So turns out this is in fact surprisingly compatible with S3, partly because S3 didn't move the timeline much forward and partly because apparently my reads of the characters were more valid than I expected. Hooray, and also, I'm so sorry. (And we got two whole vampire facts and THAT contradicts something I decided, of courseā¦)
Trevor is planning on spending the rest of the day, or possibly forever, he's flexible, seething at Sypha and the unmitigated gall that is her thinking she has any right to talk to him about not dying. It's probably - okay, definitely - fucked up but the fact is incandescent rage is an improvement on any other emotion he can think of.
But it's nearing evening and the rest of Gresit still exists, in its nonexistent but convincing and distracting way, and he was busy with the courtyard and the ice ghosts and forgot there's also fake terrified people to deal with.
Right. He already knows all this, it'll be a snap.
Demons? They're dead. There won't be another attack anytime soon. Yes, really. Yes, really. Go home, actually sleep. No, the hugging and crying should be directed at Sypha. Take one for the team, Sypha.
God? God's part in this is for priests, Trevor cannot overemphasize that he is not qualified in the area, but yeah, Trevor does think burning the not-a-church down tomorrow is a fine start. Whatever went wrong there went wrong enough the bishop and his men couldn't tell, so Christ alone knows how, or if, it's fixable, and yeah, Trevor agrees that's fucked up and creepy and in conclusion, fire. ("Vindictive much," Sypha mutters, and he is absolutely not, God, "Torches for the goose are torches for the gander.")
Lazy-ass vampire Jesus? He's still around, don't worry about it.
"Can he be trusted?" someone demands, and huh, that's sensible and not at all what Gresit was like. Slipping, God? The person next to him tries to shush him like a mythical savior would leave everyone to die over one person not kissing his floating ass enough, which is precisely what you'd expect from the people of Gresit, but he continues, "If he's the son of this vampireā¦"
Oh, yeah, Trevor did not share that particular fact originally for obvious and now validated reasons. "Yes," Trevor says. "He's also the son of a human. He tried to stop Dracula a year ago and got cut almost in half. And if you can't trust someone Dracula wants dead, who can you trust, right?"
That doesn't just convince the man but gets a strong ripple of approval about how yes, that does make perfect sense.
...wait, does that mean Trevor's wrong about something? Hm. He kind of is, yeah, since the bishop's dead despite being wholly untrustworthy and he's sure there's plenty of other bastards out there getting ripped up by demons as well. Maybe that's the secret to being believed by people, you've got to be wrong and it's just about being wrong in the right way.
Aw fuck why is Sypha frowning what is it, did she realize that, what's the issue it's not like she even cares about lying to people.
"What are you mad about?" he whispers.
"I'm not," she lies back. Fine, be that way. It's not like Sypha will actually be able to drop a subject.
And then, barely a few steps after Trevor convinces the crowd to go to their homes, or into someone else's home because fuck if he cares where exactly, she whispers, "Alucard said that if we were all dead, the vampires would die too. That they'd starve without humans to eat."
"Yeah?"
"And he's a vampire," she continues.
"I don't know," Trevor says. "He said he didn't eat people and I know he doesn't."
"But you think he lies about everything."
"I didn't say everything." Sypha looks at him and he scowls. "It's not like you're worried about it! I know you don't think he's going to eat us because I told you for days he was probably going to eat us or at least somebody and you wouldn't listen to me."
"Of course he's not going to," Sypha says. Trevor groans. "You must have a terrible time of it if you complain every time I'm right."
That's sure the sort of sobering thought that would send Trevor diving back into a bottle if they weren't largely smashed by inconsiderate demons. Truly, Dracula's evil knows no bounds.
"No, what I'm wondering is, it would mean Dracula meant to kill his son from the start, wouldn't it? It was a suicide pact."
"I don't know if Dracula needed humans, actually," Trevor says. "There were these big, cold metal drums in the castle that were magicked to make infinite blood."
"Really? You're sure?"
He nods. "When I cracked one, it burst apart and froze at the same time, and there was way more than would fit inside. Got my leg stuck in the bloody ice ball. I'm not a vampire, so I couldn't tell you if it was human blood, but if it was, it'd explain why Dracula wasn't concerned about killing us all. Maybe Alucard grew up drinking that."
Sypha considers this. "I'd have to ask him, but I suspect it's not possible to get around it like that. What they need from humans should require humans, that's the way magic works. Maybe Dracula just killed a lot of people and was using magic to store it. He's always slaughtering people in the stories."
Trevor shrugs. "Maybe. But vampires are immortal so no matter how much he had stored, he'd starve eventually."
"Dracula loved a human, and now he's going to make sure there's never any more humans," Sypha says. "And he tried to kill his son, and the other vampires will starve. Absolutely everyone, gone. What does he have to live for?"
Would've been nice for Actual Sypha to have shared that little revelation back when it mattered. Because then maybe Trevor'd have - no, no, he wouldn't. Can't even really lie to himself, can he? No. At best, Trevor would have thought it, once, and then figured it wasn't his problem, and that he didn't want it to be his problem, and that besides if anything was wrong Sypha would know and and and - was it that unreasonable really to think Alucard could, could fucking handle himself? Could be trusted? Even if she'd said that about Dracula it's not like Alucard was anything like Dracula. Right there in the name.
"Wait," Sypha says. "Why didn't you just ask Alucard about it, when it becomes his castle?"
Fuck.
"Did you sneak off so he wouldn't know who to blame?" she asks, eyes narrow.
"I didn't sneak off," Trevor says, and she rolls her eyes. Fine. He likes her version better anyway.
He'd left her there.
It'd been cold and he'd left her there.
He'd left her there, and he'd stopped talking to her after that because he wasn't some sort of crazy person who talked to people who weren't there, and he shouldn't have even done that much when there's no way she'd have wanted to listen to anything he'd had to say, and now here he is again doing the same thing, but this time he's taking advantage of how Fake Sypha doesn't know any of what he did because he's just shit, he's a piece of shit and a coward and he missed her and what kind of excuse is that and if he ever actually respected her he'd tell her the truth so turns out he doesn't.
He's learning so much about himself. Maybe once he finishes fucking up on every temptation in Purgatory he'll get to be punted into regular pitchfork-stabbings Hell.
Not that it'd be any better for her to know really because she'd do anything to stop Dracula and she's stuck with him and he'd just be making her miserable by being around someone she loathes and what a convenient excuse that is for him.
That's not all his fault, he wanted to just leave and they won't even have to spend time searching when he can tell her where the book with the castle-wrecking teleportation spell is, or at least about which section and what color it is, and then they could kill Dracula and it'd be done and he could fuck off the side of Alucard's fucking castle.
Probably won't do any good but God, worth a shot, right? And maybe he's wrong, maybe he won't just end up back in Gresit but land in the lake of fire like priests are always promising. See, Sypha? He can be positive.
There's a hand waving in front of his face and he has to jerk to a halt to avoid hitting it.
"Really," he complains.
"Our house is this way," she says, pointing to his left.
"Oh."
"You're very distractible." And she sounds mostly like she's teasing him but there's a seriousness underneath that really seems excessive for Trevor just not noticing where he was walking. She probably thinks he's going to fuck up in a fight. Great. Now she and Alucard will both spend the trip worrying he's dead weight.
Trevor considers contesting that but it's better to get off the topic before the question of what's so distracting comes up. Not like he ever wins arguments, anyway. "Tomorrow when you find out if the onion works or doesn't will you be satisfied at knowing the answer and stop insisting we need to stick around?"
"That's what you were thinking about?"
"I guess," he tells her.
"You guess."
Trevor points out, "Being in Gresit means constantly being reminded I'm in Gresit." Then, "Don't give me that look!"
"Why do you hate being here so much, really?"
"It's - it's Gresit!"
"An unremarkable city," Sypha says. "A bit on the smaller side."
"It's full of dead people!" Trevor snaps. "I don't normally have my failures staring me in the face longer than it takes to burn the fucking body!"
This Sypha's eyes widen a bit at that last part, because the one thing Speakers and the Church agreed about was the merits of an intact corpse for burial like they don't all end up a bunch of bones either way, and if anyone asked his opinion, which, barring Actual Sypha, they would not, the idea God needed your body intact the same way a necromancer would seemed like awful little faith in God's godness. And Trevor's pretty sure he did burn and that evidently didn't keep him out of God's clutches.
This being Fake Sypha, she doesn't say anything about that because she thinks he's crazy and you don't argue with crazy people.
"Look," Trevor tries. "I just. I want to get this over with. And you agree. Kind of. I mean, you want to keep going and, adventure and heroics and that kind of shit, but you want to go out and do all that instead of sitting around here, and no offense" - which gets him the sucked-in breath of offendedness like he didn't just say - "if I hadn't just seen Alucard's little horrorshow I would say you are actually the worst person in the whole city to be helping, so you should tell Alucard we need to go blow up demons and leave the poor bastards be."
Well, at least Sypha stopped looking pitying because now she's too busy being irritated at him for that sort of thing.
"You're really good at killing things," he tries. "So you could be doing more good by leaving Gresit to kill things."
"You should've led with that."
"I really should've."
