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Red Sky at Morning

Chapter 5

Notes:

the next update will be here anytime between next week and five months from now, so get cozy yall. :)

cw: blood, injury, some graphic descriptions.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

The gash across his arm opens up and starts bleeding again when Trevor is stripping off his clothes, now stiff with dried blood like stains of rust-colored flowers blossoming across the fabric. His sleeve has grown sodden and scarlet with fresh blood before he realizes, and he has to peel the torn flaps of what remains of the garment off his arm, the cut stinging in earnest now. He winces, dropping the bloody shirt at his feet as he examines the slice in his skin. It’s clean, a neat swipe that’s parted his skin easily.

Stitches, then.

He sighs wearily, stomping over to the bathroom to run water over the wound to clean it before doing what has to be done. He hates doing his own stitches; they come out jagged and uneven on his better days, and since the cut is on his left arm he’ll have to use his right hand, which he isn’t as dexterous with. Usually he would ask Sypha, whose hands are steadier and more experienced than his own, but right now she probably doesn’t even want to look at him. Asking her to stitch him up isn’t exactly the best way to apologize for being an insensitive bastard.

He manages to thread a needle with numb fingers—he’s losing blood, and fast, making the fingers of his left hand clumsy and stiff—and tie it tightly, making a fist as he sits at his desk, elbows braced on the wood. He poises the edge of the needle at the edge of the wound and braces himself, counting briefly to three in his head before driving the tip into the first torn bit of his skin.

He grits his teeth hard to stop himself from making any sort of noise, clenching his fingers tighter and ignoring the pain as he forces the needle through the other end of the cut, pulling the thread across and between the edges of his skin. Fresh blood wells up in the cut and spills down his arm, dripping steadily onto the floor. He pays it no heed, pulling the thread taut and moving on to the next stitch. It’s messy work, and within seconds his fingers are wet with blood and the needle and thread are covered in the stuff, shining a dark red.

He’s halfway up the cut when he hears a knock at the door.

Cursing under his breath, he stands, still holding the needle with his right hand as he stumbles across the room, his bare feet nearly slipping on the blood that’s gathered on the wooden floor. He shoulders the door open, his whole arm stiff with pain and the tips of his fingers aching from the several dozen times he’d pricked himself with the needle. “What?” he snaps, then stops short when he sees Sypha on the other side of the door, her face steadfastly expressionless. “Oh,” is all he manages to get out. “What is it? Is something wrong?”

“The crew needs a heading,” she says shortly. “Do we keep heading west?”

“Yeah. Yeah, keep going towards the Mediterranean,” he says, glancing down, briefly distracted by the unpleasantly warm and tickling sensation of having fresh blood running down his arm from the half-closed wound. “Once we hit it I’ll let you know when to change course—shit.”

The blood has successfully traveled down the length of his arm and is now dripping ceaselessly off his fingers onto the floor between his bare feet and Sypha’s boots, gleaming like spilled wine. “Sorry about that,” he mutters, swinging his bloody arm out of sight as Sypha’s eyes fall on the wound. They widen immediately. “I’ll just—”

“Trevor, you know you’re terrible at stitching yourself up—what have you done?” She grabs his arm before he can shut the door and he winces, deciding it’s probably wisest to stay quiet. She glances up, brows furrowed with concern. “Let me,” she says.

He only nods.

She sits him down on his bed, prizing the needle from his numb fingers and kneeling beside him. He’s light-headed and dizzy from blood loss as she lowers her head over the wound and undoes the clumsy, unevenly spaced stitches he’d threaded through the cut and carefully does them all again. It doesn’t hurt as much, but that’s probably because he’s seconds away from passing out. And because it’s Sypha, Sypha with her careful hands and nimble fingers, Sypha sitting so close he can smell the faint, sweet scent that usually shrouds her and feel the warmth of her breath on his skin and see the coppery downward brushstrokes of her lashes, feathering over the tops of her faintly freckled cheeks as she looks down, entirely focused.

She finishes the last of the stitches with a faint tug and ties it off neatly, setting the needle aside as she examines her work. The rows of thread are neat and orderly, evenly spaced and close together, holding the wound closed. His skin is sticky with drying blood, and already the wound is beginning to itch. There’s blood in various stages of drying everywhere, crusted underneath his fingernails, all over the floor by the desk and covering his hands and Sypha’s fingers. Seeing so much of his own blood everywhere is disconcerting, and the room is beginning to swim in front of his eyes.

“Wait here,” Sypha says softly. “I’ll go get some bandages.”

He thinks he nods, and she stands and leaves. He blinks, and his eyelids feel heavy and stiff. He can’t even move his fingers, stuck together as they are with blood. He knows he did this to himself, that he’s the only one to blame for all this. He’d baited Adrian Țepeș into exposing his own nature, and he’d paid the price—not just the wound, but so many other things. Sypha’s trust, for one thing. Exposure, for another. He’d just drawn an even bigger target on his own back and the back of everyone on this ship, the whole crew. Soon it won’t be just the church looking for them and hunting them down. And it’s all Trevor’s fault.

He feels something hot and damp drag across his stinging and throbbing forearm and jumps, realizing belatedly that Sypha has returned and is kneeling by his bed again, a tub of steaming water beside her and a sodden rag in her hand, gently cleaning the blood off his skin. He blinks down at her blearily, feeling oddly light-headed and detached from his own body, as if he’s watching himself from behind a pane of misty glass, only able to see a faint, blurry outline and hazy suggestions of reality.

Sypha dabs at the stitched wound with something that stings and burns, and he doesn’t even have the strength to articulate the pain of it, a soft little moan escaping his lips instead. “Hurts,” he mutters.

“This will help with the healing,” Sypha says, not looking at him. She hasn’t looked at him the whole time she’s been in here, tending to his arm. Even half-conscious he feels a little pang of something that’s part regret and part anger. Why does he have to fuck everything up?

Sypha stands long enough to sit beside him on the bed, still wiping the blood off his skin. Somehow it’s made its way onto his face and chest, and it’s dried in sticky splotches of dark red. The smell of it is everywhere, the air thick with its heavy iron scent. He holds himself still as she dabs at his skin, suppressing a shiver or two as she leans forward, that sweet vanilla smell of her skin washing over him and filling his head. Her lips are slightly parted, and she’s so close he can see the dents her teeth have made in the soft skin where she’s bitten it. He can’t take his eyes off her, no matter how many times he tells himself to stop. Her face is as familiar to him as his own, but he can never get enough of looking at her, and every time he does he discovers something new about her face—the freckles dusting her nose, the slivers of darker blue in her eyes, the way the left corner of her lips goes up first when she smiles.

He doesn’t remember falling in love with Sypha, but he remembers realizing it. They’d been maybe sixteen or seventeen years old, sitting on the roof of one of the taller buildings in Dranova, swinging their legs over empty space and eating one of those expensive icing-covered tarts from the bakery in the market after Trevor had saved up enough coin to finally buy one. They’d broken it in half with their hands and shared it, licking their fingers and giggling. There had been icing and crumbs everywhere but the tart had been sweet and tasted of fresh green apples and cinnamon and it melted on his tongue, and with Sypha sitting squeezed beside him and the taste of it in his mouth he’d actually been happy, one of the first times he’d felt really happy since he’d been a child.

A bit of icing had fallen onto Sypha’s robe and she was trying to rub it off steadfastly, chin tucked into her shoulder and tongue poking out just a bit, eyebrows scrunched together and all of her concentration leveled on that single task of getting the little icing stain off her clothes. There had been crumbs dusting her lips and her hair was in disarray, the evening sunlight slanting down onto her and coating her in dark gold. He was looking at her, just like he’s looking at her now, and then he’d realized suddenly that his life would quite simply be nothing without this girl in it.

He’s jerked back to the present when Sypha withdraws, having sponged all the blood off him. She gently begins to wrap his forearm with a cloth bandage, and he can feel a cool salve smeared on the inside. Once the wound is covered and the bandage is tied off she draws away, examining her work. She exhales, and he can see the vulnerable line of her throat move as she swallows, then nods. “That should do it,” she says. “Make sure you don’t overexert yourself, otherwise the stitches will come undone.”

He says nothing and she sits back, her hands covered in his blood. Finally she glances up and meets his eye, and their gazes catch and hold. He sees hesitation tug at her face visibly, and then she glances away quickly. “You’ve still got blood on you,” she murmurs, and she leans down, wringing out the rag she’d used earlier into the bucket, still steaming gently. The water inside is more red than colorless now.

She wipes the cloth carefully across his face, and she’s still not looking at him. He can feel exhaustion and blood loss dragging him under, making his limbs heavier and his vision dimmer. He looks at her as she looks away from him, busying herself cleaning the blood off his skin. He swallows, and when he speaks his voice is cracked and dry.

“Sorry,” he says.

She glances up for the barest fraction of a second. “What?” she asks, and she sounds slightly uncertain.

“I’m sorry.”

She looks away again. “For what?”

“I don’t know—everything.” He sighs, shutting his eyes so he doesn’t have to see her avoiding his gaze. “I’ve been a shitty friend, especially in the past few days.”

“You’ve lost more blood than I’d thought,” she says, and now she sounds amused. “You have nothing to apologize for, Trevor. I know it’s been hard for you, what with everything that’s happened in the last week. You’ve been doing everything you can.”

“That’s still not enough.” He opens his eyes, and this time she’s looking directly back at him. “I haven’t been fair to you.”

“This is ridiculous,” she says, shaking her head and continuing to sponge the dried blood off him. “You don’t know what you’re saying, Trevor. This is your fatigue talking.”

“Then it’s best to wring a confession out of me now, since I don’t have the presence of mind to stop myself from saying it,” he says, and he reaches up, fingers encircling her wrist, stopping her. She inhales sharply, looking back up at him. Her fingers free the cloth and it slides to the floor, leaving a trail of bloody water in its wake. Neither of them pay it any mind, still staring at each other.

“Saying what?” Her voice is barely above a whisper.

“What I really think,” he says.

“About?”

“Everything.”

“Trevor…” She hesitates, and now she’s looking at him, really looking at him—not ducking her head and shying away like she was before. Being on the other end of the full force of her gaze is startling after she’d avoided his eye for so long, and her face is so familiar to him, more so even than his own. There’s a blazing sort of hesitation suffusing her features, a kind of insecurity, one that’s jarring; Sypha is many things—she is fierce and she is powerful and she is confident, and sometimes she’s obstinate and she can be a total pain in the arse—but she’s never insecure. She’s never uncertain.

But she is now.

He wants to answer that question he can see in her eyes. Because he can see it, hovering just out of reach of either of them, dancing in her periphery. It’s there, and he thinks he knows the answer to it. He hopes he does. He wants to tell her he loves her, wants to hope that that will fix everything magically somehow. But it will only put another burden on her shoulders, already hunched under the weight of so many others. So he swallows the words, just like he’s been swallowing them since he was sixteen. It will only ruin everything.

He always ruins everything.

And he can see her guard lowering, cautiously. His own is crumbling with every second, worn down as it is by pain and blood loss and Sypha’s proximity and the sound of her voice, the touch of her fingers.

He knows he can’t let this happen.

He’s fucked up—he’s shone a spotlight down onto this ship, another one. Now everyone in the Seven Seas will be gunning for them, everyone will be waiting to take their pound of flesh. Now Adrian Țepeș is his prisoner, and he knows what he is. He can’t allow anyone else to get hurt because of what he’s done. He can’t allow anyone close enough to share that spotlight, to widen that target.

Especially not Sypha. And that means he has to do whatever it takes to push her away. He’d rather Sypha hate him than die because of his carelessness. He steels himself, adjusting himself for another weight, another problem—and then he pulls back just barely.

He sees her eyes shutter almost instantly the moment he does, sees the walls close up around her again. She sits up, her fingers falling away from his chest and her other hand deftly scooping the blood-soaked rag up again. She ducks her head, and just like that that brief little moment, that slender cord that had connected them for just a few seconds, breaks once more.

“Thanks for…” He blinks down at his bandaged arm, feeling something hot and bitter growing in his throat. “You know. I’m rubbish at this stuff.”

She nods. “It’s nothing.”

He tries to swallow whatever it is that’s beginning to make it hard to breathe, leveling a blow and praying it lands, for her sake if not his own. “Lucky you decided to come by. I didn’t think you would—I thought you’d send someone else to ask about the heading.”

Her mouth tightens, and she stands, dropping the sodden rag into the bucket with a splash of bloody water. “I suppose,” is all she says, tightly. “It’s my job, isn’t it?”

He doesn’t know if she meant it to, but it stings. She begins to turn away, her shoulders tensing and her face closing up. She’s going to leave. She’s going to turn away, and she isn’t going to turn back around again. And it’s worth it. Anything to keep her safe.

She’s about to turn away fully when he aims his final blow. “You thought about what I told you earlier, right? About… about him?”

She stiffens, then glances back his way. “What?”

“You’ve given it some thought?”

She hesitates. “Yes… yes, I have.”

“Good. So now you’ll know it’s necessary. And again—lucky you’re here, because I think you’ll be up to the task. Better you than me. And it’s like you said; it’s your job, isn’t it?”

The blow hits home: Sypha flinches visibly, hurt flashing across her face for a split second before she hardens again. Her posture is stiff and unfriendly when she spins on her heel and stalks from the room, slamming the door behind her as she goes. The moment it does he sags against the back of the bed, all the energy draining out of him. He curls in on himself, blinking hard to get rid of the stinging in his eyes, and puts his face in his hands.


In his dreams, he sees his mother.

He remembers her, remembers that she had hair like spun gold and eyes like chips of summer sky, that her arms had been the safest place in the world and her voice the most calming thing he had ever heard. Sometimes he hears it in the wind that curls off the sea, hears it in the crash of the waves and the whisper of the tides, feels her arms around him instead of the water, sees her eyes instead of the endless blue expanse of the ocean. Sometimes he wonders if he will feel the same comfort she made him feel if he lets himself drown. Wonders if it will bring him peace. Succumbing to the one entity he loved more than anything—but is that the sea or his mother?

His mother’s eyes blink out at him, warm and kind and blue. He sees her smile, and beckon him towards her, her arms outstretched. She calls his name, and he goes to her.

His fingers pass through her skin like mist, and he falls forward into the choppy, storm-churned sea instead, realizing too little, too late that he had seen the waves, not her eyes, and heard the roar of the sea, not her voice, and now he feels the current drag him under and not her arms. But he doesn’t remember enough of her, doesn’t remember her as if she’s standing in front of him. He remembers her the way a half-remembered dream lingers in one’s mind, turning to liquid in your hands as you watch, dripping uselessly to the ground when you try to grip it tight, not wanting to let it go. He remembers her in impressions and suggestions, the sound of a lullaby and the feeling of silky golden hair, the softness of her cheek against his.

Her memory fractures and breaks into shards, each one tipped with blood—

Blood.

He can taste it in the back of his throat, coppery and thick and sharpening his vision, elongating his teeth, making everything stand out in bright, brutal detail. It makes him as quick and as intangible as the wind, sucks his soul out of his teeth bit by bit, drop by drop. If he fills himself with enough of it he’ll turn into a soulless husk, a vessel made of hunger and instinct.

He sees the Bishop, sees the disgust on his face as he beholds the creature that Adrian has turned into, the creature he has been all along. Sees the cross in his hands, a cross that will sear his flesh, burn it away and turn him into ash. He sees himself as a boy, unallowed to enter the church, asking the Bishop why. He remembers never getting answers, remembers giving up on seeking the truth. He thinks he knows why, now.

He dreams of his father, which is impossible—he never knew his father. But does he? He sees blood on his hands even though the hands aren’t his own, tastes blood on his teeth, but they don’t belong to him. He sees a ship at midnight and a crew that doesn’t breathe, and wonders if he is losing his mind.

He dreams about the sea, and he dreams of blood, and dreams of his parents. And in the whirlwind of memories and impressions and shards of bloody glass, he can’t tell which is which and who is who. He doesn’t think he even knows who he is anymore. Is he human, or is he a monster? Is he Adrian, or is he somebody else, somebody who has been lurking beneath his skin for his whole life? Is he his mother’s son, or his father’s? Or is he neither?

He thinks about the First Mate, the boy with the ocean eyes. He thinks about his soft voice, his direct gaze, thinks about the strange feeling he gets whenever they speak, as if there’s something missing. And he thinks about Trevor Belmont, and he doesn’t know whether he hates him or is indebted to him for what he did.

He thinks and he dreams, and he drifts. And outside, the sea laments its horribly beautiful symphony, and he isn’t sure, but he thinks he hears the wind calling his name.


The wound on his arm itches, and he hates it.

Resilience and willpower are all well and good when it comes to enormously difficult things like being tortured for information and not giving in when that pretty young thief had attempted to seduce him in order to steal his dagger (he admittedly hadn’t shown much willpower in that last situation, but Trevor had managed to hoodwink him and steal the emerald ring right off his delicate little finger, after allowing the boy to back him into a hidden alcove at that party). But those great qualities always seem to desert a person when faced with something as stupid as an itchy set of stitches.

He curls his fingers into fists to avoid the urge to scratch, knowing that he’ll rip the stitches wide open and spill half his lifeblood down onto the prow. Not to mention it’ll hurt like mad, get infected and make him regret it the moment he does it. But maybe he deserves it. He still can’t get the look on Sypha’s face out of his head before she’d turned on her heel and slammed the door. God, he can’t even fathom how much of an arse he is.

He sighs, leaning his head against the figurehead behind him. It doesn’t work trying to convince himself it’s worth it. Even if it is, it feels like shit.

He looks down, where beneath his boots the ship slices through the churning waves. Their surfaces are turned to the darkest of blues by the evening sky, and the sunset is beginning to streak across the sky above him. It’s always beautiful out here in the middle of the ocean, where it’s just him and the blue sky and the blue sea. Peaceful, almost. Like he hasn’t got the church and a fuckton of pissed-off vampire generals on his tail.

He mutters a few choice curses under his breath, swinging himself over the figurehead and back onto the helm. Practice keeps him from slipping and being cut in half by the speed and weight of the ship moving through the water, as does a dash of caution. He may not be afraid of much, but getting sliced in half by his own ship isn’t high on his bucket list.

The ship is bustling with activity, even if it’s just seven men on board besides him, Sypha and Adrian Țepeș. He just nods at the men as he passes by, turning and ducking down the steps belowdecks. He doesn’t have it in him for small talk right now, even if it might be important small talk. Stopping on every third stair to make sure Sypha isn’t down here he slowly moves down, down and down further still until he steps out into the brig, the creak of wood and the sound of the waves loudest here.

He stops in front of the last cell, and earlier he hadn’t known whether he felt bad for Adrian Țepeș or not. He’d thought about it a lot, about whether what he’d done had been morally right, or ethically wrong, or just plain stupid. And while he still doesn’t know the answer to the last one, now he knows for sure that he definitely doesn’t think he’s done the man any favors.

Despite the silver bars and the aspen walls and the other anti-vampire paraphernalia that made up this cell Trevor had deemed it wise to restrain his arms, knowing that not much, not even silver, could stop a vampire if they were thirsty enough. And this particular vampire had technically been starving for about twenty-five years. Not a very optimistic number. So he’d shackled his wrists to the walls with iron, knowing it would both restrain him and restrict his blood flow, making it harder to move without it feeling like someone had just chopped both his arms off at the shoulders.

He looks like some heathen’s version of Jesus, arms chained to either side of his body, half-slumped against the wall, wrists bleeding and healing and bleeding again, bruised and battered and the lower half of his face a mask of blood. His eyes are closed, the lids so dark they look like bruises on his face, which is more gaunt and hollowed than Trevor remembers. His hair is hanging around his face in lank golden strips, tumbling messily onto his shoulders. His chest barely rises and falls, the only sign that he’s even alive. All in all, he looks like hell, and it’s all Trevor’s fault.

What the fuck am I even doing here? he thinks suddenly, swallowing hard and taking a step backwards. It’s a mark of how disoriented he is that the swaying of the ship makes him stagger, and it takes a few seconds for him to find his footing. He’s beginning to turn away when he hears a weak voice behind him speak.

“Leaving so soon?”

He freezes, still halfway through turning towards the door. Ah, fuck.

He turns slowly back towards the cell, feeling oddly like a child caught with his hand in the cookie jar. Not that he knows how that would feel.

Adrian Țepeș hasn’t moved a single inch, his hands still chained, wrists still bruised and skin broken and leaking blood and clear fluid, back curved awkwardly and slumped against the wall. Only now his eyes are open, no longer two dark circles but two dull golden disks that are filmed over with a heavy layer of fatigue and sleeplessness. He’d probably been awake the whole time. Bastard.

“It’d be a bit creepy if I just hung around watching you sleep, wouldn’t it?” Trevor says, stepping up to the bars with his hands in his pockets. Adrian’s face twitches minutely as he shifts, pulling his knees up to his chest with apparent difficulty, as if he doesn’t want to show the pain he so obviously feels. Trevor ignores the sliver of guilt and pity that burrows between his ribs.

“I suppose,” is all he says. “Only I wasn’t asleep.” He shakes his hair away from his face, which is alarmingly expressionless. This man’s whole life has been flipped upside down and set on fire, everything he believed in ripped apart and scattered to the winds. Surely he should be feeling something. He looks at Trevor with those tired, lifeless eyes of his. “What are you doing here?”

“I… don’t know,” Trevor says, honestly.

“You’re the second person to say that to me,” Adrian says, leaning back against the wall. It looks incredibly uncomfortable, and Trevor knows that if he stands here for one more minute he’ll end up tossing him the keys that sit heavily in his pocket. “Am I the person you all come to when you’ve nowhere else to go, then?”

“Maybe. I’d take it as a good sign, if I were you. It means people don’t think you’re a prick.”

“I beg to differ.” He frowns out at Trevor. “Or rather, you would.”

“I don’t think you’re a prick, really,” Trevor says conversationally. “I’ve just been raised to.”

Adrian’s face stills, and finally there’s the barest sliver of emotion on his face—and it’s an amalgamation of panic and fear and frustration and anger and sadness, and how that one little millisecond of expression can convey all that is beyond him. It’s the realization that he really is truly upset by what he learned, that Trevor really fucked up that badly, that makes him grab the keys with minutely shaking fingers and unlock the cell door.

That earlier look of blankness along with a tinge of suspicion replaces his expression as Trevor opens the door with the squeak of hinges and fishes the other set of keys out of his pocket. “Fuck this,” he mutters, unlocking the chains around his wrists. Adrian doesn’t move as Trevor frees his hands, but the moment the last manacle comes loose he exhales, his fingers wrapping around his own wrists to soothe the bites, sitting fully on the ground against the wall with his legs crossed beneath him. His shoulders slump with the relief from the pain almost instantly.

“I suppose these will look normal again in a few hours,” he says, examining the deep scores the iron had dug into his skin, braceleting his wrists with ribbons of scarlet.

“I’d expect so.”

“Couldn’t stomach how pathetic I looked, I suppose?” He raises an eyebrow, and Trevor shrugs. “Something like that.”

Adrian looks down at his hands, then back up at Trevor. “I’m not going to thank you, Belmont.”

“I wasn’t expecting you to,” Trevor says, turning around again. He shuts the cell door behind him again, locking it with a loud click. By the time he turns to face the inside of the cell again Adrian is looking at his wrists blankly—where the wounds are healing even as they both watch, the torn skin knitting itself back together and new skin smoothing over the scar tissue. Within seconds, all that’s left is the blood that had gathered there earlier.

“Not a few hours then, I suppose,” Adrian says after a pause, examining his own hands. “I still have to get used to this.”

“Not a bad thing to get used to, is it?” Trevor glances ruefully down at his own arm, where the skin around his stitches is still red and inflamed, sticky blood gathering between the threads. It still itches. “I mean, there are worse things that come with being half-vampire.”

“Like still being hungry no matter how much you eat and knowing you can’t satiate it with human food?” Adrian asks, and now there’s an edge to his voice. “Like feeding on the blood of the innocent? Like not being able to touch silver? Like staring eternity in the face and realizing you have nothing to live for even if you’ll outlive the whole world and possibly the very universe?”

“Look,” Trevor says, trying as hard as he can not to get irritated, “it isn’t my fault that—”

“That I am what I am? But it is your fault that you forced that realization on me when I was least expecting it,” Adrian snaps. “You knew exactly what you were doing, and you did it anyway. That’s on you, Belmont.”

“If you want to blame anyone,” Trevor says, “blame your Bishop. He knew what you were your whole life. I’ve known you a total of five days. Who’s to blame here?”

Adrian opens his mouth, then closes it again. “I don’t believe it,” he says, softly. “I don’t want to.”

“Well, it’s the truth, so you have to believe it no matter what,” Trevor says. “You’re a dhampir, Țepeș. Your dad is fucking Dracula. You’re arguably the most powerful being on this planet, second only to your father. You have to believe it, because now there are probably a bunch of very angry and betrayed vampire generals sailing towards us in order to get you.”

Adrian gapes at him. “What?”

“Your father isn’t dead,” Trevor explains, not-so patiently. “He’s an immortal and all-powerful vampire king. The father of all vampires, the first vampire, whatever you want to call it. My family has spent their whole lives hunting him, but he’s good at what he does, and what he does is skulk out of sight. And now that you know all this, very pissed off vampire generals are going to try and get you to get an edge over your father.”

“But—” He splutters, a look of genuine and honest surprise on his face. “I don’t—”

“Everything you’ve been told about your past and your family is a lie,” Trevor finishes. “So you understand why I’ve taken due precautions?”

“I—I suppose—but—” He takes a deep breath. “I’m not sure if anybody’s told you,” he says, glancing up at Trevor, “but you simply ooze subtlety.”

“I never had cause to sugarcoat things, Țepeș, and I never will.” He points at him. “And I am not starting with you.”

“So you have met my father,” Adrian says, clearly undeterred. Trevor sighs. “No, I haven’t. If I had, either I’d be dead or he would be.”

Adrian says nothing for a long time, merely looking down at his fully healed wrists with something almost like insecurity written all over his face. Finally, he speaks. “I… don’t really know what to say,” he says.

“How about ‘thank you for opening my eyes, Trevor’?”

“Fuck you,” he says without missing a beat, and Trevor can’t help but laugh. Even Adrian cracks a smile, but it fades away a second later. “I don’t know what to think,” he says. “My whole life I was taught to hate people like me, taught to think I’m unholy and the product of a violent mistake. How can I just be expected to live with that and act like it doesn’t mean anything to me?”

“You can’t just carry on,” says Trevor, taking a few steps forward and sitting cross-legged by the bars. “I get that. But you do have to acknowledge that the Bishop all but violated your whole existence and used you as a means to an end, and that he lied to you knowing who you were. Sy—my first mate said you weren’t allowed into the church as a kid. I’m sure you dealt in gold and not silver. I don’t think you’ve ever seen real, actual combat where people bleed heavily. He took who you are away from you, and that can’t be forgiven.”

He sighs. “I know that,” he says. “But I can’t deny that without him I would most certainly be dead.”

“It’s ‘not being dead’ against ‘using your existence to protect himself’,” says Trevor, holding his hands up. “It’s a simple choice to me.”

“But not to me.” Adrian frowns. “I understand what he did was unforgivable, but… if he had a chance to explain himself—”

“No,” says Trevor. “No way. That’s playing right into his hands. It’s what he wants, for you to try and forgive him. He hates you. He thinks you’re a monster and a thing of the devil, a by-product of hell. He acted like he cared about you. He sent you to kill me thinking you’d manage it, and that gets rid of the only thing standing between the church and their perfect vision of a world that bows down to them and they subjugate. Going to him with the benefit of the doubt is exactly what he thinks you’ll do if you find out, which you have. You have to cut him out, or he’ll end up popping up when we all least expect it and fuck everything up way more than it already is.”

Adrian lets out a long breath. He stays silent for a few minutes, then says, “All that being said, it would have been much easier simply to come down here and tell me who I was instead of—”

“Fuck’s sake, okay, fine—I’m sorry,” Trevor says, throwing his hands up. “What I did was unfair and mean and kind of cruel, and I should have thought twice before springing it on you like that. Okay? Happy now?”

There’s something almost like a smile on Adrian’s face. “I suppose.”

“So about the Bishop…?”

“I have to think about it,” Adrian says stubbornly. “I can’t just let go of such a big part of my life just like that. I need some time to think.”

“Right,” Trevor says. “Now that that’s out of the way, come on.” He stands, dusting off his trousers before grabbing up the keys and unlocking the door. “Out you come.”

“What? Why?” He looks genuinely bewildered, and it only succeeds in making Trevor feel even guiltier. Because I’ll feel like shit knowing you’re rotting away down here when I could put you somewhere you don’t aversely react to every inch of. “Because it’s too much work coming all the way down to the brig to bring you food and shit, and I’m a lazy bastard. How’s that?”

“Weak, but I’ll take it.” He stands, warily eyeing Trevor as he steps out of the cell. Trevor rolls his eyes. “Plus, you reek and are in desperate need of a bath.”

“That’s a better case,” Adrian says, turning to face him. Trevor side-eyes him, raising a brow. “You’re not going to jump on me and eat me alive, are you?”

“Much as I’d enjoy that, no,” Adrian says, haughtily turning his nose up. And he’s back. “There’s nowhere to run, so that would be fruitless. It’d be satisfying, though.”

“I’m sure I taste delicious,” Trevor says, locking the now-empty cell and moving towards the door with Adrian trailing behind him, muttering something about bitter blood and Belmonts. He hides his grin.

“Your arm is bleeding,” Adrian says helpfully as they climb the steps. Trevor glances down at the aforementioned arm, where one stitch has come loose. Blood is beading at the open tear, rapidly. He looks quickly at Adrian, who seems unfazed. Either he has iron self-control, or it doesn’t really affect him unless it’s at very close proximity. Either way, Trevor isn’t willing to risk it. He digs a scrap of cloth out of his pocket, wrapping it around the wound and ignoring the way it steadily begins to bleed through. “There,” he says. “All better.”

Adrian sighs. “I’m not going to turn feral at the sight of a cut, Belmont,” he says testily as Trevor leads him to the last empty room on the ship. He can’t believe he’s actually doing this. “Besides, it’s small. And I don’t need the stuff to survive,” Adrian goes on. “Moreover, I’m not a danger to any of you.”

“That,” mutters Trevor, “remains to be seen.”


There’s a certain vindictive satisfaction Sypha derives from ripping off her bindings every night when she goes to bed.

They may be necessary, but they’re uncomfortable. She can actually feel her body shifting to accommodate the tightness of them around her chest, compressing her ribs and giving her less space to breathe.

She collapses onto the bed, feeling the softness of the mattress beneath her back. It feels like heaven after a day’s constant work, and even though she thinks she sleeps better on her bed in the caravan, this isn’t all that bad. She sighs as she closes her eyes, allowing all the tension of the day to drain from her body.

It had taken longer than she’d anticipated to clean Trevor’s blood off her hands, watching the water run pinkish in the sink for what felt like hours and hours but was probably merely minutes. She still can’t shake off the unease and the anger at what he’d told her earlier, pricking her consciousness every few minutes and making her mood plummet. It had been uncharacteristic but almost predictable, as if she’d been expecting him to tell her what he’d told her. So why is she so disappointed?

Come on, Sypha, she tells herself. You know better than to trust Trevor Belmont.

But she doesn’t know why there’s a little voice lingering in her head, telling her that something’s wrong. And usually, that voice is never wrong.

She sits up, heart hammering. Quickly tying the bandages around her chest again and slipping on a coat, she turns the lamps low and leaves the room, shutting the door quietly behind her. She pads down the hall towards where the captain’s quarters are, making sure her footsteps are soundless on the paneled floors. Standing just outside the door she listens for a minute, but hears nothing. Casting one quick, cursory glance back at the firmly shut door she hurries towards the stairs, taking them down four at a time. Skidding into the brig, she moves forward cautiously until she reaches the last cell, unable to see anyone inside. She steps out directly in front of it, unable to believe her eyes.

The cell is empty.

She doesn’t waste a moment, turning and racing back up the stairs and towards Trevor’s room. She’s just about to knock when it flies open, revealing a very dubious-looking Trevor with both eyebrows raised. “Let me guess,” he says before she can even open her mouth. “Our illustrious prisoner is missing.”

She gasps for breath, shaking her head. “How did you—”

“Because I’m the one who moved him.” He turns and walks back into his room, leaving Sypha to follow. “I suppose I felt a bit bad with him down there. That cell mustn’t’ve been a load of fun.”

“I didn’t take you for a sympathetic-to-vampires kind of person,” she says.

“Yeah, well.” He gestures grandly, and it’s then that her eyes fall on the half-empty bottle sitting on his desk. So he’s drunk, or on the way to being spectacularly so. She sighs. “How did he take it?”

“Remarkably well. He didn’t even try to eat me.” He holds out his arm, where blood has dried to a sticky, viscous coating on his skin. She supposes it could be worse. “Good sign, I suppose. And we even had a conversation without punching each other, so I’d say that’s progress.”

“So would I.” She hangs back warily, not knowing what exactly to do with herself. “So… he wasn’t… upset? I find that difficult to believe.”

“Oh, he was upset,” Trevor says conversationally. “But I think he’ll be all right. He said he needed time, so I decided to dump him somewhere with an actual bed because I’m a wonderful person.”

She laughs. “Keep telling yourself that, Trevor.”

“I will.” He smiles at her, that same cocky, disarming yet totally earnest smile that she’d ended up falling for despite how annoyed it made her. “Stay for a drink? The night’s still young.” He gestures to the velvety navy sky outside, and Sypha hesitates for only half a second before shrugging. “Why not?”

He beams at her, holding the bottle out. “It’s oak-matured. Good stuff. I found about eight bottles under the bed.”

She takes the bottle from him, lifting it to her lips and taking a sip. It’s strong, heavy and flavorful, and even the little mouthful she’d taken burns a fiery path down her throat and makes her fingertips tingle. Her eyes fall on the seven other bottles sitting innocently on the desk, and she feels her heartbeat quicken. It’s going to be a very, very interesting night, she thinks, and then she lifts the bottle and drinks.

Notes:

i'm so weirdly obsessed with those scenes in movies where a character has to stitch themselves up after they get shot or something and there's a bunch of close ups and shit and it's super bloody and graphic and gross but it's really cool at the same time and i've secretly always wanted to write a scene like that, hence!!!

also hi pls feed me comments so I can convert them into writer fuel and provide you with more content. <3