Encore

Harrowing

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."