Chapter Text
It was strange, traveling with someone so…ancient.
Annette had always considered vampires as cruel, evil things to be killed, lest they kill you first. She had done just that to her master, and she had considered all vampires to be just like him. Evil, ruthless creatures without capacity for empathy nor compassion. Soulless beasts born from the deepest pits of Hell.
She had never considered that creatures born of a union between man and vampire could exist, but she supposed that if she had, she’d consider them just as evil as the beast that sired them.
Alucard wasn’t any of that, though.
She had spent a lot of time watching him. He always knew, could hear the beating of her heart in her chest, but he didn’t seem to mind. He sated her curiosity, telling her stories of his upbringing and what it was like to be such an unnatural beast as he was.
He took no offense to her probing questions, though. He was incredibly gentle in a way that almost reminded Annette of her mother. He spoke in a soft, low voice that often had Annette straining her ears to try and make out what he was saying.
Sometimes, though, she caught a glimmer of red fury in the depths of those golden eyes, or spotted the way he grinded his fangs against his bottom lip to cool anger or frustration. They were the only pieces of evidence that he was anything but human.
Alucard seemed reluctant to get close to the humans he was traveling with, too. Even though they slept, ate, and fought together, he always remained distant. When Annette and Richter would have small talk, Alucard was never there. She’d often catch him staring into the sky, and Annette would wonder what he was thinking about. It was impossible to tell.
Even with the way Richter hung off of his arm like a puppy – as she had learned, Alucard had been something of a legend passed down from Belmont to Belmont for hundreds of years – he refused to allow himself to get attached. Sometimes his face would glimmer with fondness, before it would reset to his standard, neutral expression.
Annette wondered how much it hurt. Being an immortal, destined to forever watch those he loves grow old and die. It wasn’t much of a surprise that he refused to grow close to anyone. How many times had he done that in the past, just for them to be taken away?
She’d asked, once.
She’d approached him when he was brooding, while Richter slept. The young Belmont always slept early.
He was sitting on a boulder, whetting his magical sword. Annette figured that it did not actually need to be sharpened, being magical, but that Alucard did it anyway just to keep his hands busy.
He looked up to her before she’d even had the chance to say a word, vampiric senses on high alert. He was often the one to watch for danger.
“Yes, Annette?” he said, in his usual, low, raspy tone.
Annette got closer, before sitting cross-legged on the grass.
“What’s it like, being immortal?” she said bluntly.
A sigh left the dhampir’s lips, and he dropped the whetstone. He was staring into the sky, eyes vacant, and for a moment Annette wondered if she’d made him space out.
“I don’t wish it on anyone,” Alucard finally said. “Never fearing death, getting all the time in the world to travel, to find…love.” He spoke slowly. “It sounds wonderful, doesn’t it?”
He turned his head to look at her, and Annette found herself blinded by the intensity of his golden gaze.
“But I’ve spent three hundred years watching the ones I love die, with nothing I can do to stop it. I’ve seen generations of Belmonts die. And it is a cross I will have to bear for three hundred more years.”
He went quiet, and Annette could see his sides heaving. She realised, then, that he was sobbing. It was entirely silent, and his eyes were lidded. There were no tears. She would never have been able to tell, were she not accustomed to the signs.
She felt bad. She hadn’t meant to upset him.
To her utter shock, two spirits materialised. They were barely-there, and Annette had to really focus to see them properly. They were old. They had died a long time ago.
There was a female one. She was tall and lithe, and Annette could barely make out short, bright orange hair. She stood next to Alucard, wrapping her arm around his neck and using her other hand to stroke her fingers through his long, white-blonde hair. She was comforting him.
Alucard did not react in the slightest. He had no idea.
The other spirit was bigger. It was a man. He had wild brown hair that reminded Annette a bit of Richter, and she could just make out a long scar across one blue eye. He wrapped Alucard up in a full-on bear hug, and the man was so large that Annette could barely make out the half-vampire underneath him.
These spirits – they clearly loved him.
Should she tell him?
Annette thinks to herself. For how long had these spirits been watching over Alucard? Protecting him? Comforting him? And he had never known?
When Alucard calmed down, the spirits dissipated. She decided to take her leave. She would keep this secret for now.
But since that day, Annette would see the same two spirits, constantly. Now that she was looking out for them, she saw them everywhere.
They watched over Alucard on the rare occasion that he slept. Sometimes, the female one would pretend to draw on Alucard’s sleeping face, and then both of the spirits would burst out in silent laughter. When he was upset or losing himself in his thoughts, they would appear to comfort him. Wherever the dhampir went, they would follow, laughing and smiling. And they would both show affection to him, constantly. Oh, how Annette wished he could feel it.
It went on for a few weeks, and Annette felt like she had to say something.
One night, she approached Alucard again. He was sitting against a tree, with his eyes peacefully closed. Anyone would think he was sleeping, but she knew better.
He cracked one eye open when she approached, and hummed.
Annette squinted, and sure enough, the two spirits were with him. The female one was lying down, draped across his lap, her hands reaching up to play with his hair. The male one was sitting against the same tree, his arm that was almost as big as Alucard’s torso wrapped around his shoulders. Annette even spotted him pressing a kiss to Alucard’s neck.
“Do you know that there are two spirits that follow you wherever you go?” Annette asked.
Alucard’s eyes snap pedfully open at that, and an intense golden gaze is trained on her. His eyes were intense, and they always reminded Annette that he was not fully human.
“What?” Alucard repeated, though Annette knows that he heard her.
The female spirit giggles, and she pinches Alucard’s nose. The dhampir doesn’t react.
“There’s a man and a woman,” Annette said. “The woman is lying across your lap. She’s playing with your hair.”
Alucard looked down at himself, took a strand of his hair in his fingers, but to him, there was nothing there.
“What does she look like?” Alucard urged.
“She’s skinny,” Annette said, squinting to get a better look at the spirit. “She doesn’t wear very feminine clothes. Speaker robes, I think? …hm, I think I see four scars on her arm, made by something’s claws. She has bright orange, short hair, and blue eyes. Her hair sort of looks like Richter’s, if he had bright orange hair.”
Alucard blinks heavily, and he seemed like he was trying to control his emotions. “Sypha.”
Annette opens her mouth to speak, but he beat her to it. “Is there a second spirit. A..A man? Big, bulky, slightly idiotic looking? Scar over his right eye, brown, spiky hair, blue eyes?”
Annette nodded. “Yeah. He’s sitting next to you. He’s got his arm around your shoulders.”
Alucard’s head whipped to the side so fast he nearly hit it off the side of the tree trunk. And though he was looking directly at the male spirit, his eyes saw right through it.
His hand reached up to touch the top of his shoulder, before moving to the back of his neck. Annette could see claws extending from the tips of fingernails.
“Why can’t I feel you?” Alucard wept, and this time, Annette saw a tear fall from one of his eyes.
The spirits reacted. The female on sat up, reaching up to wipe the tears from his eyes before encasing him in a full-body hug. The male one wrapped both his arms around Alucard’s neck in a motion that would surely strangle him if he had been tangible. They were whispering to Alucard, whispering words that Annette couldn’t hear.
The poor dhampir looked so distressed, knowing that they were there, yet being unable to see or feel them. He clutched at air, and Annette noted the claws that had extended from his fingers. Claws that matched the scars on the female spirit’s arm.
She almost regretted telling him, seeing Alucard in such emotional pain. She’d never seen him like that before.
“They follow you everywhere,” she told him. “They love you so much.”
Annette took her leave then, deciding it was better to let Alucard unpack this on his own.
As soon as the girl left, Alucard lost it.
He had barely been holding it together in front of her. But he felt he couldn’t show emotion in front of them. He had to be strong for them. He couldn’t cry.
He began to sob once she was gone.
The subject of Trevor and Sypha was a sore topic to begin with. He missed them so much. He had thought the pain would go away as the years passed, but after three hundred years, it still hurt just as much as it had in the sixteenth century. He had learned how to suffer through it, silently. It felt like his heart was being torn apart some days, but he managed to appear stoic and nonchalant on the outside, a mask he had perfected over the centuries.
But knowing they were here, watching over him, and yet he was unable to see them. Unable to feel them. Was Trevor embracing him right now? Was Sypha there, stroking his hair like she had always loved doing?
It hurt too much.
Alucard sunk to the floor, curling up and folding his knees against his chest. “Why can’t I see you?” he cried. His claws gouged the earth, as if digging there could find the part of him that he was missing. “Please, just give me a sign. Something.”
He placed his head against the ground, feeling himself begin to hyperventilate.
There was nothing. The birds continued to sing. The sun continued to set. A squirrel darted in his peripheral vision, unaware of his plight.
Alucard cried out, an anguished, desperate scream that he was certain the others back at the camp could hear. He didn’t care.
Then, he felt it, though it was so faint. A feminine touch, wiping the tears out of his eyes. A heavier, more masculine touch, the feeling of strong hands, calloused from years of using a whip, stroking his shoulders, his back. Alucard’s eyes snapped open, but there was nothing there. Yet, the sensations continued.
They were there, even if he could not see them.