Chapter Text
He didn’t know how long he had been laying there. After some time, he wasn’t so much waiting anymore as enduring indefinitely. There was no concept of an end to this - no finish line time was marching toward. He’d damned himself and now he was living with the cost of his actions. There was plenty of time to consider the injustice of the whole thing as their blood seeped deeper into the sheets, drawn up nearer and nearer to his face and nose. It was a taunt, jeering at him from beyond death. If he were human he might have had a chance to free himself - if he were human, the thick red all around him would be wholly a testament to his terrible act, not a panacea, a sick reward for acknowledging some innate brutality. If he were human, he’d be dead.
***
The flies should have been a giveaway. Trevor didn’t know how long he had been storming the halls, but the bugs had begun to get on his nerve. He was already on edge - he expected Adrian to meet them at the gates, or at least step out of the shadows while Trevor roamed the maze of halls. Perhaps he was already outside and was helping Sypha with the horses. Or off hunting. Or he’d moved on and let the castle become an empty tomb. Anything other than the fear nibbling at the back of his mind.
Every horror was shoved to the forefront when he paced past an open doorway and was affronted by the smell of decomposition.
He was already thrown by the shock of coming across three motionless forms, but that paled in comparison to his revulsion at the recognition of Adrian’s limp body. His feet kept walking closer, mechanical and disbelieving. He noticed the weeping - writhing? - ulcers etched deep into his limbs, encircling his torso.
It took Trevor further seconds to make sense of the odd pus in the wounds, but as he stepped closer, the reality was all too apparent. Maggots - fat on Adrian’s flesh - squirmed and gnawed deeper into the cuts made by the silver bindings.
Trevor’s brain seemed desperate to avoid considering what this meant for Adrian - he wasn’t dead, he couldn’t be dead - and so it kept feeding him information about the tableau before him. There were two bodies crumpled at the foot of the bed, both of which had fared much worse than the dhampir. They were beyond the bloated stage of a fresh body, and it was clear where their skin had split in places and allowed the churning rot inside to spill over Adrian’s legs. But the heavy, spoiled-sweet smell was still strong and the corpses still wet, attended to by the same flies that gathered around the cuts in Adrian’s body like a glittering black sheet. It must have been a couple weeks then, since it happened.
Finally, Trevor’s body gave up and he retched, and his sudden movement scattered the flies into a dark cloud that dissipated quickly as he fought to keep it down.
A low rasping, almost hissing, caught his attention. Trevor’s brain let him look at Adrian’s face for the first time, and he braced himself to see the same gaping sockets as the unfortunate souls on the bed behind him. Instead he was staring into horrifyingly alive eyes - a familiar gold ringed in red, set deep into the skin of his face. He repeated the same rasping noise, awake and experiencing every crushing moment of whatever pain he must be in.
Trevor rushed to bend forward, attempting to brush the vermin away so he could at least see what was holding him in place. As soon as his hands neared the restraints, Adrian jerked towards him, snapping his teeth with force. Trevor hopped back, hands up, and Adrian stilled again.
His face was crusted with what must have been vomit, and later bile. The acid had left raw and flaking patches of skin trailing across his face and neck, now tempered with silent tears running down the sides of his face. His mouth dropped open, and Trevor could see that his tongue looked swollen and dry. It was obvious what he needed - his body had focused what dwindling regenerative power it had left into keeping him animated, even as his body hovered in death - or close enough, according to the myriad necrophages burrowing into his muscle.
Trevor decided he didn’t care if Adrian tore him apart like a wild animal, sucked the marrow from his bones and blood from his heart. He deserved it for leaving him like this.
He knelt alongside the bed again and saw Adrian squeeze his eyes shut and turn his head incrementally away. Trevor felt along the thin cord with one hand and reached for a short knife with the other. His fingers grasped the fine silver but brushed the core of the seeping wound. He expected to see Adrian wince, but he seemed to be focused somewhere else. Trevor snapped the first strand with a quick tug - immune to the silver and blessings, it wasn’t terribly difficult - and set about tearing apart each segment of wire he could reach. He threw glances to Adrian between his hurried movements, prepared to be thrown to the ground and devoured at any moment, but the other man was tensed and still. After some number of links had been broken, a threshold must have been crossed, because Adrian gasped and immediately curled into a tight ball, apparently what he had been straining to do this entire time.
Trevor dropped his blade and heard it clatter to the ground as he braced himself, but Adrian had already turned to what was closest. He tore up the sheet beneath him, stiff and black, soaked through with rotten blood, and shoved it into his mouth.
He gnawed desperately at the fabric, buried his face in it as he moved his mouth along to a new section. He hadn’t said a word, but the rasping had stopped, replaced with a low whining that would haunt Trevor for years to come. The hunter was spellbound watching the display for a moment before he moved.
“I’m coming back,” Trevor managed to whisper.
***
When he returned the chamber, breathless, Adrian had moved to the darkest corner beyond the bed, hunched and gripping fiercely at his skin. He must have smelled the warm doe Trevor had dragged behind himself, because he whimpered again, softer this time. Trevor got close enough to see the fresh gouges in his skin where he had begun to claw at the pain and parasites.
He brought the doe within reach of the shaking figure and was finally able to read his expression. Trevor could see him trying to think as he strained against the force that told him to rip into the one thing in the room with a heartbeat.
“Do you want me here, now?” He did not expect the flash of fear and confusion that contorted Adrian’s features. He quickly followed, “I mean - me and Sypha are right outside, she’s getting you more and I can help bring it up.” Trevor nodded in what he hoped was an encouraging manner. His death wish had momentarily subsided enough that he’d rather avoid being the second course.
“Sypha?” Just hearing a full word from the man gave Trevor more faith than he’d felt all day.
“I told her we had some things to take care of first.”
That seemed to be permission enough, and Adrian half-crawled, half-fell onto the deer’s throat - clawing and biting in equal measure until his face was entirely obscured.
Trevor kept nodding as he stepped to the door. “Eat, drink. We’ll be right back.”
***
He managed another deer and most of a hog before he began heaving, and coughed up half of what he’d drank. Trevor was kneeling beside him, attempting to hold back the tangle of straw-like hair and steadying his shoulders. The thin figure hacked and wept, and Trevor was silent. There wasn’t anything to say. When Adrian’s body had rejected all it was going to, Trevor gripped the haggard carcass in front of them and pulled it closer. He watched him collapse again onto the pig, choking on needy mouthfuls as he ran his hand along the knobs of his spine, brushing away a few stubborn maggots.
Sypha met them in the private kitchen. Her pacing stopped as soon as she heard them coming, and Trevor could see the tears collecting in her eyes as soon as they stepped through the doorway.
“Oh,” she breathed. Though he no longer looked like a corpse, he by no means looked well. His skin still had the texture of onionskin paper, and dead skin beside black rot collected around the endless, twisting lattice of wounds around his body. Trevor tried to get most of the bugs off, but their handiwork was on full display.
Sypha threw herself at him as hard as she dared, wrapping her arms around the least marred parts of his skin. Adrian shifted his weight from Trevor’s shoulder to Sypha. He pushed his face into the side of her neck, seeking reassurance she was alive, present. It felt feral in its desperation - not threatening, but like the human part of him may have died up in that bed anyway.
She wanted to cry, but couldn’t. She felt sick - nauseous deep in the core of her being. After everything that had happened over the past few weeks, how could she ever be sure of herself again? She’d thought … they’d both thought …
It didn’t matter right now.
There was work to do.