The thing about Speakers is, they try, they really do, but they also cannot keep their mouths shut so if you talk to them long enough to run through the safe topics - maybe a half hour at most if they're a really timid bunch - they will absolutely move on to other ones instead of shutting up around the stranger the way reasonable people do.

So it's inevitable the conversation would quickly turn into poking at the fact he is, according to Sypha, 'very religious' yet is responding to all their questions on what exactly that is with 'look, I dunno how it works' because he doesn't, he never really knew much and current circumstances prove he wasn't even right about most of that.

"How can you believe anything strongly if you don't know what you believe at all?"

"I can't tell poison mushrooms apart from good ones either," Trevor points out. "And that's Christianity. Gotta worry about anything where you can end up foaming at the mouth and shitting your intestines out if you make one mistake."

"What?"

"You don't get it! Speakers don't have to worry about going to Hell in the first place," Trevor grumbles. "When do you do that, anyway, if it's not a funeral thing? Is it like baptism?"

"We don't do that," Sypha says.

"I know you don't do baptism, that's why I said like. I mean whatever it is you do so God can't get your souls and send you to Hell."

"Oh," Sypha says, and there is ice crawling through Trevor's veins at the sound because she sounds like Trevor is - "You're mistaken. We don't believe in that. Not for us and not for anyone."

"So you -" Trevor chokes. "Not just you, all of you, Speakers -"

"We don't believe in Hell."

"It's not about belief!" he says, or maybe he doesn't, maybe it's just a shriek, and how stupid it is to be speaking to her at all when he's not speaking to her at all and what is it like in Sypha's version? Is he there? Does she hate him enough that God's dredged up his image? He gulps air and manages, "This isn't real, you're just saying- " But everything else had sounded like Sypha and Sypha, the things she'd said, he hadn't been listening had he, wasn't paying attention because he didn't know how much it'd matter, and he already knew they didn't believe in Satan, he's so fucking stupid -

And not just her, not just her and her family, every last one, ones he'd met as a kid to the ones he'd left the whip with, trusted with everything when it wasn't even their responsibility wasn't their burden but they'd still promised him they'd do what was right, because they were good people, and, and, all the others he'd never met across the world and all the ones before and before throughout time and - "Everyone in the past and everyone in the future."

He can't even comprehend the number.

"Belmont."

That can't be right.

"Belmont," the Sypha who does not know how horribly wrong she is tells him, "really, it's okay."

it's okay it's okay it's okay Trevor it's fine it's okay it'll be okay please Trevor you have to

Can't be right.

"If Dracula killed all of you, no one new could go to Hell," Trevor realizes.

Sypha sucks in a breath.

"And Dracula is evil. So whatever he's doing is evil, so it must work some other way. I must be missing -" And he almost falls down from the relief of it. "Jesus. Right. The, the Harrowing of Hell, he lets out everyone who's there just for not knowing about him. So Speakers go to Hell but then you meet Jesus and he lets you out again."

"That's not how -"

"Shut up, Arn," Sypha hisses.

"I know, you think other stuff," Trevor says. "That's, see that's why it makes sense, it wouldn't be right for people to be in Hell forever over an honest mistake."

"But that's not what your own Church thinks," the especially talkative one protests. "I've learned about this -"

"Eh, so they're wrong." No one looks particularly impressed by this reasoning but Trevor's entire point here is that they don't believe it so unlike Trevor, they're only going to Hell for a visit and they'll be right back out once Jesus explains he's real, and actually real not the Speakers' so-technically-we-believe-someone-named-Jesus-existed hair-splitting bullshit. Hopefully they'll all have the sense not to do that to Jesus' face, but Jesus would probably forgive them. That's the guy's thing. "Well," Trevor adds, "I know it doesn't matter to you but I am really glad I worked that out."

Huh, so that's what Sypha's what the fuck expression looks like echoed across the rest of her family's faces. Kind of sweet.

Which is to say, "Right, good talking with you," and he gets up, heads outside, and splatters the dirt with several cups worth of boiled water with chay bits in it.

"And that's why you said you didn't want to eat anything," Sypha observes.

"It seemed like how things were going," Trevor tells her. "Which is unfair. I mean I realize of things to go unfairly wrong this is small but I only threw up once last time and it was after I'd tracked down what's left of alcohol around here. Tasted like piss from a dead horse that'd been fermented in another, deader horse."

"Uh-huh."

"I thought after the first bottle I'd be drunk enough the second would taste better. It did not. The third was worse somehow."

"Maybe you threw up because you drank three bottles at once."

"Technically," he informs her, "It was only after two and a half. Then I drank half a bottle given that was all the alcohol I had left on hand."

He's not even looking at her but he can hear the judgement in her expression.

He tells her, "You should go back in already."

"Why?"

Because you're not going to see them again. "Because you're not going to see them again." Wait fuck - fuck fuck fuck - "Anytime soon," he tries, like she didn't just hear the obvious, incriminating gap between the two sentences. "I mean you've always been traveling with family and you'll miss them when you split up and -" He groans. "You know, the sad thing, this is still going better than the first time."

She eyes him. "What did you do the first time?"

"Nothing." Well, nothing followed by her telling him to do something and him telling her that all he could do about it was try to keep her alive and when she didn't find that good enough either that hey maybe they'd both all die so none of them would be sad and wasn't that all tempting fucking fate. He'd wonder what he'd been thinking but the answer was also pretty much nothing.

"And I miss them terribly?" she asks, sounding as much curious as concerned.

"Well... I… You were worried about missing them at the start, but you weren't, miserable. After. I don't think. I'm pretty sure. Maybe you didn't tell me because I was, and am, really fucking shit at this. But you told me a lot of stuff anyway so I. I think you missed them a regular amount." It occurs to Trevor that he has absolutely no frame of reference for what a regular amount might be. The people he knows are just straight dead. And worse, the person who'd actually know things like that, who was supposed to handle people and their feelings, was Sypha, but he'd never asked what it'd been like when she left her father for her grandfather's caravan because that wasn't the sort of thing you ask people.

He almost says that she'd laughed, a lot, and smiled even more, and why would she pretend like that for him. And he's almost sure that's true.

But what if she would. What if this Sypha tells him with her face and her voice that's exactly what she'd do.

No. Better not to say.

"They're fine," he says. "They're fine, we were just busy." And he clambers onto the roof in the hopes that he can escape any further conversation.

"What are you doing now?" she demands.

"It's, it's a good vantage point."

"So were you lying about the Night Horde?"

"Just about sleeping," he says. "Today - tonight - happens to be a bad time for that. For me." He generally just falls asleep and wakes up with time passed but none of the drama, but for whatever reason, that hadn't been true this night. He didn't even remember what he was dreaming about, which somehow always manages to be worse than when he does. All he knew was he kept waking up sick with dread and no thanks, God, he's full up on that.

"And you'll be not sleeping on the roof because…"

"Because I'm very tired and about to be very, very bored. Getting some use out of the weather. And..." He considers. "You know, uh, some people, might have somewhat heretical beliefs about God. And I don't know if they're right about that, but I do know now that God hates me personally."

"Somewhat heretical?" Sypha says, sounding more amused than anything.

God, fuck off, like he's supposed to know how heresy's ranked. "The Night Horde doesn't really show up but… You know those dreams where nothing's gone wrong but everything's going wrong, and you're running around but then the problem's somewhere else. And it's not how it really went, and I know that there can't just be more out of nowhere, I know it's impossible, but it doesn't matter. If I know something bad doesn't happen and I relax then maybe it will, but if I know that means it will then it won't, but..." He gestures helplessly.

Sypha considers him. "'With men it is impossible, but not with God; for all things be possible with God'?"

He shudders. "So I'm on the right track with this. Fucking great."

"So you fear your information can't be trusted. If everything keeps going as you remember it instead, will that prove otherwise?"

"It'll prove God's waiting for me to think things are fine before everything..." Well, it can't go to Hell when you're there already. "...falls apart," he finishes.

Sypha's quiet for a bit. "We could test it," she suggests. "Court frostbite later and come inside for now. See if demons show up."

"If demons show up people will die, Sypha."

"Can't they only show up if none of this is real?"

"I already know it's not real. Look, I have important roof stuff to do anyway."

"Really," she says.

"Really."

"And that would be…"

"See, I know how you guys all feel about writing," he says. "Or right now, anyway, you'll realize I'm right later."

"I find that doubtful."

"Of course you do, that's how realizing stuff later works."

"Perhaps," she says thoughtfully, "you were confused by me being nice. It's not like we hate writing."

"You totally do."

"Oh, we do not."

"I told - well, I didn't, but originally, you guys said I was a liar because I said my dad had gotten into a fistfight with a Speaker, because you'd all never, but believed me as soon as I said the fistfight was about writing down stuff Speakers knew."

Sypha considers. "...I wouldn't punch someone over that."

"You can shoot fire, yeah. But you don't know how many books there are. Point I was making, Belmonts write all the shit down." And yeah, Speakers are better at memorization, he'll acknowledge that's a valid skill, but also a lot of it is... Speakers learn from other people who've memorized it first and can set them straight if any bits are wrong while they're trying to get it to stick. Without that, when it's just you on your own running through your own memories over and over…things get muddled easy, when it's just you. That's why you write it down as soon as you can, before the details can get away from you, and then you try to memorize that. "And I think maybe I'm on the right track with this Dracula-based morality system thing too. You can't trust the Church to know how things work, this whole fucking mess proves that, but Dracula is reliably always evil and he's done a ton of stuff. Big stuff, petty stuff, all of it. I mean," Trevor continues, "it's not just he's a torturing mass murderer who literally drinks the blood of innocents. He's incredibly shallow, for example." You'd think someone ready to burn the world over the world burning one person would've been a bit less of an asshole to her at least, but no, not fucking Dracula apparently. There'd been portraits of a blonde woman Trevor assumed was Lisa everywhere in the fucking disaster labyrinth Dracula called a castle and in not one had she actually looked aged, even as they chronicled the many, many decades of Alucard's journey at her side from a tiny chubby-fisted idiot brat all the way to the full sized idiot brat he looked like in the present. "I bet I can make a list of everything I know about Dracula and anything that's not mentioned God doesn't mind."

Sypha sighs. "Fine. Just don't interrogate Alucard about this when he gets back."

"I already know more about Alucard than I ever wanted," Trevor tells her. "You've heard the kind of shit he says without even realizing he's saying it. The last thing I want is to hear more."

Sypha rolls her eyes at him but at least drops it and heads out of sight.

Trevor's not sure how much good the list will do him personally, but might be useful to someone else, if he ever gets the chance. Especially since if anyone's summoning him it'll be a Belmont and that fucking deacon was probably full of shit but the idea Belmonts are damned is still bothering him like a splinter he can't shake.

Obviously he knows it can't be all of them. Emmi was only around for, what, a couple months between Lena bringing the idiot home - how hard is it to remember to tell people you're five, not four, Christ - and dying of whooping cough. God's not going to send a four year old to Hell over a couple months and a tombstone with Belmont chiseled on it. But who qualifies as enough of a Belmont? Like, does Simon get off on account of being such a complete fuckup who never should've been one, sure he was the firstborn son and Lord Belmont for a couple years but if the Church didn't compare unfavorably to a box of imaginary oat-eating dicks he would've been shipped to a monastery, God, so whose fault is that? Whose fault is it that Simon's dead at all when no one even wanted him to be a Belmont and if their parents could've just gotten rid of him he'd still -

He doesn't know how it works and probably some stupid ass who accused him of being a fucking gjenganger doesn't know either.

Still. Writing things down is worth a shot. He has absolutely nothing better to do. And that he's going to feel like such an idiot if he gets the chance to pass things on and then once it's done and he's back in Hell he realizes he forgot something, like the whole poison cloth because vampires are just such pricks they wear poison sometimes business.

Maybe that's what God wants from him, anyway? Maybe there'll be a miracle and his ghost can just hand everything he wrote over.

He doesn't give himself frostbite. How badly does Sypha think of him? He's spent years sleeping outside, if he didn't know what he was doing he wouldn't have fingers left for anyone to worry about. His hands are barely the wrong side of numb by the time he's put down everything he can think of, and he stuffs them under his armpits and settles in for a night of boredom.

Some birds fly across the moon. Eventually, an owl hoots, but not anywhere close. Shame, because it'd be kind of hilarious to catch one and present it to Alucard, see if he tries to interrogate a dumb animal. No magical animals of any kind show up for a secret meeting with Trevor. It's just a regular night.

Oh, he should put down the magic animal spy issue. Just because Alucard's wrong doesn't mean it's not true. And crows, probably it's not just vampires that can talk to crows...

"Belmont."