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Trinity Blood fic: Binary
1983 words. G. AU. Dietrich's POV.
Dietrich and Marionettenspieler as two separate entities.
Binary
Disclaimer: Trinity Blood belongs to Sunao Yoshida, Gonzo and others.
++++++++++
Something is wrong, it has been for quite some time. Isaak is staring again, strangely, curiously with that slightly amused smirk readily betraying him. He’s been staring like that for too long now, for weeks. As if he is watching something quite entertaining, something that soon will fall apart. He’s always so fond of failure: I’ve never quite understood why. But never mind. If he’s waiting for me to break he’ll be disappointed. I’ve survived far worse than the promise of disaster in those glassy eyes.
After all I am not alone.
That is the secret that will defeat him. I am not simply a single individual attempting to thwart him. I have my own demon to guard my back. And he is more than a mechanical fiend. It’s almost funny that Isaak will call me the Devil when given the chance; he always says it aloud is if by calling out my true name he will have stolen away my power. But what is the use of naming names when they are obvious?
His name is Marionettenspieler. He, my other, the devil by my side. A power that Isaak’s esoteric mumblings cannot overcome.
How strange it is that Isaak only now has come to notice that which I’m sure Radu noticed from the first. Tragic that. Broken, heartsick little Radu who only realised that he’d signed a contract with his own blood a moment too late. Marionettenspieler never liked him anyway, was always so ready to strike my poor ifrit down. At least that’s what he tells me. We never have secrets he and I but I think that this time he may be lying. Because I saw it too, the thing that lurked behind Radu’s eyes. It was a presence much like my own demon, a sharp-tongued and deformed serpent that thought itself a god. I thought I heard it slither through my mind once or twice, cursing softly, sibilantly. I think it even referred to itself as a goddess.
“You see, it’s insane.”
“Why do you say that?”
“It’s not a god any more than it’s plural.”
“I think it’s using the royal ‘we’.”
He’d snorted.
“Besides, surely they could say the same of us. It’s not the sanest of things to be having conversations inside my own mind.”
He’d let the matter lie after that. He’s like that usually. If I thwart his ravings with effective logic he’s content to let the matter drop. It’s why we make such an effective team. He’s capable of such viciousness and violence but with a rational argument made against it will readily concede the point. Which is exactly what saved Esther. He doesn’t like Esther much, always called her a range of things from distraction to useless. He never tells me why that is when dear Esther has actually been a great deal of help but I suspect that it is because he is jealous. I shower her with attention when I can and he dislikes it. I don’t see why he should. It’s not as if Esther will save and protect me, not like he does.
“Worthless.”
“Hmm?”
“Pointless, more than anything else.”
“I didn’t really expect the Star of Sorrow to work, you know.”
And I hadn’t. I also hadn’t expected István to provide me with such tools either but it had done and circumstance had given me Esther; beautiful, headstrong, blasphemous Esther. I had made use of my perfect tools and what did it matter if I came to love at least one of them? He didn’t complain too much anyway, once I’d shared in painstaking detail my line of enquiry, once it looked rather possible that dear Esther would be killed. And after she wasn’t, he preferred not to discuss the matter again. He’d much preferred Gyula anyway. His malevolent, insane, beautiful Marquis. There our opinions had differed for while I could understand that Gyula was in his own way attractive, I never felt any such pull towards him as I did towards Esther.
There in we differ. It was Gyula he had wanted to save, not Esther whom I loved. He disliked Esther, I found Gyula tolerable. He despised Radu, I was in fact quite fond of that floundering noble. I found an ancient Methuselah Duke oddly disturbing, he wanted to set that man at the head of armies that would conquer the world.
“Don’t you find him at all… disturbing?”
“Who?”
“You know, your vampire Duke.”
“He’s not mine…”
“Yet?”
“Not while that sullen wretch lives.”
“Radu? Do you really think that someone like Radu has that sort of power over anything?”
He’d refused to answer the question further but that certainly made sense. He lusted after what he could not have and because he couldn’t have it, invented stupid excuses to reason out why it wasn’t actually his. In this case the reason he couldn’t have the eminently disturbing Duke of Tigris was because Radu was alive, or at least as alive as either of us could discern. I would have laughed about it if not for the stark similarity to my own argument of why I did not possess Esther.
Byzantium was something of a disaster as a result. Because I didn’t care enough to really engage myself in the matter and left it, for the most part, in his hands. In retrospect I really should have taken control of matters a little more but I was relinquishing control to him, my perfect ally. I suppose I still idealised him, my savour whose seemingly insane actions had saved my life time and time over. He never did anything without reason, no matter how deranged and always it was with one intent, to protect me from harm. He had saved me, why should I ever doubt him? But doubt him I should have done, there in the midst of Byzantium’s madness.
“Did you really think she’d just die?”
“Shut up, I don’t want to discuss it.”
“You may as well; your Duke is dead now anyway.”
“Be quiet.”
“So’s Radu. It’s a pity really, I liked him. He was so very-“
“At least she’s dead too.”
“Who?”
“Her. That serpent lodged in his skull.”
“Oh.”
As I said, I may have felt her in passing but I’d had little idea of the war they’d waged. My Marionettenspieler and this odd snake he despised, this thing that had been resident in Radu’s head. He chose not to elaborate on the matter further but often during long evenings when I had barely woken I’d find him staring hard out of our eyes towards the East. Later he even refused another mission to Carthago for fear that she would rise up to destroy us from beneath the very desert sands. Strange that, though maybe he really did believe that she’d been a god.
In some ways it is a shame that there was such enmity between them. I’ve never met another with a second voice in their head after all. Perhaps we may have understood each other, I tell myself. But then perhaps not since Radu always seemed terrified of that other voice. I can imagine that it was she who came to the fore when Marionettenspieler took great delight in striking them down. Sometimes I wonder if he is perhaps a solitary demon.
Sometimes I wonder if he is a demon at all.
I wonder if that’s why Isaak keeps looking at us, why he keeps waiting for something to change as if we’ll suddenly reveal the truth. We might but not to him. I don’t trust Isaak at all. He is a constant fixture in my life, certainly but he is not an entirely comfortable one. I have never really liked him. Marionettenspieler on the other hand is always highly entertained by Isaak’s faux-esotericism. He can watch for hours, listen in rapt fascination as Isaak drones on in sound bites of information that he’s gathered from just about anywhere. The incessant quoting drives me insane or would if sanity were a strictly tangible thing but Marionettenspieler takes great delight in it and they play such foolish games of citations and half broken poetic lines that I often find myself falling asleep out of sheer boredom.
Of course I’m not listening again while they talk idly until the mention of Esther catches my attention. And I would open my mouth to speak if not for the fact that Marionettenspieler is firmly in command of the body’s functions. All I can do is sit and listen in the back of our skull as he teases and taunts enough to pry the pertinent information from Isaak’s asinine mutterings. The crux of the matter being this, that Esther herself has changed and from what I hear I do not like the person she has become. I have no use for this princess of Albion.
“You can do away with her if you like. She no longer interests me.”
“Oh no, I think she might have quite a few more uses.”
“Such as?”
“Any number of things.”
“I’d like her dead.”
“So she can’t change and escape you anymore?”
“Shut up, that’s no reason for anything.”
“I like her.”
“You- wait, this isn’t even about her, is it? She was with your dead Duke’s niece last, wasn’t she?”
“What difference does that make?”
“It’s all about him again, your obsession. You should have just fucked him while we were in Byzantium.”
And suddenly everything goes black. I’m falling and the feel of the staircase beneath my flailing limbs assures me that I’m home.
I’ve evidently stuck a nerve there.
This is not the first time that he’s used such tactics, our minds share the same information and he knows where best to hurt. Yet he does not. The staircase is only terrifying in context, beyond my actually being there as I was when young it is nothing but a brief short-circuiting of my senses while he regains control over his emotions. I let myself tumble down knowing that in the darkness of our mind there is no bottom. Then just as abruptly as it began, it ceases and I can see and hear again.
“She is useful.”
“Really?”
“Yes and once that use is ended she will be destroyed.”
“It’s a pity we couldn’t retrieve the Ring of Solomon, it was pretty.”
“There must be a way to remove Isaak as well…”
His voice fades away and I am left alone inside our skull again.
Maybe Isaak will really die this time. I suspect that he will, if Marionettenspieler has decided it. I don’t really mind, not much. He has always made the best decisions for us, has always protected me. Even when his actions have been incomprehensible he has always had our best interest in mind. I am only a single individual after all, what do I know of what is best for the world? So I will trust his judgement because there is nobody else to trust, nobody else who knows my every thought, every feeling. It is only he who understands who and what I am.
I am Dietrich von Lohengrin, sometimes Duke of Brandenburg-Jägerndorf and technically Brabant as well, cousin to His Majesty King Ludwig of Germanicus, third cousin to Her Royal Highness Crown Princess Esther of Albion and even distantly related to His Holiness Alessandro XVIII. I am to all intents and purposes a sane and productive member of society when I’m not being a terrorist, I’m even rather good at that too so isn’t it funny that by all reasoning, just because I chose to share space in my own head I’m deemed unstably insane? And with the rest of the world set against me in such a fashion is it any wonder that it is only this devil that walks in step with me, this demonic Marionettenspieler that I trust with my entire being?
++++++++++
Brabant is the duchy mentioned in Wagner’s Lohengrin. Brandenburg-Jägerndorf belonged to the House of Hohenzollern from 1523 to 1622. If Dietrich is related to Ludwig of Germanicus it’s not unreasonable for him to be related through various noble intermarriages to Esther and possibly Alessandro as well.
I’ve been meaning to write this for a while now but I’m getting lazy hence the first person perspective.
Dietrich and Marionettenspieler as two separate entities.
Binary
Disclaimer: Trinity Blood belongs to Sunao Yoshida, Gonzo and others.
++++++++++
Something is wrong, it has been for quite some time. Isaak is staring again, strangely, curiously with that slightly amused smirk readily betraying him. He’s been staring like that for too long now, for weeks. As if he is watching something quite entertaining, something that soon will fall apart. He’s always so fond of failure: I’ve never quite understood why. But never mind. If he’s waiting for me to break he’ll be disappointed. I’ve survived far worse than the promise of disaster in those glassy eyes.
After all I am not alone.
That is the secret that will defeat him. I am not simply a single individual attempting to thwart him. I have my own demon to guard my back. And he is more than a mechanical fiend. It’s almost funny that Isaak will call me the Devil when given the chance; he always says it aloud is if by calling out my true name he will have stolen away my power. But what is the use of naming names when they are obvious?
His name is Marionettenspieler. He, my other, the devil by my side. A power that Isaak’s esoteric mumblings cannot overcome.
How strange it is that Isaak only now has come to notice that which I’m sure Radu noticed from the first. Tragic that. Broken, heartsick little Radu who only realised that he’d signed a contract with his own blood a moment too late. Marionettenspieler never liked him anyway, was always so ready to strike my poor ifrit down. At least that’s what he tells me. We never have secrets he and I but I think that this time he may be lying. Because I saw it too, the thing that lurked behind Radu’s eyes. It was a presence much like my own demon, a sharp-tongued and deformed serpent that thought itself a god. I thought I heard it slither through my mind once or twice, cursing softly, sibilantly. I think it even referred to itself as a goddess.
“You see, it’s insane.”
“Why do you say that?”
“It’s not a god any more than it’s plural.”
“I think it’s using the royal ‘we’.”
He’d snorted.
“Besides, surely they could say the same of us. It’s not the sanest of things to be having conversations inside my own mind.”
He’d let the matter lie after that. He’s like that usually. If I thwart his ravings with effective logic he’s content to let the matter drop. It’s why we make such an effective team. He’s capable of such viciousness and violence but with a rational argument made against it will readily concede the point. Which is exactly what saved Esther. He doesn’t like Esther much, always called her a range of things from distraction to useless. He never tells me why that is when dear Esther has actually been a great deal of help but I suspect that it is because he is jealous. I shower her with attention when I can and he dislikes it. I don’t see why he should. It’s not as if Esther will save and protect me, not like he does.
“Worthless.”
“Hmm?”
“Pointless, more than anything else.”
“I didn’t really expect the Star of Sorrow to work, you know.”
And I hadn’t. I also hadn’t expected István to provide me with such tools either but it had done and circumstance had given me Esther; beautiful, headstrong, blasphemous Esther. I had made use of my perfect tools and what did it matter if I came to love at least one of them? He didn’t complain too much anyway, once I’d shared in painstaking detail my line of enquiry, once it looked rather possible that dear Esther would be killed. And after she wasn’t, he preferred not to discuss the matter again. He’d much preferred Gyula anyway. His malevolent, insane, beautiful Marquis. There our opinions had differed for while I could understand that Gyula was in his own way attractive, I never felt any such pull towards him as I did towards Esther.
There in we differ. It was Gyula he had wanted to save, not Esther whom I loved. He disliked Esther, I found Gyula tolerable. He despised Radu, I was in fact quite fond of that floundering noble. I found an ancient Methuselah Duke oddly disturbing, he wanted to set that man at the head of armies that would conquer the world.
“Don’t you find him at all… disturbing?”
“Who?”
“You know, your vampire Duke.”
“He’s not mine…”
“Yet?”
“Not while that sullen wretch lives.”
“Radu? Do you really think that someone like Radu has that sort of power over anything?”
He’d refused to answer the question further but that certainly made sense. He lusted after what he could not have and because he couldn’t have it, invented stupid excuses to reason out why it wasn’t actually his. In this case the reason he couldn’t have the eminently disturbing Duke of Tigris was because Radu was alive, or at least as alive as either of us could discern. I would have laughed about it if not for the stark similarity to my own argument of why I did not possess Esther.
Byzantium was something of a disaster as a result. Because I didn’t care enough to really engage myself in the matter and left it, for the most part, in his hands. In retrospect I really should have taken control of matters a little more but I was relinquishing control to him, my perfect ally. I suppose I still idealised him, my savour whose seemingly insane actions had saved my life time and time over. He never did anything without reason, no matter how deranged and always it was with one intent, to protect me from harm. He had saved me, why should I ever doubt him? But doubt him I should have done, there in the midst of Byzantium’s madness.
“Did you really think she’d just die?”
“Shut up, I don’t want to discuss it.”
“You may as well; your Duke is dead now anyway.”
“Be quiet.”
“So’s Radu. It’s a pity really, I liked him. He was so very-“
“At least she’s dead too.”
“Who?”
“Her. That serpent lodged in his skull.”
“Oh.”
As I said, I may have felt her in passing but I’d had little idea of the war they’d waged. My Marionettenspieler and this odd snake he despised, this thing that had been resident in Radu’s head. He chose not to elaborate on the matter further but often during long evenings when I had barely woken I’d find him staring hard out of our eyes towards the East. Later he even refused another mission to Carthago for fear that she would rise up to destroy us from beneath the very desert sands. Strange that, though maybe he really did believe that she’d been a god.
In some ways it is a shame that there was such enmity between them. I’ve never met another with a second voice in their head after all. Perhaps we may have understood each other, I tell myself. But then perhaps not since Radu always seemed terrified of that other voice. I can imagine that it was she who came to the fore when Marionettenspieler took great delight in striking them down. Sometimes I wonder if he is perhaps a solitary demon.
Sometimes I wonder if he is a demon at all.
I wonder if that’s why Isaak keeps looking at us, why he keeps waiting for something to change as if we’ll suddenly reveal the truth. We might but not to him. I don’t trust Isaak at all. He is a constant fixture in my life, certainly but he is not an entirely comfortable one. I have never really liked him. Marionettenspieler on the other hand is always highly entertained by Isaak’s faux-esotericism. He can watch for hours, listen in rapt fascination as Isaak drones on in sound bites of information that he’s gathered from just about anywhere. The incessant quoting drives me insane or would if sanity were a strictly tangible thing but Marionettenspieler takes great delight in it and they play such foolish games of citations and half broken poetic lines that I often find myself falling asleep out of sheer boredom.
Of course I’m not listening again while they talk idly until the mention of Esther catches my attention. And I would open my mouth to speak if not for the fact that Marionettenspieler is firmly in command of the body’s functions. All I can do is sit and listen in the back of our skull as he teases and taunts enough to pry the pertinent information from Isaak’s asinine mutterings. The crux of the matter being this, that Esther herself has changed and from what I hear I do not like the person she has become. I have no use for this princess of Albion.
“You can do away with her if you like. She no longer interests me.”
“Oh no, I think she might have quite a few more uses.”
“Such as?”
“Any number of things.”
“I’d like her dead.”
“So she can’t change and escape you anymore?”
“Shut up, that’s no reason for anything.”
“I like her.”
“You- wait, this isn’t even about her, is it? She was with your dead Duke’s niece last, wasn’t she?”
“What difference does that make?”
“It’s all about him again, your obsession. You should have just fucked him while we were in Byzantium.”
And suddenly everything goes black. I’m falling and the feel of the staircase beneath my flailing limbs assures me that I’m home.
I’ve evidently stuck a nerve there.
This is not the first time that he’s used such tactics, our minds share the same information and he knows where best to hurt. Yet he does not. The staircase is only terrifying in context, beyond my actually being there as I was when young it is nothing but a brief short-circuiting of my senses while he regains control over his emotions. I let myself tumble down knowing that in the darkness of our mind there is no bottom. Then just as abruptly as it began, it ceases and I can see and hear again.
“She is useful.”
“Really?”
“Yes and once that use is ended she will be destroyed.”
“It’s a pity we couldn’t retrieve the Ring of Solomon, it was pretty.”
“There must be a way to remove Isaak as well…”
His voice fades away and I am left alone inside our skull again.
Maybe Isaak will really die this time. I suspect that he will, if Marionettenspieler has decided it. I don’t really mind, not much. He has always made the best decisions for us, has always protected me. Even when his actions have been incomprehensible he has always had our best interest in mind. I am only a single individual after all, what do I know of what is best for the world? So I will trust his judgement because there is nobody else to trust, nobody else who knows my every thought, every feeling. It is only he who understands who and what I am.
I am Dietrich von Lohengrin, sometimes Duke of Brandenburg-Jägerndorf and technically Brabant as well, cousin to His Majesty King Ludwig of Germanicus, third cousin to Her Royal Highness Crown Princess Esther of Albion and even distantly related to His Holiness Alessandro XVIII. I am to all intents and purposes a sane and productive member of society when I’m not being a terrorist, I’m even rather good at that too so isn’t it funny that by all reasoning, just because I chose to share space in my own head I’m deemed unstably insane? And with the rest of the world set against me in such a fashion is it any wonder that it is only this devil that walks in step with me, this demonic Marionettenspieler that I trust with my entire being?
++++++++++
Brabant is the duchy mentioned in Wagner’s Lohengrin. Brandenburg-Jägerndorf belonged to the House of Hohenzollern from 1523 to 1622. If Dietrich is related to Ludwig of Germanicus it’s not unreasonable for him to be related through various noble intermarriages to Esther and possibly Alessandro as well.
I’ve been meaning to write this for a while now but I’m getting lazy hence the first person perspective.
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One of the things I like most about your writings is their audacity: you perfectly know your story and the way to tell it, no matter how odd, misterious and distant from the original story is it, you know how to make it real, and make the reader believe it. Your schizoDiet works, and that's all.. even the way you segregate Dietrich's likings from those of the Marionetten is accurate and works good.
This is one of those fics of your I'd really love to start translating once I'd have a chance/time. Yesterday I translated the drabble from the character love meme you wrote for my friend Kitty about Andrea & Paula, and it was quite a nice try. Go fuck off those who said
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I generally tend to start with an idea and go from there though on rarer occasions I’ll start with a feeling or sensation (as with that Süleyman background piece I’m working on) and just work it into the narrative, and as long as I can make it work then it doesn’t really matter how far from canon it strays. Though taken out of context that sounds like an excuse for OOC actions which it really isn’t.
Feel free to. I’m flattered that you want to translate my writing… even if I know nothing about Andrea other than his PhD and what he looks like.
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But the real magic is, to write OOC and persuade the reader you are not ^_-
And you're damn good at it. I try my best for my part, but since I'm unable to judge myself from the outside and my standard number of commenters nevers excedes 2-3 per story (beside my closest friends) I really have difficulties in evaluating my capabilities in this particular field ^^;;;
Delilah, Ion's one and that piece about Suleyman's first battle are on top of the list, once I have a little more spare time to translate, too.. ^^
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Those who read my stories are usually people that are aware of my whole pseudocanon because of other stories or (far way more) because of random discussion I had with the on the matter.
I oftenly wonder how my stories will sound to someone that is oblivious of my opinion on characters/facts, and if they will sound the same even ignoring the basic assumptions that lead me to write those things down... bah, nevermind me, I guess it's just a variation of the classic writer dilemma.
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...btw, do you remember those longe discussions about Seth's lack of humanity...? I think I understand it better now. It's the unability to value what humanity is and what are its priority above the plans. Seth is, IMHO, a little better than that, but still she has all the traits of the tyrant.
(It happened because of reasoning about a much more poorly written show.. You have no idea of the damage you did me. I've been discussing plots and POV with you for months, and this has been awesome but lowered my threshold tolerance for fandom stupidity of something like 300%..^^;)
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