reposing | reincarnation vampire lord

reincarnation vampire lord | miraclewhip

Ultimately, what ends up being the most logical choice is the one he hates the most, but there have been many people vying for the power vacuum that Dracula had left. The greedy, the pompous, self-righteous -- too many have tried to claim the empty throne in his father's castle, and all have fallen. But the courts will never be happy to leave it vacant, and he's tired of the fighting.

So he takes it himself, crushing anyone that tries to overthrow him. Otherwise, he prefers to be merciful and benevolent, even if he loathes the politics and having to outright police the rest of the creatures of the night.

It isn't the most ideal. He sees Trevor and Sypha less than he'd prefer, wanting instead to be with them, watch their children grow, to love them. And he does, but just not as much as he'd like.

"They will die one day, my lord," one of the other vampires warn. "Would you fall into the same cycle as your father before you?"

It is a thought. Alucard knows what the intention is: to turn them into vampires like him. But he could never throw them into his world, a world of night and never having daylight. To survive as does. To truly force a Belmont into what they've hunted after all this time? Unacceptable. So he lets them live as they are, human and wonderful, until their last dying day.

And it is on that day that Alucard locks himself away from the rest of the world, deep in the earth with the crypt of his mother and father. To sleep, now that there is nothing else waiting for him alive.

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This feels correct. He doesn’t know why, because it was a stupid thing to do (and it’s a little laughable, how he agreed not to do foolish things before immediately throwing himself into the arms of a man who is, despite being his rescuer, a practical stranger), but it does.

“Home.” He repeats, and he says nothing more for the moment. Instead, he buries his head in Adrian’s shoulder.

Truly and honestly, Adrian wants to weep. He's glad to share the castle with someone. Whether or not it's true, if this is indeed his stupid, wonderful Belmont from centuries ago, Katalin is still good. And he would protect that.

"I have ... seen my fair share if people in the world. Some who do their best, despite the awful circumstances. Despite every terrible thing thrown at them. Others who are despicable opportunists." Wiping his eyes, Adrian pulls back, his hands on Katalin's shoulders. "Perhaps you are not their blood, but your heart is a noble Belmont. That I won't doubt."

It's been barely two days, but he's seen enough. Watched this man's sincerity, his kindness, and he is certain.

"Let's bring you to your friend."

He has a home. He has a home. He didn’t expect that to mean anything to him, didn’t think he needed it, until suddenly it’s something that he has and he can’t keep himself from trembling with sobs. He’s so tired. So, so tired. It hurts, every muscle still aches. His wrists are scarred from the manacles digging into them for so long. He’s not sure there’s a place on his body that isn’t bruised green and yellow and purple and black. And perhaps, perhaps he was maybe afraid. Afraid to die. Afraid to not die, and to be trapped here for years. But he has a home, now, and homes are safe.

He squeezes Adrian tightly to himself before letting go and nodding.

“Sophie. She’ll- she’ll be worried. I’ve not been writing to her, while I’ve been here.”

He sounds oddly guilty about that, as if he ought to have been capable of doing so.

The sobbing only earns a soft, sympathetic gaze, and he reaches out to gently thumb away Katalin's tears before smoothing his hair back. It feels natural to do in this moment. It doesn't hurt he looks like one of his lost loves, but Katalin himself clearly needs the comfort and reassurance. He isn't worried right now about looking weak or anything of the like.

And Adrian finds he wants to protect him.

"That's hardly your fault," he assures gently. "Let me take care of the rest."

Turning around, Adrian looks to the engine. With a bit more power in him and being as close as he is, it's less strain to control it now. Holding out his hands, Adrian concentrates on where they had seen the Speakers.

Gazing out to the view, Adrian quietly says farewell to the crypt for now.

Gears turn, electricity sparking over the engine. In an instant the castle transports itself, appearing only a short distance where the Speaker tribe is finishing packing their belongings for a harsh journey.

They've noticed. From the high vantage point, the tiny blue specks can be seen rearranging themselves. Some are quickly shepherded into the safety of the wagons, while others move backward slowly, defensively, protecting the others.

And then one is moving toward the castle, sped along by wind magic beneath her feet.

"Sophie! That's Sophie!" Katalin yells, scrubbing his eyes and nose, suddenly just as bright and overjoyed as he was hurt and delicate only a moment ago. From this distance there's little to differentiate her from the other speakers. So apparently he recognises her by virtue of her desire to fight a vampire castle.

Seeing the Speaker that's using magic to rush toward the castle makes him raise a curious brow. Not exactly the initial instinct that he would expect out of most people, but it's hard not to be endeared by how excited Katalin is. Adrian smiles a little, then turns to begin his descent in order to exit the castle.

"Come. You should greet her proper."

He wonders what to expect. Though Sophie clearly has a familiar face and hair just as fiery as in his memories, she certainly seems more... fierce than he's expecting.

Then again, Katalin is much softer than Trevor ever had been, but the stark differences are not things that actually truly bother him. It's charming, actually.

He doesn’t need to be instructed to do that much. Only guided, he learns when he dashes ahead of Adrian and realies that he has no idea at all where he’s going.

“You’ll love her. You’ll love her so, so much. Everyone does, everyone who ever set eyes on her-“

Excitable, clearly exaggerated praise spills out of him as he half desperately tries to navigate the castle and half follows Alucard through it until they’re at the doors, and already there’s the sound of something small and solid slamming against them.

(He gave her that knife, the last Christmas before she couldn’t return to the Belmont house. The blade was from one of his old ones, no longer useful for his hunting but good enough for the work of camping and survival. The handle he made himself, and it bears all the scars of a first try.)

“Sophie!” He calls out as the doors open at Adrian’s approach. “You’re- you’re safe, thank god.”

They had very nearly been packed, when all of a sudden a strange energy had begun to crackle in the air, and a rough wind had picked up out of nowhere — not blown so much as displaced, as the space it had once occupied was suddenly and abruptly overtaken by something else.

The old stories have always been Sophie's favorites, in a way that she's never quite been able to explain. All of the Speakers preserve them, of course, but it's somehow always been easy for her to keep them — unusually easy, bright and vivid with detail that she secretly suspects that it was only her imagination adding in, except that those details never seem quite as made-up as they probably ought to. And it's because of those old stories that she remembers the one about a castle that moves, a terror that crosses the land swifter and more immediate than any caravan could ever hope to travel. She's never seen it (of course she hasn't; no one ever has), and yet still she knows how it must have looked, with its spindly towers and skyward spires and lack of apparent logic to its construction.

In her imagination, it looks — well. Rather like the castle that does show up. The one that whips the surrounding nature into a frenzy, that throws its shadow over land that once was bright (if not altogether warm, given the winter), and sends the other Speakers scattering in apprehension of the unprecedented phenomenon in their midst.

But she knows. She knows what one does with a castle like this, somehow, and it might be from the stories, but it might also be from a story that no one ever told her — one she only just discovered in tandem with the sight of the thing, one that shakes all over in her memory and resonates through her limbs in a way she couldn't hope to explain.

She knows she needs a knife. The knife is important. The castle is important, and the knife, and she needs to bang on the doors with the pommel of it, because that's important, too. She has one, luckily — an old gift from a holiday that Katalin had cared about much more than she had, a possession that stays permissible in the camp both because it was a gift and because it counts as a tool instead of a weapon.

She has a knife. The castle is there. The story is inside her.

So she goes, with wind at her feet to speed things along (not part of the story, but just efficient), and gets herself up to the doors and starts banging, and knows that something will happen when she does, sooner or later.

It turns out to be sooner.

It also turns out to be Katalin, who is not supposed to be in a castle, and who is not supposed to be looking scrawny and half-dead and decked out in too-big clothes that hang off his frame and show off the bruises on his neck and his wrists and —

Oh. There's someone else there, too.

Which is how Sophie Aurin, eldest daughter of the Aurin family, proceeds to invite herself over the threshold of a big spooky castle she's never seen before, knife in hand and determination glittering in the steel of her eyes, and bodily inserts herself into the space between Katalin and the stranger he's with, her expression a challenge daring to be taken up.

"What is this?" she demands, which is probably a stupid question coming from anyone with, well, eyes, but they all have to start somewhere, don't they.

"Perhaps not half as much as you seem to," Adrian gently teases Katalin with a wry smile.

Whatever he expects, truly Adrian does not know. What he does know is how quickly Sophie moves in order to put herself between him and Katalin -- which, granted, he could not blame her. If anything he values her instincts, how determined she is to protect the man. The knife does not instill fear, though it does earn a raise of his brow.

But in her face, in her gaze, he sees Sypha, his fierce beloved untamed Sypha. Sophie has a fire that is different, but they share it nonetheless.

He can't help but smile, even if his heart aches at missing her. Missing both of them. Still, he has promised Katalin, and he will keep it.

"It is, perhaps, best if Katalin explains to you, Sophie Aurin. But know that I am relieved to know you are safe and well."

There’s a change comes over him in Sophie’s presence. He leans toward her, like a plant moving toward the sun. Words come more easily, with a little less swearing. Everything about him is softer, more open, and he stands like her presence is the only thing just barely keeping him upright.

“It’s a castle.” He says, because he’s also more than a little stupid around her. And also because he’s still dumbfounded by the fact that it moved, even if he was momentarily distracted from it by her presence. “He brought it here. To find you.”

And this is why, she thinks, it is actually not best if Katalin explains anything, but that's a digression she doesn't dwell on, mostly because she's paying attention to the nuances here — not just the things that are said, but the things that are being said without using words to say them.

The stranger's smile doesn't seem feigned or forced. He claims to be relieved, and he sounds like it, which doesn't make a particular lot of sense in itself, but it's something to develop more later. Katalin is Katalin, which carries something to that in and of itself; if he's acting the way that he usually does, then that means he's not acting as though this is anything outside of the ordinary.

Whatever this is, he doesn't seem to think it's unsafe. She knows that, because if he did, he wouldn't be letting her stay standing between himself and the stranger. He'd already have her knife in his hand and a challenge in his eyes, both to keep her from getting into trouble for the aggression, and to make sure that there was aggression at all to begin with.

So, then. Mysteries. Ones that leave her still guarded, but at least a little less overtly defensive.

"That seems like a lot of trouble to go to, just to find me," she remarks, eyeing the stranger and discovering with some surprise that she finds the sight of his smile...warming. "What do you want with us?"

That was a slip, using us instead of me. But subtle as it is, it neatly covers all of her areas of concern — the Speakers, the ambiguous countryside affected by such a move. And also herself and Katalin as a unit — because of course that's how she instinctively thinks of them.

Katalin's body language is terribly endearing. If nothing else, he's glad to reunite him with someone that he loves so much. His eyes return to looking at Sophie, watching her, unable to blame her for being so ready to defend her friend and her people.

"Nothing," he answers truthfully. "I am Adrian Fahrenheit Ţepeş, son of Vlad Dracula Ţepeş. I do not know how the stories might go in your tribe now, as it has been a few centuries, but I do not come to harm any. Your people, your friends, and yourself are all safe from me."

Adrian looks at her, looks at them. How different and how similar they are to the people he knew. Softly, he speaks, "I was asleep for sometime. I'm afraid that you two have a strong resemblance to people I loved, and it was in that a vampire who foolishly called himself a lord wanted to use it against me. Katalin was held captive as a result, unfortunately, and they were attempting to track you. With failure, of course, but the intention was there. Rest assured, he is no longer a threat, but ashes next to an empty throne.

"As a result, I was concerned. As was Katalin, of course. I've no regrets to bring him to you." Adrian smiles wryly. "He very clearly thinks quite highly of you."

He looks at Adrian, mouth slightly agape, and then back at Sophie. That was meant to be a secret, gosh. There were at least two things there that were meant to be a secret.

“You didn’t have to tell her that I fucked up again.” He grumbles, pouting for only a moment before it’s gone and he’s back to bright and warm. “I’m okay. Just got stuck for a little while, this time. The vampire helped. And- I don’t really understand it past that.”

(Again. And this time. It’s not that he’s not good at what he does, more that he never learned to pick his battles and just picks all of them at once. This isn’t the first time he’s got out of his depth, just the worst.)

He watches Adrian’s expression carefully, trying to divine what he thinks when he sees Sophie. If she’s the answer to everything for Adrian that she is to him. He’s smiling, at least, and that has to mean something good. In an attempt to be at least somewhat helpful, he adds- “There’s a mirror here. One of the ones you used to tell me about.” He turns to Adrian. “Could you show her?”

"Half-vampire," she supplies automatically, mostly directed at Katalin. She knows the story, of course; it's one of the most important ones the Speakers have ever kept, the ones granted a designation of sanctity levels above even the usual importance of the tales they preserve. There are some stories that merit such a thing — the understanding that should no other story survive, this one must be kept, and its care must always be entrusted to the best of the best, because every least detail is precious beyond compare.

"You are the one they called the Sleeping Soldier," she continues, as she weaves her own understanding through the things they've each said, linking it together into a greater whole. "And — you are saying we look like the others. The hunter Trevor Belmont, and the scholar Sypha Belnades. I know the story. We will never forget."

(She wonders if the half-vampire — if Adrian — really comprehends the depth and significance of those four words. We will never forget isn't a promise; it's perhaps the highest accolade that a community of Speakers can ever offer.)

"As for you," she adds, rounding momentarily on Katalin, "Is that why you look so terrible? And why I have not heard from you in so long — you were taken by vampires?!"

An apologetic glance is given to Katalin, but Adrian doesn't quite lose his smile. He wasn't going to lie for you!

"Yes," Adrian responds to Sophie softly. "I suppose more to the point, the vampire lord that took Katalin away was under the impression that you both could be them reborn. However, Trevisan was also a fool who thought he could gain the upper hand with me. Either way, it was important to ensure no one else was idiotic enough to come out here after you."

And alas, poor Katalin, being so reprimanded. "Don't be upset with him. It's my fault, if anything."

Wow rude, he might need to rethink his choices of stupid crush.

Distracting Sophie with the knowledge that there’s a viewing mirror here, like the one she admired so much in the Belmont Hold (they snuck away to look at it, one winter, and she focused it on far away places where it was summer in december and on birds with brightly coloured feathers) hasn’t worked, and so he instead sighs in defeat.

“It was only for a little while!” He insists, and he’s not quite sure who he’s angry at for embarassing him in from of who. “I just got a little careless. It won’t happen again, and you don’t need to cauterise anything this time. It’s fine.”

(He said that last time, too, except for the cauterising part.)

"I don't believe you," Sophie retorts, and whether that's an actual response or just a verbalization of exasperation is anyone's guess. Alas poor Katalin, the distraction was a valiant try, and in nearly any other circumstance it almost certainly would've worked. Probably it still will, once there's a little more equilibrium and a little less worry to the moment.

But she's thoughtful a minute, as she regards Adrian, because there's one thing he hasn't actually said in the midst of all of this that seems pertinent to ask, and it turns out she's just impulsive enough to do it.

"But what do you think, about it?" she ventures at last. "You said we look like them. And that the vampire lord who took Treffy — took Katalin —"

(Oops. His proper name always feels so strange on her tongue, from how rarely she bothers to use it.)

"— thought that we are them. So. Do you think that, too?"

Cauterize anything this time what.

Before he can actually tackle that, Sophie proceeds with the question he'd been dodging for himself. Adrian glances down before he meets her gaze again.

And he can't help but the twitch of amusement from his lips, hearing it. Treffy.

"There are similarities," Adrian says softly. "Glimpses that I have seen when Katalin, things I know Trevor would have said. Your voices, your faces -- it is almost identical. But there are differences as well. Not that they bother me."

He frowns to himself. "And I would not act as if there was the expectation that either of you owe me anything, that you owe me to be them. You have your own lives. Your own bonds. You should live them."

It's a bit roundabout of an answer. As he does, when he's not really wanting to be too forthcoming. But it's not a lie, either.

Why. Why is she using that nickname. Why is everyone here conspiring to humiliating him in front of each other? How is any of this fair? He’s regretting a lot of his choices right now.

“I don’t know what the fuck’s going on.” He provides, oh so helpfully. “Something, something, excommunication. Something, something, unbaptised. Something, something, second chances.”

But he does owe Adrian, doesn’t he? He can’t leave. He made a promise. Best not to tell Sophie about that until he’s out of the first round of trouble. She always hates it when he makes promises to random monsters. Something about words having power. Something about being careful. As if he’d ever make a promise he didn’t intend to keep.

“That’s assuming he was telling the truth, of course. He also told me that he wanted me to rescue his daughter from the castle. I’m not even sure he had a daughter.”

"You would probably know more if you didn't get hit in the head so often," says Sophie, who is apparently utterly unable to resist a fairly steady stream of color commentary on Katalin's contributions. It comes of having grown up with him; there's a rhythm to the banter that's practically instinctive by now.

(They are probably making a great impression on the half-vampire soldier of legend, Adrian Fahrenheit Ţepeş. Utterly fantastic, the both of them. Though he seems to have taken care of Katalin before they'd moved the castle here, so perhaps he's at least a little more used to Katalin's...everything, by now.)

"...So that is it. You're just...bringing him back. And you would let me take him, and leave, and that would be that?"

"Who can say? Why else would Trevisan have gone through such trouble, if he was so certain? I can't claim that he was right, just that he was an idiot who thought he could use you against me. Whatever God's rules are have no bearing on me. He hardly spares any love for vampires, half or full."

The idea does... make his heart heavy. But he had given his word, to stay awake. Even if he never saw Katalin again, he would hold onto that agreement, at least until his human life was done.

"If that is what you both want, then I would not stop you," Adrian says softly.

“It was only once. And I was well enough the next day.”

He does bristle at the way that word leaves Adrian’s mouth, just a little. He only has so many ties to his first family, and that is one of them. Not half as much as he bristled at the accusation of being an excommunicant, in this life or any other.

(‘I still fucking care.’ Trevor had admitted once, drunk, in a tone that suggested that he considered still fucking caring a terrible thing, agonizing over the decision of whether to piss on the wall of the chuirch ‘Even after everything, it still fucking matters. Still fucking hurts’)

“I want to show Sophie the mirror. And the engine.” She’d always clasped her hands around empty air when she recited that part, as if there was something she were trying to grab. “Everything.”

It's good that Katalin changes the subject when he does (...again), because this time it takes. More importantly, the fact that it works as a distraction is what keeps Sophie from opening her mouth, when she's already looking fairly hard at Adrian, as though he's a puzzle she's trying to solve in realtime.

You're wrong. You do want something with us, is what she almost says. He's not willing to act on it, perhaps; he's keeping himself carefully restrained, unthreatening, even noble. But there was something about him, she could tell, that didn't like the thought of what she'd said about taking Treffy and going. Not out of malice or greed — perhaps just out of melancholy.

It's a long look. A searching look. It probably leaves little to no ambiguity about what's running through her head; her expression loses some of that guarded nature in favor of just working through the problem in front of her.

But she doesn't say it, because Katalin wants to see the mirror, and the engine, and everything. No — he wants her to see it. That means it really must be worth looking at.

And anyway, that will give her more time to watch their sleeping soldier, besides.

"Someone should tell the caravan that they're not in any danger," she reminds Katalin, even as she absently remembers she's still holding a knife and fits it back into its sheath on her belt. "...What mirror and engine?"

That is no different, her calculating gaze. For however poorly Trevor and Adrian were at communicating deeply emotional, Sypha was always so free with her emotions, understanding them better than they would understand themselves sometimes. Here it is similar, her thoughtful gaze. At least, until her curiosity seems to get the better of her.

Much to Adrian's relief.

"Inform your people they are safe, and welcome inside if they need," Adrian tells her. "I imagine Treffy would like to show you the castle's engine, as well as the mirror I possess. It can technically transport matter, but I prefer to use it purely for viewing, as needed."

He holds out his hand. "Go. I will be here when they are calm." Pointedly, he looks at Katalin, his voice gentle, "I won't be going anywhere."

“You had better not.” He grumbles, focussed more on that than he is on the use of that nickname (that! nickname!). “I’ll-“ -and he can’t come up with a threat that’s a match for how very offended he feels by the idea of Adrian returning to his slumber. “-you promised. No sleeping. Unless- unless it’s the normal sort.”

And he moves closer to Sophie, ruffling her fluffy hair with a rough hand and grinning.

“If he starts sulking and goes to sleep when we get back, you’re allowed to get mad, okay? He promised none of that shit.”

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