Chapter Text
Trevor Belmont thought he knew the world. There wasn’t any kindness in the world he knew. There wasn’t a friendly face or any presence of a bright future. In his eyes, there was not a drop of pleasure left anywhere. Except, perhaps, a false pleasure, he thought to himself as he let the last bit of ale drip slowly from his near empty tankard.
He watched it trickle down with glossy, unfocused eyes. Alone and cold in the corner of a tavern, he sat. His ale-filled, slow, fuzzy, brain began to give way to strange, distant thoughts. Cloudy thoughts. Vaguely familiar places and people and sounds. A flickering fire. A laughter, somewhere distant. Thoughts of home. Comfort. It all felt so impossibly out of reach now. The presence of a warm hand and soft skin. An honest smile. The simple feeling of holding someone close. He was sure he would never feel something like that again. Not even the embrace of death would offer him that comfort. Nothing again ever would.
Or so he thought.
When he met Sypha, he had a hard time grasping how different she was. She wasn’t like anyone he’d ever come across before. A powerful sorceress, a talented mage, someone who would have your back in battle, all while flaunting a cute, cheerful smile. Speaker magician. She was the complete opposite of the defenseless damsels in distress he had met previously.
One in particular came to mind. He had saved someone before, from a vampire in the woods, years before he met her. This girl, all those years ago, alone in the woods, was nothing like Sypha. A sweet, innocent girl, who knew nothing of the horrible woods for which she was lost in. She was utterly defenseless. A young, wide eyed girl who just so happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. Trevor happened along, heard the scream, and rushed to her aid.
After slaying the creature, letting it's head roll clean off it's shoulders after a swipe of his short sword, he kicked the now headless corpse down an embankment. As it tumbled, defeated, it shriveled up and decayed away before their eyes. Then, he offered a had to this girl. It was only when he took a second to meet her eyes did he notice the fear across them. He was so blind to it now, the evilness and fear these creatures brought with them. The gore, the blood.
The demons and dark creatures he met on the road were little more than a small hurdle to jump over as he headed to the next town to find his next drink. He had spent enough time around them, mostly plunging a knife straight into their gut, to not even bat an eye at the sight of these gruesome horrors. This was his whole life. But this girl? She had never seen anything so cruel, so full of hate and malice in all her life. And before her, was this man. This fearless man, this horrible, disgusting man, holding a bloodied blade. A dead vampire before them, killed and pushed to the side like he was a weed plucked from the garden. This strange monster hunting man stood right before her, offering her a hand that appeared even dirtier than his sword. Reflecting back on it, he understood her fear and why she climbed to her feet and ran. She was lucky. She didn’t have to be witness to the horrors of this land that he was raised in.
Sypha, on the other hand, didn't need saving. In fact, she appeared to be capable of many things by herself. Falling through the broken road in Gresit, plummeting down into the catacombs below, Trevor used his whip to grab her, to bring her close. He wrapped an arm around her securely. Just as he tried to turn them around, so that he would be one to break her fall, a gust of wind came. From Sypha's hand, she conjured a blast of air, just enough to break their fall.
The independence she had was strange to him. She was fearless, not afraid to stand up and speak her mind. Typical Speaker, he thought. But, then that idea changed. He began to see how she was unlike the other Speakers he had knew or heard of. Like himself, she didn’t so much as blink when she plunged a dagger made of ice with her magic into the guts of a creature of the night. She would create a wall of fire between him and the angry mod of people and priests, all while saying she did no evil. Amazing.This would certainly take some getting used to.
Despite how much she baffled him, he still kept her, and everyone else at arm's length, if not farther. One of the things that baffled him the most, was how warm and open she was. Unlike him and unlike Alucard, she had this light glow around her, an aura made of nothing but sunlight, he thought. Even though she had seen so much pain, so much suffering, being a Speaker, she wasn’t broken like him, or like Alucard perhaps, as well.
Their first night on the road, away from the clutter and noise of Gresit, it started to become so much more strange. The firelight flickered in the night. He laid there across from his two new companions, watching the shadows dance on their faces. They talked about Dracula and the abstract thought of actually completing the task before them. The swapped stories about things that were pretty alien to him. Alucard spoke of his mother, a pleasant smile on his face. Sypha shared knowledge on her Grandfather and his acceptance and excitement he shared with her as she learned how to use her magic. Her voice, all the while, light, sweet, and all kinds of lovely.
And then, she was fighting, right alongside him. He wasn’t sure how experienced she was at it. But it didn’t matter much, she had a great amount of talent and it was obvious that each and every move was calculated. She had certainly studied it in great length. She fought like it came natural, despite being raised in a people who were so against violence. There were times he would just watch her and be taken aback by her abilities. The powers that she possessed made him fortunate that she was on his side, and not the other way round.
But even just sitting next to him, after they slaughtered numerous night creatures on their way to Arges, she seemed… different. Watching the now dying embers in silence, he felt his appreciation for her. The monsters were killed and the night was quiet. In this moment, Trevor found himself for the first time in as long as he could remember, feeling… something. He wasn’t sure what to even call it. And she wasn’t even doing anything but sitting by his side.
A bead of sweat trickled down his forehead. There was a steady thumping making itself known in his chest. He picked at his fingers and examined the dirt and calluses on his hands. But he couldn't figure it out, still. It felt a bit like nervousness. Though, it wasn’t the normal kind of nervousness. He was used to the nervousness brought on by possible danger, the kind that keeps your eyes darting around and ears keen to pick up any surrounding sounds made by potential threats. The kind that makes you suspicious of everything and everyone. This kind, however, was the sort that caused an unfamiliar blush to form on his cheeks. For his heart to flutter when she spoke.
When he finally settled down and closed his eyes for the night, he let his mind wonder. Within the swirling depth of loneliness, and memories of drunkenness, and sleeping under trees, he saw something else. Just before he lost consciousness and drifted off to a dreamless sleep, he saw her. Her smile was as bright as the campfire he fell asleep next to. He listened to the gentle sounds of her breathing as his own breath slowed.
-
After they defeated Dracula, the three of them, Trevor Belmont, the last of the family of Belmonts, Sypha Belnades, a Speaker Magician, and Alcuard, Adrian Tepes, the son of Vlad Dracula Tepes himself, the man upstairs who was little more than a pile of ashes and a wedding ring on the floor, walked down the stairs. What more was there to do? Shaken, bodies tired, and minds still spinning, they walked. They just walked, and they had no exact destination in mind. It's as if they couldn't accept that it was over.
The castle was silent. Their footsteps echoed through the great many hallways and stairwells, now littered with the bodies of vampires and creatures of the night alike. Neither of them knew what to say. Neither of them knew what would come next. The three stood together, at the bottom of the stairs, looking into the great entry hall where the battle began. Trevor’s eyes fell to the large scratches seared onto the skin of Sypha.
Her flesh bore no previous scars that he knew of. She wasn’t tainted like him; she wasn’t riddled with the marks of countless night creatures and evil humans alike; she did not have the flesh of someone who knows nothing but battle, wickedness, and killing. That wasn't her. But looking upon these marks, large lines spanning across her shoulder, marks made by the claws of Dracula himself, he felt a hollow, sinking feeling from within. Now, she was more like him.
He couldn’t protect her. He wanted so badly for her, for her and Alucard for that matter, to walk away from this and continue their lives as if this evil didn’t threaten them in the first place. They had a life apart from this. They had something besides this. They were capable of so much more than being a killer. Trevor knew he was not, he would never get that choice. The people who hated his family were right about one thing, evil did follow him wherever he went.
But with Sypha, it did not. For her, light seemed to be her companion, not darkness. She was not raised in this chaos like he was. She wasn't practically born with a whip in her hand. Her life’s purpose was to bring aid, not death and destruction. Everything the Speakers stood for was to undue all of that chaos, not be the ones who were involved in it’s creation. Yes, they brought down a great evil, but the ruin of their work was all around them. It was in the great boulders of stone and smoking cinders in the city of Gresit. It was in the faint outline of what was once the Belmont home. They weren’t the leading force to start this destruction, but they certainly played a role, no matter how good their intentions were or how many creatures of the night they slaughtered.
Sypha was a simple Speaker. She did not have a duty, a lineage, or an entire family's hard work and dedication on her shoulders. There was nothing that brought her here except her incredibly strong sense of knowing what is good and what is evil. She simply did this because she saw it as the right thing to do. She had a choice, she had a say, while he and Alucard did not.
And he was supposed to protect her, for as long as he could. That's what he told her. But his protection had to run out eventually. Against night creatures and the vampires that swarmed the castle, he could keep it up, sure, and it’s not as if she was not able to take care of herself too. However, in that moment that Dracula raised his hand, striking her down, in the moment she hit the floor, flung away from him, her body knocked down so easily, he saw just how fragile she was. A simple Speaker. Thus ended his ability to protect her.
It is because of his failure to do so, that she now had a permanent mark, forever carved on her once flawless skin. The angry, red lines screamed out to him. He looked away, but the image remained behind his eyes. The mark was still there, no matter where he would go. Those angry red lines, they shouted at him, saying how she, just like everyone else around him, suffered, no matter how hard he tried. It was a constant reminder to him of his failure to prevent her from being like him.
And then, she took his hand. He looked back to her, meeting her eyes, in shock and disbelief at the peaceful look on her face. She wasn’t angry. Of course, she wasn’t angry. She smiled at him and just like the wondrous powers of her magic, he felt that hollow hole in his chest start to shrink. Holding both Alucard and Trevor, she led them over to the great doors of the castle, where the sun was just starting to rise. As they walked, Trevor felt himself holding more tightly onto her gentle hand. He grasped it as if she could slip away at any moment. She didn't mind one bit. He needed the comfort right about now. They all did.
Everything else fell away, all of the darkness in the corners of his mind seemed to be flushed out. The rays of the rising sun cast out every last bit of that fear and that guilt, just for this moment. There was more to discover here. A path, that he never knew existed before, was showing itself to him. This strange, intoxicating feeling, this new kind of nervousness felt... good. Dare he say, it felt like something he could get used to.