[ The speaker's eyes are still closed when she stands, placing a hand softly on Alucard's head. The castle can try to offer comfort, right now. It has the capacity. It has the speaker's memories and knows what comfort is. ]
I wish to be what I was. [ It's using Sypha's voice, but Sypha would never have such difficulties with words. It pauses between each one, struggling to speak in a human tongue. ] At your side or at your father's.
She would. But she is not here. She will not return.
[ The castle's tone doesn't change - that's a human subtlety that it can't even begin to manage. But the energy of the building swells with some sort of feeling.
The castle does sit, at least, even if it struggles a little with the concept. Butt on bed, it manages. It can't quite figure out what one does with the legs. Eventually it gathers them up against its chest, using them to shield its spinning heart. That is probably what one uses legs for. ]
I refuse to die. Should the speaker be the price of that, so be it.
[Alucard at least walks over and gets Sypha's legs lying down. Tucks her back in again. She's warm and cold in all the worst ways and it needs to stop.]
No. Nor will he. But I would have you honor her wishes, above mine or his.
It's expanded itself since Alucard was here last, but it's still nowhere as large as it was. It takes a minute or so to reach the door, and by this time Trevor is hammering on the thing. ]
Sypha! Sypha, open up! Shit, what's wrong?
[ The doors have never kept him out before. This has to mean that Sypha's got sicker, right? ]
[ Trevor looks exhausted. He is exhausted. Even as close as they can safely manage the journey's a long one, and he tries to make it back after his work without rest so as to not leave Sypha alone too long while she's ill.
He's also splattered with blood and ash, though he doesn't seem to be injured enough for it to be his own. ]
You're back.
[ For a single, unguarded moment he sounds happy about that, reaching out to touch Alucard's shoulder for a few seconds before he remembers how fucking furious he is with this vampire. He repeats himself, more businesslike. ]
[Alucard is nothing but business. The ice well that another Sypha in another time described him as. Wanting to move through this and then be done. Done with these two at least. The castle too, although that thought adds a new level of guilt. Done with everything. He can go be a wolf in the woods and forget he was ever anything but.]
I will leave when that is concluded, presuming the circumstances do not destroy me first. I have a plan if you are willing to listen.
[ Is he 'the circumstances'? There is a 90% chance he is the circumstances. ]
I'm listening.
[ He's listening while working, at least, tossing a heavy bag down in the entrance way and fishing through it to retrieve a tiny bundle of wax cloth. He stands again, gesturing to a doorway that wasn't there when Alucard was here last. A laboratory, the castle helpfully provides. ]
[Alucard ignores the blood and ash. Ignores everything about Trevor, about the bag. Why there's wax cloth. All of it isn't important.
Moreover, and this is the important part: he doesn't care.}
Fine.
[He doesn't like that doorway. Doesn't like that it means using Sypha's energy.]
The castle needs energy to endure until it exist on it's own. The buildings were fine, but the circumstances changed and it moved to Sypha as a host because of her strong will. But even that is limited, and that is why we are in the current situation now.
If a location in London can be found on or atop a leyline, then all will be well. In the mean time, I can take the castle from her.
[As almost an afterthought, he adds:] I'll have a week at most before that kills me. I'll find a coffin and rest for that week.
Then do it. I'm renting a room from a bunch of spiritualists in the city. That's ungodly enough for the castle, right?
[ He finishes mounting whatever it was he took out of that cloth to a microscope slide and putting it alongside the other thing he was looking at. There's no particular order to it. ]
I'm getting the feeling you're upset about the killing you thing.
I'll have her look at it once she's well enough. I've always had a shitty eye for those things.
[ Okay, that hurts a little. Enough to actually look at Alucard for a moment. He's furious and betrayed, yes, but he'd cared about Alucard before that. Cared about what he'd thought was Alucard, at least. It's stupid, but it's a little shitty to think that that didn't matter. ]
Nothing. Right.
[ He looks away, in the direction of Sypha's room. ]
Go- do whatever you have to do with the heart, then. I've missed dragging a coffin around. Did wonders for my arms.
What did you expect me to do? You could wipe out entire towns if you wanted to, and the only things I can do about that are to kill you or trust that you won't. You've proven that you don't mind hurting people. How the fuck am I supposed to trust you after that?
And you expected me to take blood from an injured man who needed it more.
[He keeps walking.]
If I wanted to wipe out an entire town, I wouldn't have helped your ancestors murder my father. If that isn't enough for your insane Belmont logic, then we will never move beyond this point.
[He's gone after that. A bat. Flying back to Sypha's bed.]
A willing man, yes! That's the only thing that matters.
[ He's just yelling at a bat now. At a bat that's flying away.
It shouldn't matter. Alucard isn't who he thought he was. He's just another person who Trevor doesn't know and whose opinion he shouldn't give a shit about. But it does. Alucard is family. The only family he has left. And to know that the only family you have is too far gone to be allowed to survive-
I wouldn't have helped your ancestors murder my father.
-oh.
He stays there, not following, waiting for Alucard to do whatever needs to be done to get this thing out of Sypha. ]
Then it erupts all at once, shuddering and shaking and all but howling. It's heart has been ripped out of one chest, and it wants to go back, back, back to the source that it knows will keep it alive.
Alucard doesn't care. He holds the heart in his hands, moves it over his chest, snarls that awful feral snarl he heard from his father in the past.]
You made a rash choice already. This is temporary.
[It's just like dragging a kicking and screaming child. That's what Alucard tells himself as he forces the rest of the castle upon himself. Takes it all to heart, and in one awful exhale, tries to force the thing to settle.]
[ Naturally, the castle being a difficult fuck, the castle manifests a coffin that is built into the floor. He couldn't drag it along if he tried. Which means they need to come back here once they find somewhere. Which means they have less time.
Sypha wakes in the morning whole and human and not nearly keen enough, in Trevor's opinion, to start wearing clothes again. He convinces her, fusses over her for the morning, but by afternoon she's impatient to leave even if she isn't really well enough to be walking around yet.
The journey to London is slower with her still recovering. It's three days instead of one with frequent breaks to make sure she's eating a little every hour or so and resting enough. But they're lucky. The spiritualist's house may not have been ungodly enough before Sypha walked into it, but it was certainly ungodly enough after. And the line doesn't run through it, but it runs close enough that static electricity gathers in Sypha's clothes and hair. She'll need to find a way to work off that excess magical energy once she's less drained - right now she probably needs all she can get - but they can figure that out later. The issue is just getting back to Alucard.
Trevor goes alone. They're short on time, and Sypha still isn't well enough to travel quickly and they don't have that much time left. It means leaving her alone in a strange city, which isn't ideal, but she has access to magic enough to hopefully defend herself.
He knocks on the coffin, because that's how you interact with coffins I guess. ]
[ The thing that approaches Alucard, stalking closer and closer, is not Dracula. It is not any part of Dracula that he has ever known. Not the loving father and not the vengeful widower. It's a thing of bones and rotting flesh and ash, the centuries-old corpse of Mathias Cronqvist animated by the grudges of all he hurt.
It moves closer, slowly, shuddering, dissolving into ash around the stake as it reaches out for Alucard.
Something peices through it, stopping a hair's bredth from Alucard before it pulls back. The wraith is lit from within for a moment. And then it burns away from the inside. Burns into ash and a single wedding ring. ]
God- oh god- please tell me I didn't hit you with that. No, you're still there. Good. That's good. I-
[ Juliet's tone drops, and her slightly pannicked babbling fades into quietness. She drags herself into the room, bloody and bruised and one arm hanging broken and useless at her side but still mostly whole. She drops the morning star, moving over to Alucard. Taking his hand with her one good one. ]
-I'm so sorry.
[ She squeezes, then lets the energy leave her. Falls to her knees in exhaustion in the ruined bedroom, extending her arm to Alucard to offer comfort. ]
This was- best for him. If he was the man she loved, if he was more than my family thought he was, he wouldn't have wanted to become this. You did him a kindness.
[In that moment Juliet reaches him, Alucard says nothing. He only takes her hand, trying not to focused on how battered and bruised she is. Or he is for that matter, for the dhampir is just as unsteady as the Belmont, shaking and terrified and so, so beyond any emotion he's experienced before.]
They're both gone.
[He whispers that, and then the memory is no more. Darkness embraces the dhampir, and oh, what a relief that is. It grows heavier as the days pass. Warmer. Safer in it's way, and Alucard is sure it is consuming him. Even as the castle tries not to. Even as it runs on it's lowest setting.
It takes effort to force the coffin lid open. Some of it is from the exhaustion, but the rest is a desire to keep away from the world.
What Trevor sees below him is a skinnier Alucard, flesh hanging from bones, cheeks thin, color all but gone. A vision of what Alucard might be like if he truly took after his father.]
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I wish to be what I was. [ It's using Sypha's voice, but Sypha would never have such difficulties with words. It pauses between each one, struggling to speak in a human tongue. ] At your side or at your father's.
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[He doesn't want comfort. That much Alucard knows, because why does he deserve any of it? He's a patricide. Among so many other errors.]
I can't have you take a life. You know my mother would be furious.
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[ The castle's tone doesn't change - that's a human subtlety that it can't even begin to manage. But the energy of the building swells with some sort of feeling.
The castle does sit, at least, even if it struggles a little with the concept. Butt on bed, it manages. It can't quite figure out what one does with the legs. Eventually it gathers them up against its chest, using them to shield its spinning heart. That is probably what one uses legs for. ]
I refuse to die. Should the speaker be the price of that, so be it.
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No. Nor will he. But I would have you honor her wishes, above mine or his.
[He's firm on at least that much.]
Castle. What if I no longer live? What then?
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I will find a new master. I will reveal myself to the vampires of the world and allow them to go to war over me. Whoever claims me, I will serve them.
[ It goes silent for a while, and then Sypha's body goes still. Once again it speaks solely in information, not words.
The Belmont approaches, it says. Should it bar the doors? ]
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[He's firm about that much and--
ugh.]
Fine. But let me get to the door first. He and I need to speak.
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It's expanded itself since Alucard was here last, but it's still nowhere as large as it was. It takes a minute or so to reach the door, and by this time Trevor is hammering on the thing. ]
Sypha! Sypha, open up! Shit, what's wrong?
[ The doors have never kept him out before. This has to mean that Sypha's got sicker, right? ]
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And then he says to hell with it, and opens the door himself.]
She is as fine as circumstances allow for.
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He's also splattered with blood and ash, though he doesn't seem to be injured enough for it to be his own. ]
You're back.
[ For a single, unguarded moment he sounds happy about that, reaching out to touch Alucard's shoulder for a few seconds before he remembers how fucking furious he is with this vampire. He repeats himself, more businesslike. ]
You're back.
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[Alucard is nothing but business. The ice well that another Sypha in another time described him as. Wanting to move through this and then be done. Done with these two at least. The castle too, although that thought adds a new level of guilt. Done with everything. He can go be a wolf in the woods and forget he was ever anything but.]
I will leave when that is concluded, presuming the circumstances do not destroy me first. I have a plan if you are willing to listen.
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I'm listening.
[ He's listening while working, at least, tossing a heavy bag down in the entrance way and fishing through it to retrieve a tiny bundle of wax cloth. He stands again, gesturing to a doorway that wasn't there when Alucard was here last. A laboratory, the castle helpfully provides. ]
I can listen while I walk.
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Moreover, and this is the important part: he doesn't care.}
Fine.
[He doesn't like that doorway. Doesn't like that it means using Sypha's energy.]
The castle needs energy to endure until it exist on it's own. The buildings were fine, but the circumstances changed and it moved to Sypha as a host because of her strong will. But even that is limited, and that is why we are in the current situation now.
If a location in London can be found on or atop a leyline, then all will be well. In the mean time, I can take the castle from her.
[As almost an afterthought, he adds:] I'll have a week at most before that kills me. I'll find a coffin and rest for that week.
Saves you the trouble if all fails.
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Well, shit.
[ But he can, in fact, listen while working, and he looks over at Alucard. ]
I just need to find a place to put the castle, and- she'll be okay?
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[Alucard stays at the doorway. Wanting to get away.]
Like I said. It won't matter if it all goes to shit after I do that.
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[ He finishes mounting whatever it was he took out of that cloth to a microscope slide and putting it alongside the other thing he was looking at. There's no particular order to it. ]
I'm getting the feeling you're upset about the killing you thing.
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[Alucard ignores the fact that Trevor's order is awful. Nope. No snide comments.]
Belmont, I don't care at this point. I genuinely don't. There is nothing anchoring me to this world, and there has not been for centuries.
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[ Okay, that hurts a little. Enough to actually look at Alucard for a moment. He's furious and betrayed, yes, but he'd cared about Alucard before that. Cared about what he'd thought was Alucard, at least. It's stupid, but it's a little shitty to think that that didn't matter. ]
Nothing. Right.
[ He looks away, in the direction of Sypha's room. ]
Go- do whatever you have to do with the heart, then. I've missed dragging a coffin around. Did wonders for my arms.
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[It's the most he'll admit to noticing the hurt. After that, he begins to walk away.]
Leave the coffin in the castle. If I'm going to die, I'd rather be here. As the stories said I was.
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[ He's talking at Alucard's back, now. ]
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[He keeps walking.]
If I wanted to wipe out an entire town, I wouldn't have helped your ancestors murder my father. If that isn't enough for your insane Belmont logic, then we will never move beyond this point.
[He's gone after that. A bat. Flying back to Sypha's bed.]
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[ He's just yelling at a bat now. At a bat that's flying away.
It shouldn't matter. Alucard isn't who he thought he was. He's just another person who Trevor doesn't know and whose opinion he shouldn't give a shit about. But it does. Alucard is family. The only family he has left. And to know that the only family you have is too far gone to be allowed to survive-
I wouldn't have helped your ancestors murder my father.
-oh.
He stays there, not following, waiting for Alucard to do whatever needs to be done to get this thing out of Sypha. ]
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Then it erupts all at once, shuddering and shaking and all but howling. It's heart has been ripped out of one chest, and it wants to go back, back, back to the source that it knows will keep it alive.
Alucard doesn't care. He holds the heart in his hands, moves it over his chest, snarls that awful feral snarl he heard from his father in the past.]
You made a rash choice already. This is temporary.
[It's just like dragging a kicking and screaming child. That's what Alucard tells himself as he forces the rest of the castle upon himself. Takes it all to heart, and in one awful exhale, tries to force the thing to settle.]
Manifest nothing else save a coffin. I'll rest.
[They liked him better in the coffin anyway.]
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Sypha wakes in the morning whole and human and not nearly keen enough, in Trevor's opinion, to start wearing clothes again. He convinces her, fusses over her for the morning, but by afternoon she's impatient to leave even if she isn't really well enough to be walking around yet.
The journey to London is slower with her still recovering. It's three days instead of one with frequent breaks to make sure she's eating a little every hour or so and resting enough. But they're lucky. The spiritualist's house may not have been ungodly enough before Sypha walked into it, but it was certainly ungodly enough after. And the line doesn't run through it, but it runs close enough that static electricity gathers in Sypha's clothes and hair. She'll need to find a way to work off that excess magical energy once she's less drained - right now she probably needs all she can get - but they can figure that out later. The issue is just getting back to Alucard.
Trevor goes alone. They're short on time, and Sypha still isn't well enough to travel quickly and they don't have that much time left. It means leaving her alone in a strange city, which isn't ideal, but she has access to magic enough to hopefully defend herself.
He knocks on the coffin, because that's how you interact with coffins I guess. ]
WAIT SHIT THIS ONE SHOULD HAVE BEEN FIRST
It moves closer, slowly, shuddering, dissolving into ash around the stake as it reaches out for Alucard.
Something peices through it, stopping a hair's bredth from Alucard before it pulls back. The wraith is lit from within for a moment. And then it burns away from the inside. Burns into ash and a single wedding ring. ]
God- oh god- please tell me I didn't hit you with that. No, you're still there. Good. That's good. I-
[ Juliet's tone drops, and her slightly pannicked babbling fades into quietness. She drags herself into the room, bloody and bruised and one arm hanging broken and useless at her side but still mostly whole. She drops the morning star, moving over to Alucard. Taking his hand with her one good one. ]
-I'm so sorry.
[ She squeezes, then lets the energy leave her. Falls to her knees in exhaustion in the ruined bedroom, extending her arm to Alucard to offer comfort. ]
This was- best for him. If he was the man she loved, if he was more than my family thought he was, he wouldn't have wanted to become this. You did him a kindness.
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They're both gone.
[He whispers that, and then the memory is no more. Darkness embraces the dhampir, and oh, what a relief that is. It grows heavier as the days pass. Warmer. Safer in it's way, and Alucard is sure it is consuming him. Even as the castle tries not to. Even as it runs on it's lowest setting.
It takes effort to force the coffin lid open. Some of it is from the exhaustion, but the rest is a desire to keep away from the world.
What Trevor sees below him is a skinnier Alucard, flesh hanging from bones, cheeks thin, color all but gone. A vision of what Alucard might be like if he truly took after his father.]
The work is done?
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