Chapter Text
Running.
He had to run. Get away from the fire and the Church. The Clergymen.
He could still feel the heat on his hands from where he’d begun to dig through the wreckage, hoping for anything. Anyone that had lived. That might be alive. That maybe he could help. He could bandage wounds… Feed them and keep them safe.
And then he’d seen someone on the edge, coming towards the Hold again. Trevor wasn’t going to risk staying around and finding out just who they were or why they were coming towards him. His heart pounded as he took off into the woods near the house, only his bag and the weapons he’d had when he was hunting before with him.
There was no reason to think that being gone for a few hours would leave him the last of the Belmont clan at the age of twelve, but here he was. Trying to escape a monster that his family had spent generations protecting.
Humans.
His lungs burned as he scrambled towards what he knew would be a river. He’d only barely made it across when he finally stumbled, scraping his hands and feeling his ankle twist underneath. He hissed in pain, pulling the injured limb towards him with a wince.
The only thought in his head was that he needed to keep going. He couldn’t stay near the Hold, certainly, but running on an injured ankle wasn’t going help. His eyes watched the smoke curl into the sky in the distance as the events slowly sank in with each throb from ankle. The first sob was a quiet thing. A gasp almost as he began to understand.
The Belmonts were gone.
There was just a Belmont. One. Him.
The second tore through him as his grip tightened on his ankle, feeling pain shoot through his leg as he bowed his head, tears flowing properly. They were gone… All of them were gone and there was only him now. Not even a room to return to. No teacher, no family. Just Trevor Belmont, alone in the woods with a too big cloak his father had let him borrow.
He’d only gone out to hunt, his mind whispered. He should have been there to help. Should have fought and protected his family like a hunter was supposed to…
~
Which was how he found himself waking up on the forest floor the next morning, ankle still throbbing and throat dry. Painful. His hands fumbled for his canteen with shaky hands, only to get a small sip before he had to haul himself to his feet, leaning against a tree.
He was numb to the emotions of the night before, never having remembered falling asleep as the sobs had eventually died out into the silence of being alone in the forest. But he knew he needed to find something to drink so that he could keep moving or they would find him. Burn him. His hands didn’t quite stop shaking, and some small part of him told him he should eat the jerky he had taken with him to hunt. But he couldn’t bring himself to care.
Who would care if the last Belmont disappeared now?
The Church had made sure he had no one to return to.
So he pulled the cloak tighter, glad that he still had his whip and sword at his hip, and began a stumbling trek through the woods, unsure of where he was gone as he tripped along a path that didn’t exist.
That was how he traveled for days, picking up dirt with the soot and burns that covered him from trying to dig through the fire. The crest on his cloak became unintelligible unless he managed to get it to an excellent cleaner. All that mattered now was that he still had the cloak. But he finished the jerky on the second day when his stomach demanded food, leaving him to hope that he would just die instead of prolonging this further. Just let him fall asleep one night and wake up the next morning.
The pain in his foot grew, which was the only reason he knew he had awoken each morning. Each day he stumbled and sipped at his water, barely keeping himself going, until he collapsed each night into a heap.
Until one day, without meaning to, he collapsed near a town and decided he wouldn’t get up the morning. He was more than happy to just stay there. Hopefully he could sleep… Nightmares had started to come, now that his brain was trying to catch up with the fact that his whole life was over. That no one would welcome him anywhere again.
His eyes were beginning to force themselves closed in exhausted as he pulled his cloak tighter around his shoulders, only enough left to think to set his sword down beside him as he tried to curl up and ignore the world.
When he heard a voice.
He frowned, stirring shakily, but his body refused to move. Starved and still in pain from walking on an already badly twisted ankle. The words she was saying didn’t make any sense, but he forced his eyes open enough to see blond hair and a woman bending over him. His hand fumbled shakily for his sword in his haze. Her words were gentle though. Soft.
His brain wanted to fight even through the pain, but his body recognized this woman was no threat with her soft voice and her hair tied back. A healer, maybe a doctor if he somehow had any luck left in his life. Still, he wanted to run. To move. Flee from whoever might possible cause him more harm than the world had already deemed a twelve year old would deserve.
But there was only so long he could push himself, and he was well past that. So he drifted into a dreamless, exhausted sleep as he felt himself being carefully gathered up, pictures of a blond woman dancing for a moment as his eyes shut again.
A mother, he hoped.