Defeating Dracula and saving the whole of humanity from endless night was a simple task, compared to navigating the pitfalls of a trifold relationship. Simply getting them all on the same page regarding their mutual attraction and interest had been a frustrating exercise in small words and locked doors. They aren't always able to spend as much time together as they like, duties and emergencies calling one or the other of them across the countryside, so progress in communication and understanding comes slow. But it's so good, electrifying when they get it right. Sypha's never considered herself a patient person, but she would compromise much for that perfect balance they sometimes achieve.
Case in point: she's gotten used to waking up alone, even when they're all together. Her childhood had been small and tight-knit, siblings and cousins and age-mates all piled into caravan bunks together. She doesn't sleep well without someone's knee in the small of her back, her limbs are predisposed to twine around other warm bodies, and she's immune to snores.
Not so, for either of her men.
Take Alucard (yes, please, and thank you): only child of an obscenely powerful and wealthy figure. Sheltered and privileged. He'd had his own room in a massive castle, and no brothers or sisters to squabble with over toys or books or nightmares. Not a cuddler by nuture, though perhaps the nature of one lurked underneath the shell of night court manners. And Trevor! He understood the push and pull of a large family, but he'd lost that closeness to fire and violence. He didn't speak much about the years that came after, but in sleep he bundled himself into a defensive ball, shielding his softer underbelly. Sypha could guess how he may have slept in fits and starts, waiting for a knife in the dark.
It broke her heart to think about. She'd decided early on on a course of exposure therapy, inflicting the casual physical affection of her people on them left, right, and center. It seemed to go well, during waking hours. But she'd woken more than once at night to Trevor reflexively knocking her arm away and crab-scrabbling out of the bed, or curled into Alucard only to be met with an initial, hesitant stiffness.
She told herself it wasn't that they didn't trust her, didn't love her. It was only that she'd been a part of their lives for such a short time; she had so much history to work against. She could compromise, demand less, set aside the empty feeling when she woke up alone (the latest riser of the three by far).
So when she turned her face from her pillow that morning and found Alucard still in bed beside her, absently tracing his fingertips up and down her arm, she blinked. Scrubbed the heel of her other hand against her eye, and blinked again. But there he was, all serene and calm in the late morning light. Someone - Trevor - must have pulled the curtains back, not that it had impacted her sleep in the slightest.
The first time that Sypha and Trevor left the castle in the aftermath of Dracula's demise (defeat, murder), Alucard had explored the depths of his grief. Alone, he could be as much a monster as his father, throw things around, tear, rend, destroy in an attempt to purge the waves of emotion that rolled off of him. It was better that no one else was around to witness the actions, for surely they would take one look and proclaim "like father, like son."
That anger was followed by tears, and so it went on and on. In the in between moments, Alucard focused his attention to the castle and the Hold. Neither were inhabitable, and Trevor and Sypha would be back at some point. They'd need a wing of the castle to stay in, and so Alucard began rebuilding in the most literal way.
Work channeled so much. Freed his mind to focus on the less overwhelming but equally important feelings that lay beneath the surface. Alucard found himself wondering when the other two would come back. That? That was a path to longing, and then the realization that there was a deep and abiding love for them both.
Sypha was the one who kept them all on track after, negotiation and navigating emotional waters that neither he nor Trevor were good at exploring. Trevor had years of trauma and walls to break down. Alucard's problems were mercifully obvious, and so the name of it all became balance.
He had grown up around parents who were overly affectionate with each other. There were such vivid memories of his father walking into a room where his mother was reading on the sofa and just settling right in beside her. Or scooting her onto his lap. He had seen them kiss a little too much. In theory? In theory Alucard knew what he should be doing.
Be should and practicing? Two different things.
Alucard knew that change only comes from dedicated effort. It was a matter on his mind when he awoke, and why he remained in bed next to Sypha rather than roll out and go to make breakfast. Somewhere in all of that, the scars on her upper arm captured his attention, and then? Then a mind still mired in grief took over.
"Almost eleven," was the response, said in barely a whisper. "Trevor's gone out hunting, he thought he saw wild boar tracks yesterday."
"He's g'na get himself gored," Sypha yawns, apparently unconcerned with Trevor's grisly fate. A little kernel of worry hardens in her gut despite her sleepy eyes and lazy stretch; if Trevor isn't back by late afternoon, they'll go looking. He can handle himself, but boar are no joke, and they don't have any dogs to sound the alarm.
Now there's a thought. Dogs. Puppies. Rolling around on the floor in front of the fireplace, getting underfoot in the kitchen, sleeping at the foot of the bed. Sypha smiles to herself, eyelids drooping shut again. How domestic.
Another handful of syrupy minutes pass by before she remembers she's awake, and there's a whole day full of things to do. Grumbling in the back of her throat, she rolls closer to Alucard, blindly butting her head under his chin. The sweep of his fingers up and down her arm is nice, but feels a touch preoccupied.
"He's a big, strong, Belmont. He'll be fine." Alucard's dealt with the boars plenty of times, and Trevor? Trevor's spent most of his adult life hunting food. He has no worries about his ability to handle himself in a situation, gored or ungored. The dhampir's thoughts are on how to prepare the meat instead.
While Sypha thinks of puppies, Alucard thinks of dinner. His mind goes to the spices in the kitchen, what's running low, and what markets will have replacements. The Ottomans are so heavily involved in the trade that their invasion is almost a good thing, at least from a culinary perspective. They bring cheaper spices.
Right. They'll need cinnamon, he's down to the last stick.
His shopping list done, Alucard is about to close his eyes. It's Sypha's collision against him that drags him out of his thought process, and back to--
--he's been stroking her scars all morning, hasn't he?
"What about me?" The emphasis and tone are as warm as he can be for still being in bed.
Sypha muffles a snort in her elbow. Yes, Trevor's a big strong Belmont, but he's a big bulky target. Alucard has the advantage of speed and slightly stab-resistant skin.
Only slightly, though. She slips her hand under his sleep shirt and smoothes her palm over the raised, smooth edges of the scar beneath.
"Mmm, you don't usually sleep in," she mumbles. Ugh, morning breath. "Bored of boars? Nothing to catalogue in the library? No mail?"
"You were very comfortable against me. It seemed rude to get out of bed and have you wake up alone."
He has slept for a year. Now, with the other two in his life? To sleep is to lose precious moments that he could otherwise spend with them. Why sleep when he could have Sypha's hand against his scar, wonderful and warm and moving close to his heart.
Sypha hides a pleased smile against Alucard's neck. Her industrious, forward thinking vampire, taking a morning off because he recognized she might like the company? That's progress. She sighs her approval and squirms a little closer, fingers opening and closing over the tip of the scar. Everything in balance.
"Thank you," she says, "I hope you weren't too bored."
She is. Cuter when she's squished between himself and Trevor, but even with one of them? Sypha's a peaceful little thing, hiding the terrifying powerhouse that the night world knows her to be and fears. It has never escaped Alucard's notice that he and Trevor get a side of Sypha that isn't just her at her best, it's her at her most caring, because there's only two people that will ever get to see that side of her.
Alucard's fingers go still at the scars on Sypha's arms. By accident, they line up precisely with where his father's claws once gouged, and it is as he lifts his head up that Alucard clocks their position. The realization makes him go still, and all words stop flowing.
"Cute is for kittens. And puppies." Sypha grumbles, puppies on the brain this morning. Cute is for harmless things...and those that choose to set harm aside for a select few. All right, fine, she can get behind that line of reasoning; possibly no one else alive has ever seen the way Alucard catches his tongue between his teeth when he's reading a particularly dense passage.
She's smothering laughter when he freezes up beside her, slow dhampiric heartbeat stuttering against her cheek. Frowning, Sypha peels away and catches him staring pensively at her shoulder.
She has other scars. Worse ones. Hell, Trevor's practically a topographical map of some alien hellscape, his hide's so marked up. These are things they accept about one another. Yet Alucard knows the history of these particular scars, and seeing his fingers splayed over the raised marks is...jarring in a way she hadn't expected.
Alucard, lost in thought as he is, knows that much. He can lie and say he's fine, but Sypha will call him out in an instant. He can say nothing, and she'll prod at him until he speaks. He can be truthful to the degree of admitting he's thinking of his father, but that's a mood killer.
So the honest but vague answer it is. His fingers slide a little bit beyond those marks, curling around the back of her upper arm instead.
"Just tracing lines."
They both do it to Trevor in their idle moments. He rarely seems bothered by it. Alucard has no issue with either of them touching the horrid gash that marks the start of events that brought them together. This shouldn't be different and yet.
Sypha snorts against his neck, secretly delighting in the way his skin jumps. He's so clever about these things, dishing out just enough truth not to be called on the things he still keeps wrapped tightly away. They tend to let him get away with it, when they have the sense to recognize what he's doing; their dhampir needs time and space to process things. His mind is such a complex mechanism, it sometimes takes simple things a day or two to work their way through its twisting paths and chambers. Things like 'I am outside my comfort zone and I don't appreciate it' or 'I enjoyed that thing you did but I'm not sure I'm allowed to ask for more.'
Things related to his father are rarely simple.
Sypha twists, pushing her hip against Alucard's to urge him onto his back. She props herself up on her elbows, hovering just above him. His hand still blankets the claw marks on her skin, palm the same temperature as the midmorning air.
Alucard's defense mechanisms reach his mouth last. It is easier to read body language for discomfort, as the time delay between an event happening and his articulating an issue can go on for as long as a week. This only ever happens with the big things though - Trevor being an idiot gets an immediate response. Wanting to do a date night like one that just concluded? Absolutely has taken two weeks to get said before.
So for things related to Dracula and the thing that brought them together in the first place? That's more like diving into a cave and bringing out interesting rocks to examine. It takes time, and then after the rocks are removed, they need to be polished before they are considered done and tended to.
Or some other metaphor. Alucard's given that thought too, but he's yet to find one he likes. What he knows he does like is when Sypha gives direction no matter how small. That helps settle his head. Pull thoughts and feelings in the right direction. Just like now.
"I know," he says, golden eyes meeting her blue ones. There's no particular hint of his emotions for now. "You've never indicated otherwise."
"Hmm," it's a nonjudgemental noise, acknowledging that he's listened and taken her words at face value. Whatever else is going on in his head, he believes that Sypha is comfortable in her skin. "Good." That's important.
Equally important to her, however, is his comfort level with the both of them. They are all reminders to one another of some things perhaps best left forgotten. Monsters and monster hunters, those who wield flame and those who've lost to it. They can hurt one another so easily.
Sometimes Sypha thinks about that, about how little damage they've actually done to each other, and she can't catch her breath.
"But do they bother you?" She's settled her weight atop him, mostly, fingers laced over his chest. The points of her elbows drive into the mattress on either side of his arms as she looks down at him. "That's a separate thing from my feelings on the matter. They're not mutually exclusive."
"They're a part of you. They can't bother me, not truly."
Scars are scars. Maps of survival. Perhaps moreso on Trevor, whose torso and back is a testament to that fact. Alucard's only scar is a complex thing because of how it was earned and the shape of it, for it misses so many vital parts but just barely. His father as a doctor, and if he had truly meant to kill his son in that awful moment, he would have. The shape is a reminder of the man who he was for twenty odd years, the man who is mourned by a sole survivor.
The shape of the things on Sypha? That is the man who was transformed by grief. The mark is upon her instead of himself, and Alucard can at least think that much is wrong. Unfair. If anyone was to bear those scars, then it should be him.
He doesn't let those thoughts spill forth. Instead there is a soft sigh, and his hand strokes down the marks softly, running perpendicular.
"They're just another part of that legacy. Same as this castle. Same as what I bear in blood and on my skin. Just manifested differently."
A lovely sentiment, even though Sypha knows it to be a lie. She's seen the way his eyebrow twitches when she leaves her robes on the floor for more than a single day. Although, fine, she can acknowledge the difference between a had habit and something inflicted on her by someone Alucard cared for deeply.
"You don't treat them the same as those pieces," she points out, not unkindly. Her fingers wind through his hair, where it fans out over the pillow like skeins of cornsilk. Sypha's known plenty of women who'd commit murder for hair like his. "I just...I worry that we let you hold that legacy too close. Staying here in the castle. Studying his works. The knowledge kept here is invaluable, but I don't want it if it causes you pain."
That isn't a lie. The castle? That's a combination of safety and experimentation. Projecting will into the world. The books and what's within? Intellect. The most important part of Dracula's legacy, beyond his family. The scars though, that's the worst of his father, pressed upon love ones and all stemming from Lisa's murder.
Sypha's hand in his hair is soothing. Alucard knows she must have figured out that petting his hair is one of the quickest ways to calm him, and there's no part of him that can truly protest at the discovery.
That reason is why Alucard tells himself that it's okay to sigh like he does when they're both away. Lonely. That icy well Sypha once described with a few tracks in it.
"If I didn't want to be here, you know I wouldn't be." Bullshit. Alucard is nothing if not devoted to his family's legacy.
"I wish he knew you better. That they both did, instead of this being the only signifier of an encounter."
As Trevor's pointed out more than once, Sypha's poker face is shit. She's never experienced an emotion she didn't immediately broadcast, including gently exasperated disbelief when her other lover claims not to be shackled to his family's legacy. They are, all of them, living legacies, culminations of works terrifyingly larger than themselves.
She doesn't call him on it. Not out loud. Her eyebrows do that for her. Instead, she traces the slight point of his ear and says, "Is that why we stay here, instead of rebuilding the Belmont estate? So that we might know them the way you did?"
The sad thing is, she can follow the logic. Sypha's spent days submerged in Dracula's notes, marveling at his intellect, completely forgetting how close she'd come to death by his hand. Even Trevor leaves off grumbling when he's neck deep in the marvelous self-filling tub in their washroom, with its never ending supply of clean hot water.
Traces of Lisa around the castle aren't so heavyhanded, since most of her personal effects were burned along with the home she kept in Tepes. Sypha catches her now and then like whiffs of faded incense - clever lamps installed in reading nooks for tired eyes, antibacterial silver tools in one of the labs, a brutally practical herb garden off one of the kitchens. It's oddly comforting to know that the castle has accommodated humans before, and can be made to do so again.
She tips her forehead against Alucard's with a sad smile for the people she will never know. "We know them through you, you know. It may not be ideal, but we get to see the kind of person they shaped, when they were at their best. That's not nothing."
"No. The Hold just requires a lot of staircase work and labor of a different sort, and I'm not ready to tackle that yet."
He's only barely made an impact on all the blood stains, and to repair that grand staircase is a nightmare of logistics and material. Not touching the Hold was in fact a poor choice for Trevor's and Sypha's work, for so much of what lay ahead for them was based in that collection below the earth. He needed to get to it, he really did, but the castle? He had a strong bias towards it.
Sypha's expression isn't an impossible thing to interpret. Her hands are warm against cold ears, and the questions give him so much pause after his immediate and nearly flippant response. His actions always said more, and leave it to a Speaker to interpret them appropriately.
In all that honest consideration, Sypha pulls Alucard out of his own thoughts.
"No. But..." he trails off. He always does, when competing thoughts battle for articulation. "It upsets me all the same."
An understatement, because of course it's an understatement. Alucard deals almost exclusively in those.
"Not that I don't have the utmost faith in you, but we really should hire the structural work out to people who know what they're doing." That's a fight she's been putting off, too. the Castle is beyond the understanding of your average artisan, so it gets a pass, but Trevor's not going to like a small army of craftspeople tromping around in the Hold.
Whereas if Alucard ever fully expresses an emotion, the world may flinch off its axis. Sypha presses a kiss to the miniscule wrinkle between his eyebrows that appears when he admits to being 'upset'.
"If it helps, I don't think of him when I see it," she strokes his hair off his forehead, and yes, sure, she's fully reclining on him like he's a divan, now. So what? He's very comfortable. "I think about how you said you weren't alone anymore, and then we proved it."
"I built the entire crypt under Gresit, you know." Because Sypha, you're going to come for his engineering abilities when you broke it in the first place? He thinks not. And he absolutely thinks not that he'll allow any random person into that hold.
The kiss to the Alucard version of a deeply furrowed brow mollifies him only slightly. The wrinkle remains, and he huffs like the child he sometimes is through all the bluster and attempts at maturity.
It's Sypha just using him as furniture that causes the dhampir to let go of that thought. She's warm, and brings so much warmth with her.
"It might help in time." That could be a truth. He doesn't know for sure. "It's one of the few remaining marks of him in this world."
"You're an architect now, too?" Sypha mock-gasps. "So accomplished at nineteen!" In truth, she'd figured Dracula had had some sort of team of builders, but that he'd entombed them all within his grand design, like the Pharaohs of old.
...that's probably exactly the kind of thing Alucard worries she thinks of his father. Damn.
"I won't argue that he left some, um, other scars," she's thinking about the chasm the Castle gouged into the earth when she dragged its dodecahedron sideways through space and time, or the burnt swaths of bloodied ground that were once prospering villages. "But there's you, too. And I think in time we can apply all the things he hoarded here to greater use. That will be one hell of a legacy." If she has anything to say about it.
"Yes, actually." Alucard's response is as serious as anything. "We worked on that together. It was...awkward, once I matured. Architecture and engineering helped us bond as adults."
When he was a child, attention and a lesson in one of the labs was more than enough to mollify him. Growing older, growing faster had been hard. Both he and his father struggled with it, but building? That had been the key.
There's a nod of acknowledgement with other scars, but it doesn't change where his mind sits now.
"I'm not so concerned with that external legacy as within this....configuration of ours." Family. He means to say family. "And I think that at the end of the day, they may mean something different when I look at them."
Oof, she may have overstepped there. She hasn't yet fully worked through the nuances of Alucard's...situation. He isn't just a nineteen (twenty?) year old who can pass as older, he's matured at a completely different rate from humans. How much of that was physical versus mental? Vice versa? Or does a human baseline even stand as a point of comparison?
"I'm glad you found something for the both of you," she says, by way of apology.
It isn't until his touch returns to her scars, rasping over them like the edge of an autumn leaf, that Sypha realizes this particular insecurity is smaller, quieter, more close to home and all the more vulnerable for it. Concern tugs at the corners of her mouth.
"We love you, Alucard." Best make that as plain as can be. "And yes, your father did try to kill us, but you are your own person. You've proved that with your own pain. Don't...don't cause yourself any more, please."
There's little more than a hum of acknowledgement for the apology. Sypha didn't know. Couldn't have known, because how would anyone bond with their half-vampire son? It was an open book of a thing, and there's no need to dwell on it.
"I love you both as well." It's a response that is automatic these days because it is a simple truth. He loves them both and they only get a single lifetime together. To hesitate to say the words is stupid. Selfish in it's way, for all he can think of is how many more years he'll go without saying them to Trevor's and Sypha's faces.
"And you know as well as I that that's easier said than done."
He doesn't quite laugh or smile, but there's an approximation of it. That and some real warmth from within, because she cares and Alucard knows she knows it's a challenge. "But I will continue to try."
Sypha heaves a dramatic sigh and lets her face drop against his neck with an emphatic "Ugh." If Alucard's attempted 'no, I'll stay behind and haunt my father's castle unto eternity' stunt had shown her anything, it was how quickly he'd throw himself at an opportunity to be tragic and self sacrificing. "Yes. Yes, I know. We'll work on it."
Then, because she's a firm believer in positive reinforcement, and this has been a morning of prolonged cuddling and relatively straightforward emotional speech, she gives a full-body wiggle and nibbles at the slope of his shoulder. "Know that I appreciate all your efforts immensely."
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Sleep and Scars and FEELINGS
Case in point: she's gotten used to waking up alone, even when they're all together. Her childhood had been small and tight-knit, siblings and cousins and age-mates all piled into caravan bunks together. She doesn't sleep well without someone's knee in the small of her back, her limbs are predisposed to twine around other warm bodies, and she's immune to snores.
Not so, for either of her men.
Take Alucard (yes, please, and thank you): only child of an obscenely powerful and wealthy figure. Sheltered and privileged. He'd had his own room in a massive castle, and no brothers or sisters to squabble with over toys or books or nightmares. Not a cuddler by nuture, though perhaps the nature of one lurked underneath the shell of night court manners. And Trevor! He understood the push and pull of a large family, but he'd lost that closeness to fire and violence. He didn't speak much about the years that came after, but in sleep he bundled himself into a defensive ball, shielding his softer underbelly. Sypha could guess how he may have slept in fits and starts, waiting for a knife in the dark.
It broke her heart to think about. She'd decided early on on a course of exposure therapy, inflicting the casual physical affection of her people on them left, right, and center. It seemed to go well, during waking hours. But she'd woken more than once at night to Trevor reflexively knocking her arm away and crab-scrabbling out of the bed, or curled into Alucard only to be met with an initial, hesitant stiffness.
She told herself it wasn't that they didn't trust her, didn't love her. It was only that she'd been a part of their lives for such a short time; she had so much history to work against. She could compromise, demand less, set aside the empty feeling when she woke up alone (the latest riser of the three by far).
So when she turned her face from her pillow that morning and found Alucard still in bed beside her, absently tracing his fingertips up and down her arm, she blinked. Scrubbed the heel of her other hand against her eye, and blinked again. But there he was, all serene and calm in the late morning light. Someone - Trevor - must have pulled the curtains back, not that it had impacted her sleep in the slightest.
"'morning," she rasped. "'time is it?"
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That anger was followed by tears, and so it went on and on. In the in between moments, Alucard focused his attention to the castle and the Hold. Neither were inhabitable, and Trevor and Sypha would be back at some point. They'd need a wing of the castle to stay in, and so Alucard began rebuilding in the most literal way.
Work channeled so much. Freed his mind to focus on the less overwhelming but equally important feelings that lay beneath the surface. Alucard found himself wondering when the other two would come back. That? That was a path to longing, and then the realization that there was a deep and abiding love for them both.
Sypha was the one who kept them all on track after, negotiation and navigating emotional waters that neither he nor Trevor were good at exploring. Trevor had years of trauma and walls to break down. Alucard's problems were mercifully obvious, and so the name of it all became balance.
He had grown up around parents who were overly affectionate with each other. There were such vivid memories of his father walking into a room where his mother was reading on the sofa and just settling right in beside her. Or scooting her onto his lap. He had seen them kiss a little too much. In theory? In theory Alucard knew what he should be doing.
Be should and practicing? Two different things.
Alucard knew that change only comes from dedicated effort. It was a matter on his mind when he awoke, and why he remained in bed next to Sypha rather than roll out and go to make breakfast. Somewhere in all of that, the scars on her upper arm captured his attention, and then? Then a mind still mired in grief took over.
"Almost eleven," was the response, said in barely a whisper. "Trevor's gone out hunting, he thought he saw wild boar tracks yesterday."
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Now there's a thought. Dogs. Puppies. Rolling around on the floor in front of the fireplace, getting underfoot in the kitchen, sleeping at the foot of the bed. Sypha smiles to herself, eyelids drooping shut again. How domestic.
Another handful of syrupy minutes pass by before she remembers she's awake, and there's a whole day full of things to do. Grumbling in the back of her throat, she rolls closer to Alucard, blindly butting her head under his chin. The sweep of his fingers up and down her arm is nice, but feels a touch preoccupied.
"What about you?"
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While Sypha thinks of puppies, Alucard thinks of dinner. His mind goes to the spices in the kitchen, what's running low, and what markets will have replacements. The Ottomans are so heavily involved in the trade that their invasion is almost a good thing, at least from a culinary perspective. They bring cheaper spices.
Right. They'll need cinnamon, he's down to the last stick.
His shopping list done, Alucard is about to close his eyes. It's Sypha's collision against him that drags him out of his thought process, and back to--
--he's been stroking her scars all morning, hasn't he?
"What about me?" The emphasis and tone are as warm as he can be for still being in bed.
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Only slightly, though. She slips her hand under his sleep shirt and smoothes her palm over the raised, smooth edges of the scar beneath.
"Mmm, you don't usually sleep in," she mumbles. Ugh, morning breath. "Bored of boars? Nothing to catalogue in the library? No mail?"
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He has slept for a year. Now, with the other two in his life? To sleep is to lose precious moments that he could otherwise spend with them. Why sleep when he could have Sypha's hand against his scar, wonderful and warm and moving close to his heart.
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"Thank you," she says, "I hope you weren't too bored."
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She is. Cuter when she's squished between himself and Trevor, but even with one of them? Sypha's a peaceful little thing, hiding the terrifying powerhouse that the night world knows her to be and fears. It has never escaped Alucard's notice that he and Trevor get a side of Sypha that isn't just her at her best, it's her at her most caring, because there's only two people that will ever get to see that side of her.
Alucard's fingers go still at the scars on Sypha's arms. By accident, they line up precisely with where his father's claws once gouged, and it is as he lifts his head up that Alucard clocks their position. The realization makes him go still, and all words stop flowing.
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She's smothering laughter when he freezes up beside her, slow dhampiric heartbeat stuttering against her cheek. Frowning, Sypha peels away and catches him staring pensively at her shoulder.
She has other scars. Worse ones. Hell, Trevor's practically a topographical map of some alien hellscape, his hide's so marked up. These are things they accept about one another. Yet Alucard knows the history of these particular scars, and seeing his fingers splayed over the raised marks is...jarring in a way she hadn't expected.
"Are you sure you're all right?"
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Alucard, lost in thought as he is, knows that much. He can lie and say he's fine, but Sypha will call him out in an instant. He can say nothing, and she'll prod at him until he speaks. He can be truthful to the degree of admitting he's thinking of his father, but that's a mood killer.
So the honest but vague answer it is. His fingers slide a little bit beyond those marks, curling around the back of her upper arm instead.
"Just tracing lines."
They both do it to Trevor in their idle moments. He rarely seems bothered by it. Alucard has no issue with either of them touching the horrid gash that marks the start of events that brought them together. This shouldn't be different and yet.
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Things related to his father are rarely simple.
Sypha twists, pushing her hip against Alucard's to urge him onto his back. She props herself up on her elbows, hovering just above him. His hand still blankets the claw marks on her skin, palm the same temperature as the midmorning air.
"They don't bother me." she tells him, forthright. "You know that, yes?"
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So for things related to Dracula and the thing that brought them together in the first place? That's more like diving into a cave and bringing out interesting rocks to examine. It takes time, and then after the rocks are removed, they need to be polished before they are considered done and tended to.
Or some other metaphor. Alucard's given that thought too, but he's yet to find one he likes. What he knows he does like is when Sypha gives direction no matter how small. That helps settle his head. Pull thoughts and feelings in the right direction. Just like now.
"I know," he says, golden eyes meeting her blue ones. There's no particular hint of his emotions for now. "You've never indicated otherwise."
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Equally important to her, however, is his comfort level with the both of them. They are all reminders to one another of some things perhaps best left forgotten. Monsters and monster hunters, those who wield flame and those who've lost to it. They can hurt one another so easily.
Sometimes Sypha thinks about that, about how little damage they've actually done to each other, and she can't catch her breath.
"But do they bother you?" She's settled her weight atop him, mostly, fingers laced over his chest. The points of her elbows drive into the mattress on either side of his arms as she looks down at him. "That's a separate thing from my feelings on the matter. They're not mutually exclusive."
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Scars are scars. Maps of survival. Perhaps moreso on Trevor, whose torso and back is a testament to that fact. Alucard's only scar is a complex thing because of how it was earned and the shape of it, for it misses so many vital parts but just barely. His father as a doctor, and if he had truly meant to kill his son in that awful moment, he would have. The shape is a reminder of the man who he was for twenty odd years, the man who is mourned by a sole survivor.
The shape of the things on Sypha? That is the man who was transformed by grief. The mark is upon her instead of himself, and Alucard can at least think that much is wrong. Unfair. If anyone was to bear those scars, then it should be him.
He doesn't let those thoughts spill forth. Instead there is a soft sigh, and his hand strokes down the marks softly, running perpendicular.
"They're just another part of that legacy. Same as this castle. Same as what I bear in blood and on my skin. Just manifested differently."
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"You don't treat them the same as those pieces," she points out, not unkindly. Her fingers wind through his hair, where it fans out over the pillow like skeins of cornsilk. Sypha's known plenty of women who'd commit murder for hair like his. "I just...I worry that we let you hold that legacy too close. Staying here in the castle. Studying his works. The knowledge kept here is invaluable, but I don't want it if it causes you pain."
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That isn't a lie. The castle? That's a combination of safety and experimentation. Projecting will into the world. The books and what's within? Intellect. The most important part of Dracula's legacy, beyond his family. The scars though, that's the worst of his father, pressed upon love ones and all stemming from Lisa's murder.
Sypha's hand in his hair is soothing. Alucard knows she must have figured out that petting his hair is one of the quickest ways to calm him, and there's no part of him that can truly protest at the discovery.
That reason is why Alucard tells himself that it's okay to sigh like he does when they're both away. Lonely. That icy well Sypha once described with a few tracks in it.
"If I didn't want to be here, you know I wouldn't be." Bullshit. Alucard is nothing if not devoted to his family's legacy.
"I wish he knew you better. That they both did, instead of this being the only signifier of an encounter."
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She doesn't call him on it. Not out loud. Her eyebrows do that for her. Instead, she traces the slight point of his ear and says, "Is that why we stay here, instead of rebuilding the Belmont estate? So that we might know them the way you did?"
The sad thing is, she can follow the logic. Sypha's spent days submerged in Dracula's notes, marveling at his intellect, completely forgetting how close she'd come to death by his hand. Even Trevor leaves off grumbling when he's neck deep in the marvelous self-filling tub in their washroom, with its never ending supply of clean hot water.
Traces of Lisa around the castle aren't so heavyhanded, since most of her personal effects were burned along with the home she kept in Tepes. Sypha catches her now and then like whiffs of faded incense - clever lamps installed in reading nooks for tired eyes, antibacterial silver tools in one of the labs, a brutally practical herb garden off one of the kitchens. It's oddly comforting to know that the castle has accommodated humans before, and can be made to do so again.
She tips her forehead against Alucard's with a sad smile for the people she will never know. "We know them through you, you know. It may not be ideal, but we get to see the kind of person they shaped, when they were at their best. That's not nothing."
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He's only barely made an impact on all the blood stains, and to repair that grand staircase is a nightmare of logistics and material. Not touching the Hold was in fact a poor choice for Trevor's and Sypha's work, for so much of what lay ahead for them was based in that collection below the earth. He needed to get to it, he really did, but the castle? He had a strong bias towards it.
Sypha's expression isn't an impossible thing to interpret. Her hands are warm against cold ears, and the questions give him so much pause after his immediate and nearly flippant response. His actions always said more, and leave it to a Speaker to interpret them appropriately.
In all that honest consideration, Sypha pulls Alucard out of his own thoughts.
"No. But..." he trails off. He always does, when competing thoughts battle for articulation. "It upsets me all the same."
An understatement, because of course it's an understatement. Alucard deals almost exclusively in those.
"Never should have been scars."
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Whereas if Alucard ever fully expresses an emotion, the world may flinch off its axis. Sypha presses a kiss to the miniscule wrinkle between his eyebrows that appears when he admits to being 'upset'.
"If it helps, I don't think of him when I see it," she strokes his hair off his forehead, and yes, sure, she's fully reclining on him like he's a divan, now. So what? He's very comfortable. "I think about how you said you weren't alone anymore, and then we proved it."
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The kiss to the Alucard version of a deeply furrowed brow mollifies him only slightly. The wrinkle remains, and he huffs like the child he sometimes is through all the bluster and attempts at maturity.
It's Sypha just using him as furniture that causes the dhampir to let go of that thought. She's warm, and brings so much warmth with her.
"It might help in time." That could be a truth. He doesn't know for sure. "It's one of the few remaining marks of him in this world."
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...that's probably exactly the kind of thing Alucard worries she thinks of his father. Damn.
"I won't argue that he left some, um, other scars," she's thinking about the chasm the Castle gouged into the earth when she dragged its dodecahedron sideways through space and time, or the burnt swaths of bloodied ground that were once prospering villages. "But there's you, too. And I think in time we can apply all the things he hoarded here to greater use. That will be one hell of a legacy." If she has anything to say about it.
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When he was a child, attention and a lesson in one of the labs was more than enough to mollify him. Growing older, growing faster had been hard. Both he and his father struggled with it, but building? That had been the key.
There's a nod of acknowledgement with other scars, but it doesn't change where his mind sits now.
"I'm not so concerned with that external legacy as within this....configuration of ours." Family. He means to say family. "And I think that at the end of the day, they may mean something different when I look at them."
A Rorschach test of daddy issues.
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"I'm glad you found something for the both of you," she says, by way of apology.
It isn't until his touch returns to her scars, rasping over them like the edge of an autumn leaf, that Sypha realizes this particular insecurity is smaller, quieter, more close to home and all the more vulnerable for it. Concern tugs at the corners of her mouth.
"We love you, Alucard." Best make that as plain as can be. "And yes, your father did try to kill us, but you are your own person. You've proved that with your own pain. Don't...don't cause yourself any more, please."
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"I love you both as well." It's a response that is automatic these days because it is a simple truth. He loves them both and they only get a single lifetime together. To hesitate to say the words is stupid. Selfish in it's way, for all he can think of is how many more years he'll go without saying them to Trevor's and Sypha's faces.
"And you know as well as I that that's easier said than done."
He doesn't quite laugh or smile, but there's an approximation of it. That and some real warmth from within, because she cares and Alucard knows she knows it's a challenge. "But I will continue to try."
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Then, because she's a firm believer in positive reinforcement, and this has been a morning of prolonged cuddling and relatively straightforward emotional speech, she gives a full-body wiggle and nibbles at the slope of his shoulder. "Know that I appreciate all your efforts immensely."
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