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AMoS Chapter 5-8
Rating: R for language, and mentions of RAPE and M/M SLASH. Don't like, then don't read.
Disclaimer: Castlevania and its characters and situations are the sole property of Konami. I am making no money or profit off of this fanfiction and no copyright infringement is intended.
Summary: AU. What if Joachim Armster had lived through his fight with Leon Belmont? What might have been different? Well hang on, because Joachim is going to tell you all about it. From his kidnapping and forced turning to his rescue from the ruins of Walter's castle, and from Trevor's birth and to Richter's death of old age, he tells all - and blames it all on Leon while he's at it.
Section Summary – Part 5 goes from Trevor's funeral to Liron's death.
8.
Passing
The next five years were wonderful. I returned to the role I had before Trevor passed on, and I spent many hours with Liron and the family. I played cat and mouse with the children during their training, told stories to them when they sat on my porch, spent evenings with the adults talking and laughing, shares meals and stories, and was generally a part of the family again. I didn't realize until then how much I had missed it.
In 1550, two years after Christopher's birth, Liron, who had just turned 50, retired from hunting, and like his father and grandfather, he preferred to relax by the fire and swap stories. As age began to catch up with him, I was often over at the Lord's house, and he seemed to enjoy it when I fussed over him. He also loved it when two year old Christopher and three year old Clara clambered up onto his lap and asked him for stories.
Though they were all getting on in years, Jacob, Isaiah, and Bridget all possessed enough magic that they were aging fairly well. At 72, Jacob needed a cane to get around, and of course, there was his arthritis, but otherwise he was still very hale and hearty, and he and his brother often engaged in little magic prank wars for fun. Isaiah was 71, and he was in similar shape as his brother, though since he had not been the main hunter, his joints were in better condition. Bridget, now 68, barely looked a day over 40, thanks to her high magic levels, and Edwin often had to endure gentle teasing over robbing the cradle, since his wife looked so much younger than him. She rarely became involved in her brothers' prank wars, simply because it was all too easy to destroy them both and therefore, not as much fun. When she did, however, the entire clan would shudder in fear.
The three of them were as close as they had ever been, and they often went on spontaneous romps through the woods - "monster mashing" as they called it, and they would come home the following day, dirty, tired, and sore, but grinning ear to ear. I couldn't bring myself to scold them for it, even when others urged me to bring my errant grandchildren into line. After all, what is life without a little fun and adventure?
Though large gatherings still made him nervous, Hector liked spending time with me at the Lord's house as well, though he would refuse to go over there alone. He still found the world outside our house too frightening to face without me, even with Isaac's constant presence at his side. Sometimes though, Jacob or Isaiah would swing by, and talk of magic and devil forging would coax him out of the house, and I would often have to go retrieve him later to feed him. I hated interrupting him though; it was nice to see him out and socializing with others.
******
Sadly the good times couldn't last forever, and things came crashing down for Jacob in 1553, when Claudia, his beloved wife of 50 years, died in her sleep one summer night. I was awakened in the very early morning by Isaiah banging on my door, and it took me a moment to realize what I was hearing. I had just put Hector down for the day and had decided to get a few hours in myself, and I had just fallen asleep when Isaiah came around. It took only a short "Claudia died." for me to wake up, and I dressed myself in record time and ran over to the Lord's house to see my grandson.
I found Jacob sitting up in his bed, with the other half of it empty save for an imprint left where Claudia had been lying, and he was sobbing his heart out as I walked in. I shooed everyone else out of the room, and then I scooped my crying grandson into my arms and settled down into the nearest chair with him. I said nothing as I cradled him; there was nothing to say. Instead I only made soft comforting sounds and rocked him as he cried out his grief. His magic flared wildly around him in response to his emotional state, causing the candles to flicker and the curtains to sway gently on their hangers. At least, I thought, he and Claudia weren't bonded like Trevor and Sypha had been. Being bonded would have made things so much worse.
I stayed with him as the funeral preparations were made, and the two of us watched over Claudia through the night. Jacob fought to stay awake as the moon moved across the sky, but he refused to go to bed. He ended up falling asleep in my arms a few hours before the dawn, and I held him the rest of the night.
In the morning, Adrian gently asked him if he wanted Claudia laid in the clearing with Trevor and Sypha, but Jacob refused.
"I did not face Dracula." he said in a hoarse voice. "The regular cemetery will do fine."
"Are you sure?"
"I am sure. We already agreed on this, years ago."
So later in the morning, Claudia was laid to rest in the cemetery behind the chapel. Liron and I stood on either side of Jacob, holding him and supporting him as he cried. Liron, who was Jacob and Claudia's only child, wasn't in much better shape than his father, and neither were Adrian and Lucas.
I carried Jacob home after the funeral was done, and I convinced him to eat a light lunch and then take a nap. He clung to my hand as he curled up on his side in his bed, but he couldn't stop crying, and he finally begged me to take him elsewhere. The bed was too empty without Claudia beside him. I scooped him up and carried him into one of the guest bedrooms, and there, without the constant reminder of his missing wife, he finally cried himself to sleep. I didn't move from his side while he slept, and when he woke a few hours later, he only crawled up into my lap and curled close to me while I rocked him.
******
Though they were not bonded, Jacob seemed to have died right along with his wife. Over the next several weeks, he didn't smile or laugh. He sat silently at meals, only joining in the conversations when asked a direct question, and he would escape to bed as often as he could.
"It doesn't hurt when I'm asleep." he mumbled when I confronted him about his sleeping habits. "Besides, I'm old. I can sleep as much as I want."
Isaiah and Bridget were very concerned about their older brother, and they finally showed up one day, packed an overnight bag for him, forced him into his hunting clothes, and dragged him out for a night of monster mashing. I suspected that monster mashing wasn't really on their agenda, and I was proven right when they returned the next day with their clothes barely rumpled, but all three of them were laughing as they crossed the ward line. Liron and I were waiting at the door as Jacob came inside, carrying his bag and leaning on his cane, and the smile on his face was reflected in his eyes. He put his things away, bathed himself, and then he collapsed into his own bed for the first time since Claudia's funeral.
I never asked what Isaiah and Bridget did or said when they were out with their brother, but whatever it had been, it seemed to be the thing Jacob needed to start moving past his grief.
"Does it ever go away?" I heard him quietly ask Liron late that night.
"No," Liron whispered, "It just becomes easier to live with."
Jacob looked up at me, and I nodded silently in confirmation, which prompted him to rest his head against Liron's shoulder. A few minutes later, he fell asleep that way, and I carried him off to bed.
When I returned to the living room, Liron was also getting up to head to bed, and I caught him by the arm and pulled him into an embrace as he moved towards the hallway.
"Uncle?"
"Shhh," I said as I held him close. "I just want to hold you for a bit." He smiled faintly at me and laid his head down on my shoulder.
I vaguely remembered when his wife had died, when Adrian was sixteen and Lucas was eleven. She had died suddenly during a meal, slumping down over her plate as her heart stopped with no warning. She had died four years after Trevor, when I was still keeping myself firmly separate from everyone else. I told myself that Liron had support from others and so didn't need me.
And now the guilt from that was eating me alive.
"I'm sorry that I wasn't there when you needed me." I whispered. "I should have been there."
He snuggled against me. "I forgave you for that a long time ago, Uncle. You were hurting too, and after Mary died, part of me wanted to run away and hide as well. Adrian and Lucas were the only reasons I didn't."
"I don't think I'll ever forgive myself for abandoning everyone: your father, your aunt, your uncle, your cousins, and you, when you needed me most."
"But, as I said, you were hurting too. Losing my wife was horrible; I can't imagine what losing your child is like."
"I hope you never have to experience that, because it's the worst pain that you can't possibly imagine."
He raised his head and gave me a gentle smile. "And that is why I forgave you for it. I was hurt that you weren't there, but I realized that you had to be hurting even more than I was, so I couldn't be angry at you anymore. You're here now; that's the important thing." He laid his head back down. "I love you."
"I love you too, child, so very much." I squeezed him and then let go, which prompted him to step back.
"Goodnight, Uncle Joachim." he said with a smile, and I ruffled his hair before he went off down the hall towards his bedroom. Once I heard his door shut, I went to check on Jacob again, and upon finding him sleeping soundly, I brushed his hair out of his face, kissed him goodnight, and then I returned home.
******
Sadly though, Claudia's passing was a harbinger of things to come. Three years later, in 1556, Heather, Isaiah's wife, sat down in her favorite chair in front of their living room fireplace and didn't get back up. Isaiah and their adopted son Carmen, went to pieces, and once again I found myself holding a distraught grandchild as he grieved.
Carmen watched his mother through the night while I stayed in the other room, holding Isaiah in my arms. He cried quietly as I cradled him and murmured words of comfort to him, but just after midnight, he fell silent.
"Isaiah?" I looked down at him, thinking that maybe he was falling asleep.
And then his heart just stopped. Stopped like his father's had years before. It stopped with no warning or hint that there was a problem, and his last breath came out as a quiet whisper.
"Isaiah?" I shook him slightly. "Isaiah? Isaiah!" I shook him again. No, this couldn't be happening! "Isaiah!"
I was vaguely aware of the sound of running footsteps, followed by the door being thrown open. The scent of Carmen's blood touched my nose, but I ignored as I furtively tried to revive my grandson. "Isaiah, please!" I shook my head. "No!"
I heard more footsteps, and someone – I still have no idea who it was – tried to take Isaiah out of my arms, but I only held him closer to me and refused to let go of him.
"Let go of him, Uncle." I faintly heard Bridget saying from somewhere nearby. "It's too late; you can't help him."
"Let me through." came Adrian's voice, and then I heard him speak directly into my ear. "Let go of him, Uncle Joachim. There's nothing that can be done for him now."
I nodded miserably and allowed someone to take him out of my arms, and then I hid my face in my hands and cried.
With the dawn came Heather's funeral, followed immediately after by Isaiah's wake. I stayed with Isaiah during his wife's funeral, and I was joined there by Jacob, who pulled up a chair beside me and leaned against my shoulder in the silent house.
Carmen, Bridget, Jacob, and myself all watched Isaiah through the following night, but our watch was not silent. At some point, Bridget brought up a story about how Isaiah had helped her hide in a large soup kettle in the kitchen during a game of hide and seek and then had forgotten that she was in there.
Jacob laughed. "I remember that. Papa was tearing the house apart looking for you, and the cook found you when you started banging on the side of the kettle. You were crying like a baby when he picked you up and carried you out of the kitchen."
"Did Isaiah get in trouble for that."
"You father scolded him for it." I replied. "He knew that he hadn't meant any wrong by it, so he let him off lightly."
"He came into my room later and gave me a candied apple." Bridget smiled. "He was nearly crying himself because he felt so bad."
"How about that time when we were out hunting, and he pushed Papa into that stream?" Jacob said with a grin.
"And Papa stood up, glared at him, and poor Isaiah was shaking in his boots, thinking he was in so much trouble?"
"And instead Papa just dragged him in too?"
"I'm still not sure how we all ended up in that stream, but somehow we did."
Carmen leaned against me as Bridget and Jacob shared stories of their brother, and despite our grim task, the night passed easily, filled with laughter. We all had stories to tell. I told of the time Isaiah was startled so badly by one of his cousins that he blew out a window with magic alone. Trevor had gone around grinning with pride at his son's magical power for the rest of the day, even as the two of them replaced the window together. He could have easily ordered a servant to do it, but he enjoyed working with his hands, and Isaiah would later hold that day as one of his fondest memories of time spent with his father.
"You, Jacob," I said, "were very jealous of Isaiah when he was born."
"I was?"
"Very much so. You called him that 'noisy smelly thing' -" Bridget laughed. "- and couldn't figure out what everyone found so fascinating about him. It wasn't until he was old enough to start smiling and interacting with everyone that you got over it, and you were very protective of him after that."
Jacob scratched his head. "Huh, I had no idea. I remember being protective of him when we were little, but I didn't know I had started that early."
"You know it was his idea," Bridget said then, "to take you out hunting after Claudia died."
Jacob looked at her in surprise. "Really? I thought it was your idea."
She shook her head. "We had been wondering what we could do to help, and he suggested that maybe getting out and going hunting like we used to would take your mind off of things. It was also his idea to just drag you out of the house, whether you wanted to go or not."
"Well it certainly worked."
A look of understanding passed between them then, and I couldn't bring myself to ask about it.
In the morning, Isaiah was buried next to his wife, in a plot beside Claudia. Once the shock of his sudden death had faded, I found it much easier to let go of Isaiah than Trevor.
"Perhaps," Silvanus said later, "taking your from the Belmont lands after Trevor died was the wrong thing to do. You had no one to share your grief with, which I'm certain only made things worse for you. Now, you have others to share it with, which lightens the pain that you feel."
I shrugged: maybe it was true, maybe not. The why did not matter to me that much. I still missed him something fierce, and it was a strange reversal with Hector holding me at night while I cried instead of the other way around, but that soul wrenching grief that I had felt after Trevor's death was absent this time. For that, I was very grateful.
******
The next few years moved on quietly. Carmen and his wife lived on in his parents' house and played the role of favored aunt and uncle to their cousins' children, since they had none of their own. Jacob nad Bridget still occasionally went through romps through the woods, but those became less frequent as Jacob's physical condition deteriorated from age. In 1559, three years after Isaiah's passing, he could barely walk, and I spent my daylight hours with him, taking care of him like I had with Trevor. Hector didn't mind all the attention I was playing to Jacob, since he had me to himself at night once Jacob was in bed. They visited with each other when Jacob was able to stay awake that long, but that was rare, and it left Hector feeling quiet and subdued as winter slowly moved into spring.
In the early spring of 1559, once Hector was up for the night and he was fed and dressed, he wandered into the library and immersed himself in a book without saying a word to me. I was baffled for a moment – was he upset at me for some reason? - but I couldn't detect nothing like that through the bond.
A soft knock at my front door though banished worries about Hector from my mind however, and when I answered I was shock silent to see a trembling Jacob, who was then 81 years old, standing on my porch, leaning heavily on his cane, and looking so tired.
"Uncle Joachim?" he whispered. "May I come in?"
I shook myself out of my shock, scooped him up into my arms, and carried him inside. How had he gotten here? Had he walked the distance? It must have taken him nearly a half hour to cover the short distance between my house and the Lord's house! I sat down in my favorite chair, and he snuggled close.
"What are you doing here, Jacob? Why aren't you in bed?"
"I'm so tired, Uncle Joachim." he mumbled into my shoulder as I gently ran my claws through his hair. "I didn't want to be alone..." I frowned in puzzlement, and then I heard his heartbeat falter once. I closed my eyes in pain.
"Is it time for you to go, little one?" I asked him gently, and he nodded.
"May I stay here with you?" he asked quietly "Until the sun comes up?"
"Of course you may." I kissed him on his forehead. "Do you need anything?"
"Just... don't let me go. Not until sunrise. Promise me?"
"I promise, little one. You'll be right here in my arms."
"I love you, Uncle Joachim. Please don't go away again after I'm gone."
"I won't, Jacob, I swear I won't." I squeezed him and rocked him a little. "I love you so much. Now close your eyes, little one, go to sleep."
He closed his blue eyes and nestled his head against my shoulder. "Goodnight, Uncle Joachim, and... don't be angry with Hector, okay?"
I chose to ignore the part about Hector for the moment. "Goodnight, Jacob." I whispered as tears began to trickle down my cheeks. I saw Hector come out of the library out of the corner of my eye then, but he kept his distance. I felt a faint tendril of his power reach out and touch Jacob, which prompted my grandson to smile faintly, and then he retreated back into the library.
Jacob slept deeply in my arms for the next few hours, and I rocked him and sang lullabies to him like I had when he was small, and as the time slipped by, his heartbeat began to slow and weaken. At about two in the morning, it faltered, recovered, faltered again, skipped a few beats, slowed even further, and then it stopped. He kept breathing for about a minute, and then he took two shallow, whooping breaths that shook his entire body, and then he went still and relaxed in my arms.
I bowed my head and began to cry, but true to my promise, I held him in my arms until the sun peeked over the horizon.
Two days later, Jacob was buried in the cemetery beside his wife, brother, and sister-in-law, and a distraught Liron clung to me during the service. Adrian and Elena stood on my other side, weeping, while Clara and Christopher, who were aged 12 and 11 respectively, stood between their parents, quiet and subdued. Hector wanted to attend the funeral, and nature seemed to oblige by supplying a heavy cloud cover that rendered it safe for him to go out.
Once the service was concluded, we retreated to the Lord's house, where Liron asked me if I could tell them some stories. I smiled faintly, wiped my blotchy eyes, and related the time that Jacob had gotten lost in the woods while out on hunter's training. He'd gone far enough that he was beyond the range of Trevor's meager ability to detect his heartbeat and scent, and so he'd come looking for me in a panic, thinking that something terrible would happen to the then nine year old Jacob if we didn't find him soon.
We found him easily after that, about a mile from where he'd last been seen, calmly using his hands to fish from a stream. Once Trevor and I broke through the trees, he'd looked up, saw us, and proudly shown us the fish he had caught.
"Look Papa! Look Uncle Joachim! Look at the fish I caught!" he'd said, but his pride had turned into confusion, and then tears when Trevor darted forward, hauled him over his knees, and paddled him for running off.
"'But I wasn't lost!' he kept saying as Trevor wailed on him." I said with a faint smile. "'I knew where I was the entire time!' He couldn't figure out why his father was so upset with him, or his mother later on. They sent him to bed without supper after that, but I know that later, Trevor went to see him after everyone else was asleep, brought him a snack, and they talked for a while."
"Did he ever do it again?" Christopher asked.
"No, he didn't. I think that was one lesson he learned the first time."
"So don't get any ideas, young man." Adrian said sternly, which made the rest of us chuckle.
Christopher gave us a meek smile that fooled no one, and Clara asked me for another story.
We all had stories to share, and we talked for a while before Hector fell asleep a few hours after the funeral, and I had to carry him home to bed.
"What did Jacob mean," I asked quietly as I was tucking him in, "when he asked me not to be angry with you?"
Hector looked at me with wide eyes, and I felt a brief moment of panic from his end of the bond. He then held Isaac tight against him, something that he only did when he was afraid of my reaction to something.
"Hector?"
"I knew... weeks ago that he was dying." he whispered.
"You knew?"
"I could sense the power of his soul fading, sometimes I can detect that when a person is dying. I can't always though, but this time I could. He somehow knew that I knew and he asked me not to tell you. He didn't want you to worry about him."
Well, that was certainly true; I would have worried myself to death over him if I had known ahead of time that he was nearing the end of his life. "And what you did just before he died? What was that?"
Hector lowered his eyes. "He was scared, and his soul was agitated, so I calmed him down so he could die peacefully."
"That is all?"
"That is all. I didn't take his soul or anything if that's what you're asking."
"I believe you, little one, now let go of Isaac."
Hector winced, let go of his dragon, and sent him to lie down at the foot of the bed. I then scooped my child up into my arms and held him.
"I'm not angry, Hector. You made Jacob's passing easier for him, something that I will always be grateful for."
He snuggled close and put his arms around my shoulders. "If I hadn't done that, he would have been scared and tense, and... I didn't want that to happen."
"Well I am very glad that you did that." I kissed him on the cheek, and he smiled at me. "You don't ever have to worry about me being angry at you for such a thing, child."
Hector closed his eyes. "Okay."
I laid him down and tucked him in, and I couldn't help but smile when Isaac came up and curled up beside him. I scratched him along his eye ridges, which caused him to rumble with pleasure, and then I kissed Hector goodnight (or day actually) and slipped out of the room.
I returned to the Lord's house, where I found Liron sitting alone at the dining table, weeping. I pulled up a chair next to him and wrapped him in my arms. He leaned against me as we grieved for the one we had lost.
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