narcasse: Sebastian Flyte.  Brideshead Revisited (2008) (smug)
Narsus ([personal profile] narcasse) wrote2007-03-10 09:37 am

Trinity Blood AUs: Future Perfect & Perfidious Albion

Of course this is entirely the fault of serendipity [livejournal.com profile] herit.
474 words. AU. PG? for mention of mutilation and hints at Radu/Helga.
Based on the premise of Isaak being Radu’s direct superior rather than Dietrich.


Future Perfect

Disclaimer: Trinity Blood belongs to Sunao Yoshida, Gonzo and others.

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It was a farce really, Marionettenspieler’s private little control room where all he did was stare in horror at his own face in a handmirror.
“Live fast, die young and leave a great looking corpse?” Flammenschwert had enquired once, loitering in the doorway, cigarette hanging from his lips and with a fresh bandage over his left eye. Dietrich had thrown the mirror at him.

Maybe that had been ten years ago, maybe twenty when the terran had finally begun to realise that his looks wouldn’t last forever and that realisation had brought about a profound change in him. In public there was no noticeable difference but in private he fretted over a growing abundance of grey hair, the fine lines developing at the corner of his eyes and what was looking more and more like early-onset arthritis. Later, he’d taken to dying his hair and sleeping covered in a whole selection of supposedly anti-aging products.
It was something Radu might have understood if he’d had any vague comprehension of his own looks before one too many failures had disfigured him. Not that he’d been injured on missions but rather than Isaak only had so much tolerance for what he saw as avoidable failures. Radu still preferred to hold his cigarette with his right hand even though it was missing two and a half fingers. His left hand was only missing half a finger at least and while one of his ribs had been broken and allowed to heal in a particularly awkward fashion he’d learnt to move without it causing him trouble. And when he thought about it, it wasn’t as if his left eye was all that necessary either. That had been the mark of his last mistake and afterwards, surprisingly he’d learnt to produce infallible results.

Isaak had been both pleased and disappointed which Radu had taken to mean that the old mage really had nothing else to do.
“Damage report.” He’d dropped the manila folder unceremoniously onto Isaak’s desk.
Isaak had made that odd faint clicking noise with his teeth that he occasionally did when preoccupied as he glanced over the report and Radu had felt certain that he could feel his missing fingers curl in trepidation. At length Isaak had looked up and readjusted the monocle that looked like he’d stolen it from a very specific corpse.
“Well done, Flammenschwert. Well done.” And it hadn’t sounded congratulatory at all.

Disabled and disfigured, he should have been odd man out in the Orden but strangely enough Eix Hexe had suddenly become quite fond of him, which wasn’t without its own pitfalls. Eventually, Radu had given up on ever managing to drink his tea when Helga proposed that they do so together because it was really quite difficult to manage that sort of thing with an ice goddess sat in his lap.

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The title is more of my barmy referencing since Future Perfect Tense describes an action that happened at an indefinite time in the past or that began in the past and continues in the present. ’Balmy’ is really up there with phrases like ‘limy fruitcake’ now that I think about it.
There may also be more of this in the future since the idea of Radu Bernadotte-Barvon is growing on me. Isaak’s starting to sound like he’s having a harddrive crash though.



345 words. G. A sort of character death. Unrequited Esther/Dietrich. Post-series.
The possibility of AI.


Perfidious Albion

Disclaimer: Trinity Blood belongs to Sunao Yoshida, Gonzo and others.

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It was the eyes that terrified Esther. Those dull, lifeless eyes that didn’t look like the man she had once loved. She’d loved him, she could admit that now. Loved him for all his insanity, his passion, his fire. She’d loved him for all the wrong reasons, the same reasons that girls always liked unsuitable boys. But it was too late now that this thing that was no longer a man knelt before her.
Perfidious Albion, so that phrase went, faithless, treacherous, forsaken. The progenitor of the Project Hermes. A technology so advanced that it had made the Mars settlement of later years seem almost primitive in comparison.
“I am the bird of Hermes; I have devoured my own wings…” She murmured the lines softly as she reached out to gently cup his face in her hands.
“Majesty.”
“You’ve done well. All of Albion will be blessed by your progress.” She leaned forwards to kiss his forehead. Taking a moment to brush his black hair aside with a hand, she blinked back unexpected tears.

She’d never really get over it, she supposed. Even now. So she shouldn’t be surprised at the sorrow that stirred in her heart every time she laid eyes on him. This man, this shell that was simply the casing for an advanced AI.
“Why him?”
The question would go unanswered. Why Dietrich? Why before him Isaac Butler who’d been just another promising young student in Londinium. Why so many before that?
“Because the control mechanism requires a human neural network to facilitate-“
She’d held up a hand to halt the Count of Manchester’s explanation. It wasn’t what she was asking anyway.
L'Angleterre, ah, la perfide Angleterre, que le rempart de ses mers rendait inaccessible aux Romains, la foi du Sauveur y est abordee.
What else was there to do but laugh, when a Catholic nun sat on the Protestant throne, when Albion assured its neutrality by plunging the rest of the world into war? When an AI sometimes called her “Esther” in a tone that reminded her of a mortal man…

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"England, ah, faithless England, which was rendered inaccessible to the Romans by rampart of her seas, the faith of the Saviour spread even there." - phrase used by Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet in a 17th century sermon. Though the main sentiment itself was later applied to a different sort of perfidy.
Esther quotes Hellsing with the bird of Hermes line because I’ve a tendency to cross the two series over in places.

[identity profile] herit.livejournal.com 2007-03-12 04:55 pm (UTC)(link)
I was never anti-yaoi, only people thought I was cause I bitched about the official "yaoi" artwork. u_u And yeah, true, that might be the one I hated. << But you can like what you want. XD

[identity profile] alucards-bane.livejournal.com 2007-03-12 04:58 pm (UTC)(link)
Okie dokie :3

[identity profile] reichsfreiherr.livejournal.com 2007-03-14 01:28 pm (UTC)(link)
If I’m thinking of the right two images I can see what you mean. They are gratuitous fanservice.

[identity profile] herit.livejournal.com 2007-03-14 02:09 pm (UTC)(link)
Including Dietrich with shirt undone and open pants lying in Cain's arms, or Cain and Abel hugging naked somewhere in heaven? Yes, that's the two. They're so fanservice it's just... too much.

[identity profile] reichsfreiherr.livejournal.com 2007-03-14 03:06 pm (UTC)(link)
Ack, that image too. I was just thinking about the portrait style images of Cain & Abel and Isaak & Dietrich, which were nice but still pretty much fanservice. The Isaak & Dietrich one in particular was just unnecessary for the most part. Granted, I like it enough to use it for an icon but that’s rather tongue in cheek Rosencreutz: equal opportunities employer more than anything else. Actually, maybe it isn’t so much the fanservice aspect, though it is gratuitous, but rather the really blatant way it’s done. There’s a definite line between subtle and crass and while that Isaak & Dietrich image touches that line, it doesn’t actually cross it. The Cain & Dietrich image on the other hand just… I could have done without it.

[identity profile] herit.livejournal.com 2007-03-14 04:40 pm (UTC)(link)
The Cain & Abel one just annoyed me. The Isaak and Dietrich one, though looking OOC, at least is aesthetic to a certain degree. I love the background, as random as this is. Now everything that came afterwards is just DO NOT WANT. And I agree; Kiyo by God does fanservice as well, but I can stand his better, because it is less obvious. Except for Asta's contribution, that is. Still, nobody is lying in each other's arms. While the Anime "artwork" just looks cheap and forced (very much like the Hellsing manga fanservice).

[identity profile] reichsfreiherr.livejournal.com 2007-03-15 10:11 am (UTC)(link)
That pentacle motif that seems to reoccur is the artwork is lovely. I came awfully close to taking the CD case for Radio Head apart just so that I could scan the black & white image of it used there. It’s that and the Orden crest that are really quite appealing though the crest itself is a little to weighted with connotations with that goat’s head business. I suspect that half the appeal of the pentacle image is that not only is it snap occult symbolism but it’s also has maths & mechanics connotations with the metal framework that looks like it should belong to an elaborate protractor of sorts. And while I remember, one of the most beautiful basic mechanical images I’ve ever seen has to be this (http://www.sxc.hu/photo/625104). There’s just something about really perfect schematics that I adore.
As for everything else now that I’ve completely derailed anything else I was going to say; I agree completely. The anime-style art is just… well.

[identity profile] herit.livejournal.com 2007-03-16 10:53 am (UTC)(link)
And here I hardly have anything to say. That's really the case, this thing is incredibly beautiful. There is just something aesthetical about this mechanical imagery. I never noticed it was used un the Radio Head case, before.