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It says everything about their recent experiences that the freshly-staked bodies at the castle gate pass with barely a mention. She looks them over as they approach the stairs, feels Trevor stiffen beside her, the grip of his hand turning her fingers white. But neither of them speak of it.
(They're young, so young, it hurts in a myriad different ways to imagine what must have happened.)
It says everything that the hideous silence of the entrance hall does not come as a surprise. That the looming presence of Adrian at the top of the stairs, fresh scars curling up his arms and pinched frown between his eyes, does not fill her with the expected relief.
(He's all she's wanted since they left Lindenfeld but she cannot make herself go to him - worse, she doesn't think he wants her to.)
It says everything that boorish Trevor Belmont doesn't spit an automatic retort in response to Adrian's assertion that he's sure they can find somewhere to rest if they plan to stay, his eyes never leaving their entwined hands.
(He turns his back without a further word and the ache in her chest morphs into something stabbing and breathless.)
It says everything that it's not any of this that finally breaks her.
Sypha stares at the dolls that can only be her and Trevor, wrapping her arms tight around her middle. Her nails bite into her sides and it's only when she tries to inhale and a desperate whine escapes her instead that she realises she's crying, tears falling in fast and heavy tracks down her cheeks.
She chews her lip, trembling against the force of her desire to burn them, to yell and scream and curse herself and Trevor for ever thinking it was a good idea to leave Adrian here alone.
While her lover stalks the halls of the castle (hoping to stumble across their missing third, no doubt), Sypha stands in the warm domesticity of the repurposed kitchen and sobs out her heartache, alone.
#
Trevor eventually finds her later where she lingers in the hallway outside of the room the three of them had slept in prior to… no. Sypha pushes down that thought, reaching out to slip her arm into the curve of Trevor's because she'll be damned if she loses him too.
"We should find somewhere to sleep." She says quietly, as if there isn't a perfectly good option in front of them. As if either of them have been able to do much sleeping recently.
"We could knock?"
Sypha shakes her head and pulls him away, further down towards where she vaguely remembers there being guest rooms. Not that they had needed them, the voice in her head reminds.
Words swirl around between her clenched teeth, gathering in a torrent on the tip of her tongue. She has to bite the inside of her cheek until the door to their adopted room is shut behind her, just to halt the rambling mass of distress. Trevor winces when she rounds on him, lazily shaking out his arm for effect.
"He made dolls of us, Trevor. Dolls. They're in the kitchen." His eyes widen, horror and hurt warring in the deep blue of his gaze. And oh, does she understand. All of the shit they've seen, the depths of human depravity and none of it hurt as much as coming face to face with the proof of their own poor decisions.
"There's a room down the hall that showed recent signs of life. I found clothes and weapons. Some books from the Hold." He frowns, picking at a stray thread on his shirt. "I mean, I have some thoughts, but…"
Sypha pushes past him, collapsing onto the end of the bed as all of the fight leaves her in a rush. She falls back, staring at the plush velvet curtains that hang in heavy drapes around it. Thick enough to block out daylight.
"Is it fair of us to speculate?"
Trevor gives a snort, dropping into a seat by the fireplace. With a wave of her hand, she lights it, watches him kick his feet gratefully towards it. "I don't think he's going to tell us any time soon."
She smothers a low sound of pain, ignoring the tears leaking out of her eyes once more. "Why should he?"
The room is deathly quiet for what remains of the evening, save for the stifled, private sounds of their shared grief. When Trevor finally joins her on the bed, neither mention the redness of the other's eyes, the labour of breathing through a sorrow-blocked nose.
They simply curl together, tangled and hurting, and snatch what little sleep they can manage.
#
It is strikingly easy to pretend the dolls aren't there, the longer she spends drawing together a meal with the few remaining sundries in the kitchen pantry. Without thinking she is fixing enough for three, as if the simple act of being within the castle walls is enough to fold her back to old habits.
She blames that returning familiarity for her reaction when the door opens behind her. Instinctively she turns with a falsely cheery jibe on her lips about how stupidly long Trevor manages to sleep in a nice bed, only to find—.
"Adrian." She breathes.
He looks stricken.
Whether it's at her presence, or at anyone's presence at all she cannot tell. But somehow even the flare of shame and confusion it causes her to see his hurt is better than his complete indifference of the previous day.
He remains there, still as a statue, for long enough that her guilt begins to grow unfathomably. The castle is large enough that she could have found another place to prepare a meal, without the weight of four button eyes on her every move... but perhaps she was unconsciously attempting to force this meeting on neutral ground.
He sets the two baskets he’s carrying on the table, moving no closer to her than he absolutely has to. His voice shakes as he speaks again, full of repressed emotion.
"I shall return later."
"Adrian, please. Don't…" Sypha casts her eyes down when he jerks back, hand scrabbling at the sideboard to stabilise himself. Perhaps in the midst of all this horror he has forgotten what sight rests over his shoulder. In truth she has no idea of his current mental state, beyond his fluctuating reactions to her and two bodies on stakes.
"I shall return. Later." He huffs a breath out, golden strands of hair catching in the exhale. "Don't hurry on my account."
Sypha is so desperately weary of the weakness that comes with mute emotion instead of finding her words. She feels cursed, as if the unforgivable truth of Lindenfeld stripped her of any right to call herself a Speaker.
There are a hundred things she wants to say, a hundred things she knows would have made him smile before, broken through his calm exterior, driven him to clutch her up to his chest and press a gentle kiss to her jaw.
It grieves her to admit that Adrian is nowhere to be seen in the man who awkwardly exits the kitchen backwards, almost tripping over his own limbs. Something happened to change him that he is not ready to discuss with her. With them.
Sypha wonders if she has the patience to wait until he is, or if her own traumas will overwhelm her long before then.
#
Boom-boom-boom.
Boom.
Boom.
Boom.
Sypha jolts awake from a nightmare of snarled children’s bodies, stakes and blood and too-small shoes to the sound of desperate, angry, knocking. Reaching out for Trevor is a new instinct, and it is not the first time that she’s found his side of the bed cool to the touch. It is however the first time that it strikes terror in her heart, as the reality of what she’s hearing hits home.
She rushes out of their room, skidding down the hall to where Trevor’s fist is colliding over and over with the door of Adrian's bedroom. She forms ice around his entire right arm at his next wind up, cursing him in all the languages she knows.
"Have you completely lost your mind Trevor Belmont?" She hisses, pressing both palms to his chest and forcing him back away from the door.
"M-my arm?" He frowns, pointing at the frozen limb.
"Fuck your arm, you idiot. What is wrong with you?"
He's drunk, of course. Trevor Belmont has never forgotten the location of a wine cellar in his life. The booze lowers his critical awareness enough that he now just looks confused, pained and lost in the face of Adrian's continued avoidance. It's not what he expected. It's not what either of them expected.
"I want to talk to him."
"Did you ever think—."
"That maybe I don't want to fucking talk to you, Belmont? I thought you were better at taking hints."
Sypha spins around, pressing her back to Trevor’s chest. Their dhampir is standing at the crest of the stairs, staring daggers at the pair of them. She digs her fingers into Trevor’s belt when he tries to round her to get to Adrian, digging her heels into the plush carpet as his frozen elbow jabs the back of her shoulder.
Nothing good will come of letting them go toe to toe right now.
“Do you know…" Her lover growls, pain and frustration practically dripping from his words. "Do you have any idea what we’ve been through?”
Sypha sighs, letting the ice melt away from his arm and shooting Adrian an apologetic look. “Trevor, shut up. Now’s not the time.”
“No? Then when? Are we going to do this awkward fucking dance until he manages to force us away again?”
Adrian hums, looking back over his shoulder. Casing his escape routes. “Again?”
“I don’t remember you asking us to stay.”
One day, perhaps, they will be able to speak to one another when they’re hurting without useless barbs, without points to be scored and battles to be won. It is solely luck that she is not mediating yet another physical battle of wills. They are all too damn tired.
“Would you have?”
Trevor grunts, moving himself to stand beside her despite the death-grip she has on his belt. “Would we have stayed? Are you mad?”
Sypha risks a few steps forward, anxiety tickling along her spine at the likely truth in Trevor’s choice of words. “We never told you. We were so foolish.”
She watches as Adrian’s expression morphs into something different. Something new. He’s a picture of stifled hope, so impossibly human that she wants to hold him and refuse to let him go. “Never told me what?”
A scoff from behind her is her only warning. “We love you, you idiot.”
“Trevor.”
Her chastisement hangs in the air for only the barest of moments, before Adrian begins to cry.
“Oh, hell.”
It’s Trevor’s turn to crumple and she glances at him in time to see his face fall, his own continually denied emotions flooding to the fore. Sypha reaches blindly out to grip his forearm, harder than she means to, heat flaring beneath her palm and charring the material beneath.
Together they move towards Adrian as one would an injured animal, each slipping under one of his arms to hold him up.
Sypha flattens her palm against his chest, over the thudding beat within. Trevor’s fingers twine with hers, and she understands the real error of their ways. Adrian’s heart is theirs to care for, and they took it for granted.
“The bedroom?” She asks.
“No, please. Not... there. Not now.”
#
It takes them time to set up in the room she and Trevor appropriated for their own.
She sits with Adrian while Trevor fetches more wine, wiping away his tears and whispering calm into his ear.
Trevor curls into Adrian’s side when she sets about lighting the room properly, starting a fire and fetching some blankets.
By the time they’re all tangled up as they used to on the road, legs entwined and arms around one another, Sypha’s head is pounding with the emotional hangover that she has had no chance to overcome for over a week now.
“You don’t have to tell us what happened.”
“I am sure it would be more pleasant not to.” Adrian murmurs, tucking his nose against the crown of Trevor’s head. “But avoiding it thus far has served me particularly poorly.”
They wait. Belnades and Belmont, investigators. The mystery laid out before them, ready to be solved.
“I have not dealt well with the loss of my father. Your absence pushed me towards what I fear would have been complete insanity—.” He pauses, lips brushing her forehead when she shudders through guilt in his embrace. “Then they arrived.”
They listen, taking in the tale of the wandering soldiers, the kindness he showed them, the cause he assumed himself to be furthering in Trevor’s name. A horrible ball of something like jealousy forms in the pit of her stomach when she imagines them here, spending time with Adrian while she and Trevor wasted their own time helping people so unworthy of it.
Adrian hesitates over his recounting long enough for Trevor to bring their joined hands to his mouth, pressing a lingering kiss to the dhampir’s palm.
“They came to me, one night when I couldn’t sleep.”
Trevor looses a quietly mournful sound, as if something in his suspicions was suddenly confirmed.
“My brain fooled me into thinking they were you, at first.” He pauses, thumbs rubbing over each of their hands. “Even when I knew it to be false. I imagined you both touching me when they did. I filled the gap in my heart that came from never allowing myself to truly have you…”
“They bound me. Silver.” Sypha objects at the very thought of it, running her hands over his scarred wrist. “It has broken me, in a way that I am unsure I can ever mend.”
Silence reigns in the aftermath of his admission. A necessity, she thinks, for each of them to process the truth of it in their own way. Sypha wants to hide from it as much as she wants to fight and never stop .
If only they had been here. If only they hadn’t decided to leave. If—.
"If they weren't already dead. I would kill them for daring to touch you."
Adrian smiles, sad and grateful, and it's enough to make her heart clench. "Thank you Trevor."
She watches as Trevor's finger traces the neck of Adrian's shirt, feels a faint shudder run through the dhampir that doesn't seem as unsettled as she might have feared. It will take time, she knows. To refamiliarise themselves with each other. To regain that trust that allowed for nips and kisses and - at their weakest - desperate, hungry rutting.
But perhaps that time is what they all need. For aren’t they all shattered into tiny pieces now, barely resembling the trio that defeated Dracula? Aren’t they all lost without each other’s hands to hold?
“You say you are broken, Adrian. Would you…” She hums, reaching out to stroke her fingertips over Trevor’s cheekbone. “Would you be willing to let two equally broken individuals support you in piecing yourself back together?”
Adrian’s hair falls in a curtain over Trevor’s face as he tilts his head to regard her carefully, curiously. The other man sighs and swipes it away, but doesn’t move from his position against the dhampir's shoulder.
“Do you wish to discuss—?”
A cupboard of shoes on blood stained pillows, the bottom falling out of her stomach in realisation...
A shake of her head is enough to stop that thread. “Another time. Please.”
"Very well."
Trevor tucks his face into the unmarked expanse of Adrian’s throat, sucking in a greedy inhale of the dhampir’s scent. “When did you last sleep?”
Adrian sighs, tugging them both closer despite the almost physical impossibility of such a feat. “I have not, truly. Several weeks, at least.”
“Oh, same here. It’s wretched.”
A laugh bubbles out of her before she can stop it, her hand coming up to cover her mouth as the two of them stare at her in shock. “Apologies. I think I’ve forgotten what constitutes good humour.”
Adrian shakes his head, then lets it fall to rest on the back of the elegant sofa. “You’ve spent the past few months with only Trevor for company. I’m hardly surprised.”
It’s a testament to their combined weariness that it doesn’t devolve further than that. Sypha smothers her lingering giggles in the soft material of Adrian’s shirt, their joined hands resting in his lap as Trevor tugs the blanket over them all and settles himself equally close. The symbology of it all is not lost on her. They could not be more entwined with their third if they tried, covering him, shielding him from the atrocities of the world that they were not around to protect him from before.
If nothing else, Sypha is assured of one thing: they will not make that mistake again.