Encore

Trevor finds himself on his hands and knees in the dirt, the taste of vomit on his tongue and distant pain everywhere else that said he'd gotten the shit beaten out of him but was too blessedly drunk to feel it properly.

None of these things makes sense. The only possibility is - he shoves his hand into his mouth, then splutters from the muck that brings. Yeah, no, that was fucking stupid. He couldn't have been turned and turning didn't screw up people's memories, he's pretty sure.

He staggers to his feet. He's cold. It's dark. He is too shitfaced for mysteries. There's a tavern behind him. He definitely was just in a fight there. Getting out of here is the best option. He'll pass out somewhere quiet and tomorrow he can try to find -

Trevor spits out a laugh. No one. There's no one.

But there's still monsters to fight, and he'll be damned if the last Belmont freezes to death in a ditch instead.

The last Belmont needn't have worried, it turns out. The night is miserable but warmer than it has any right to be, and when the dawn comes he sees flowers sprouting amid the snow, like it's early spring instead of late autumn.

And he hasn't worn this cloak in some time. Or the whip.

"What the fuck!" he shouts at the sky. God doesn't answer, so he continues, "If this is - if this is Purgatory, I was fucking well purified already! I was pissing sacrament! What more do you fucking want!" When there's still silence, he adds, "I can wait all fucking day!" A bird shits on his head.

And it turns out his stomach hasn't figured out they're dead. It twists in on itself like it's got teeth in a demand for breakfast and Trevor... He supposes he doesn't want to stand around and get more shit on him.

When is this? Is it any time in particular, or is he just supposed to spend eternity wandering in and out of stinking bars? Is that, of every fucking thing he's done, what God's taken issue with?

...It was sloth of a sort, he supposes. But under the circumstances it sure seems fucking petty. He kept walking, didn't he? And a bar brawl wasn't particularly slothful, so why start there when mostly he'd just passed out quietly.

It's when he reaches Gresit it all suddenly clicks into place.

It's later in the day than when he arrived the first time, the real time when it actually happened. The demons have already retreated. But the rest is just how he remembers Gresit.

And that means Sypha and Alucard are somewhere underneath.

So he makes his way through a fucking shit pipe, again.

On the other end of the pipe is supposed to be a sleeping guard. Middle aged, clean-shaven. It'd meant he could get into the city without having to knife anyone.

Instead, Trevor finds a spear aimed at him by some bald geezer with a scraggy white beard. "Well," he says. "Fuck me. I'd been happy to go in the front way, y'know. If it wasn't barricaded. Against flying monsters." It won't even be hard to throw a dagger and take this pathetic excuse of a defense down. But what's Trevor got to fear, exactly? Getting speared through his unreal chest?

To his surprise, the spear tilts away again, the butt coming to a rest on the flagstone. Bit of a disappointment. "What brings you to our fair city," the man says, and Trevor can't tell if the flatness is exhaustion or sarcasm.

He'd gone through all the trouble, crawled through shit to get into a hellhole of sobbing victims and fly-ridden entrails and the sure knowledge that those demons would be swarming back that night, for some dried goat.

And just. Just fuck it. "The story of the sleeping soldier," Trevor says. "Here to put a boot up his ass."

He's not sure what he's expecting to get out of that - anger and maybe a stabbing for his flippancy, derision and mockery at the claim he'd be the one to do it, perhaps the kindness of an eyeroll and 'move along' for a madman. But not hope.