[Damn. Outsmarted by his own suggestion. Alucard pauses, then sighs. He gives up, knowing the fight is not worth it under any circumstances. He only gets to his feet.]
Very well. We'll need the room to spread out materials.
[It's a little easier to talk when they have to focus. Research. Do work that is focused rather than skirt his fragile emotional state. Alucard is quiet as he walks over to one of the long tables. It's clear. A good landing place.]
I'll go fetch paper and ink so that we can take notes. Set up as you like.
[Impossible to entirely squash her victorious smile, but Sypha can be a gracious winner.] Of course! Thank you, Adrian.
[The soft tone of her voice makes it clear she's not solely speaking about the research assistance. It means a lot that he's willing to push through whatever's bedeviling him to work with her. She just hopes doing so will return enough of a sense of normalcy that he'll find a way to talk about it.
He can't shut himself away forever. He can't ignore it or stew in it. None of them can. But she'd like to give him some time to find the right words.
She spreads the books out in order of earliest to latest published. It may mean nothing, but it could also give them some indication of the permanence of the Corridor's earthly locations.]
[Alucard takes a few minutes to gather the supplies, as well as himself. Sypha's....done nothing but be herself, and that has forced walls to come tumbling down already. He isn't sure if he should be pleased about that or angry, but it is a thing that has happened all the same. Sypha warms everything around her, that's a basic fact.
When he returns, it's with a small bound notebook, a pot of ink, and a pen. It's all set down beside Sypha, and he looks to her quietly.]
Note down anything connected to Infinite Corridors, no matter how indirect, and then cross reference to see how many things repeat across the writings. Maybe we can rule out some conjecture that way. [It's not much, but it's a start. Similar phrasing ought to help distinguish between new information and unreferenced citations. They ought to be able to chew through these half dozen books by sunrise, between the two of them.
Sypha burns through the volume on geology within an hour - there isn't much of interest, other than some information about historic leylines. She fills half a page with notes on the subject and reaches for the next book.
Although capable of working in silence, she does her best thinking out loud. Always has. Spinning words helps her find the true thread of a thought, as though the right ones ring silver and striking in the air. So she's not exactly thinking about it when she starts leafing through pages and says:] What if this cult succeeds? Would he comply with their plot? I thought, at the end there, he seemed like he came back to himself. He seemed tired.
[Not the same kind of tired Alucard himself is displaying, but similar enough to give her a chill.]
[Alucard's own work is marked by silence. He writes things down every so often, but even his pen is mute. Hair brushes over drying ink, and he has to remember to fix that.
He finds little. Mostly notes on the possibilities of what lies within the corridors, but nothing more than conjecture. Nothing about manipulation, and--
--and Sypha wonders out loud, causing Alucard to go so very, very still.]
[Sypha pauses in the act of nibbling on her pen. He? What had she been saying?
Oh. Oh. She sets the pen down with a dry swallow, and doesn't even try to hide her wary worry.]
Dracula. At the end of our fight. He seemed so...sorry.
['Sorry' is a small and insufficient word for the weight of emotion that had flooded Alucard's childhood bedroom that night. But it's more than that. It's the blank way he'd stared out the Infinite Corridor's scintillating maw as the night creature calibrated the conduit with souls. She hadn't been free to watch when Saint Germaine wrested control of the Corridor back, but that brief glimpse of Dracula with his wife in his arms makes her wonder...
Why come back? He has almost everything he was willing to end the world for, down there in Hell.]
And we saw him, just for a moment, through the Corridor. Although, I don't know if it was him, or some alternate possibility of him. From some other point in time, even. Either way he didn't look especially murderous.
[Alucard's ready to say something about Sypha's first point - that he was, that it made his own hand unstead,y and so many other things - but he freezes. They saw Dracula himself through this corridor.
A version of him, a possibility, or whatever else it is, it stops Alucard cold. Makes his eyes alight on Sypha with a new sort of horror and misery, because he wants to ask so many things in spite of them seeing Dracula for only a moment.
All of Alucard seems to slump forward at this point. His shoulders droop. He could collapse. He's near it, and the dhampir begins to blink furiously. It doesn't help the tears, or the crack in his voice as he speaks.]
[Now she's done it. Run her mouth just an inch too far. He'd been doing a little better, or at least pretending at it, and now...
The chair squeals as she shoves away from the table. Sypha rounds it in four quick, sharp steps. Everything in Alucard's posture is defeated, a cry to be left alone, but she can't anymore. Not when she keeps doing this to him unwittingly. Making him feel so alone.
Sypha throws her arms around his shoulders. Even seated, he's so tall his head nearly reaches her chin. It's not difficult at all to press her face to his hair.]
[Alucard still freezes when Sypha hugs him. Any time the other two have attempted physical contact, he's backed away as quickly as possible but-- well. No forewarning this time. Looking back on this moment, Alucard will mark it a moment of personal growth for not lashing out at Sypha with teeth barred. For the moment, he may as well be a corpse.
He says nothing for what may be an eternity. And then--]
No. No, you didn't. [Her arms tighten around his unresponsive form, squeezing so tight it's nearly painful (for her - to him, it probably feels like getting tangled in a sheet).] You ended his life. He's actions alone during that life landed him in Hell. You put a stop to those actions.
[Granted, by the standards of the Christian God, the same may be true for her, and Alucard, and Trevor as well, saviors of Wallachia or no. Before Lindenfeld Sypha would have hoped that should she eventually end up in that realm, her circle of punishment would not be so deep or dark as Vlad Tepes'. Now...she's less sure.]
[Alucard's perhaps too determined to be miserable about this. But he's also aware of how close Sypha is, and he finally tries to pull away. Sypha is too close. Far too close, and there's too many memories of things starting to flood over Alucard.]
I--
[They weren't around for the worst of the break downs either time. But if they were, they'd have heard sobs like this. Deep and broken and sometimes more animalistic, like a wolf's howl trying to escape from a human throat. All of Alucard shakes, and his forehead comes to rest on the table so that Sypha can't see his face.]
[When he folds, Sypha folds with him, her grip as stubborn as a limpet and possibly about as pleasant to experience. All she knows is she's let go of him too easily in the past, a mistake she is not keen to repeat now.]
You didn't. If it hadn't been you, it would have been one of us. [Fuck the prophecy. The prophecy set a son to kill his father, when she or Trevor could have just as easily grasped the stake. Neither of them would've lost sleep over it.] It should have been one of us. You've shouldered too much Fate on your own.
[So she hangs on, small frame curled protectively over his broader one, body shaking with his sobs. She presses hard against him not to smother them, but to ground them in something more sympathetic than a tabletop. When he doesn't immediately try to buck her off, she loosens a hand to card through his hair, gently prying it free from where it's been pinned by his forehead and shoulders. Sypha gathers it at the nape of his neck, and mourns.] I won't leave you to do that alone again, not anymore.
[That's the point, in the end. It was him who held the stake, not Sypha and not Trevor. It was a son's love that made him act for the sake of one parent not the other. It was the duality of his own nature that drove so much action and--
--and it was duality that made him swing the other way. That made him understand his father's perspective, and it's why he still tries to pull away from Sypha in spite of everything. His hair hurts. He doesn't care.]
I know. [Guilt drips from her every word, wrings from her fingers as she onehandedly wrangles his hair. There's so much of it.] And I'm sorry, I'm so sorry. [If only she or Trevor had been faster, if only they'd pushed into the room sooner, if only she hadn't been so flinchy with her fire around the other two, if only if only if only.
Is this what Trevor hears in his head, all the time?
When Alucard pulls again, she lets him draw away from the immediate blanketing contact but does not let go of her hold on his shoulder. His hair slips from her fingers and puddles just everywhere, again.] I'm not trying to fix you, Adrian. We can't change what's already been done. But we can help each other live with it, can't we?
You don't. [Part of Alucard can clock the guilt. The rest of Alucard is drowning in his own sorrows, refusing the life preserver that has been tossed to him.] You weren't here.
[It isn't an accusation. It's a statement of tortured fact, because something else has been unlocked.]
If you were I wouldn't have-- [Alucard breathes out, trying to at least get his breathing under control.] They wouldn't have thought their attempt on my life could be accomplished through affection, they wouldn't be on the lawn--
[There. He's managed that much. It's his confession of what happened in their absence.]
I wasn't..? [Sypha's whole face crumples in concern. Has his memory of events slipped, somehow? If so, was it the isolation? Or the strange injuries? Or--
Her rapidly chaining thoughts shatter into separate, disconnected links, when he starts talking about a 'they'. An attempt on his life. Something he's done. Something she was not here for. She doesn't, can't, know where this conversation has gone, but she can make a leap and hope she lands on answers.]
Alucard. Adrian, please. What attempt? Who hurt you? [She's straightened up, hands slipping away only to reconnect by settling over his. The tips of her fingers stretch to the red mark at the very edge of his shirtcuff.] I don't understand. I can't fix it, but you don't need to be alone with this either.
[He nearly snaps when Sypha's hands ghost over the new collection of scars he's gathered since the two have been away. As it is, he jerks his hands away so that Sypha is no longer touching them. Tries to hide the flesh in his shirt sleeves, almost child like.]
The two things on the front lawn.
[Alucard has vowed to never utter their names.]
Rather than try and kill me outright as Trevor did upon our first meeting they waited and bedded me before attacking.
[His tone is so terribly hollow when it finally gets said out loud. As is the clarification:]
They what? [It's a rhetorical question, breathed in a horrified whisper. Her hands hover over empty space, frozen with the rest of her posture.
Ice spreads from her fingertips, licking across the tabletop in a shameful lack of control. It licks the spines of the books and limns the beetle-chewed edges of their pages. A glass inkwell shatters at the abrupt temperature change, pelting her hip and forearm with black shards.
The ice retracts to nothing with Sypha's next sharp intake of breath. She breathes it out in a dense cloud of fog and curls her hands into fists. He doesn't want to be touched. She doesn't trust herself to touch safely in this moment.]
I won't. I won't. I'm sorry. They should never have--
[Heat rises in her throat as she speaks, starts to emanate as flame at the root of her tongue. She has to close her mouth and swallow it down.]
[Alucard's head snaps up at the sond of ice. It's a distinct sort of cracking, and it nearly brings him back to himself. Something about all the water being bad for the books. That the ink is going to get on everything and be impossible to clean and--
--and none of that comes out. There's only a far too fragile dhampir that's admitted to what's still the second worst thing he's ever done, and every part of him wants to just fall apart like the glass of the ink well.
Words don't come. They try, but in the end, there's just Alucard shaking his head, inaudible and impossible. Finally--]
[This time, she gets out ahead of her mouth. This time, she does not immediately offer the truth: that she and Trevor removed the bodies. The lie of omission burns as intensely as the flame she chokes down.
Later. When he can stand to hear it.] As a warning? You don't think they were working alone?
[He's slurring. Sypha can't recall ever hearing Alucard speak with anything other than sharp, posh syllables. That can't be good.]
It won't matter whether others come, you won't be alone to be blindsided.
[The Castle's mobility engine may be beyond their ability to repair, but they can lock it down with magics, free him from this place. Put an end to this hermitude.]
We can do that. We can seal it. [Somewhere at the back of her mind is the barest uncurling seed of a thought - something to do with the nature of Infinity Corridors and Castles that slip through spatial boundaries. She can't quite make out the shape of it yet, but if she leaves it be long enough, it just might unfurl into something recognizable. Something useful. For now, sealing is a thing she already knows and can apply.] Seal it, ward it, and take the fight to our enemies. Just as before.
[Sypha leans forward, hands fisted on the tabletop. She breathes steam again, but it's less perceptible this time. Control, control.] We won't leave you here. I don't want to leave you here. But we also need you. We failed in Lindenfeld because you weren't with us, Adrian, I truly believe that. We're all better together.
[It's a declaration that finally has some heat in the dhampir's voice. That has him looking up to meet Sypha's eyes, certain about at least one thing.]
I cannot account for myself or my control, and to be around others is an unacceptable risk. It's better to seal this place with me in it.
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Very well. We'll need the room to spread out materials.
[It's a little easier to talk when they have to focus. Research. Do work that is focused rather than skirt his fragile emotional state. Alucard is quiet as he walks over to one of the long tables. It's clear. A good landing place.]
I'll go fetch paper and ink so that we can take notes. Set up as you like.
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[The soft tone of her voice makes it clear she's not solely speaking about the research assistance. It means a lot that he's willing to push through whatever's bedeviling him to work with her. She just hopes doing so will return enough of a sense of normalcy that he'll find a way to talk about it.
He can't shut himself away forever. He can't ignore it or stew in it. None of them can. But she'd like to give him some time to find the right words.
She spreads the books out in order of earliest to latest published. It may mean nothing, but it could also give them some indication of the permanence of the Corridor's earthly locations.]
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When he returns, it's with a small bound notebook, a pot of ink, and a pen. It's all set down beside Sypha, and he looks to her quietly.]
How do you want to go about this?
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Sypha burns through the volume on geology within an hour - there isn't much of interest, other than some information about historic leylines. She fills half a page with notes on the subject and reaches for the next book.
Although capable of working in silence, she does her best thinking out loud. Always has. Spinning words helps her find the true thread of a thought, as though the right ones ring silver and striking in the air. So she's not exactly thinking about it when she starts leafing through pages and says:] What if this cult succeeds? Would he comply with their plot? I thought, at the end there, he seemed like he came back to himself. He seemed tired.
[Not the same kind of tired Alucard himself is displaying, but similar enough to give her a chill.]
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[Alucard's own work is marked by silence. He writes things down every so often, but even his pen is mute. Hair brushes over drying ink, and he has to remember to fix that.
He finds little. Mostly notes on the possibilities of what lies within the corridors, but nothing more than conjecture. Nothing about manipulation, and--
--and Sypha wonders out loud, causing Alucard to go so very, very still.]
I'm sorry. He?
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Oh. Oh. She sets the pen down with a dry swallow, and doesn't even try to hide her wary worry.]
Dracula. At the end of our fight. He seemed so...sorry.
['Sorry' is a small and insufficient word for the weight of emotion that had flooded Alucard's childhood bedroom that night. But it's more than that. It's the blank way he'd stared out the Infinite Corridor's scintillating maw as the night creature calibrated the conduit with souls. She hadn't been free to watch when Saint Germaine wrested control of the Corridor back, but that brief glimpse of Dracula with his wife in his arms makes her wonder...
Why come back? He has almost everything he was willing to end the world for, down there in Hell.]
And we saw him, just for a moment, through the Corridor. Although, I don't know if it was him, or some alternate possibility of him. From some other point in time, even. Either way he didn't look especially murderous.
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A version of him, a possibility, or whatever else it is, it stops Alucard cold. Makes his eyes alight on Sypha with a new sort of horror and misery, because he wants to ask so many things in spite of them seeing Dracula for only a moment.
All of Alucard seems to slump forward at this point. His shoulders droop. He could collapse. He's near it, and the dhampir begins to blink furiously. It doesn't help the tears, or the crack in his voice as he speaks.]
That's enough research for me today, I think.
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The chair squeals as she shoves away from the table. Sypha rounds it in four quick, sharp steps. Everything in Alucard's posture is defeated, a cry to be left alone, but she can't anymore. Not when she keeps doing this to him unwittingly. Making him feel so alone.
Sypha throws her arms around his shoulders. Even seated, he's so tall his head nearly reaches her chin. It's not difficult at all to press her face to his hair.]
I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.
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He says nothing for what may be an eternity. And then--]
I put him there.
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[Granted, by the standards of the Christian God, the same may be true for her, and Alucard, and Trevor as well, saviors of Wallachia or no. Before Lindenfeld Sypha would have hoped that should she eventually end up in that realm, her circle of punishment would not be so deep or dark as Vlad Tepes'. Now...she's less sure.]
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[Alucard's perhaps too determined to be miserable about this. But he's also aware of how close Sypha is, and he finally tries to pull away. Sypha is too close. Far too close, and there's too many memories of things starting to flood over Alucard.]
I--
[They weren't around for the worst of the break downs either time. But if they were, they'd have heard sobs like this. Deep and broken and sometimes more animalistic, like a wolf's howl trying to escape from a human throat. All of Alucard shakes, and his forehead comes to rest on the table so that Sypha can't see his face.]
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You didn't. If it hadn't been you, it would have been one of us. [Fuck the prophecy. The prophecy set a son to kill his father, when she or Trevor could have just as easily grasped the stake. Neither of them would've lost sleep over it.] It should have been one of us. You've shouldered too much Fate on your own.
[So she hangs on, small frame curled protectively over his broader one, body shaking with his sobs. She presses hard against him not to smother them, but to ground them in something more sympathetic than a tabletop. When he doesn't immediately try to buck her off, she loosens a hand to card through his hair, gently prying it free from where it's been pinned by his forehead and shoulders. Sypha gathers it at the nape of his neck, and mourns.] I won't leave you to do that alone again, not anymore.
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[That's the point, in the end. It was him who held the stake, not Sypha and not Trevor. It was a son's love that made him act for the sake of one parent not the other. It was the duality of his own nature that drove so much action and--
--and it was duality that made him swing the other way. That made him understand his father's perspective, and it's why he still tries to pull away from Sypha in spite of everything. His hair hurts. He doesn't care.]
Your staying won't fix me.
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Is this what Trevor hears in his head, all the time?
When Alucard pulls again, she lets him draw away from the immediate blanketing contact but does not let go of her hold on his shoulder. His hair slips from her fingers and puddles just everywhere, again.] I'm not trying to fix you, Adrian. We can't change what's already been done. But we can help each other live with it, can't we?
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[It isn't an accusation. It's a statement of tortured fact, because something else has been unlocked.]
If you were I wouldn't have-- [Alucard breathes out, trying to at least get his breathing under control.] They wouldn't have thought their attempt on my life could be accomplished through affection, they wouldn't be on the lawn--
[There. He's managed that much. It's his confession of what happened in their absence.]
I don't want to live with that.
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Her rapidly chaining thoughts shatter into separate, disconnected links, when he starts talking about a 'they'. An attempt on his life. Something he's done. Something she was not here for. She doesn't, can't, know where this conversation has gone, but she can make a leap and hope she lands on answers.]
Alucard. Adrian, please. What attempt? Who hurt you? [She's straightened up, hands slipping away only to reconnect by settling over his. The tips of her fingers stretch to the red mark at the very edge of his shirtcuff.] I don't understand. I can't fix it, but you don't need to be alone with this either.
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The two things on the front lawn.
[Alucard has vowed to never utter their names.]
Rather than try and kill me outright as Trevor did upon our first meeting they waited and bedded me before attacking.
[His tone is so terribly hollow when it finally gets said out loud. As is the clarification:]
Please don't make me go into detail.
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Ice spreads from her fingertips, licking across the tabletop in a shameful lack of control. It licks the spines of the books and limns the beetle-chewed edges of their pages. A glass inkwell shatters at the abrupt temperature change, pelting her hip and forearm with black shards.
The ice retracts to nothing with Sypha's next sharp intake of breath. She breathes it out in a dense cloud of fog and curls her hands into fists. He doesn't want to be touched. She doesn't trust herself to touch safely in this moment.]
I won't. I won't. I'm sorry. They should never have--
[Heat rises in her throat as she speaks, starts to emanate as flame at the root of her tongue. She has to close her mouth and swallow it down.]
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--and none of that comes out. There's only a far too fragile dhampir that's admitted to what's still the second worst thing he's ever done, and every part of him wants to just fall apart like the glass of the ink well.
Words don't come. They try, but in the end, there's just Alucard shaking his head, inaudible and impossible. Finally--]
S'why they're still there.
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[This time, she gets out ahead of her mouth. This time, she does not immediately offer the truth: that she and Trevor removed the bodies. The lie of omission burns as intensely as the flame she chokes down.
Later. When he can stand to hear it.] As a warning? You don't think they were working alone?
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[The castle, he means.]
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It won't matter whether others come, you won't be alone to be blindsided.
[The Castle's mobility engine may be beyond their ability to repair, but they can lock it down with magics, free him from this place. Put an end to this hermitude.]
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No. The castle will be inaccessible first. It has to be.
[He has to be here, after all. Now more than ever, because he's already done this thing. What else might come if he's allowed near other people now?]
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[Sypha leans forward, hands fisted on the tabletop. She breathes steam again, but it's less perceptible this time. Control, control.] We won't leave you here. I don't want to leave you here. But we also need you. We failed in Lindenfeld because you weren't with us, Adrian, I truly believe that. We're all better together.
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[It's a declaration that finally has some heat in the dhampir's voice. That has him looking up to meet Sypha's eyes, certain about at least one thing.]
I cannot account for myself or my control, and to be around others is an unacceptable risk. It's better to seal this place with me in it.
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