that was theirs. It is not a necessary part, the possession, but if you have it, then it is done. The song is an old one, about how mankind was scattered after the fall of the Tower of Babel — it's not difficult to teach.

[She'd learned it quickly, after all. It's a haunting melody, yet an oddly beautiful one. It sings of the stars and the moon, the trees and flowers, the lakes and rivers. Mankind, scattered across the world, and the yearning to come home again.]

There is a place in the song for the Speaker's name. You...you are singing it to them, you see. Calling them back to you, and guiding their memory to the ashes you have made for them. So that when they are scattered again, it is not from being lost. The ritual finds them, so that there are remains to be treated properly.

Arn. His name was Arn.

[ He brings up a hand to stroke Sypha's cheek softly, resting his chin on top of her head, enclosing her as best he can like some sort of Belmont-shaped stacking doll. ]

He didn't have many possessions. Too much of a fucking traditionalist for that. But- I have some things that might work.

We'll find wood, and some white cloth. And then whatever else feels right to add. It will be enough.

[That much, she can say with confidence. If only it were so easy to say that about all uncertain things, and not just this one.]

It's an old ceremony. It came over from Europe. He...would've certainly known it, especially if he was as traditional as you say.

He was the most fucking traditional- I held down a patient for him, once, to stop them from thrashing about while he treated them. And he gave me a hard time for subverting his free will by force. Even that was too close to violence for his delicate fucking sensibilities.

[ He's complaining, but there's fondness to it. Speakers don't compromise on what they believe. None of them do. Sypha hasn't, even now. It's just that what she believes in is a little different from the rest of her people. ]

Once you're back on your feet, then. I- thank you. Everything that's happened, and you're the one who's here fixing my problems, even now. But he'd be grateful. I know he would.

It's not...just for you.

[It's an admission that comes slowly, and with reluctance. She could've just accepted his thanks and left it alone, and closed her eyes, and drowsed like this in his arms. It would have been fine, and that could have been that.

But he's shared something with her that she knows, deep down, he probably didn't want to. How there had been moments when he would have lied or dodged, except that she'd told him to tell the truth. And maybe that's what makes her want to give back, in her own way. To make herself vulnerable, like he is.

(That's a lie. It's not about him, no matter how much she might try to rationalize it. It's because she wants to confess to someone, and right now he's a willing, captive audience.) ]

In the basement. There were...other Speakers he took, before me. I don't know their names. But I want to give them the peace of being remembered, too.

Oh.

[ He can't hold her much tighter. Not without hurting her. But god, he wants to. To open up his chest and pull her into the cavity of it and keep her safe. And he wants to run out, now, and track down the necromancer and get the vampire killer about his neck and pull and pull until he hears something snap.

He does neither. Either would be selfish. Either would be for him and not for her, and she matters and he doesn't now more than ever. He just kisses the top of her head before returning his chin to resting upon it. Safe. She's safe. And until she wants something else, that is all that matters. ]

Do you need their names, for the song? I can try to learn them, but-

[ -but perhaps a list of the names of people who died in that room is really, really not what she needs right now. ]

No. I will do it without. I —

[She hesitates. It's a rare moment for her, a Speaker, to know exactly what she wants to say but still feel the words sticking in her throat, thick and wrong and hard to dislodge.]

...I want to believe it was already done for them. By their families who lost them. I don't want to think of them down there with no one to miss them or mourn them.

I understand.

[ There's a long pause. Perhaps he should clean up the mess he made. But that would mean letting go of Sypha. And that would be wrong right now. ]

We won't let him do this to anyone else. You know that, yes? This will happen again, but it won't be him. You'll be the last of your people who he does harm to. I will find him, and Al- [ No. Not now. Even if he'll perhaps never be Adrian to Trevor again, that's who he ought to be to Sypha. ] -Adrian will kill him. And you will burn the body. Burn his work. Burn every mark he made on the world away. And then we will forget him.

[ 'I have never known a Trevor Belmont'. ]

We will have never known a forgemaster who called himself a Doctor.

[Once upon a time there was a Speaker named Arn who was in Trevor's war, a mud dove, who wore white and had delicate fucking sensibilities and didn't want Trevor to be a part of his story anymore, and it's the very particular and deliberate way that Trevor pronounces his Speaker's curse on the necromancer that makes her realize where he must have heard it before.

You're going to hate it, he'd said. You'll kick me out of the bed, he'd expected. It makes her wonder if some part of him had sat there, petrified, already wounded and kicked and bruised from an identical conversation with a different Speaker, waiting for her to not just force him from her bed but to erase him from her life as well.

And yet.

And yet he'd loved her so much, wanted her to be safe so much, that he'd risked it anyway. Because Trevor will always destroy himself first, for the sake of the people he loves.]

Will you make me forget?

[The scars on her arms will still be there. The memories of the bruises will remain. But the necromancer's words don't have to. No matter how much he might want them to.]

Will you love me as hard as you can, until his memory is gone?

If I could make you do anything, I wouldn't be stuck telling you stories. Now would I?

[ He can't lie. Even if he could, he can't make promises that he can't keep. ]

We'll never speak his name again. We'll track down every caravan that lost a member in the city and tell them that the monster is gone and to remember their lost friend but forget the thing that hurt them. But- no matter what we do, some part of you might remember. Some nights you'll wake up, and it'll take a moment to realize that you're there and not here. Maybe sometimes we'll touch you, and there'll be just a few seconds when you try to put a fucking icicle into us. I- nothing I can do will change that.

But we can give you better things to remember. Happier things. Enough of them to drown those out and keep them rare. And when they happen we can sit with you and hold onto you until you're grounded and you know for sure that you're here with us. And they'll happen less and less, then. Until they happen so rarely that they may as well be gone forever.

...I would feel bad, if I stabbed you with an icicle.

[For all that his promises are touching and sweet, perhaps the most revitalizing thing about them is the way that they edge her toward humor. It's been hard to find the will to smile lately, much less laugh, but with Trevor it feels like the beginnings of spring stirring beneath the thick blanket of winter.]

Even though I suppose you would probably appreciate it, with how often you complain of the heat here.

20s AU Post

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