cryptsleeper: (Default)
Alucard \\ Adrian F. Ţepeş ([personal profile] cryptsleeper) wrote2018-11-04 07:45 pm
speak_n_spell: (concern)

[personal profile] speak_n_spell 2020-04-04 08:44 am (UTC)(link)
[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.
speak_n_spell: (concern)

[personal profile] speak_n_spell 2020-04-05 06:29 am (UTC)(link)
[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.]


I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.
speak_n_spell: (determination)

[personal profile] speak_n_spell 2020-04-07 07:02 am (UTC)(link)
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.]
speak_n_spell: (concern)

[personal profile] speak_n_spell 2020-04-07 11:56 pm (UTC)(link)
[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.
speak_n_spell: (intense)

[personal profile] speak_n_spell 2020-04-08 01:23 am (UTC)(link)
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?
speak_n_spell: (concern)

[personal profile] speak_n_spell 2020-04-08 01:43 am (UTC)(link)
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.
speak_n_spell: (deep thought)

[personal profile] speak_n_spell 2020-04-08 02:40 am (UTC)(link)
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.]
speak_n_spell: (hmph)

[personal profile] speak_n_spell 2020-04-08 05:27 am (UTC)(link)
Out front of the Castle?

[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?
speak_n_spell: (concern)

[personal profile] speak_n_spell 2020-04-10 01:48 am (UTC)(link)
[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.]
speak_n_spell: (intense)

[personal profile] speak_n_spell 2020-04-10 08:00 am (UTC)(link)
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.
speak_n_spell: (intense)

[personal profile] speak_n_spell 2020-04-13 03:02 am (UTC)(link)
[She meets that heat with more ice, unblinking blue eyes and a marble-carved face that could give any vampire politician a run for their money.] Self defense isn't a loss of control. You were betrayed. There's a difference.

Besides, [Her brow furrows the tiniest bit, the need to emote pushing through the instinct to out-declare the most declarative person she's ever met.] do you really think we'd let you hurt anyone? Or either of us? We won't bury you alive in here out of cowardice!
speak_n_spell: (determination)

[personal profile] speak_n_spell 2020-04-13 07:03 am (UTC)(link)
I'm not saying it was a...good choice after the fact. [Sypha will readily admit that much. Thinking about them, their garments (nightshirts - she hates that she knows this now) flapping in the wind, heads flopping back on their necks like unattended puppets, sends a twist of unease through her gut.] But we've all done things we regret out of hurt and fear. Those mistakes don't define us unless we knowingly repeat them.

[Very slowly, very carefully, Sypha reaches out to tuck his hair out of his face. She does not cup his cheek the way she aches to do, or run her thumb along his crumpled brow. But she can make sure he can see her if he so chooses.] They hurt you. They gained your trust first, and they hurt you. But I know you Adrian, and I know you were trying to warn others away from being as suicidally stupid as best you could. So don't you try to tell me what I do and don't deserve.

[There's more she could say, about how she and Trevor are hardly paragons of great sense or success themselves, but no. Not now, not until he stops thinking of himself as less than human for melting down.]
speak_n_spell: (concern)

[personal profile] speak_n_spell 2020-04-14 06:14 am (UTC)(link)
[For the third (fourth? fifth?) time, Sypha draws herself away. Specifically, she slides off the table and steps towards the door.] All right. I'll join Trevor in the Hold. It hasn't got a magical search function, he probably needs the help.

We'll...see you at breakfast. [Or she'll track him down again. Conceding to his wish for space, while he's like this, is as much as she's capable of doing.

And even then she cannot do it quietly. Sypha goes to the Hold, all right, but she stops at the bottom of the pit that once housed the circular staircase. Using pistons of ice, she shoots chunks of debris into the air and blasts them apart with wildly flung fireballs. This goes on until she's wrung out, dripping with sweat, the urge to scream killed by her grunts of effort.

She's utterly unsurprised to find Trevor watching her from the Hold's reconstructed doorway. His gaze is an open question, and Sypha does not hesitate to lay out the answers she's found.

When she's done, Trevor disappears into the woods with a hatchet in hand, lips curled back over his eyeteeth. He comes back in the wee hours of the morning with enough split logs to warm the whole Castle for a week. His anger, it turns out, is more productive than hers, at least when there's no alcohol on offer.

They don't talk about it within the Castle's walls, both too conscious of Alucard's superior hearing and silent footsteps. And Alucard, well, he holds to the letter of her request, if not the spirit of it, by appearing only as a lanky white wolf.

It makes for interesting breakfast conversation, but Sypha knows she's not the only one concerned when he turns up for the next meal the same way. And the one after that. And the one after that.]


"We can't keep on like this." [Trevor says one evening as they return from the Hold, his arms weighed down with all the books she's annotated for copying or translation. He grumbles about playing the glorified pack mule, but he never says no.]

We just have to wait him out, [Sypha reasons, because she feels it too. The ticking clock over their heads. The pressing knowledge that they're no closer to solving the riddle of the Infinity Corridor. The fact that Alucard's been a wolf for days.] He's been through something terrible. And he never had a chance to heal from the other terrible things that happened beforehand!

"I know, but-"

Also, he mentioned there might be more useful information in Dracula's private library, but not where it was or how to get into it or even if that would upset him!

"Yes, but-"

And I'm not leaving him again! I can't! We can't! He's our friend, he deserves better from--

"Sypha, I am trying to agree with you!" [Trevor has to all but holler to cut her off. They're outside the kitchen now, staring heatedly at one another. Sypha breathes hard through her nose, days of poorly stifled emotion boiling her blood. Trevor stomps into the room and dumps her books at the table, then turns back to her.] "We won't leave him. But we may need to truss him up and toss him in the wagon, that's all I'm saying."

[Sypha slumps towards him, coming up close and then leaning into him until her face is buried in his chest and his arms come round her shoulders. She hides her wobbly lower lip and reddened eyes and muffles her uneven breaths.] I'm sorry. I didn't mean to make it sound like you don't care. I know you do. I'm just...everything's so awful. I want to fix it. I don't know how.

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