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Chapter Text

Chapter 1

The Task

The present

“Dad has got something for you again”, were the words that Lenny greeted you with as you dragged your feet across the Belmont mansion’s doorstep.

“Great”, you replied sarcastically and flopped down onto the nearest couch in the ostentatious foyer. 

It felt as if the air from 1888 London was still sitting heavily inside your lungs, but the great Reynard Belmont had another mission for you. 

Again. 

Fuck, you were tired. 

“You’re lucky, you know”, Lenny pointed out and sat down next to you, slouching into the cushions like a petulant child, despite the fact that there were only 8 months between the both of you. 

“Oh, am I now?”, you yawned, not even bothering to hide your opened mouth behind your hand. 

“At least you get to do something”, Lenny kicked against the fluffy carpet with golden thread in front of the couch in frustration.

The carpet that was probably worth more than all the furniture in your tiny apartment. 

The Belmonts had really been lucky over the last century. 

Which had also led to the entire vampire situation being at least somewhat under control. 

At least in the Western world. As far as you knew, no one really cared what happened to the poor people at the edge of the world, whose only fault was to have been born in the wrong place or the wrong time. 

Just the way it always was. 

Hence, Leonard Belmont’s stinky attitude. 

He was a perfectly well-trained vampire hunter with too little to do. 

Meanwhile, you were a terribly under-equipped person with the wrong set of genes. 

“Ah boo-hoo”, you made mockingly and stuck your tongue out towards him when he sent you a glare. 

It was a good thing that he had become your best friend over the last couple of years of training together – or rather, being trained by him – and enduring Reynard’s many rage fits and disappointed speeches. 

Otherwise, he might have kicked your ass about right now.

“There you are”, Reynard’s deep and serious voice travelled down the huge winding staircase to your left all of a sudden. “Come up now, you have work to do. And Leonard, stop slouching.” 

______________________

Reynard Belmont had found you about five years ago, at the tender age of twenty-one, after you had gotten a thorough health check before being able to donate blood and the likes. 

You had been in college and seriously low on cash, hence the selling – um, donating – of bodily fluids and stuff like that. 

Reynard had come after you because of a suspicion. And, a couple of tests later, which he persuaded you into with some colourful lies, you might add, his suspicion had been confirmed. 

That you had been born with a specific gene defect that allowed for you to travel through time. 

Which was an ability he was terribly in need of, apparently. Since the current vampire situation was so well in hand – at least from the human view on things – the vampires had tried to get creative in the last couple of decades. 

Their truly great times had passed: the times of Dracula, Carmilla of Styria and even Erzsebet Bartory. At the low point they were at right now, there wasn’t much perspective for the future. 

So, they looked into the past. 

Additionally, vampires had one more thing on their side: immortal magicians and mages. 

It had taken them far less time to figure out the spells to mess with the fabric of time. 

Unfortunately, the gene-pool of a turned vampire also didn’t seem to change. 

Ergo: time-travelling vampires and other creatures with the goal to bring back the past – or rather, change the past in a way that made the present more to their liking and favour. 

And against all that stood the mighty, ancient Belmont family… and you.

While Reynard was always on the look-out for more time-travellers, they were hard to come by these days. 

Vampires were always trying to turn them into one of them – and thereby to their own side – or just kill them. That way, they would be useless to Reynard as well. 

In all honesty, you had no idea why you were the one who was still alive. 

When Reynard had brought you into his family at twenty-one years old, he had already mourned the fact that it was too late. In his eyes, you would never become the warrior you could have been. 

The warrior his son Leonard was. 

There was too much to do and too little time to prepare you. The head of the Belmont family had had a choice to make: use most of the time he had in-between missions to educate you in the most basic forms of magic you could muster and all the necessary knowledge on history and cultures past or… train you into being a fighter. 

After the first couple of training sessions, the choice had been made for him: You had no natural pre-disposition to be a warrior. You weren’t really fit, you weren’t strong, you were lacking the balance and… everything, basically, according to Reynard’s rant. Leonard still tried to train you the best he could, mostly in self-defence. Against another human, you might have even stood a chance, but against a vampire? A night creature? Probably not.  

Adding to that, you also lacked a natural pre-disposition in magic. You could only muster the most basic forms of spell-work. 

Hide your scent for a while. 

Push an enemy away a little with a shock wave. 

Stuff like that. 

There were only three things on your side: you were a pretty amazing shot – even with the ancient-ass guns Reynard made you train with. 

You could remember pretty much anything they threw at you: dates, places, events. History and languages had always been a strong suit of yours. 

And you were in no shape or form lacking perseverance. 

You had absolutely no interest in dying in some ditch somewhere, in the trenches of the first world war or on a pyre in the seventeenth century. 

On top of that, you had no interest in allowing your present to be turned into some kind of vampire euphoria. 

Which was how survival had become one of your specialities. 

____________________________________

“So, where to?”, you asked while staring around Reynard’s stuffy study. 

Sadly, as far as you knew, this was the only room inside this mansion – besides Leonard’s – that actually looked lived in. 

Lenny was sitting in a chair next to yours, on the opposite side of his father’s desk. 

Reynard’s nose had wrinkled when his son had followed you upstairs, but he hadn’t said anything about it. He had learned years ago that fostering your friendship with his son worked in his favour more times than not. 

More than once had you been tempted to quit this fucking job. Good thing that the Belmont family was paying you rather well – far better than any job you would have gotten with your mid-par college degree. 

Even better that Leonard was – despite all his differences with his father – an idealist at heart and truly believed in his family’s calling. 

Whenever you would come back from a job exhausted, scared shitless and ready to throw everything away, he patched you up, calmed you and reassured you that you were fighting for all of humanity.

Making the world better one day at a time. 

“Paris, January of 1793”, Reynard finally replied. There was a tenseness to his stance that you didn’t like at all. 

“Right into the revolution?”, you grinned at Lenny. “That must be killing you.” 

Lenny had a thing for radical changes in history. He found them to be fascinating. 

Probably wishful thinking for the day he would finally be able to stand up to his father and the century-old conventions pushing down on his shoulders. 

Right now, however, he wasn’t your best friend Lenny, he was Leonard Trevor Belmont, the dutiful son of Reynard Belmont. 

“What is the mission?”, he asked, instead of replying anything to your teasing. 

Reynard let out a deep sigh that caused your skin to crawl. First his tense stance, now this. 

“You have to stop one of the messiah’s vampires from turning Marie Antoinette into a vampire.” 

The arms of the wooden chair creaked as you dug your nails into the material. “You want me to go directly toe-to-toe with a vampire? With one of Erzsebeth’s vampires? Why not just shoot me right here, save the mage the trouble of sending me back?” 

“According to our records, Richter Belmont should be in Paris around the same time. You can convince him to help you.” 

“Oh, yeah, right”, you spat. “Because that went over so well the last time.” 

Niklaus Belmont – Russia 1895 – had not been amused by some snarky time-traveller with little manners (according to him) practically demanding his help. 

“If Marie Antoinette is turned, the French Revolution will never play out the way it did”, Reynard elaborated. “It would fundamentally change the present as we know it. When you come back – if you come back – most of us might not even exist. Even you might not exist. Changing your own past would be an extremely painful experience and result in your death.” 

A defeated breath left you when you leant back in your chair. 

Always the same argument. Always the same fucking successful argument. 

“Marie Antoinette was executed in October of 1793”, Lenny pointed out carefully. “What is to stop the vampires from turning the queen somewhere between January and then?” 

“Once Richter and Alucard have crushed Erzsebeth’s rising, there will be no one left with any intent or reason to save Antoinette”, Renard pointed out. “The only problem is that the both of them don’t know to keep an eye out for the queen as well. Once they know, the job is practically done. This is more of a messenger mission than a fighting one and –”

“Hang on”, you interrupted and sat up straight again. “We talked about this, after last time. No more sending me out to make sure other people die.” 

Two weeks ago, you had come back from London, 1888. 

Where you had made sure that Jack the Ripper wasn’t caught after his second victim. Making sure that more women were tortured, mutilated and killed. 

You still couldn’t get rid of the bitter taste in your mouth at the thought. 

“And what choice do you have?”, Renard asked, lifting an arrogant brow. 

Smug bastard. 

He didn’t have to reiterate his speech of the world as you knew it most likely ending if you didn’t see this through. 

As he had said. 

You didn’t have a choice. 

______________________________

“You can’t give me anything automatic?”, you asked sceptically when Lenny tugged the muzzleloader pistol into your belt. 

“You know the rules. If you lose something in the past that doesn’t belong there, everything will be for nothing anyway.” 

“Time-traveller 101, yeah, I know”, you mumbled petulantly. 

It made sense and you had heard the argument a thousand times before. 

Lenny squeezed your arm and you gave him a weak smile, knowing full well that it wasn’t his fault. 

That you had to go on another mission to make sure that someone died. 

That it had happened again today. 

You had felt it before, once or twice a year. This tingling on the back of your neck. As if someone – or something – was watching you. It had been there ever since you had been a kid. 

Back then, your parents had written it off to the over-imaginative mind of a child. 

In your teenage years you had actually been tested once, for paranoia and schizophrenia, but nothing had come of it.  

Since joining the Belmonts’… mission, it had gotten worse every year. 

Nowadays, you felt it at least once every two weeks. 

When you had mentioned it to Lenny, he had claimed that it was normal. To always feel this unease, knowing what lurked out there, in the dark. 

But why had you felt it since you had been a child? 

“It’ll be alright”, Lenny pulled you from your thoughts. “Just like dad said. You’re a messenger this time, nothing more. Nothing big.”

_______________________

The mage’s spell felt the same way it always did. There was some comfort in that, at least. 

The strange tugging inside your stomach, as if you were perched on the very edge of a rollercoaster. 

The tingling and excitement that accompanied the weightlessness of falling down. 

Of being trapped – even if just for a few split seconds – in a space without the constrictions of time, or earth and whatever came with it. 

All too soon it was over and there you stood. 

On the outskirts of Paris. 

1793.

_______________________

1793

Nothing big, you remembered Lenny’s words derogatorily as you watched in mild horror when the king’s head dropped into the woven basket at the bottom of the guillotine. 

This was a feeling that never changed. 

This strange dysphoria between knowing something was about to happen as a distant event and actually seeing it. 

Being there to feel the rowdy mood of the crowd. To listen to their shouts. To smell their sweat. 

To see the fear in someone’s eyes. 

Some stories were tragic because they didn’t have to end that way. 

All the stories that you got to witness were tragic because they were always meant to end that way. That was why you were here, after all. 

To make sure that this very same man’s wife would be standing in the same spot, only months later. 

To doom someone else to death. 

Just because it was meant to be this way. 

Who decides?, you wondered for the thousandth time, but pushed those thoughts aside. 

They never led to a good place. 

Instead you ascribed the sudden discomfort you felt towards the tightness of the shirt you were wearing, the stiffness of its collar and the embroidered vest that had been neatly buttoned down on top and stuffed with a cravat – almost lovingly – by Lenny… about 230 years from now. 

Somewhere in the last five years, the irony of these things had gotten lost on you. 

Instead of dwelling, you rightened your three-pointed hat and trudged on. 

Like this, with your hair and face hidden beneath the hat, wearing trousers and a currently very fashionable waistcoat, anyone who saw you would guess that you were some rich boy, at least as long as you kept your face down. 

Which was just how you liked it. 

Survival instinct and all. 

No reason to risk being burned as a witch or stoned as a woman of too many liberties at the dawn of enlightenment.

Walking along the Seine beneath the shade of the pretty trees provided you with some calm after Louis XVI’s execution. Soon, you would start to ask around for the Temple, the last prison of the royal family. 

Try to scout the area… check whether vampires had already been there or were close. 

You were so lost in your thoughts that you didn’t even notice the dark-skinned, distraught girl or the young man clad in blue beside her. 

What did cause you to stop in your tracks was this sensation… this familiar crawling at the back of your neck. 

Someone – or something – was watching you. 

With a hand on the pommel of your gun – loaded with silver bullets – you turned slowly. 

Your mouth dropped in awe. 

You hadn’t even noticed the dark stranger beside the young couple. 

But you noticed him now. 

Naturally, you had heard stories of Alucard over the years. He was one of Lenny’s personal favourites and even the ever-stoic Renard seemed to hold him in high regard. 

Adrian Fahrenheit Tepes. 

A hero of humanity. 

The legendary patron and personal friend of the Belmont family. 

God, you were staring at him, you knew, but what could you do? He was so… beautiful. 

Well, at least you weren’t the only one making a fool of yourself. 

The breath-taking dhampir was staring back at you just the same. 

His mouth parted slightly…

… and then he said your name.    

Chapter Text

Chapter 2

The Bond

1793

In some way, he looked exactly the way you had expected him too.

Tall. Regal. Strong. 

His dark clothes tailored to perfection. The black coat billowing around his feet in the gentle breeze, letting you catch a glimmer of the sword at his side. 

His hair was white, almost as white as his skin, except for a certain golden-silvery hue in the sunlight. His skin looked like porcelain - a thing of beauty, but also something that whispered distinctly of him not being of this world. 

Not a mere mortal. 

Yet, none of the stories you had heard around the Belmont house nor your own imagination could have prepared you for actually meeting Alucard.

There was this aura around him, this presence of might and aloofness. 

He was immortal, after all, over three-hundred years old by now. 

Something like that leaves its traces around a person. 

What shocked you the most, though, were his eyes and his voice. 

His eyes. 

The only time you had ever seen real gold was inside Reynard’s treasury, when Lenny had snuck you down there to satisfy your nagging curiosity. 

All of the treasures and gem stones you had seen down there seemed insignificant - almost worthless - compared to the liquid gold that was swimming through Alucard’s warm gaze.

And that voice?

Deep, quiet. 

Somehow rough and smooth at the same time.  

There was something about it that travelled from his body, through the cobblestones beneath your feet right into your chest, setting your insides on fire and causing your fingertips to tingle. 

Still, you could have wrapped your head around all of this: the expected and the unexpected.

What didn’t want to make any sense was your name inside his mouth. 

“Uhhhh… hello?”, you replied unintelligently, your brain still not having caught up to this situation. 

And then it happened. 

A quirk. 

A near miniscule twitch at the corner of his mouth. 

Had… had he just been tempted to smile at you?

The two young people had his side chimed in with different variations of “Who is that?” and “Can she help?”

“How do you know my name?”, you blurted out your own question. 

Something stilled inside the swirl of those golden eyes at your words and the dhampir in front of you stiffened slightly. All of a sudden, he looked a little colder, a little more drawn back. 

“Ah”, he made flatly, straightening his shoulders. “I see.”

“See what?”, asked the young man who - now that you looked at him a little closer - resembled Lenny slightly, in the shape of his jaw and the set of his shoulders. 

A Belmont.

Richter, you thought.

“You wanted time to rest”, Alucard told his companions with a slight tilt of his head. “We should take that time now.”

“You’ve been telling us the entire way from the gate to the widow’s window that we had no time to make rest.”

“We don’t”, the dhampir agreed, his gaze settling on your face once more. “But we should take the time to answer questions.”

___________________________________

The questions were pretty much always the same.

No matter whom you told, no matter the time period.

After giving Richter, Annette and Alucard the most basic outline of information (you had been briefed long ago by Reynard what you could and couldn’t say to the people of the past) the onslaught of inquiries started.

Can you also go into the future?

No.

Can you take things with you?

Only clothes and the likes, nothing that’s alive.

Even plants?

I never tried.

Can you help us in the up-coming fight?

Your fingers flexed at your sides nervously, blood rushing to your face. A feeling you knew all too well settled heavily in your stomach.

Embarrassment. Shame.

You hated this feeling of inadequacy when faced with Belmont warriors. It wasn’t your fault that you hadn’t been trained for this all of your life, but simply thrown into the deep end.

“Um, well, not really, I –“, you hedged, your hands growing clammy.

“As she said”, Alucard interrupted you firmly, “she has her own task to complete here.”

“A task you can’t really tell us about?”, Annette probed further.

You shrugged. “I could, but it isn’t really necessary. As I said, it involves the queen and one or several – possibly time-travelling – vampires, who are trying to change the future.”

“But, if the world still exists when you are born, doesn’t that mean that we win this fight against the vampire messiah?”, Richter's eyes shone with confidence.

“Sadly, no”, you sighed deeply. “It’s the whole point of me being here and the other vampires being here as well. The future is never set in stone. As of right now, my birth and the whole time period surrounding it is the future. Meaning that it isn’t certain. It never is as soon as I set foot in a different time. For all we know, me being here could tip the scales for you losing this battle.” Once again, you raised your shoulders in a cheap shrug. “Sorry.”

Richter scowled and Annete pursed her lips in thought.

Your eyes shifted to Alucard and by this point you were no longer surprised to find him looking right back at you.

Not just at you, even, but right into your eyes.

He had been looking into your eyes this entire time. Additionally, he had not asked you a single question.

Not one.

A certain kind of suspicion was sneaking up your spine.

Your fingertips were tingling again. Or were they still tingling?

“So, all in all, you are just here to put more on our plates?”, Richter asked carefully. His tone of voice wasn’t malicious per se, but he didn’t sound thrilled either.

Raising your palms in a soothing motion, you inhaled a deep breath. “Listen, I’m not quite sure yet myself what I am to expect of all of this. I can’t really fight with you, so I will take care of my own task for now. Check out the Temple, see whether I can find the threatening vampire or vampires in question. If I manage that, all I need you to do is kill them. That shouldn’t cause any of you to break a sweat, right? Just a handful of vampires?”

“No”, Alucard confirmed confidently.

Richter opened his mouth as if to argue…

Until Annette laid a gentle hand onto his arm. “We are here to save mankind. Both now and in the future. We will do what needs to be done, right, Richter?”

“Right”, the young Belmont huffed and let his shoulders slouch slightly.

Guilt joined the stone of shame inside your stomach.

Technically, Richter was right. You were putting more onto their plates.

Absent-mindedly, you started to plug at the skin around the nails of your other hand. A nervous habit, which Reynard absolutely despised. He claimed that it portrayed weakness and a lack of confidence in oneself. According to him, vampires would eat gestures like this right up. Both the act itself as well as the sight of your practically always bloodied and crusted cuticles.

“Get some rest”, Alucard declared suddenly, crossing the room in several long steps. Behind him, the sun was starting to set through the window, lending him a strange sort of halo.

“And what will you do?”, Richter demanded to know.

“I will see whether I can find out more about the whereabouts of this mummy while you mortals rest your tired bones”, the dhampir threw over his shoulder.

Richter huffed and Annette managed to smile and roll her eyes at the same time.

Right in the moment when he was about to push past you, Alucard bumped your arm slightly with his elbow.

It wasn’t hard enough to be rude or to gather the attention of the others, but it was definitely deliberate.

Especially coming from a half-vampire.

You raised your eyes in surprise and for once, his gaze didn’t meet yours immediately, but was trained at your maltreated cuticles for a second, before flitting back to your face.

Oh.

Was… was it rude to make yourself bleed in front of a vampire? Even if he was only half of one?

Even if it was only a sliver of blood?

Would it lead to unnecessary temptation?

You had never been on good terms with a vampire before, how would you know?

Before you could say anything or ask any questions, however, Alucard was gone.

____________________________________

The rest of the time before the sun had completely set was spent with amicable chatting.

Richter was curious about the future of his family, even though you kept repeating that whatever you knew would have to be taken without guarantee. From this moment on, even tomorrow was uncertain, let alone centuries from now.

It was what made this entire time-travel thing so nerve-wracking each and every single time.

What if, instead of fixing everything, you ruined everything?

For all you knew, you might be deleting your own existence right now.

While both Richter and Annette – who were adorable in their flirty cluelessness, by the way – grew tired after a certain amount of time, you remained restless.

Your task, the death of the Queen, and the uncertainty of a future that lay at least partly in your hands was weighing heavily on your mind.

The teenagers in front of you didn’t notice. You had mastered the art of hiding your unease after being questioned and scolded too many times by Reynard. Even Lenny, your best friend in the whole world, the person that knew you better than anyone, often couldn’t tell anymore when your deepest worries consumed you.

It was a curse and a blessing. You didn’t want others to worry with you. To worry for you.  

Still, sometimes it would be nice to just be seen.

“Where are you going?”, Richter asked when you rose to your feet, ready to leave the room inside this little inn to the oblivious love-birds.

“I’m going to go out to catch a little bit of fresh air”, you replied.

“Aren’t you tired?”, Annette wondered.

You smiled. “Unlike you, I haven’t been walking through the forests surrounding Paris for the last couple of days, slaying vampires and night creatures. I will be fine, I just need to stretch my legs.”

And clear my head a little.

_________________________________

The Seine looked peaceful beneath the light of the blinking stars and a few flickering street-lights.

This was something else that you would never get used to: it was so dark at night, in the past.

Dark and quiet.

No cars driving around with their headlights on. No electric street lamps, no billboards or TVs running all throughout the night.

Just the sound of waves and crickets under the black sky.

“You are restless”, a sudden voice came from behind you, causing you to jump about three feet into the air.

“Jesus”, you breathed as you whirled around, a hand firmly pressed over your heart. “You scared the ever-living-crap out of me.”

(Reynard would scold you for non-period appropriate speech, but you guessed that it didn’t really matter around an immortal.)

“I apologize”, Alucard stated while ducking his head slightly, in a miniscule bow. His hair cascaded in front of his face, but not quickly enough for you not to see that hint of a smile play around his pale lips again.

“You are worried”, he added then and your eyes widened in surprise.

How about that? Apparently, endless years of experience allowed for him to read humans better than even their close friends could. Or had you given yourself away after all?

“Yeah”, you admitted quietly, just at the last second remembering that you weren’t supposed to scratch your fingers into a bloody mess. Quickly, you shoved your hands into the pockets of your waistcoat. “Time-travel tends to have that effect on mere mortals, I guess. I don’t think we are meant for this kind of thing, this kind of power.”

“Hm”, he made, his voice rumbling through the space between you and right into your chest once more. “Perhaps.”

He stepped up to your side and turned to face the river Seine as well.

There was something there, you thought as you stared at his elegant profile underneath the starlight.

Something about his presence… about the way he would look at you.

Not just at you, but always into your eyes. Right into your eyes.

You didn’t think that you had ever had as much eye contact with anyone in all your life as you had had with the dhampir beside you this afternoon.

But it was more than his gaze.

Over the last couple of years, you had grown more aware of the hints of magic thrumming around you, around everything. It was always there, just not palpable. Hidden somewhere inside the texture of reality, so real and at the same time untouchable. At least to anyone who wasn’t a witch or a mage.

Magic bound everything together, the mage had warned you before he had ever sent you into the past. Magic also did not have to adhere to any laws of nature as you knew them. It was eternal and endless.

It did not have to follow chronological orders.

The effect Alucard’s presence had on you, it was not just the physical impact a being like him had on a mortal like you. It was as if there was a thread of magic woven through the space between you both, connecting you to each other.

Your suspicion grew sharper.

Clenching your fists inside your pockets, you knew that it was time to give a voice to it.

“We know each other, right?”, you finally asked. “I – I mean, you know me. I don’t remember anything, so I guess it hasn’t happened to me yet.”

Tilting his face up at the stars, Alucard breathed out an almost imperceptible sigh. “Yes.”

It made sense, really. Time-travel 101.

The chronological order you knew of things wasn’t exactly the same for everyone else.

Just because you hadn’t lived something yet didn’t mean that Alucard hadn’t as well.

“So, um…”, you swallowed thickly, “Are we… friends or something?”

He huffed a little laugh. “Sometimes.”

“Sometimes?”, you repeated.

You didn’t know what to make of this… this connection. The mage had warned you that things like this happened. That people who were not bound by the constricts of time as mortals knew them could become connected through these sorts of magical bonds.

But the mage had always talked about it in an inimical context. That it was possible for you to meet an enemy for the first time, but that enemy had already met you several times.

Basically, what you were supposed to do, according to him and Reynard, was to listen to your gut and the magic surrounding you. Did something feel off? Did you feel intrinsically inclined not to turn your back to someone?

Trust that feeling. They might have betrayed or attacked you before. You just didn’t know it yet.

It wasn’t this way with Alucard, though.

The magic surrounding him made you feel safe. His gaze felt warm when it slid across the skin of your face.

His presence seemed to wrap itself around you like liquid honey. Thick and sweet and…

You were growing light-headed.  

And yet, you were only friends sometimes?

“Did you find the mummy?”, you tried to evade your own spiralling thoughts.

“Yes. We will go to the Louvre come morning.”

__________________________________

“Okay, I have one more question”, Richter said as the sun rose and he put his arms back into his coat sleeves. “If you spend so much time in the past, aren’t you… missing too much in the present? Of your family’s lives? Your friends’?”

“It’s a little more complicated than that”, you tried to explain as best as you could. To be fair, you hadn’t yourself really understood the mage’s elaborations on that topic. “Time passes differently when I am in the past compared to what the people who are waiting for me in the present experience. I can be gone for weeks and for them it only feels like a couple of hours.”

The longest you had ever been gone was six weeks. The mage had sent you away before breakfast.

Upon your return, six weeks later in your own perception, Reynard and Lenny had just sat down for dinner the following day.

“Aren’t you aging faster than your friends then?” Annette tapped a finger against her chin. “At least in their eyes?”

You exhaled a loaded breath. “While I am in the past, I am at least partially protected by the magic that allows me to be here. It stops me from aging, basically. When I am at home, I age normally, but while I am under the spell… I am in a sort-of suspended state of being.”

“You… you are immortal right now?”, Richter blinked at you with wide eyes. “Despite being a human?”

“Well, I haven’t tried dying in the past yet. But as far as I know –“

“She can still be harmed”, Alucard interrupted you, his voice sounding darker than before. “Do not get any ideas, Belmont. For the time being, she is ageless, nothing more.”

“O-okay”, Richter mumbled, taken aback by the dhampir’s tone of voice, rubbing a hand across the back of his neck while turning away.

You couldn’t help but stare at Alucard, wondering about his forceful reaction.

“What is the furthest you have gone back?”, Annette wanted to know.

“1618, the beginning of the thirty years’ war”, you replied. “The further I go back, the more strenuous does the spell become. My way back gets harder and the mage can’t be as precise. Worse comes to worst, I could land years away from where I was supposed to go.” You shrugged. “Which is why the mage refuses outright to send me back further than the beginning of the seventeenth century. He doesn’t want to risk it and I can understand why. Besides, I have no interest in going back further either.”

“What?”, Alucard’s head whipped around at that, his hair cascading across his shoulders in a magnificent tangle of gold and silver. The warmth that was always in his eyes when he looked at you seemed dimmed.

If his reaction from a few minutes ago had been forceful, now he looked downright shocked.

“Yeah, um”, you swallowed thickly. “The mage won’t send me back that far. Just like he will always send me back at least a hundred years from when I was born. Otherwise, I might get too close to my immediate ancestors and interfere with my own existence.”

“What do you mean with ‘finding your way back’?”, Annette interjected.

“Oh, uhm…”, how could you put it into words? “The mage can control the time I will spend in the past a little. He tries to send me away for roughly a week or two, most of the time. But the magic oftentimes has a mind of its own and this kind of spell-work is fickle. So that is a factor as well. Additionally, I can influence it a little. When the spell wears off, or the magic shifts, I can usually feel it somewhere in my gut. It’s a kind of tugging, as if my insides are being pulled in a different direction from my body. Sometimes, if I have to, I can push this feeling away and stay for a little longer, or I can call it forward and make a quick getaway.”

That had saved your life more than once in the past.

Both Richter and Annette looked at you with fascinated expressions while Alucard still seemed to be stuck at an earlier point of the conversation.

“He won’t send you back further”, he repeated to himself, his voice strangely hollow.

“The mage? I’m not even sure whether he can”, you replied honestly.

Alucard’s hand curled around the pommel of his sword, his leather glove creaking noisily.

Richter and Annette were exchanging worried glances.

“What is wrong?”, you asked quietly, taking a careful step closer to the dhampir.

He was your friend, he had said. At least sometimes. You didn’t have to be afraid of him, right? The magic thrumming between the both of you said so.

“Nothing”, he shook his head with a thoughtful expression. “Go to the Temple and see what you can find. We should get to Sekhmet’s body. We are losing precious time.”

______________________________________

You were sprinting down the riverbank as fast as you could in these historically authentic boots. Already you could imagine the blisters forming on your little toes and feel the air burning inside your lungs.

Well, this had all gone to shit really fast.

Only a couple of hours had passed since you had separated from Alucard and the others. In the meantime, your search for information around the Temple had been fruitless. No vampires in sight during this time of day, no one was willing to talk to you and the former queen was far too well guarded to get close.

Even worse, the tugging you had tried to explain to Annette earlier had made itself known.

Way too fucking early.

You had been in Paris for hardly twenty-four hours. Why the hell was your body pulling you back into the present?

Had something gone wrong with the spell? Had –

You had had no time to linger on these thoughts. Trudging back towards the inn, where you were supposed to meet up the other again, you had suddenly seen it.

A shadow crossing the sun.

A purple night creature on fast wings, holding something.

And being followed by someone.

In a blur of black fabric and silver-gold hair, Alucard had been shooting across the sky after the creature.

Until he hadn’t.

Suddenly, he had been falling.

Breathing had felt impossible all of a sudden while the magic around you had thrummed with a sensation too heavy to describe. The thread that seemed to exist between yourself and Alucard felt as if it had been pulled too tight.

Painfully tight.

That was when you had started your mindless sprinting.

It was stupid, really. There was nothing you could do if you reached him and there was still danger around.

You would just be a hinderance in the next battle.

That didn’t stop you, though. This strange bond was calling you forward and you were powerless to stand against it.

You were being called to Alucard and every bone, every muscle and every thought inside your body followed the call.

Finally, you saw them, reached them.

Richter and Annette out of breath. Alucard drenching wet but otherwise looking fine.

Thank God.

It didn’t make any sense. You had met him yesterday and yet it had felt for a few crucial moments as if your very life depended on his well-being.

It didn’t make any sense.

“What happened?”, you asked, completely and utterly out of breath as you reached the small group.

You couldn’t break through their arguing, however.

Obviously, they had failed in their task to keep the mummy away from Erzsebet’s minions.

Alucard was angry because Richter had given their location away.

Richter was angry because Alucard was angry.

They – or rather, Alucard – decided that Annette and Richter would be looking for vampire nests and Alucard would be speaking to the Revolutionary commune of Paris.

Richter wanted to go with Alucard.

Alucard gave a snarky reply.

Shivering involuntarily at the demanding tone in the dhampir’s low voice, you were just about to demand that they stopped ignoring you, when Alucard turned towards you swiftly: “You. Come with me. We need to talk.”

Oh-oh.

Casting a glance towards the other two, all you could make out was Richter’s shrug and Annette’s compassionate gaze.

Alucard was marching away and you had no choice but to follow. Your curiosity and the dreaded magic were pushing you forwards, towards him.

“What happened?”, the question left your mouth a second time.

In the stories you had heard about him, both from Reynard and Lenny, he had sounded like this all-powerful being. Sure, you had guessed that he wasn’t all-mighty, but… the creature had managed to simply kick him from the sky?

After getting their hands on the mummy in the first place?

Something had to be wrong.

He wasn’t answering you.

“Alucard?”

He came to a halt then, at the mention of his name, and turned his face away from you with a hiss. It sounded almost pained.

“I am weakened”, Alucard then explained stiffly.

Immediately, you froze. Weakened?

The Belmonts had become experts at weakening vampires over the past and you had heard more than one method to do so.

Malevolent spells. Poisoned blood. Silver shackles.

Had something been done to him?

“How –“

“It is because of you”, he interrupted you, turning around in a swift motion, standing right in front of you all of a sudden.

Intimidated, you put your head back to be able to look at his pale face from beneath your lashes.

He had not stood this closely to you before, at least not for this long.

The air between you felt as if it were charged with magic.

But that didn’t seem to have the same effect on him as it had on you.

While you were worried that you might grow light-headed again, he was simply glaring down at you.

You swallowed.

He had to be almost two heads taller than you.

Twice as broad.  

“Me?”

A curt nod was your only reply before Alucard breathed a deep sigh and moved a hand through his wet hair.

Don’t follow the water droplets across his face with your eyes, don’t –

“I expect that your mage told you what would happen if you interfered with your own past or the origin of your existence?”, he asked, his eyes turned towards something above your head.

“Yes”, you wet your lips nervously, “he said that changing my own past would be an extremely painful experience. As long as I don’t delete my own origin, I probably wouldn’t simply cease to exist, but I wouldn’t belong into this world anymore either. The magic would try to fight me every step of the way. As I said, painful, and probably ending in death because of it anyway.”

Pressing his lips into a firm line, Alucard’s gaze returned to you. “That is what is happening to me.”

Slowly but surely, your jaw lowered in a shocked and confused expression. “But – but you said that it was my fault… I haven’t changed your past in any way, shape or form!”

“You are changing it by having no intention of travelling further back than the seventeenth century”, he hunched over slightly, searching your eyes with his. “You are smart, you already gathered that we have met before, at least from my point of view. The first time we met was in the second half of the fifteenth century.”

It felt as if someone had pulled the cobblestone from right under your feet, like some magicians did with a tablecloth and expensive dishes.

Not enough that it was difficult to wrap your head around the fact that this Alucard had already met you before without you knowing anything about it, but he had met you in the fifteenth century?

“That’s not possible…”, shaking your head vehemently, your world was tilting slightly. “I can’t –“ At that moment, the tugging inside your stomach, the sign that you were being pulled home, returned with a vengeance.

You lost your footing. The world was turning onto its side and you couldn’t –

Alucard caught you, your name leaving him like a worried prayer. “What is it?”, he asked and there was this panic inside his voice that brought the tingling back to your fingertips at lightning speed.

You couldn’t answer though.

His hands were curled around your upper arms like vices, almost painfully tight, but you were glad for it. It rooted you to this place, this time, while your insides continued to turn and shift.

He wasn’t touching you, not really. There were still at least three layers of clothing between your skin and his: your shirt, your waistcoat, his gloves.

So, why did it feel as if an electric current was being shot through your body as soon as his palms pressed against you?

Why did this worried, almost frightened tone of his voice set your stomach on fire?

“It’s all wrong”, you tried to breath through a gasp. “I’m being pulled back already, back home, but it’s wrong –“

“No”, Alucard shook his head vehemently. “The magic is setting things right. You have to go back. Go back home and then have them send you to Wallachia. You need to go there, after Dracula’s defeat.”

“But… my task…?”

“Will still be here when you return. I will still be here, unless you don’t go there. I don’t know what will happen to me – to all of us – if the order of things is changed.”

“I –“

Alucard gave you another firm shake, holding onto your arms so tightly with his inhuman grip that your feet left the ground. “Listen to me. Wallachia. After Dracula’s defeat. Do you understand?”

Numbly, you nodded.

The last thing you heard before you were torn away from Paris, from the January of 1793, was your name upon his lips.

There was something there, in the way he said it, but you couldn’t quite put a name to it.

Didn’t quite dare to.

It was already too late when you remembered that he hadn’t even told you what the hell you were supposed to do in Wallachia.

Only that you had to be there.

Somehow, the world depended on it. 

Chapter Text

Chapter 3

Of Immortality and Loneliness

The present

The way back felt rougher than usual. 

Your stomach plummeted so hard that you had to fight the very strong urge to throw up once you landed clumsily back inside the pretty much abandoned study the mage always cast the spell from.

Your knees buckled and you stumbled slightly, trying to catch your breath. 

Fuck. 

You had lost your hat somewhere, either in the thralls of the magic or at the riverbank of the Seine. 

Reynard would be pissed. Authentic, historically accurate clothing was hard and expensive to come by. 

Pushing the stray hairs that had escaped your low ponytail back, you straightened again and pretty much staggered out of the study and into the familiar hallway. 

Lenny stood at the edge of the staircase, looking up when he heard the movements across the old floorboards.

“What the –“, he mumbled as he stared at you, casting a glance at his watch. “You’ve barely been gone a couple of minutes.”

“Yeah, tell me about it”, you tried to swallow the dry lump inside your throat. Still feeling shaken up from Alucard’s hard grip and the desperation in his voice, you had a hard time focusing back on the present. “Where is your father?” 

“In his study, but what –“

“And the mage?”

Lenny shrugged. “Crawling back into his hole? No one knows from where he comes or where he goes, just that he’s here when dad needs him. You know that too.” 

“Yeah”, you sighed deeply. 

__________________________________

“You want to go where?”, Reynard asked incredulously.

The current head of the Belmont family was not at all happy with the direction things were taking. Sure, jobs had gone sideways before, but that had always been your problem, not his. 

He just had to make sure that you were where you needed to be, when you needed to be there.

“Wallachia. Sometime after Dracula’s defeat”, you repeated for what felt like the hundredth time. 

Or had it only been a hundred times in your head, while you had prepared for this conversation?

“When was Dracula defeated again?”, you wondered, casting a glance at Lenny. 

Surely, Alucard’s number one fan would know. 

“1476”, your friend replied reluctantly. 

Shit. That really was a long-ass time ago. 

Lenny said your name, calling your attention back to him. “Do you know what it means, for the mage to send you this far? What if you land decades from where you are supposed to be? What if you never come back?”

“I –“

“I don’t have time-travellers to throw around”, Reynard interrupted you forcefully. “If you get lost to us somewhere in time, Lord knows what will happen. There will be no one to stop other travellers from causing chaos. Is that really something you want to happen?”

“I want to avoid causing chaos”, you tried to explain. “If I don’t go, everything is lost anyway. Richter and the others will never defeat Erzsebet and the world as we know it won’t exist. I have to see this new task through first.” 

“And how do you know all of this?”, Reynard wondered, raising a sceptical brow, as if someone was challenging his authority over you. 

You squared your shoulders petulantly. “I know all this from the son of Dracula”, you spat. “The task was given to me by Alucard himself. Why else do you think I would even consider it?”

Lenny’s chin dropped and even Reynard’s stiff shoulders fell slightly. 

Well, well, well. 

Looks like there was some sense to be talked into them after all. 

____________________________

The mage would not return for a couple of days, so you were sent home. 

The feeling of being watched felt more insistent in that time, almost driving you crazy. 

Was it the anticipation of what was to come? The dread of not knowing whether you’d ever come back?

Not even knowing what you were supposed to do? 

Sleep only came in bits and pieces, causing you to turn and toss for two whole nights. 

Finally, the call came. 

The mage was back. 

_________________________

Sometime after 1476?

The pit in your stomach seemed to grow deeper the further you went. 

Being sent this far into the past had felt the same to you, even though the mage had seemed more strained. 

He had reiterated his warnings, telling you that there was no guarantee that you would land in the right time or place. 

That you would find your way back. 

You had landed in some Wallachian village at sunset. 

With no idea where to go or what to do, you had closed your eyes, inhaled a deep breath and searched for that tiny piece of magic you held inside yourself. 

It was feeble and silly compared to what someone like the mage or Richter or Annette could do, but it was there. 

And it was answering your call. 

Somewhere, in the endless depths of your mind a light shone, like a lonely, distant star. 

Responding to the call of your weak magic. 

The bond. 

Not bound by space or time, it was there. 

He was there. 

So, you followed that feeling, trudging through the woods. Your shin-length skirt got into the way of branches and roots, your coat not nearly warm enough to protect you against what felt like an oncoming winter’s chill. 

You were tired. 

But the light inside grew stronger. 

Eventually, the trees grew more sparse, until you could see something of a clearing. 

Finally. 

Avoiding a root trying to break your ankle, you managed to fight your way out of this bush, onto a clearing that held the remains of an abandoned, burned house. 

But that wasn’t all you found. 

Coming to a sudden halt, you went cross eyed as you stared at the sword that was pointed right at the tip of your nose. 

“Told you I heard something”, Alucard quietly said to his companions. 

________________________________________

You had to hand it to Trevor Belmont, he might have been a lot of bad things, but he was pretty chill about all this. 

Apparently, he had seen too much in too little of a lifetime to be surprised by much of anything anymore. He accepted the fact that you were some time-travelling human sent by his progeny without so much as a blink of an eye. 

Secretly, you guessed that he was simply happy to believe that he wouldn’t be the end of his line. Even if it sounded too good to be true, even if it might all be just a lie. As of right now, that knowledge could give him peace.

Sypha was positively ecstatic, wanting to know as much as possible about the spell-work behind all of it. Too bad that you couldn’t really explain it to her. 

And Alucard? Well, he acted the very opposite of the way he had in Paris… or would be acting in Paris…? 

Anyway. 

Alucard was asking the most questions of all, sceptical until the very end. 

He wanted to understand the science behind it, throwing around phrases and words you had never even heard of. Your feeble attempts at elaborating left him obviously dissatisfied.

“I do not trust you”, he declared after what felt like hours of questioning. 

You would have loved to scream at him that he was the only reason you were here, but that would break one of the basic rules of time-travelling. 

He wasn’t allowed to know what he would do in the future. 

“So…”, you scuffed the tip of your boot through the dirt under your feet, avoiding to reply anything to Alucard’s rude statement, “Where are we? What are you doing here?” 

“We are on top of the Belmont Hold”, Trevor explained. “We need to find a way to trap and kill Dracula.”

Your head whipped around. 

“Wait, what? What year is this?”

________________________________

1476, actually 

One disaster after another.

Your life was one fucking disaster after another. 

You had to hand it to the mage, though. His personal objective had been to send you to a time roughly two or three years after Dracula’s defeat. Which meant that he was only off by a couple of years, instead of decades. 

It still wasn’t good enough, though. 

What the heck were you supposed to do now, here? 

Alucard hadn’t said anything about this in Paris. Had you fucked up already? 

This Alucard – the one of 1476 – wanted to leave you behind in the woods. Trevor and Sypha insisted on taking you with them into the Hold. It was too dangerous to leave you outside with all these night creatures, they argued.  

They really were a trusting lot. It was lucky for you, but you worried that it might bite them in the back one day. 

“I can feel something around you”, Sypha explained as she led you to the stone she had managed to move out of the way only seconds before you had arrived on the scene. “Like you don’t belong here… at all. It makes sense with your story.” 

“Thanks”, you mumbled, frustration sitting heavily inside your stomach. Things hadn’t been supposed to go this way. 

So, you followed the hunter, the scholar and the son of Dracula under the earth.

______________________________

You had been prepared for a lot. You knew what the Belmont mansion in your time and its cellar looked like. Yes, the Belmont Hold was large, impressive and beautiful, but it didn’t really knock your socks off. 

Alucard managed to do that all on his own. 

You had expected him to be different, to look different. 

He was just as tall, just as broad. Just as handsome, but… he did not seem as other-worldy as he had in Paris. His hair was more golden than silver or white. Still beautiful, the way it was curling around the high-collar of his coat, but not quite that long. 

The sword was the same, the eyes too.

But the way he looked at you had changed. There was scepticism there, distrust. 

Confusion. 

You could still feel the bond, but it was weaker now than in Paris. It felt more as if it were dancing around your shoulders instead of sitting heavily inside your stomach. Not quite so insistent. 

Not quite so intimate. 

A connection, yes, but as of yet… a fleeting one.  

You wondered whether that was why he was reacting so badly to your presence. Maybe he felt it too. 

Maybe that was what confused him. 

What you had been absolutely not prepared for in regards to him was the sass. 

Jibe after jibe thrown at Trevor, at his family and the Belmonts’ life purpose. 

It was a little mean, but also a little funny. Trying to hide your grin behind the curtain of your hair, you noted that even Sypha pressed a hand to her mouth to stop a giggle or two. 

Alucard was certainly quick-witted. 

And a little bit of a bitch. 

Your light mood disappeared, however, when he remained standing in front of a glass display case, glaring at the skulls sporting vampiric canines for way too long for your comfort. 

A museum dedicated to the extermination of my people, he called it before turning away. 

Sypha and Trevor had disappeared into various depths of the labyrinth of bookshelves, sometimes making themselves known by their bickering.

They reminded you of Richter and Annette.

Or were Richter and Annette reminding you of these two?

Whatever. 

With no reason to be here, no goal in mind, feeling like nothing more than giant hindrance, you started to stroll past the shelves as well, letting your fingers dance across the spines of the heavy tomes to your side.

The old leather felt soothing, though you mourned the fact that you could read none of them. These ancient, magic languages held no meaning to you. 

Eventually, you rounded a corner, ending up right in Alucard’s space. 

Accidentally, you might add. 

He was moving so quietly, how the hell had you been supposed to know that he would be right here? This Hold was huge, after all.

You had not been listening to the bond.  

Glaring down at you with those cold golden eyes, he snapped the book he was holding shut and pressed his lips together in annoyance. “What?”

You swallowed heavily, head pounding with the promise of an on-coming headache. 

It was hard to have met two so drastically different versions of the same person within the span of a week. 

A person you were somehow connected to by magic, but having no idea what it meant. 

“Nothing”, you mumbled and lowered your eyes. “Sorry.” 

“You should stay out of the way”, he spat, your uselessness heavily implied. 

“I know”, you breathed and turned away. 

There was a small, painful tug inside of the magical thread almost imperceptibly connecting you to him. As if you should have turned back to him. 

As if he felt sorry. 

But it was gone as soon as it had come. 

________________________________

Eventually, you decided to stop wasting your time and asked Sypha to help you with the index. There had to be at least some books down here in a language you could read. 

Maybe the Belmonts had found out things about time-bending spells even this far in the past. 

You found a section of the library that might be promising and started to pull random books from the shelves, inspecting them, moving your fingers across the handwritten lettering. 

These books must have been priceless at this point in time. 

Bringing the book closer, you closed your eyes and inhaled deeply. 

A blissful sigh left you.

Past or present, old books still smelled the same. Of comfort, peace, calm and quiet –

“What are you doing?” 

You flinched away violently, dropping the book. Raising your eyes, you saw Alucard sitting atop the bookshelf closest to you, his sword lazily leaning against his shoulder.

He was holding his own book. 

It must have been hours since you had last spoken. 

Had you wandered into his space again, or had he sought you out? He could move so quietly, it was impossible to tell. 

“Uh, smelling old books?”, you replied. “It’s weird, I know.” 

“Hm”, he made non-descriptively, but kept staring at you. 

“What?”, you asked. 

He raised a perfectly arched brow at you. 

Refusing to avoid his gaze, you elaborated: “You are staring at me.” 

“Interesting”, he shot back. “I could have sworn it was the other way around.”

Your fingertips started to tingle again as blood rose to your cheeks. 

He was right, you knew that he was right. From the moment you had arrived, your positions had been reversed from what they had been in Paris. 

Now, you were the one always staring at him. Seemingly knowing more than he did. Feeling this distinct yet unexplainable fondness. 

It was only natural that he would be as curious about you as you had been about him. 

Unfortunately, you didn’t have any answers either. You had no idea what was going on, not even a clue. The only person who might have been able to explain any of this was himself, but three-hundred years from now. 

“You think I’m lying?”, you asked quietly, flexing your hands at your sides nervously before moving to pick at your cuticles with one hand. 

There was a rustling sound as Alucard let himself drop from the bookcase. “No”, he replied after a long pause. His gloved hand closed around your wrist and you startled as he pulled your hand away before you could cause yourself to bleed. Your arm warmed immediately and you shivered at being so close to him. 

“I think you are telling the truth, which is even more concerning.”

Your teeth buried themselves inside your lower lip. “Sorry about that”, you waved your hand between the both of you, alluding to your almost bloody fingertips. “Is that rude? To bleed in front of…of a…” 

He dropped your hand as if you had burned him and took a swift step away from you. “Ah, that is what I am then. Just another vampire?” 

“You are the one who called them your people”, your brows furrowed. 

Alucard hissed in anger, baring his fangs at you. 

You could only stare at them with a dumbfounded expression. Within the blink of an eye and a flash of red light, he had vanished, as if it had never happened. 

Inhaling a shuddering breath, you shook your head, angry with yourself.

You had faced vampires in battle before, had almost been killed by some of them. 

Displays like this shouldn’t fascinate you. 

Shouldn’t excite you. 

_____________________________________

Alucard acted his part well. Hiding behind indifference and his aloof hatred towards Trevor. 

But there was also sadness, buried deep inside of him. Maybe, without the bond, you wouldn’t have been able to notice it. 

The bond was there, though, and the sadness that was coming off of him in waves made it hard to breathe around him. 

There was loneliness there too. 

Sypha found the distance mirror. Alucard annoyed Trevor. Trevor insulted him. Sypha pulled the Belmont away and only seconds later, they were standing behind a bookcase, giggling. 

Alucard was left standing alone, expression bitter. Raising his eyes, your gazes met inside of the mirror.

You shivered. 

You were worse than useless here. Nothing more than a fly on the wall, you were intruding on every moment, listening to conversations you weren’t meant to hear. 

_______________________________

Sypha managed to put the nail on the head. 

Alucard’s sadness was bottomless, like an icy well. 

You still had to disagree with her, though. Alucard wasn’t a cold spot in the room. 

He didn’t feel like a cold spot to you, anyway. To you, he felt like the flame beckoning your little moth brain closer. 

Even if it would burn you in the process. 

Sypha and Trevor had started snoring ages ago, but you were still restless. 

The torches had been dimmed. You didn’t know whether Syphas’s tiredness had caused that or whether Alucard had maybe made them shine less brightly so that his companions could rest better. Whatever it was, it cast the library into a gloomy, silent place. 

Alucard was turning the pages of the index in the flickering candlelight when you let yourself sit on the floor not too far from him, resting your back against one of the shelves. 

You could tell that he was watching your motions from the corner of his eye from a quick glimmer of gold across the darkness. 

Shifting slightly, you crossed your legs beneath yourself, resting your head against the spines of the books behind you. 

Looking unabashedly at him. He had been direct enough with you, you could be direct right back. 

Nevertheless, the silence grew stifling after a few moments of you just staring and him just turning page after page. 

“I’m sorry”, you said eventually, your voice hardly anything more than a whisper. You didn’t want to risk waking Sypha or Trevor, but were sure that he would still be able to hear you with his vampiric senses. 

“You mentioned that already”, he replied quietly, seemingly continuing to read.

His voice did that funny thing again, the low sound travelling directly into your chest. You shivered, but still gave way to the urge to roll your eyes at him. 

“Not about my being here and being useless and all that. I’m sorry that you have to do this.” 

His hand froze for a moment, page hanging mid-air. “Do what?”, he wondered in that aloof manner of his, his head now infinitesimally turned towards you.  

You just cocked your head slightly, thinking that it was obvious. 

The page moved again. “Dracula intends to wipe out all of Wallachia. Maybe even humankind.” 

“He’s still your father”, you swallowed. “You lost both of them, that day.” 

You might not know all of the story, but you knew that Lisa was burned and Dracula went mad. 

This time, it was a story that was tragic because it didn’t have to end this way. Dracula and Alucard might have found comfort in each other, but instead - 

“He tried to kill me, you know”, Alucard pointed out, voice so distant and cold that goosebumps spread across your arms. “When I wanted to stop him the first time. I’m sure he is going to try again soon.” 

“Well”, your voice struggled against the lump inside your throat. “Then I’m sorry for that too.”

“I neither want nor need your pity.” 

“I’d call it compassion.” 

The dhampir sighed and you yawned, closing your eyes for a moment. 

Suddenly there was a rustling sound next to you and your eyes flew back open. The black coat pooled across the floor as Alucard said down next to you and you grew hyper-aware of his presence. 

Of his smell. Something of wood and soap and magic. 

He wasn’t touching you, at least the distance of an inch between your arms, as he leaned back against your bookcase and arranged his legs. He angled one so that the sole of his boot still pressed against the floor, the other lay stretched out next to you. 

Man, those were some long legs. 

The magic was thrumming between you as if it were satisfied. You wondered whether he had moved because of the pull of the bond or whether that loneliness you had caught a glimpse of earlier had compelled him to. 

“What do you care?”, he wondered. “This isn’t your fight and you have said yourself that this was not the time where you had wanted to go.” 

You shrugged nonchalantly. “I’m just considerate like that.”

Alucard huffed something that almost sounded like a chuckle. 

“I never expected this”, he admitted all of a sudden, having grown serious again. “I guessed that my mother would never want to be turned and was prepared to lose her. Someday. With grey in her hair and wrinkles on her face. But my father… I don’t know how much more my half-blood nature is going to affect me, after having aged me so rapidly, but immortality is supposed to be expected. I always believed that at least my father would be there to share it with.” 

Dumbfounded by his sudden openness, you tried to do the math in your head… 

Lisa had been burned last year. If you remembered the rough estimation of Alucard’s date of birth that had been given in the Belmont archives…

He would have been nineteen. 

Blood rose to your face as you realised that, as of this moment in time, you were older than him. 

He was just twenty years old. At that age, you had basically still been a kid. 

And he now felt that he had the duty of killing his father, the only person he had expected to be there forever.   

There wasn’t possibly a thing you could reply to that. You had no idea how that would feel. 

“What was it like?”, you wondered, plugging on a loose treat inside your coat instead of your fingernails, “To have Dracula as a father?”

For a moment, you thought that he wouldn’t deign to answer such an intimate question, but when he started to speak, you realised that he had just chosen his words carefully. 

“Strict, disciplined. He was the one who trained me, taught me how to fight. Insisted that I studied magic and science. I believe that he and my mother always feared that other vampires would see me as a threat, having their strength but so little of their weaknesses.” 

“Must be nice, being able to walk in the sun”, you pointed out. 

“Amongst other things, like enjoying food and warmth. I wasn’t always too fond of the many exercises he drilled me with, but I see their point now, that I…”, that I have to use these skills against him, you guessed he had wanted to say. 

Carefully, you cast a glance at his profile through the curtain of your hair. He looked to be far-away, lost in thought. 

“But he was always gentle with my mother. Could be gentle with me, when I needed him to be.” Alucard shook his head with a dry laugh. “I cannot complain about my childhood. I certainly had more of one than the Belmont.” 

And yet here he was. Preparing to fight against his father.

“Do you think he regrets it? That it has come to is? That…”, you peeked at his loose white shirt, at the glimpse of the deep, wide scar you could catch beneath his collarbone, “... that he hurt you like this?” 

“No”, he replied immediately. “I don’t think he is thinking clearly enough to realise. The grieving madness of losing my mother has consumed him completely.” 

“But…”, you wet your lips carefully. “But he didn’t have to lose you too.” 

Alucard sighed deeply and through the bond, you could feel a glimmer of the pain he must feel. 

Your body took it and enhanced it, firing it on with your compassion and sadness. Maybe it even was pity, but you weren’t sure.

All you knew was that your stomach knotted itself into painful coils and you had to wind your arms around your middle tightly in order not to double over from the sudden onslaught. 

Alucard’s face turned towards you. “Your heart rate is picking up and your muscles are clenching, as if you are in pain”, he pointed out clinically. 

You couldn’t help but huff a laugh and shook your head. 

“I ask again”, he continued then, his gaze growing more intense across your face, even though you weren’t meeting it (you simply feel it burning across your skin), “What do you care?”

You inhaled a deep breath, considering your options for a moment. 

And then thought, fuck it. 

This entire task was shot to hell anyway. How much worse could it get? Besides, you believed that with all the turmoil going on, the dhampir might actually appreciate your honesty. 

“I’m going to go out on a limb here”, you started and this time met his gaze head-on, “and just come out and say it. If it’s stupid and I make a fool out of myself, then that is just the way it is and you are welcome to laugh at me.” You swallowed as he nodded. “Magic has its way of doing strange things, especially with someone who is interfering with the natural order of things as I am. And right now it’s… I don’t know, I feel as if it is connecting me to you. As if there’s this hint of a bond and I don’t really… I don’t really know what to do with that.” 

Alucard’s eyes evaded yours, staring into the depths of the dark library. “Me neither”, he mumbled quietly. 

You kept staring at him in question until he sighed and turned back to you. “Yes, I feel it too. It is unsettling… I have just met you, yet…”

“Yet it feels as if we know each other”, you breathed. “Or as if we at least should.”

“Yes.”

Something seemed to solidify inside the bond in the silence that followed, as if the mere admittance of its existence had given it strength. 

You gasped and Alucard tensed beside you. The bond felt heavier now, not quite as heavy as it had in France, but it was undeniably there. He was undeniably there, taking up a place somewhere inside of you. 

His sadness felt stronger, his confusion and irritation with the not-knowing of this situation. 

But, for this moment, his loneliness didn’t feel quite so heavy. 

“We’re in a world of trouble, aren’t we?”, you wondered quietly.

He didn’t reply anything, but he stayed right beside you, unwilling to move away. 

__________________________

Your eyelids grew heavy eventually and you started to doze off. 

Later, you would notice your surprise that you didn’t mourn the absence of a blanket or something like that (since Trevor and Sypha seemed to hog the only one down here). Contrary to what you would have expected from looking at his pale skin and knowing his vampiric nature, Alucard was warm. Physically as well as in presence. 

You also could have sworn that at some point your head had dropped against his shoulder and that he hadn’t done anything about it… not flinched away or left, at least.

But you had been so tired, it had probably been nothing but a dream.

When you woke up, the torches burned brighter again and you were alone.  

_______________________________________

Sypha found a spell to call for and trap Dracula’s castle. 

The hold was attacked. 

Trevor made a decision and doled out some orders. He would take care of the night creatures, Sypha should finish the spell and Alucard handle the distance mirror.

“And you”, he started as he turned towards you, “try not to get killed.”

You nodded. “Will do.”

With awe you watched as Alucard pulled one of his gloves off with his teeth and lengthened his nails. The entire concept of a distance mirror was a fascinating thing, really.

Just like the castle. Especially when it suddenly disappeared from the view inside the mirror thanks to engines and magic.

Still, Alucard managed to find it again. 

The night creatures entered the Hold with a crash and a rumble that felt as if it shook the entire structure of the underground library to its core. 

Above your heads a creature screeched. 

You had been standing close to Alucard before, so enthralled by the magic he was performing. At the sounds of the creatures and their shadows falling over you, you moved without thinking. 

So did Alucard. One second you were standing somewhere next to him, looking up the Hold, in the next he was right in front of you, one arm shooting out behind him and blocking you from the chaos, the other hand curled around the grip of his sword tightly. 

You could only blink at his back in front of you for a moment.

It had been as natural as breathing, to step behind him, to hide inside his protection. 

Had it been as natural to him? Something done without thinking?

Probably, considering the way he flinched when Sypha yelled: “Alucard, keep your eyes on the castle, I need to see it to put my intent on it!”

Startled, the dhampir looked back at the abandoned mirror, the image of the castle fading. 

Then he looked back at you over his shoulder, conflicted.

This bond was a confusing thing indeed.

“Go, I’ll be fine”, you assured him. 

Reluctantly, he let go of his sword and stepped back to the mirror.

Your eyes were trained to the layers of stairs and floors above your head, trying to keep track of the night creatures, hoping that Trevor was fine. 

A crash sounded from your right and the floor shook so hard beneath your feet that you almost fell. 

Sypha gasped when the night creature landed almost right beside her, apparently uncertain whether to let go of the book and the spell she was holding and make use of her speaker magic or not. 

“Concentrate on the spell!”, you called and shoved her towards Alucard and the mirror. 

The creature snarled at you, baring its sharp and ugly teeth at you. With an out-stretched hand, you muttered one of the only spells you could manage, shoving the creature back a couple of feet.

It wasn’t very effective, nothing compared to what Alucard or Sypha could have done with magic, but it gave you enough time to pull the muzzle-loader from the inside of your coat.

The gun with the silver bullets Reynard would have never allowed for you to take this far into the past, which was why you had conveniently forgotten to ask. 

Thank Goodness that silver was effective against vampires and night creatures. 

The shot could be heard through the entire Hold, the smell of gunpowder immediately filling the air. 

The bullet found its goal perfectly and you couldn’t help the smug tug on the corner of your mouth at seeing the perfect hole between the creature’s eyes.

One thing you were good at, at least.

“What the hell was that?”, Trevor shouted from somewhere upstairs. 

“Uhhhhh… nothing!”, you yelled back, immediately hiding the gun inside your coat again without taking the time to re-load. 

It wouldn’t do to let these guys find out about guns and thereby ruining all timelines. 

Turning back to the two people down here with you, you noticed how Alucard was watching you over Sypha’s head. While the speaker was giving her all to an obviously very complicated spell. 

Alucard raised a quiet brow at you. 

Not quite as helpless as he had expected, apparently. 

_______________________________ 

In all honesty, you were kind of glad to get out of the Hold when Sypha raised the ice block beneath your feet.

You weren’t particularly claustrophobically inclined, but being underneath the earth for so long had given you a little bit of an iffy feeling. The giant castle Sypha had dropped right on top of you probably didn’t help.

While the ice-block was rising slowly, your stomach started to turn.

It made sense. In France, Alucard had said that sending you home early was magic’s way of setting things right.

You still weren’t where you were supposed to be. So, magic was doing its job again.

Still, it didn’t feel nice. The feeling in France had already been stronger than usual, but right now… it was downright painful. It took all of your willpower not to double over, clutching your stomach.

Alucard was standing closely beside you. You had noticed a confused look from Trevor at the sudden proximity, but the Belmont hadn’t said anything.

Better that way. How could you have possibly explained it? Alucard and yourself had met, what, one, maybe two days ago?

But magic didn’t care about time or place or timespans.

It was there and it was positively buzzing, especially when the red night sky grew clearer.

You cast an inconspicuous glance at Alucard, but he wasn’t looking at you. There was dread inside the bond.

Fear.

Soon enough, you reached the top and Sypha flung the ice away as if it was nothing.

“I, um…”, Trevor rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly as he turned to you (a gesture you knew all too well from Lenny and had even noticed with Richter), “I don’t really know what we are supposed to do with you, during the battle, I mean.”

“Don’t worry about it”, you swallowed tightly, another tug pulling at your insides. “I’ll be gone soon enough. The magic is pulling me back home.”

Alucard’s gaze felt heavy as it landed on you.

“Oh, uh, okay, well…”, Trevor hedged.

“I…”, you licked your lips nervously, turning to Alucard, “before I disappear, I need to speak with you.”

Trevor and Sypha exchanged a set of glances, but kept their mouths shut.

“Very well”, Alucard replied, his voice giving nothing away.

Sypha and Trevor conversed quietly between the trees and the castle, probably about the battle to come, while Alucard and you disappeared behind the walls of what remained of the Belmont house.

“I don’t want to leave”, you admitted to Alucard as soon as the others were out of sight. You didn’t even care if they might hear.

“You would be useless in battle”, he pointed out coldly. “My father would not hesitate to kill you and that”, he jerked his chin towards your coat, alluding to your gun, “would be useless against him.”

“I know”, you swallowed, uncomfortable with the way he had retreated to hiding behind this cold indifference. Something had changed inside that Hold, when you had both admitted to the bond, and you wouldn’t deny it. Wouldn’t let him deny it. “I don’t want you to be alone…after.”

You didn’t remember everything Lenny had told you about Dracula’s demise and what followed, but you knew that Sypha and Trevor would leave eventually and that Alucard would become the guardian of the Hold and the castle. On his own.

With everything he had told you… that he had not expected to face eternity alone… 

And he was still so young. Too young to have to deal with all this, to face years, decades, maybe even centuries of loneliness.

It didn’t seem fair.

And he knew it too. The cold mask slipped as his eyes met yours.

You continued to speak before he could say anything. “Don’t bother denying it, I can feel it across the bond. You don’t want to be left behind anymore than I want to go back home.”

He swallowed. “But you have no choice and neither do I.”

Inhaling a shuddering breath, you nodded. “I know.” For some reason, tears were burning inside your eyes.

This didn’t make any sense.

None of this made any sense.

Counting both versions of him, you had known him for two, at most three days. This version of him knew you for less than that.

Why did you feel so connected? Why couldn’t you –

Suddenly, he stood right in front you. Startled, you raised your eyes at him, blinking the tears away bravely without letting them fall.

“I will come back”, you vowed. “I cannot tell you exactly when, but I will be back. I promise.”

“How can you?”, he wondered.

“I…”, your eyes darted between his for a moment and you just thought: to hell with it.

You had already broken the time-travelling rules by telling him about the bond. What was one more rule to break?

“I told you that I was told to come here. To Wallachia, I mean, to the time after Dracula’s defeat.”

He nodded slowly.

“You told me to come here. That there was something I needed to do here… I mean, then.”

His eyes widened, understanding the meaning behind your words quickly. He was so smart. “When?”

“Centuries from now”, immediately, you raised your hands in the small space remaining between your bodies. “That doesn’t mean that your victory here, today, is certain or complete. For all I know, I might have ruined that future already by doing the wrong thing here. You still need to give this fight your all. The outcome is not certain.”

“The future isn’t set, I know”, his jaw hardened at your confused expression, “I might not have been reading books solely on my father’s castle in the Hold.”

Ah. So, he had been reading up on the magic of time travel as well.

You jerked your head in a nod. “You told me to come back here, after. So, I will do whatever I can to be here. It might take some time, but…”, you gasped when he raised his hand all of the sudden, the back of his gloved fingers stroking across your cheekbone in a featherlight touch.

“You don’t owe me any promises”, he pointed out quietly, his voice rough in a delicious way. “You don’t even know me.”

Despite his words, the bond was filled with warmth, practically glowing. It was a feeling you would be all too happy to drown in.

So full of hope.

“I’m making promises anyway”, you whispered, not even noticing when your own hands fisted themselves into the front of his coat. “I promise that I will come back to you.”

A shuddering exhale left him and hit your face, his thumb brushing the skin beneath your eye. “I don’t know what this feeling is”, he confessed in a whisper.

Fuck it, you thought once more and tugged on the lapels of his coat sharply.

Getting onto the tips of your toes to press your lips to his.

A surprised sound left Alucard, but he didn’t pull away.

Just like the way your fingertips had tingled ever since meeting him, your face now started to tingle. The press of his kiss was soft and oh so sweet. Your lips moulded themselves together as if you had been born to never kiss anyone else.  

If the thread that connected you to him had been glowing before, it was practically on fire now, filling you with warmth, washing your body clean of anything else.

All in all, it was a chaste gesture, just your closed lips pressed against his. Nothing but an innocent kiss in the midst of a terrible situation.

Yet it felt like the most intimate moment of your life.

When the pull on your stomach returned with a vengeance, you tore away from him with a gasp. “I’m sorry, I don’t know what I was thinking”, you hurried to say as colour rose to your face. Hurriedly, you let go of his coat.

As soon as the contact was broken, the bond quieted down and the situation became what it truly was: awkward. 

You had met him maybe yesterday and had just kissed him. 

Jesus, the poor guy. 

“Don’t be”, Alucard breathed. “I –“

“I will be gone soon”, you had to interrupt him, feeling that you had no more power to stretch this out. “Fight, win. I will be back. Remember that. I will be back.”

“What will happen?”, he asked, the hand that had just been touching your face so gently pressing down onto your shoulder now, as if that might physically keep you here. “How will you go?”

You honestly didn’t know. You had never been on the other side of this and had no idea what he would see.

“I guess I’ll just disappear right in front of your eyes in a few seconds”, you shrugged. “I’m sorry, I –“

And just like that, you were gone. 

________________________________________

The present

You landed back in the present even less gracefully than last time.

Even worse, the pain inside your stomach didn’t stop. If anything, it got worse.

When you had returned from Paris, you had barely felt the bond between yourself and Alucard, but now it was still there. Almost as powerful as it had been in Wallachia.

That just confirmed your suspicion that something inside had strengthened it… maybe even caused it to form fully.

“Well”, a voice suddenly came from your right and you whirled around, your head still dizzy.

“That was quicker than expected”, the mage took a look at his old-timey pocket watch. “But I see that you managed to come back after all.”

“How long was I gone?”, you heaved under laboured breaths.

Why was the bond hurting so much?

Filled with so much dread?

It almost felt as if something horrible was happening during your absence.

“A few minutes, just like last time”, the mage let his watch snap shut. “I take it that it was a couple of days for you?”

You nodded, cold sweat forming at the back of your neck.

“Hm”, he made non-distinctly. “Which would mean that you weren’t where you were supposed to be.”

“I was too early”, you muttered. “A day or two before the battle against Dracula.”

“Ha!”, the mage barked a laugh. “Still closer than I expected it to be.” Slowly, he rose from his seat in the old leather armchair. “I believe it is time for me to go.”

“No”, you blocked his way. You might have felt weak, but you were determined. “Send me back. After Dracula’s defeat this time.”

He merely raised a brow at you. “What makes you think the spell will be more precise this time?”

“Because it has to be”, you spat.

It felt as if your stomach was about to be ripped out of your abdomen from the pull of the magic.

“I’m sorry, my dear. But I only cast these spells after talking to Mr. Belmont. After I have been paid. I’m sure you understand. Now, please …”, he made a gesture as if to say: Get out of my way.

But you couldn’t.

You couldn’t just let him leave.

With an angry snarl, you pulled the gun from your coat. “Send me back, right now!”, you hissed as you pointed the barrel right at his face (he didn’t have to know that it wasn’t even loaded).

The mage simply quirked an eyebrow at you again. He didn’t seem scared to have a gun directly pointed at him. If anything, there was a certain curiosity inside his gaze.

“Alright.” 

Chapter Text

 Chapter 4

The bitter Taste of Disappointment

Sometime after 1472? 

You landed back at the edge of the same village as last time…

… and didn’t take the time to look around.

Turning on your heel, you ran into the forest, in the direction you remembered the Hold – and now the castle – to be.

Your stomach had stopped hurting, which strengthened your suspicion that – for once – you might actually be where you were supposed to be.

But the bond felt numb all of a sudden. As if it were barely existent.

The sensation filled your gut with dread.

It was a little warmer this time than it had been just hours ago. You guessed that instead of deep winter, it had to be the end of it - or maybe even early spring. The air smelled crisp and clean.

The sun was shining.

By the time you reached the castle, light sweat was coating your skin.

You regretted not having had the time to change before coming back here, but you couldn’t have risked Reynard Belmont stopping you.

And he would have stopped you. Once you got back, you’d be in a world of trouble anyway.

But one issue at a time.

When you reached the ruins of the Belmonts’ house and had a clear view of the castle, you came to a skittering halt.

The enormous building had been eery before, and even the sunlight didn’t change anything about its gloomy appearance.

It wasn’t really a beautiful place to look at, but… you could basically smell the magic surrounding it. That in itself was fascinating.

What was less fascinating and magical, but downright shocking were the stakes in front of the castle’s entrance staircase.

Slowly, you stepped closer, swatting the flies that were buzzing around away.

The stench was almost intolerable.

Maybe, maybe you could have understood the presence of the night creatures on sticks out here, but…

But you could have sworn that the corpses at the very end of the line, closest to the stairs leading up to the door, were humans.

The white, flimsy gowns were fluttering in the wind, barely existent anymore. Their skin was sunken in, stinking and almost black. A crow was picking at one of their eyes.

You picked up a stone and shooed the bird away.

Some part of you was wishing that Alucard wasn’t here anymore. That some other being had taken over the castle.

The glimmer of the bond that remained, however small it might be, was telling you differently though.

Someone was inside that castle and you knew that someone.

Holding your breath, you pressed on past the impaled bodies and pushed against the heavy double doors. One of them creaked open slowly.

And noisily.

Stepping into the castle, you noted the smell of… well, of old things.

Dust. Moths.

The foyer looked abandoned.

“Hello?”, you called. “Anyone home?”

You couldn’t hear anything but after a moment, there was a shift in atmosphere.

Someone was watching you.

“I know you’re there”, you called, grabbing for the gun inside of your coat (which you had re-loaded upon seeing the corpses).

Another shift, and in a flash of red, he was standing in front of you.

“Wha… what the hell happened to you?”, you breathed, your mouth hanging open in disbelief.

Alucard looked… bad.

Filthy, even.

His hair was matted and dull, his skin ashen. His eyes looked sunken in and his entire body seemed to be dirty. As if he hadn’t washed in weeks.

He was stinking of wine and piss.

The irises which had looked like golden jewels before now resembled the brass of the knobs from an old, forgotten wardrobe.

His coat was only thrown over his shoulders and he wasn’t wearing a shirt underneath.

(Despite everything, you had to physically force your eyes not to stray to his sculpted chest and the criss-cross artwork of scars.)

Alucard, for his part, only stared at you for what felt like minutes. Then…

“Get out”, he hissed, voice deeper than you ever remembered it being.

“I –“, you blinked, your expression dumbfounded.

“I said”, he started again, his voice rough as if his throat was made of sandpaper, “Get. Out.”

Swallowing deeply, you squared your shoulders. “No.”

This time, he didn’t wait.

With another flash of red, he was right in front of you and threw you over his shoulder.

You shouted in surprise, one hand fisting into the back of his coat and the other in his hair as you kicked your legs through the air. “What are you doing? Let me down, goddammit… Alucard, let me down!”

Both doors opened without him touching them, probably through magic.

The castle was obeying its master.

You felt sunshine falling onto your body and realised that he actually intended to physically throw you out. “Wait, hang on…”, you called, trying to struggle into a position that might allow you to catch a glimpse of his face. “Just… tell me what’s going on… we can talk about this!”

The dhampir let you drop on your arse unceremoniously and you hissed in pain when your tailbone connected with the hard stone of the stairs.

“Go away”, he rumbled. “And do not come back.” With that, he turned around, his coat billowing around him and was gone.

The doors flew shut with a resounding bang.

You fought your way back to your feet and jumped back to the doors, but neither one of them would budge.

First, you were banging your fists against the material, but then decided that that had to be insufficient considering the sheer scale of the castle and instead used the pommel of your gun.

The sound had to be heard around the entire forest.

“I won’t go, you hear me?”, you yelled. “I won’t go! I will wait out here until you talk to me, you stubborn…”, no curse word in your repertoire seemed sufficient, “…dingbat! However long it takes!”

__________________________________________

You were sitting cross-legged in front of the castle with your back leaning against the double doors, looking out over the forest. 

Trying to ignore the rotting corpses right in front of you. 

The worst thing was that you actually got kind of used to the smell. How sick was that?

You noticed when you disappeared into the forest for a few minutes to relieve yourself. The fresh air cleared your head and once you returned, the stench hit you again at full force. 

Nevertheless, you resumed your vigil position in front of the castle. 

Alucard wanted to be stubborn? Well, you could be stubborn too. 

You would simply sit this out. 

_______________________________________

Despite the warmer temperatures during the day, the night brought a surprising chill. Huddled up inside your coat, now lying on your side with your back to the doors, you were somehow glad for the presence of the corpses. 

Whatever kind of dangerous animals or people might be out there in the forest, they surely would be scared away by such an horrendous sight. 

But then again, you hadn’t let them scare you away, had you? 

Shivering and with clacking teeth, you somehow made it through the night.

______________________________________

The next day you had to leave the castle for longer in order to find something to eat. 

Reynard had made sure you had received the most basic training in survival skills, but you didn’t feel like hunting for anything. It would take too long and you didn’t want to be gone from the castle for that long.

Didn’t want Alucard to believe that you had given up so easily. 

Besides, you always worried that an open fire wouldn’t cook the meat thoroughly enough and didn’t want to risk getting sick. 

So, a handful of berries, nuts and an apple it was. 

The leather skin filled with water that was hidden inside your coat beside the gun was almost empty and you didn’t know whether you could trust the river - or rather, brook - running through the forest. 

Begrudgingly, you admitted to yourself that you wouldn’t be able to drag this out forever. 

On your way back to the castle, the sky darkened. Soon it started to pour down with a vengeance. 

The wind whipped your hair around and seemed to blow everywhere even underneath your clothes. The temperatures plummeted fast. 

You reached the castle just in time when the first streak of lightning lit up the sky, closely followed by the rumble of thunder. 

Pressing your back as tightly against the door as possible, a part of you hoped that Alucard would take pity on you in this weather and finally let you in. 

But he didn’t. 

_________________________________________

It rained all throughout the night, the cold taking up residence inside your bones. 

Even the next day, when it had stopped to pour down, the sun didn’t return. 

And you didn’t get up. You remained wet to the underwear and couldn’t stop shaking. Food or water were no longer on your mind. 

___________________________________________

Another night. 

Your hair was still wet, so you guessed that your clothes must be too. 

You didn’t really feel the cold anymore, but it hurt to breathe. 

Sleep found you, or maybe you just passed out. 

________________________________________

The sun was back up again and burning through your eyelids. 

It hurt. 

Everything hurt. Your head, your numb fingers, your lungs. 

Something was shifting you and you curled into yourself, searching for the warmth of the other body, even though it still stank, when someone was lifting you into their arms. 

______________________________________

Sweat was dotting your brow and wetting your hair, but you were still cold and shivering. 

You weren’t really any help when Alucard tried to strip you of your coat and woolen overdress. 

“Stupid woman”, he mumbled in a hiss as he tugged you into the softest set of blankets you had ever felt. 

_____________________________________

You were shifting in and out of consciousness.

The room grew dark and light and dark again. Your body alternated between shaking in shivers and seething in sweat. Something was inside your lungs that caused your breaths to rattle and wet coughs to wreck your body. 

The next time you had a somewhat clear moment, you weren’t alone. 

Alucard was sitting at your bedside. Your vision was kind of blurry, but you could have sworn that he smelled cleaner than before.

And that you were wearing a different shift from the one that you had worn under your woolen dress. 

A warm, wet cloth was dragged over your arms and neck, wiping the sweat away. 

You hummed at the pleasant feeling and fell asleep again. 

___________________________________

The sun was setting behind the tall window when you awakened again. 

The fever seemed to have gone down, but your throat was sore and breathing was still hard. 

The door to the bedroom you had woken up in closed, letting you know what had woken you up. 

Alucard stepped up to the bed and took a seat on the edge of the mattress, holding a steaming bowl of … something. 

“I’m not hungry”, you croaked out, fighting to get into a sitting position. Realising that you were still wearing nothing but a stranger’s white shift, you clutched the blanket against your chest. 

You were reminded of the shifts the staked corpses outside were wearing. 

“You need to eat”, Alucard replied coldly and stirred the liquid inside the bowl before holding a spoonful of what smelled like stew under your nose. 

You pressed your lips into a tight line. Your throat was hurting too much, he couldn’t possibly expect you to swallow anything. 

His jaw clenched in irritation. “You are weak enough from the fever as it is. If you don’t get nutrition, you will die.”

Your survival instinct kicked in at his words and you opened your mouth petulantly. 

The stew tasted good. Nice and salty and full of herbs. 

Could Alucard cook, you wondered as you swallowed. 

The warm liquid soothed your throat a little, but it still didn’t feel good. 

The dhampir in front of you just continued to glare at your face while feeding you several spoonfuls. 

“We could have avoided this if you had just let me in, you know”, you pointed out when the bowl was almost empty. 

There was an irritated tick at the side of his jaw. “I believed you to be smart enough to leave and seek shelter when the thunderstorm hit.” 

You returned his glare with a blank expression. “I told you I wouldn’t leave.”

“It was a tremendously idiotic thing to do.” 

You swallowed the last spoonful of soup dutifully. “So was trying to throw me out. I told you I would be back, did you really think I’d give up that easily?” 

His eyes flashed to yours at that, his expression hardening further, if that was even possible. “I didn’t think you would ever return at all. You could have expected my surprise.”

“Your surprise?”, you repeated, blinking at him with a dumbfounded expression. “You threw me flat out on my arse.”

He simply shrugged, getting back to his feet. 

“I came back as soon as I could, I swear”, you confessed when he strode towards the door. Your fingers were plucking at the expensive looking threads of the soft blanket, dreading what he would reply to what you said next. “I don’t even know what year it is.”

Alucard stopped in his tracks and threw a glance at you over his shoulder, as if to check whether you could be trusted. Whatever he saw in your face softened his expression slightly and he sighed, his eyes settling on something above your head. “It is 1482.”

Your mouth dropped open.

Six years.

What had been twenty minutes to you had been six years to him.

How were you supposed to wrap your mind around that?

“I’m sorry”, you breathed.

Alucard simply shook his head and left.

_________________________________________

1482, actually

Sleep, wake up, eat, drink, sleep, wake up.

It would have been endearing, the way Alucard cared for you, if he hadn’t looked so grim during all of it. No longer angry, not since you had told him that you hadn’t known how much time had passed, but… cold.

Dulled.

What had happened to the man who had sassed Trevor Belmont to hell and back?

Who had philosophised over his past and the wish to spend eternity with his father?

Who had given you the sweetest kiss of your life?

It must have been days after he had first let you into the castle when you woke up and saw your woollen dress lying on the foot of the bed, obviously washed. On top of it were the belt you had been wearing, your stays and stockings.

On the other side of the room, thrown over a chair lay your coat. In front of it, your boots.

Getting out of bed with stiff limbs, you first used the restroom Alucard had shown you days earlier.

Dracula’s knowledge of magic and science had totally had its perks in the construction of this castle: The indoor plumbing was very modern. Running water, a big bathtub. Not quite a sink, but something like a wash basin and a toilet.

After washing up you put on your socks, laced up your stays and pulled the dress over your head, fastening it with the belt. The boots followed.

Purposefully, you left the coat.

Stepping out into the hallway, you took a look around uncertainly, until you decided to simply follow your nose.

The castle was too big, too vast to explore it entirely on your own, but the way to the kitchen was easy enough to find.

“Back on your feet, I see”, Alucard announced his presence when you entered, stirring a cauldron on top of a fire.

“Yup, as good as new”, you lied, your voice still scratching your throat and a headache lurking somewhere in the back of your brain.

“Hm”, he made non-distinctly. “So, you can leave soon.”

You swallowed, your hands fisting in the skirt of your dress. “And where am I supposed to go?”

“Wherever you please, I suppose”, he replied nonchalantly.

“I don’t know anyone here, I have no money, no place to go”, you pointed out, growing desperate.

“Money should not pose a problem. There are more than enough treasures inside this castle that are useless to me.”

“I won’t go”, you repeated the words you had told him already. “I’ll just wait outside and in a few days or weeks we can do this all over again.”

His eyes flashed to yours. “I won’t be so generous next time. If I had the choice again, I might just let you die.”

“Sure”, you spat. “And then you can stake me and put me with the others.”

The spoon clanked against the pot noisily as he rose to his feet in a threatening manner. “Don’t you dare –“

“Just talk to me, please”, you begged. For days now, you had barely been able to feel anything across the bond.

You wondered whether it was dying or whether he had found a way to actively suppress it.

He didn’t reply anything to your request.

“Please”, you repeated, taking a step closer to him. “I am only here because of you, you know that. Why won’t you let me in?” When you were close enough, you reached out a hand, as if to stroke his arm gently.

Once your fingers were within touching distance, though, he flinched away so violently that you startled.

“No”, he shook his head frantically, more as if he was trying to convince himself than you. “No.”

In a flash of red, he was gone.

You could just stand there, dumbfounded.

___________________________

Alucard brought meals to your room. Apart from that, he didn’t speak to you.

But he also didn’t mention you leaving again.

Out of boredom, you took to wandering the castle. You never strayed far from your room, keeping to the kitchen, the hallways and the foyer. A lot of time was lost with you inanely admiring the giant staircase and expensive carpets.

You would have loved to go outside and relish in the sunshine of the ending winter, but were afraid that the doors might not open again if you left.

It took several days of this strange, quiet routine, until Alucard did not bring a meal to you for once.

Following the demands of your growling stomach, you went into the kitchen.

To find two sets of plates, cutlery and cups on the table.

Alucard was wordlessly taking some meat out of an oven like contraption and putting it in the middle of the table. Since he didn’t speak, you just sat down quietly, guessing that he’d tell you to get lost if he didn’t want you here.

He started the dinner in silence, letting you put food on your plate and choosing something to drink. You noted that he only drank water, so opposed to the stench that had been waving off of him days – or weeks? – ago.

“Where did you learn to cook like that?”, you asked half-way through the meal.

He looked at you pointedly and didn’t say anything.

Still unwilling to answer your questions.

“It’s very good, is all I meant to say”, you shrugged. “That’s really impressive.” You had hoped that the complement would lure something out of him, but it didn’t.

Alucard just started speaking once you had cleared your plate and he had taken the last sip of his water. “I have decided that you can stay, for the time being.”

“Oh”, you raised a brow at him. “Is that so?”

His jaw clenched. “The last time you were gone after a day. And you told Sypha that you have never stayed in the past longer than a few weeks. So, I won’t have to endure you much longer but won’t have your death on my hands either.”

“How kind of you”, you pointed out sarcastically.

His fists tightened on top of the table. “Don’t test me, woman.”

You couldn’t help the shiver that ran down your spine at the tone of his voice.

Maybe there was something of the old Alucard left inside of him after all.

__________________________________

Your routine didn’t change much. Alucard took pity on you eventually and showed you the library, providing you with one way to kill your boredom.

“If I go outside, will I be able to come back in?”, you asked two days later.

He hesitated for a long time before giving you a curt nod. You sighed in relief.

The fresh air and sunshine did wonders for your shot nerves.

Even more days passed until one evening at dinner it happened.

“Their names were Taka and Sumi”, he said out of nowhere, pushing the last bit of his salad from one side of the plate to the other.

“Who?”, you asked absent-mindedly, enjoying the way the smoked fish seemed to melt inside your mouth.

“The two humans who are staked outside.”

You stilled, trying desperately to keep your expression neutral, scared that anything and everything might scare him away. “Okay”, you said carefully, not probing for more.

“They came to the castle about one or two years after Sypha and Trevor had left. After you had left. They wanted to ask for help, for knowledge in order to defeat a vampire general that had kept them as slaves.”

“And…”, you swallowed, not sure how to ask this, “…you didn’t want to help them?”

His eyes hardened as he glared at you. “I wanted to help them desperately”, he hissed. “If only to have some company… for a while. After so much time of being alone inside this castle”, he made an all-encompassing hand gesture, “I worried for my sanity. The company was doing me good.”

“Oh… so – um, how did they end up like… like that?”

Alucard’s jaw tightened. “They wanted to learn about magic, about the ability to move the castle. But, just as my father had taught me, I believed it was best for them to learn how to use the weapons they had at hand properly before trying themselves at magic. And the castle cannot move anymore, not since Sypha destroyed the mechanism.”

You couldn’t help but smile at the memory of the lively speaker-magician and swore that you could almost see his gaze softening at the same thought.

Almost.

“They believed that I was withholding information. So, they betrayed me and tried to kill me.”

Your body felt strangely numb as you rolled the new information over inside your head. “But you killed them instead.” It wasn’t a question.

“Yes.”

The thoughts were running at a million miles per hour through your head. You could wrap your head around it, around the idea of Alucard being selfless enough to help these people and finding himself betrayed for it.

Of him killing them in self-defence.

But staking them outside? For all the world and himself to see? That seemed a little excessive to you.

A nagging suspicion inside your stomach told you that this was not all there was to this story. But right now was not the time to push for more. You should be glad for everything he had told you already.

“I’m sorry”, you whispered and moved your hand towards his own, lying on top of the table. “You didn’t deserve for your kindness to be used and betrayed like that.”

Alucard didn’t reply anything, but once again he pulled away before you could touch him. At least he didn’t disappear this time “Would…”, he swallowed, “Would you like more water?” He got up to reach for the pitcher.

Changing the topic none-too-smoothly.

Still, it was a start.

So, you smiled at him. “Yes, please.”

_______________________________

The next day, Alucard knocked onto your door a couple of hours after breakfast.

“Come”, he said and moved through the hallway with a few long strides.

“Where are we going?”, you wondered.

He didn’t reply, but soon enough his intention was becoming clearer.

Alucard was showing you around.

First to the cellar, where different kinds of durable foods were stored. Back up the stairs to explain some of the plumbing system to you – what to do if the warm water wouldn’t work, since you couldn’t use magic to heat it.

Across the ground level of the castle, how to activate some of the castle’s inner defence mechanisms.

To the back, into the kitchen. Out through the backdoor to show you some of his herb and vegetable garden.

Back inside, he showed you how to use some of the tools and contraptions inside the kitchen.

“So, um…”, you moved an awkward hand through your hair. “Why are you showing me all this?”

Sighing deeply, Alucard straightened. “I have to leave soon.”

Your eyes widened. “To go where?”, you asked, panic rising in your voice.

He shook his head, almost looking smug. “To go to the market. There are things I cannot grow or catch here.”

“Oh”, you made, feeling stupid for your panic now. “And that will take so long that I need to know all this?”

A simple shrug was your reply. “What I want is not so easily found in the next village.”

“Huh”, a smile was tugging at your lips. “Spoiled half-vampire, are you?”

There it was again, this expression on his face, as if he were tempted to smile.

But he didn’t.

Instead, he went back to one knee to explain something about the oven-like contraption again.

“I’m kinda miffed”, you told him afterwards. “There’s no way I’m going to be able to cook as well as you. Couldn’t you have meal-prepped for me?”

His brows furrowed. “What?”

“Nothing”, you made a throw-away gesture and smiled at him again.

You made a resolution right then and there to smile as much at him as possible. Maybe he’d learn how to do it again that way.

“Here, I’ll show you”, he simply said and continued to explain stuff to you, showing you what seemed to be a handwritten cookbook.

“Did your mother cook for you?”, you asked curiously.

“Obviously. My father did not consume human food.”

Ah, the subject of his family seemed to be just as much of a tender subject as the corpses outside.

Time to change tactics.

“You’re a good teacher, you know”, you pointed out later, when he walked you back to your room.

“Is that so?”, he quipped, raising a brow at you.

Raising your palms in defence, you tried to keep the atmosphere amicable. “I’m being serious. You are good at explaining things and all that. Just take the compliment, Alucard.”

He flinched at that slightly and pressed his lips into a tight line.

Your shoulders slumped. No matter what you did, it always seemed to be the wrong thing. “Sorry”, you muttered, feeling defeated, and turned towards your door.

“It’s not…”, Alucard shook his head slightly when you glanced at him over your shoulder. “I don’t like being called that name anymore. At least not here… not by you.”

By me?, you wondered. What the hell did that mean?

You had learned better than to push him on such things, though. “I can call you whatever you want”, you shrugged again. “You just have to tell me.”

He stared at you for a moment – not glared – just stared. He did that sometimes, with that strange expression inside his eyes. As if he couldn’t quite believe that you were here.

That you were still here. Willing to put up with him.

“Adrian”, he replied. “My name is Adrian.”

“Okay”, you nodded and smiled at him. “When will you leave, Adrian?”

If you hadn’t known better, you could have sworn that he shivered a little when you called him by his actual name. “Tomorrow, after breakfast.”

“Can’t…”, you plugged at the threads of your skirt again, “Can’t I come with you?”

Quickly, he shook his head. “I have been tolerating your presence for weeks now. I wish to do this alone.” His voice didn’t sound quite as harsh as the statement might have implied, though. If anything, he sounded kind of mirthful. 

“Fine”, you huffed petulantly, knowing that you had to look like a pouting child when you opened your bedroom door.

“Maybe next time”, Alucard mumbled when you turned to look at him before closing the door.

Your face warmed at that, a fluttering feeling settling in your stomach.

It was nice to make plans for the future like that.

With him.

“Okay.”

________________________________

Alucard prepared to leave the next day after breakfast, as he had said he would.

“Can I look around the castle a little, while you’re gone?”, you asked when he stepped through the foyer with long strides.

A questioning look was thrown over his shoulder at you.

“I mean, I’ve been curious about the place since you let me in, but I… I didn’t want to snoop around, I guess”, you shrugged. “But since yesterday, since you’ve shown me a little more, I’ve gotten curious.”

Alucard stopped in front of the huge double doors. “You have been free to wander the castle as you please this entire time”, he replied quietly. “The places you are not supposed to see will remain closed to you. Everywhere else you can roam.”

Ah. So, the magic castle would simply not let you into rooms you weren’t supposed to be in.

Made sense.

“Thank you.” You licked your lips nervously.

This was painfully awkward. What were you supposed to do in order to say goodbye?

Shake his hand? Punch his arm?

God forbid, hug?

Alucard didn’t allow for you to touch him anyway.

“The doors will be sealed by magic when I leave”, he interrupted your thoughts. “Use the backdoor of the kitchen if you want to leave.”

You nodded and settled for an awkward wave for a goodbye gesture.

His coat billowed around his feet as the doors opened and you caught a glimpse of his sword at his side.

“Adrian”, you called when he stepped over the threshold. “Be careful.”

He turned slightly and cast what looked almost like a longing look at you when the doors closed.

______________________________________

You roamed around the castle a little.

Twice you got lost in the endless corridors and swore that it took you two hours to find your way back to your room.

A couple of doors wouldn’t budge, as Alucard had told you.

They didn’t have to, though. Soon enough, you found something that took up all of your attention.

The room had to be something like a study, with a high-backed, red-velvety chair, a desk and a fireplace.

And a portrait.

The portrait showed a family. A man and a woman, who held a child on her lap.

And what a beautiful child it was. Huge golden eyes, angel-like golden curls. A round, soft face with rosy cheeks.

Alucard had always been beautiful. Always somewhat ethereal.

When your eyes travelled to the tall man in the picture, you could make out the resemblances between father and son. The way they carried themselves, the set of their shoulders. Something about the shape of their jaw.

Even the small curve at Dracula’s lip reminded you of Alucard, when he looked tempted to smile.

But apart from that, he was all Lisa’s son.

The hair, the facial structure.

Even that strange look of kindness inside their eyes.

The very same kindness that had caused Alucard to be betrayed and almost killed.

You shivered at the thought and turned away, deciding to head to the kitchen instead.

The tools were easy enough to work and Alucard really had been good at explaining everything. What you made was certainly edible, but it wasn’t as nice as what he usually cooked.

The vegetables were too hard. The meat was too salty.

You sat at the kitchen table and stared at nothing in particular while chewing.

It felt awfully lonely like this, alone inside this giant castle.

For a moment you understood how Alucard must have felt in here, alone, for years.

It certainly made some of his behaviour more understandable.

_______________________________

The next day you went outside to plug some spring flowers, put them in a pot from the kitchen (you had no idea whether there existed vases in Dracula’s house) and put them on the kitchen table.

Apart from that you spent most of your time staring at the family portrait or reading in the library.

Being bored out of your mind and hoping for Alucard to return soon.

___________________________________

You had gone out for some fruit on the morning of the fourth day and found Alucard in the kitchen when you returned.

Whatever he had bought on the market must have already been packed away, because you didn’t see anything lying around.

Just Alucard, standing in front of the table, one of his gloves inside his other hand while the naked hand stroked some of the flower pedals gently.

“I was bored and looking for a reason to go on a walk”, you tried to explain yourself instead of saying ‘hello’.

“Hm”, he simply made  and tore his attention away, back to you. “Here”, he said then, putting his hand inside his coat and pulling a small package out.

“What is it?”, you asked, feeling strangely giddy.

Your dhampir-roommate had gone out to shop and brought something back for you?

How exciting.

Alucard didn’t answer you, simply held his hand out.

In your hurry to look inside the small package, your hand brushed his when you reached for it. His gloveless hand.

This time it was you that pulled away at the feeling of his warm skin. For a moment, it was almost as if the bond was springing back to life, but before you could focus on it, it was gone again. “Sorry”, you breathed, looking away.

You knew how adamant he was on avoiding touch.

Alucard simply cleared his throat a little and kept his hand outstretched. “It’s… It’s fine. Here, take it.”

To avoid another moment, you let him drop the package into your waiting palms.

Curiously chewing on your lip, you pulled some of the paper away that was wrapped around the…

You squealed in delight, bouncing up and down a little.

Chocolate. He had gotten you honest-to-God chocolate.

Immediately, you took a small bite and hummed in delight. It was not quite as sweet as the chocolate you were used to, a lot bitterer, but also somehow more… flavourful? You nibbled at it again.

“No need to be so shy about it, I brought more than just this”, Alucard pointed out.

Your squealing grew louder.

And there it was: that twitching at his lips.

Not quite a smile yet, but it was something.

___________________________________

Sometimes, when you couldn’t sleep at night, you would sneak out, searching for a midnight snack or a window that provided you with a particularly nice view of the stars. 

Other times, you weren’t quite sleepless, just curious. 

This castle was magic, but it was also old. 

There were strange sounds, all throughout the day, but especially at night. Floorboards creaking, door hinges moaning. 

Clattering against windows and the whistling of fabric. 

More than once you wondered whether it was nature or something supernatural at work. 

One night, the sounds seemed louder. There was definitely something moving around the castle. 

Remembering the defence mechanisms Alucard had shown to you and thinking that they had to be there for a reason, you jumped out of bed, abandoning your robe (which had somehow found its way into your room weeks ago) and shoes.

Surely, if something were attacking the castle, Alucard would know long before you, but maybe he had gone out? You had no idea whether he had to strictly sleep every night - vampire powers and all - or whether he slept in a coffin in a less-frequented part of the castle, too far away to hear. 

Your questions were soon answered, though. 

In an upper-floor hallway you bumped into the dhampir, who seemed to be coming from one of the rooms the castle kept hidden from you. 

“Oh”, you said in surprise, crossing your arms in front of your chest quickly, suddenly all-too-aware of the translucent nature of your shift. 

It was almost completely dark in the hallway, the crescent moon providing the only light that was falling through the windows. But it was enough for a mere human like you to make out Alucard’s form in the twilight and he wasn’t simply a mere human. 

And he wasn’t wearing a shirt. 

“I, um…”, you swallowed, fighting to keep your eyes trained on his face. 

You had seen him shirtless before, when you had first entered the castle, but he had been wearing his coat then. 

Now he seemed even more… bare, somehow. His pale skin was practically glowing in the dark, highlighting the sharp angles and shapes of his frame. 

Of his muscles. 

He seemed so broad like this, his bare arms tensely corded with strength, just like his chest. 

The scar was even more prominent now. 

But, you weren’t looking. 

Of course not. 

“What are you doing?”, you finally finished your sentence weakly. 

His face looked paler as well, his eyes almost lifeless. At your question, his jaw tensed. “Roaming, I suppose.” 

“Ah”, you made unintelligently. “Do you do that often at night?” 

Alucard inhaled a deep breath, his muscles tensing even further, if possible. 

Don’t stare, don’t stare. don’t -

“Sometimes.” 

He moved closer, as if to go past you, and a shiver crawled down your spine. There was something about him, so close in the moonlight. The hallway felt charged with energy and restraint. 

So much skin on display, both from him and you. Your arms tightened around yourself as your nipples hardened. 

It’s cold, you told yourself. That was all, the cold… nothing else. 

“Why?”, you asked, your mouth running away from you, and Alucard stopped right next to you, his arm almost brushing your shoulder as he turned slightly. 

He was staring at your face now, but you couldn’t return his gaze, too afraid that he would be able to see everything you were thinking if your eyes met. 

Why did he have to be so beautiful?

Why did he have to be so closed off after the bond had cracked you wide open inside the Belmont Hold?

In a strange, sick way, you wanted to be wide open to him. Wanted him to see. 

But see what, exactly? 

See that you thought of him as the most handsome man you had ever seen - human or not? 

That you enjoyed his presence, even closed-off and aloof as he had been ever since you had returned, far too much? 

That you yearned for every teeny-tiny speck of his attention?

Yearned for him to reach out, touch you through the thin material of your shift, pull you close and - 

Your face flushed a bright red as your thighs tensed. 

Jesus, fuck, what were you thinking? Were you really this far gone? Were you really -

“Nightmares”, he elaborated then, his eyes travelling elsewhere. “I have nightmares sometimes.” 

Your mind cleared. “About what?”, you wondered, staring at his neck instead of his face. Seemed safer that way. 

“It’s late”, he avoided your question and finally turned completely away from you. “You should go back to sleep.” 

He moved down the hallway and within the blink of an eye, he was gone.

_____________________________________  

“I want to show you something.”

Over the weeks of living with Alucard inside the castle, you had basically become a curious dog. Whenever Alucard spoke to you of taking you somewhere, you practically sprang to attention.

It was always promising and interesting and… and in all honesty, you simply wanted to spend time with him. 

Don’t think about running your hands over his muscles. 

Don’t think about pressing your lips to the scar over his chest. 

Not like that, you admonished yourself. Trying to suppress the memory of the both of you half-naked in a hallway, in the middle of the night. 

Trying to suppress the wondering whether he ever thought about you the same way. 

It was unfair, really, that he could simply appear as if from thin air like this and say:  

“I want to show you something.” 

Your dog-like attention was peaked. 

If you had a tail, it would wag.

“What is it?”, you asked, practically vibrating on the spot with anticipation.

Apart from that one time late at night, when you had both been out and about because of his nightmares, Alucard had seemed adamant in trying to keep the mood between the both of you light, just as it had been since you had tasted the chocolate. 

Now his jaw twitched with humour. “Come and see.”

You followed him through the castle hot on his heels. When he pushed the heavy door open, your mouth dropped in awe.

There was so much to see, too much to take it in all at once.

A giant, golden telescope. A glass orb that seemed to trap lightning inside. Countless other golden machinery and mechanisms, countless books and papers loaded onto desks and shelves.

“What is this?”

“You could call it whatever you want”, Alucard replied casually, as if he hadn’t just shown you the most impressive room you had ever seen. “My father’s collection of knowledge. His laboratory.”

“Oh”, you breathed, feeling strangely honoured. “And what are we doing here?”

“Hm”, the dhampir beside you shrugged slightly. “We are wasting the days away waiting for you to disappear into your own time again. I thought we… well, we could use the time for you to learn something.” He turned to you fully, “You did call me a good teacher.”

Your face flushed at the memory of the compliment, but cold dread also settled inside your stomach. Was that really all you were doing?

Waiting around for you to leave?

“What – what would you have me learn?”, you asked instead, not wanting to voice your disappointment at his words.

“Whatever you want”, he took a look around. “Magic, perhaps. To defend yourself better against whatever you might face on your travels.”

Your chest warmed strangely at that, realising what a gift he was giving you with this.

Not just the knowledge of immortals, but also the chance to better your chances against others… even him.

He had taught Taka and Sumi how to fight and they had betrayed him, yet here he was, offering the same thing to you.

Alucard wasn’t just offering you knowledge, he was offering his trust once again.

You couldn’t help but smile at him brightly. “I thought this was a room for science.”

His lips twitched again without quite smiling. “Ah, soon you will see that magic and science are one and the same thing.”

__________________________________

From then on, your days were spent studying and learning.

Alucard believed that there needed to be a foundation for using magic, just like everything else. So, you had to learn about the basics – the science behind it – before he would let you throw spells around.

Too bad that that made you feel terribly stupid.

It was just all so complicated, the physicalities in altering reality to your liking through magic.

If nothing else, you discovered a newfound respect for the mage who sent you around in time.

Alucard, for his part, started to not just spend time with you inside the laboratory, but inside the library as well. When you sat there reading in the evening, just to relax a little, he would join you and you would just… talk.

It was nice.

It felt like a confirmation of what the bond had always hinted at. That you would get along well together.

That you would enjoy his company much more than you ever thought you could.

Patiently, he would sit inside the library with you for hours, both of your books long forgotten, and try to answer every question you threw at him.

“I have a question of my own”, he asked one evening all of a sudden.

You smiled at him and slouched deeper into the comfortable armchair you occupied. “I can’t imagine that there is anything I know that you don’t, but shoot.”

Alucard leaned forward in his chair, closer to you, as if this were something he was really curious about.  “What is a dingbat?”

You could only blink at him owlishly for a moment.

You stubborn dingbat!, you had yelled at him months ago, when first coming to this castle.

You couldn’t help it, you really couldn’t: You threw your head back and laughed, your ringing laughter bouncing off of the walls of the library.

And then it happened… Alucard smiled back at you.

A complete, real smile, fangs and all.

Your world shone brighter than it had in years. 

_____________________________________________

Another sleepless night. 

Alucard had bid you ‘goodnight’ hours ago. Since then, the slight rain that had been drizzling outside had turned into a complete downpour. Fat raindrops were smacking against the windows. 

The moon provided no light in this night, heavy clouds hanging too low to let it show. Still, every now and then a flash of lightning would illuminate the room in a striking mix of white and purple colour. 

Usually, you loved the atmosphere of a good thunderstorm, but this one reminded you too much of the one that had caused you to catch pneumonia or something like that months ago. 

Additionally, the castle seemed even more eerie because of it. 

Unease was lying thickly in the air. Was it just your restlessness or more than that? 

From time to time, lately, you could have sworn that there were cracks in the shield that seemed to have been put up against the bond. That you could catch glimpses of some of the warmth Alucard was feeling when he smiled at you. 

Or you were just imagining things. Feeling what you wanted to be there. 

Still, this unease… it felt like more than just your own emotions. 

Were there sounds in the hallway above you? 

Was it Alucard, roaming around because of some strange nightmares again? 

Shaking your head, you buried yourself deeper underneath the blankets. Even if he was, what were you supposed to do? He hadn’t wanted to talk about it last time, what would have changed?

Maybe you weren’t even hearing him. Maybe it was just the noises of the storm, the castle and the thunder. 

Still, you could have sworn that there were footsteps. 

Eventually, you couldn’t stand it any more. Not the sounds, but your own restlessness. 

Crawling out of bed, you had the space of mind to put on your robe this time, knotting the soft, black material around your waist. You wouldn’t look for him, you just needed… something to help you sleep. A cup of tea perhaps, or a glass of milk. 

You had just opened your bedroom door, ready to traipse towards the kitchen on bare feet, in order to not disturb him, when you heard it, a loud crash… followed by something close to a deep, rough wail.

A shiver ran down your spine and goosebumps spread over your arms. For a second, you were torn between curiosity and respect for privacy. 

It wasn’t really curiosity that won out, but the inability to leave him alone if he might need you. Whatever was haunting him, it seemed to be worse tonight. 

You followed the sounds you had heard into the library. 

Pushing the heavy doors open as soundlessly as possible, another flash of lightning allowed for you to see. 

The small side table next to the beautiful little couch with the velvety green cushions you usually occupied had been broken, splintered wood littered across the floor. Your book, which you had abandoned on top of it hours earlier, was now lying open and face down in front of the bookcase, as if it had been smacked against it. 

The glass pitcher and water cup you had used were also broken in front of the sofa and across the cushions. 

In front of the mess, Alucard was crouching down on one knee, clutching his head in both hands. His hair was a beautiful mess, gold spilling across his naked back like a lion’s mane. Once again, he was merely wearing trousers.  

Within a second, the light was gone and you were in darkness again. 

“Go away”, he hissed darkly. 

Well, apparently your approach hadn’t been as quiet as you had hoped.  

“What’s going on?”, you asked stupidly, letting the door fall shut behind you.

Completely ignoring his command. 

“I said -”

“Adrian”, you interrupted him imploringly. “Just talk to me, please.”

“I…”, he sat turned away from you, but you could see his back muscles shuddering and the way he was gripping his hair tightly with both hands. “I can’t.”

Carefully, in order not to cut yourself, you sat down behind him, your naked shins pressed to the cold floor. “It’s okay”, you breathed, despite the fact that you had no idea what you were in for. “It’s going to be okay…”

“No, it won’t”, he shook his head vehemently. “It won’t…” 

Still uncertain, but deciding that you had to try something, you put your hand on his naked shoulder gently. 

To your surprise, Alucard didn’t pull away, but he shivered so violently that you still flinched. 

“They came to my room”, he whispered suddenly, so quiet that you almost didn’t hear. 

“Who?”, you asked, your head whirling around, eyeing the door. 

Were there intruders inside the castle after all? 

“They came to my room and… and said that it was time for my reward…”, he shuddered again and it sounded as if he had to fight with every ounce of strength against the urge to cry. “They touched me and I had been so, so lonely and I… It felt nice and I had never done anything like that before…”

A heavy, sick feeling settled inside your stomach. 

They touched me…

It felt nice…

I had never done anything like that before…

“Taka and Sumi”, you breathed, thinking about the half-rotten corpses in front of the castle. 

About how strange you had found it to be that they seemed naked apart from the flimsy shifts. 

“Don’t”, Alucard groaned as if in pain. “Don’t say their names…” 

“I’m sorry”, you breathed, realizing how stupid you had been. How senseless your useless words were. 

The way he had recoiled from all of your touches from the very beginning… avoided all kinds of kindness and closed the bond. 

They had touched him. Had used his vulnerability, his loneliness and his trust and … abused him. 

Had defiled everything that was so admirable about him. His gentleness, his openness. 

They had almost destroyed him. 

Nothing you could do or say would make this okay. 

You couldn’t make this okay. 

You were useless here, you understood and pulled your hand away. 

This time, he did flinch, turning to you and curling his fingers around your wrist so tightly that it hurt. “No, don’t go”, he hurried to say. “Please, don’t go.”

“I…”, you stared at him with wide eyes, head swimming with whiplash. 

“Don’t leave”, his eyes closed as if in pain, voice trailing off, “not you too…” 

There was a difference, you realised with wonder. 

Taka and Sumi on the one side… Sypha, Trevor, his mother and father on the other. 

And you.

“I’m not going anywhere”, you promised, putting your free hand on his biceps carefully, marvelling at how soft his hair felt beneath your fingertips. “I promise. I’m not -”

Before you could finish, Alucard sagged forward with a sob of relief, his forehead pressing against your shoulder. You didn’t even think about it when you wound your arms around the span of his back, running your fingers through the long tresses of his hair. 

“They tied me down”, he said quietly and it took you a moment to understand that he was continuing his story of what Taka and Sumi had done to him. “Sometime during… they tied me down, raised their daggers and I couldn’t…”

You hugged him closer when his voice broke off and waited - simply waited and listened. 

It took hours. Sometime during the early morning hours, when the rain had stopped and the first rays of sunlight were streaming through the high windows, the subject changed. 

Your positions changed as well. You were still sitting on your knees, your feet having fallen asleep hours ago, your legs feeling stiff. Alucard’s head was in your lap, his forehead pressed against your stomach and his arms wound tightly around your waist. 

Your hands were playing with his hair, combing through it and occasional scratching at his scalp in soothing patterns. The tears that had wet your robe and shift had dried eventually. So had the ones running across your own cheeks. 

Like this, you listened to the story of Dracula’s death and Sypha and Trevor’s subsequent departure.

To the horrible and lonely days and months that followed after. 

All the while you kept repeating your stupid rambling, even though you knew that it was useless.

It’s okay. 

You are going to be okay. 

We are going to be okay. 

_____________________________________

You couldn’t say when it happened. One moment you were sitting in silence with Alucard’s head still in your lap and your hand in his hair, your torso slowly sinking against the sofa next to you, and in the next you were asleep. 

Hours later, you woke up in your bed, having no memory of walking there by yourself. 

For a moment you wondered whether any of it had truly happened or whether you had simply dreamt it all up. 

But there was the tell-tale stinging behind your eyeballs and a growing headache forming in your head, proof that you had shed many tears sometime during the night. 

Besides, the details Alucard had shared with you, of everything that had happened, were far too gruesome for you to have come up with all by yourself. 

With a groan, you peeled yourself out of the sheets, taking a look through the window and trying to assess how late it could be. 

By the position of the sun you could tell that midday had long passed. So it had to be at least afternoon. 

You got dressed stiffly, the effects of spending hours on the hard floor evident in your aching limbs. Still, you were somehow glad of it all. Sure, it was horrible and sad and full of regret, but… at least now you knew. 

Not only what had happened to Alucard, what had caused him to act and be this way, but that he wanted you to be here. 

He had asked you to stay.

You found the dhampir in question inside the kitchen, staring into the flames of the oven absent-mindedly. 

“Hello”, you breathed as you entered, fiddling with the sleeve of your dress nervously. 

Everything had changed and yet, it seemed the same. 

“Hello”, Alucard replied, no sign of surprise in his voice. He had heard your approach, of course. Slowly, he turned towards you. At first glance he looked the same as always, but if you searched closer, you could see small signs of change:

His shoulders were stiff, as if he wasn’t sure what to expect, now that you knew. 

His eyes, while no longer dull, looked sad and… guarded. 

He was obviously gauging your reaction. 

“You must be hungry”, he said eventually, when you didn’t say anything - didn’t know what to say. 

Your lips twitched into a slight smile. “Starving.” 

His shoulders relaxed slightly at that. 

Alucard had prepared something between breakfast and lunch and you tore into it like a mad woman. He simply watched you in a sort of unnerving way. 

You knew that he was waiting for you to say something, to somehow react to the events of the previous night. Taking your time while eating to come up with something, you leaned back slowly once you were done and wiped your mouth with a napkin delicately. 

“I wanted to thank you”, you finally decided to say. “For telling me. I know that that can’t have been easy.” It was a lame statement, but somehow the safest thing for you to say, you thought. 

His hand was lying on top of the table, his forefinger tapping against the wooden surface in an unsettling rhythm while he kept staring at you in that weird way. As if he was trying to find something out. 

“What?”, you asked, fighting the urge to snap at him at the last second. 

He just shook his head and turned his face away slightly, jaw clenching. You leaned closer, deciding to return his unsettling stare and saw the slight tinge of pink high on his cheekbones. 

And then it hit you like a wall of bricks. 

He was ashamed. 

Not only had he broken down crying in your arms last night, but he had admitted to being sexually abused by two humans. 

Alucard of Wallachia, overwhelmed and taken advantage of by two mere mortals. 

Adrian Fahrenheit Tepes, a man, raped. 

“I don’t think of you any differently”, you told him, your voice almost forceful. 

Of course you didn’t. 

“If anything, I think of you more highly”, you continued. “To go through something like that and survive. Stay sane. You are an admirable person more than anything, Adrian.”

His jaw hardened further. “Did I seem sane to you when you arrived?”

“You seem sane to me now”, you insisted. No one could expect for him to come out of this unscathed, but… he was getting better. Allowing himself to get better. That was all that mattered. “I don’t see you differently”, you repeated. 

Alucard inhaled a deep breath and exhaled it in a tired sigh, eyes not meeting your gaze. “We’ll see”, he muttered as he got to his feet and started to clear up the table. 

He didn’t believe you. 

Fine, you thought, crossing your arms in resolution. 

You had stayed this long, worming your way back into his life by being resilient and persevering in the stubborn conviction that you would help him. 

You could continue to do that. You would continue to do that. 

He wouldn’t get rid of you this easily.

Chapter Text

Chapter 5

Of Happiness and Healing

1482

The temperatures had slowly but surely started to rise, since that day sometime in February, you figured, when you had arrived. 

You hadn’t worn your coat in what felt like forever, but your wool dress became stifling as well, with the swift approach of summer. 

 Alucard had resumed your lessons in science and magic, even though the glances and conversations in between still felt more guarded. You had to actively inquire whether he would join you again, for evenings in the library. 

But he did. That was something, at least. 

“Do you…”, your voice cracked from not using it for probably an hour. Alucard was sitting with you, but you hadn’t been speaking. 

Even though you were glad to know what had happened to him, you couldn’t help but also feel sad for some of the steps that you had lost due to the knowing. 

Steps of feeling closer to him, of feeling… you didn’t know. Almost intimate?

Not in a physical sense, but like an intimate connection between your minds. 

Dare you say, your souls?

“Do you have scissors lying around here somewhere?”, you finished your question, suppressing your wandering thoughts. 

He looked up from his book, expression guarded, golden eyebrow perfectly arched. “Whatever for?”

You shifted in your dress as if to make your point. “I’m sweating.” Immediately, blood rushed to your face. “I mean, that isn’t just a piece of information for you, about right now. In general, I’m sweating. It’s getting summer. I wanted to cut the sleeves off of my dress.” 

His eyes travelled over your dress and goosebumps erupted all across your skin. 

Did he just see dark green wool? Or did he see - think about - the same things you did when you studied his clothing?

What its texture would feel like beneath your fingers? Whether you’d be able to feel the warmth of his skin underneath? The strength of his muscles? The texture of his scars?

“There are more than enough dresses inside this castle”, he replied instead of answering your inquiry about the scissors. “No need to mutilate this one.” 

Your brows furrowed. “Whose dresses?” 

“My mother’s.” 

He stated it so simply. As if it were nothing. 

You swallowed thickly. “I - I don’t…”

“It’s a waste”, he said, returning his burning gaze back to the pages of his book. “They will get eaten by moths with time. No one else will wear them, so you might as well.” 

“But -”, you had wanted to say something, but he managed to shut you up with one look. 

One look from those golden eyes to make you understand. 

That maybe it didn’t have to be weird… maybe you’d be doing him a favour. Not seeing another thing of his mother’s go to waste. 

“Alright.” 

_____________________________________

It turned out that Lisa had been a freaking tall woman. With that height came other things… obviously her shoulders had been a little broader than yours, her hips as well. 

You knew from the portrait that she had been slender, so it had to be about proportions more than anything. 

So, you needed those scissors anyway. And thread and needle. 

Alucard had almost looked bemused at your affronted expression when he had asked you whether you knew what to do. 

“I am a time traveller, you arrogant -”, you swallowed an insult at the last minute, “I’ve ripped more clothes than you can probably imagine through centuries. And getting historically accurate clothing is expensive in my time, so, in order to not get yelled at by the Boss-Belmont everytime, I’ve gotten handy in fixing them. I might not be a seamstress, but I can take the waist of a dress in a couple of inches.” 

Maybe you shouldn’t have been so arrogant about it, in hindsight. That’s what you thought when you looked at yourself in the mirror, wearing a short-sleeved, red summer dress. You had taken the waist and the shoulders in, and cut some inches off of the bottom. Hemming the skirt had felt like it’d taken days when doing it by hand. 

It looked okay. It wasn’t perfect. The side seams were uneven and the fabric was bulging a little bit around your shoulder blades from not completely re-cutting the sleeves, but it would do. 

“It’s, uh -”, you started when you entered the kitchen that morning for breakfast and Alucard was just staring at you. 

And kept staring at you. 

“Look”, you tried again, wetting your lips, “if you don’t want me to wear the dresses after all -”

“No”, he shook his head quickly, blinking his surprise away. “No, it’s fine.”

You ate breakfast in silence. You helped wash the dishes. Usually, at this time of day, you’d leave him be and get some alone time before lunch, science lessons, dinner and library time. Today, you hesitated in the kitchen door for a moment, but decided not to say anything more about the dresses. You both would just have to get used to it, that was all.

It was Alucard who stopped you from simply leaving, when your back was already turned. 

“You look beautiful”, he stated softly. 

Your breath hitched, but you didn’t trust your voice to hold an entire conversation, so you just whispered “thank you” and walked up to your room. 

For the rest of the day you were walking as if on clouds. 

________________________________________

Sometimes you’d get slightly queasy. 

Slowly, your body was letting you know that it was being pulled back to your own time. It was a miracle that you had been able to stay this long at all. 

It had been months. 

But the feeling was still so faint that you simply ignored it. It came about only once a week and was easily ignored. No biggie. 

The next time Alucard told you that he had to go to town, you felt it again, but you weren’t sure whether it stemmed from the nature of your being in the past, or the plan you had made. 

The plan he didn’t know anything about. 

You could sense his surprise when you didn’t repeat your question to accompany him, but he didn’t say anything about it. 

“I won’t be gone as long this time”, he told you. “Only a day. I will be back by this evening, maybe tomorrow morning at most.” 

“Good”, you nodded. “I’m glad.” 

In moments like these, moments when he called you beautiful, or when you let him know that you enjoyed his company, that you wanted him close, you could have almost sworn that he blushed slightly. Not as bad as you, never as bad as you, but slightly. The barest hint of a pink hue high on his cheeks. 

Or you were just imagining things. 

Anyway, Alucard left and you waited for about half an hour. Then you changed into one of the dresses he had given you that you didn’t like that much, that you hadn’t even bothered to alter. 

You tied the left-over fabric from one of the hems across your face and got some of the stuff you needed from the kitchen and outside. 

The smell was even worse than you remembered when you rounded the castle and went back to the front steps. Alucard had had the front gate sealed, as always when he left, so you had to take the long way around. 

The smell wasn’t only worse, it was almost unbearable. 

But you had a plan. You didn’t care about the nightcreatures. For all you cared, they could rot out here forever. Maybe they even served their intended purpose, keeping nosy humans and god-knows-what away from the castle. 

The human corpses, however, were a different matter entirely. 

You didn’t expect Alucard to forgive them, but how was he supposed to move on with this reminder? With seeing them everyday? 

As you had expected, the stakes were driven too deeply into the ground for you to pull out, so you had to use the hatchet from the back of the castle, with which you cut the wood for the oven when Alucard was gone, to painstakingly weaken the stakes enough in order to break them with several kicks to the wood. 

The first stake fell. The body seemed to go everywhere.

You barely managed to pull the make-shift scarf away before throwing up over the stairs. 

God, this was disgusting.     

You had found some gloves with the hatchet, months ago during your first stunt alone in this castle. You put those on before collecting corpse pieces and dragging them away from the stairs. 

Sighing deeply from behind your scarf, you stared back up at the second corpse. 

This would be a long day. 

_____________________________________

You threw up once more, in the grass, this time. 

But the stakes were cut down, only wooden sumps remaining driven into the ground where they had once stood. 

Covering the human remains in wooden splints and dried out grass, you took the tools Alucard used to light the oven to set the make-shift burial pyre on fire. 

The smell hit you again with full force, but there was nothing left inside your stomach to hurl up. 

Sitting in the grass far enough away that the smell wasn’t so bad, you let your head hang low between your knees, the scarf thrown into the flames as well. Maybe you should burn this dress too. 

You were absolutely filthy. Despite your efforts, stuff had gotten on your hands and arms and legs. Your dress was dirty, from earth and grass and death. 

Sweat covered your back and brow. Your hair was sticking to your neck. 

But it was done. 

The sky tinged orange and you realised that the day had completely gotten away from you. 

Still, you hadn’t realised just how much time you had lost, until the shadow fell over you. 

Putting your head back, you stared up at him, at the way the light of the sunset granted him a red halo over his golden head of hair.  

His eyes remained on you for a long time, not once straying to the pile of burning wood and cloth and flesh. Maybe he had already had enough time to look at it before you had even realised he had come back. 

Eventually, you let your head hang low again, staring at the grass between your feet, your heart beating inside your throat. 

Alucard shifted and in the next moment, he was sitting beside you, his sword deposited in the soft grass. 

Another long moment of silence.

Then…

“Thank you”, he breathed into the early-summer evening. 

You squeezed your eyes shut, relief washing through you so instantly and severely that tears stood in your eyes all of a sudden. 

Deep inside yourself you had known that this was the right thing to do, but you had still feared that he’d be angry… resentful, somehow, because you had taken the choice away from him. 

Instead, there was a calmness about him. 

Sniffing inconspicuously, you swayed to the side and let your head drop against his arm. 

He was here and he wasn’t angry, he was grateful and getting better and… 

Alucard shifted and let you drop further, catching you in the safe circle of his arms, pulling you against his chest and cradling you, the same way you had done for him that night. 

Burying his face in your hair. 

Your filthy, sweaty hair.

And like this you stayed, long after the sun had already set, illuminated by nothing but the fire and some lonely stars. 

___________________________________

“Can I ask you something?”, you wondered another day, during one of your science lessons. 

Alucard had his back to you, scribbling something onto the chalk-board in Dracula’s study. Some science stuff that you would probably never understand. 

You hadn’t been listening anyway. Similar to you ditching the woolen dress for Lisa’s summer dresses, Alucard had taken to not wearing his black coat. Clad in nothing but his fancy, white shirt, you got lost in the way his muscles moved even more clearly underneath the light material. 

“You can ask me anything”, he replied absent-mindedly, still concentrating on the symbols he was drawing. 

“It’s not… about whatever this is”, you elaborated, gesturing towards the board, even though he wasn’t looking at you anyway. 

Alucard only snorted in slight humour. 

“It’s about the bond”, you said and bit your lip when you saw how he stiffened, lowering the chalk slowly. “When… when I had met you in the future, when you sent me back, I felt it everywhere, as if it had been an established thing for years, even though I hadn’t… hadn’t lived that yet. When we met, some six years ago, before… before the entire Dracula thing, it was fainter, yes, but it was still there. But now… when I try to search for it, for that connection between us, you…” 

He turned around and your voice trailed off. 

But his golden eyes were just studying your face, no emotion yet discernable. 

“You feel so far away”, you finished weakly. 

Almost immediately, he stepped towards you, so close, and yet far away. The magic that had been between you… it might as well not exist anymore at all. 

“I’m right here”, he whispered, looking down at your face. 

“No, you're not”, you shook your head slightly. “Not in the same way. Back then, I could feel… a kind of echo of what you felt. Not always, but… I always felt you there, within the magic and now…”, you shrugged. “Do you think that it’s just gone? That… that what happened to you with… with Taka and Sumi…”, weirdly enough, lately, you were the one who flinched when saying their names, not him, “... that that destroyed it? Broke the bond alongside other things inside of you?” 

Lowering his gaze, Alucard stared at something between both of your feet. “No, it didn’t.” 

“But -”

Your voice broke off when he reached for your hands, engulfing them with both of his gently, sweeping his thumbs over the backs of your fingers. Goosebumps erupted all over your arms. 

He felt so warm. 

“It’s me”, he admitted then and looked back at you from beneath his fair lashes. 

Your brain needed long moments to compute, far too distracted by his gentle touch. “What?” 

“I… I am suppressing it”, he breathed, something similar to shame crossing his features. 

You blinked at him slowly. “Why?” 

Alucard huffed through a small smile, shaking his head slightly. “Because it hurts. And I don’t want to hurt you.” 

“You would never hurt me”, you replied immediately, like an instinct. 

A slow, gentle smile played around his mouth, as if you were a silly child with your innocent little thoughts. He didn’t say anything. 

“Adrian”, you breathed, squeezing his hands in return. “You don’t have to hide from me.” 

Inhaling a deep breath, he shook his head slightly. “I’d keep arguing with you, if I hoped to succeed. But I’ve realised that you will not let me convince you of anything.”

“Are you saying that I’m pig-headed?”, you asked with playful affrontedness. 

“Let’s call it stubbornness.” Sighing, he gave another calming sweep of his thumbs across your hands. “Fine, I will show you and you will know what I mean.” 

You brows furrowed. “Wha -” 

But you couldn’t finish. In the next moment, the bond and magic between the both of you came alive…

… and you were immediately hit by a wave of pain, shame and regret so severe - unlike anything you had ever felt before. It was so intense, so fucking hurtful and full of suffering, that you couldn’t suppress a gasp and doubled over slightly, your forehead almost touching his chest. 

Then it was over, Alucard’s most-inner being closed off from you again. 

“So, you see”, his voice was eerily quiet. Hadn’t you stood this close, you wouldn’t have been able to make out the words. 

Stubbornly, you shook your head. “That can’t be a solution”, you were still breathless. “For you to be… completely alone with all that.” 

“I’m not. It was worse when you first arrived. Far worse before you arrived. You have already healed me, but… still, it’s too much to burden you with.” Slowly, oh so slowly, he lifted your joined hands, pressing your palms to the sides of his face. 

Your eyes were probably as wide as saucers. 

Apart from the times you had held him and he had held you, this was the most the both of you had touched. 

“For now, that is as close as I can be.” 

For now. 

It felt as if there were literal butterflies inside your stomach. He had to be able to see your heart inside your eyes. “But, one day…?”

“Perhaps”, he conceded. 

And then - then - he turned his head slightly and pressed his lips to the palm of your hand. 

Honest to God, you almost fainted right then and there. 

“Back to your lesson”, he stated then, matter-of-factly, and let go of you. 

That damned dhampir had the audacity to chuckle slightly when you swayed and almost fell at the loss of his touch. 

Bastard. 

______________________________________

From that day forward, it was as if some sort of dam had broken inside the both of you. 

As if Alucard had given you the literal okay to touch him. 

They were subtle things at first. Brushing past each other instead of walking around one another in wide circles. 

It wasn’t awkward anymore when your arms or hands brushed while passing a cup or a plate or a book between the both of you. 

Soon, these accidental touches turned deliberate. Your fingers were drifting towards him as if pulled by some invisible string. 

When you talked after lunch or dinner, your little finger would first lie across his - then, day after day, your fingers started to interlace slowly, palms lying flat on the table. Your face deeply flushed the entire time. 

That was all. Your hands touching and you staring at the way his body shifted beneath his clothes. And you were just about ready to spontaneously combust. 

Jesus, you felt like some Victorian maiden. Were he to change his boots for some sort of slippers and you would catch a glimpse of his ankle, you would probably lose it. 

You were already losing it. With every touch and every soft glance from those golden eyes, you were going absolutely insane. 

______________________________________

The feeling of being pulled away grew stronger. 

The slight queasiness turned into a swoop inside your stomach, still rare but much stronger.

Once, you had to lean against the wall inside one of the hallways in order not to topple over. 

Not that you really cared. You had no intention of leaving.

______________________________________

Alucard had taken to opening the bond a little, from time to time…

… for teaching purposes. 

You didn’t really like that reason. You would have obviously preferred it if he did it because he felt the same kind of yearning and want and madness as you. But this was still better than nothing. 

Feeling that the connection was really, really suppressed, you still had to admit that it was working: When the bond was open, you had a far better grip on the magic that was interwoven with everything. Alucard had made the same observation as the mage - that you weren’t a being that was particularly attuned to magic. 

But he was. And when you were connected to him, you could feel a shadow of that awareness. 

The warmth being poured out inside your chest like liquid honey whenever you felt something that might just have been his soul brush against yours, was just an added bonus, you guessed. 

Anyway, teaching purposes.  

Alucard had declared a few days ago that he had taught you as much of the theory as was necessary to get started with some actual magic - though you secretly believed that he had simply given up. You were not smart enough to understand all that math and physics and linguistic stuff that was apparently necessary to understand magic fully. 

Hence, the current objective: to conjure some fire. Nothing big, nothing to fight with, but it would help keep you warm if you got lost in the wild again, preventing you from getting sick. Alucard had said that with a mirthful twinkle inside his eye and you had for once refrained from clapping back, pointing out that that had been purely his fault. 

At the moment, however, you almost wished you could go back to the theory. 

This was fucking hard. You found a completely new admiration for Sypha as you tried to conjure some teeny tiny flame in the palm of your hand. 

Sweat was starting to make your hand clammy… was that maybe why it wouldn’t ignite? Could something as simple as that little bit of moisture -

“Focus”, Alucard admonished you gently and you twitched in surprise. He sounded closer than before, but your eyes were closed so that you could concentrate on the magic. 

The bond grew a little stronger, as if Alucard wanted to help you further. 

And there he was… pressing up against your consciousness, causing you to feel all warm and jittery and -

“On the magic inside the bond, not me”, Alucard pointed out. 

Whether he had guessed the direction of your thoughts from the blush on your face or sensed it through the bond, you didn’t know. 

You tried, you really tried to concentrate on the magic, but it was just… such an abstract thing. You could sense it through the bond, but not get a grasp on it. 

A frustrated sound left your lips and you lowered your hand with a defeated sigh. “This is useless, I’m just too stupid to -”

“No, wait, keep your eyes closed”, he quickly interjected before you could open them, and then his hand was beneath yours, lifting it higher again. 

As always, goosebumps erupted all over your body and you shivered. 

“You can do it, I know you can.”

Licking your lips nervously, you gave up trying to focus on the magic. All there was inside your mind was the feel of his skin touching yours and how that simple contact made you feel as if you were on fire.

That was something you could grasp, that fire you felt for him, the way it was burning you up from the inside out, tingling beneath your scalp and in the tips of your fingers, warming your heart and -

You gasped as your palm was suddenly warmed from the outside and it felt as if you were holding something alive inside your hand. Your eyes flew open and you glanced at the small flame in wonder. “Was that you?”, you looked at him almost accusingly. 

His eyes were almost level with yours, because you were standing on a little stool in the middle of Dracula’s study. Something about the position of your body and the science of air and bla bla bla. 

He smiled and shook his head slightly as his golden gaze met yours. “No, I’m afraid you did that all by yourself.” 

Well, that wasn’t really true now, was it?

You curled your hand into a fist, successfully snuffing the flame out. “Okay, fine, okay, take a step back, I wanna try again.” 

Alucard spoke your name softly. 

“No, no”, you pointed at him insistently, “you said I can do it on my own, so I wanna do it on my own.”

“Fine”, he raised his hands in submission and took a step back. 

You held your hand out again and closed your eyes. It was harder this way, the magic still feeling so far away, but you simply focused on that feeling again, that thrill and fire of him. 

And whoosh, there it was. Fire. Inside your hand. 

You squealed in delight as your eyes flew open once more. “Do you see that?”, you asked redundantly as you gave the flame a little more power, causing it to grow. 

Conjuring it had been the hardest part, this was easier. 

“Yes, alright now, controlling it will be the next lesson”, Alucard pointed out when he stepped closer again, “Do not burn the castle down, please.”

You let the flame grow smaller again, but were still buzzing with amazement and success, so much so that you couldn’t help but slightly jump up and down on the spot in delight.

Your stool wobbled dangerously at that, but Alucard was there immediately, stabilizing you with a hand on each of your elbows. 

The flame flickered brightly between your bodies. 

You were so close now, warmed inside and out. “I made fire”, you whispered and smiled shyly as you glanced at him from beneath your lashes. 

“I can see that”, his eyes twinkled with a certain sense of pride. 

“Thank you”, you breathed, knowing deep down that this could also be used as a weapon, one day, but he had taught you anyway. The trust he was giving you sometimes felt crushing in its enormity, but right now it was just something beautiful. 

“Anytime”, he promised and let his thumb sweep over your naked elbow gently.

You couldn’t help it, truly. 

Slowly, slow enough to let him pull away, you let your head drop forward, until your forehead was almost touching his. In the last moment, you angled your head to the side, so that your nose brushed his. 

You would have loved to see his expression, but your eyes had already fallen closed, overwhelmed with it all. 

Then your lips brushed his, carefully, gently. It only lasted for about a second before the contact broke again and you drew a shuddering breath, waiting for how he would react. 

It was Alucard who pressed back in, seeking the connection out. 

Your lips moulded together perfectly and you shuddered violently. Just as it had that first time, the thread of magic between the both of you felt as if it started to glow, washing through both of you. 

The flame in your hands had long died and your hands twitched, undecided on where to land first. His arms, his shoulders, his hair…?

Despite your inner struggle, a blissful sigh left you, your lips parting slightly. So did Alucard’s, your breath shared in that wonderful gasp of - 

And just like your first kiss - that stupid, shy little kiss before their fight against Dracula - it was over way too soon. 

Alucard pulled away and stepped back swiftly, as if nothing had happened at all. Avoiding your eyes, he cleared his throat and turned back towards his trusted chalkboard. “Now, on how to control a magical flame…”

All you could do was blink at him dumbfoundedly. 

______________________________

You managed to keep your mouth shut for three days. 

Three days during which it seemed as if nothing had changed. You still shared your space and thoughts. You still ate together, read together, studied science and magic together. 

Laughed together. 

Alucard still touched you in that strangely intimate and yet chaste way. 

It seemed as if nothing had changed, but something had changed. Inside of you. It hadn’t been your first shared kiss, but still.

The last one felt as if it had been a lifetime ago. 

This one had been something else. You knew each other now, it wasn’t just the bond and some nameless magic influencing you. 

You had wanted to kiss him. 

Him. 

Adrian. Just the way he was. Broken, strong, beautiful and all. 

And he had kissed you back. 

And now he was pretending as if it had never happened. 

It was driving you absolutely insane. Even more so than before. 

“You’re lost in your own thoughts”, Alucard pointed out as he finished the glass of wine he had with dinner. 

Oh. You blinked at your emptied plate. Had he been talking to you?

“Sorry”, you breathed. 

He merely shrugged and rose, collecting the dishes for washing. You knew that he wouldn’t be angry with you. 

There seemed to be very little he would ever be angry with you about, lately. His patience with your antics was sheer endless. 

So, why exactly were you afraid to voice your thoughts?

Slowly, you got up as well, to help him with the dishes. 

By now, he knew that you preferred washing over drying and let you step ahead, submerging your hand into the warm, soapy water. 

“I was thinking about that kiss the other day”, you simply spat it out, staring at the plate and rag in your hand instead of him. 

Immediately, he tensed and you closed your eyes, wondering whether you shouldn’t have said anything at all. 

“Listen, since you don’t… since nothing changed…”, you stopped, trying to collect your thoughts. What exactly did you want to say? 

That he acted as if it hadn’t happened? 

That it seemed as if he preferred if it hadn’t happened?

“If that’s not something that you want, you can just tell me.” That’s what you settled on. Maybe a little vague, but it would hopefully get the message across. 

Alucard sighed deeply, heavily, and said your name quietly. 

Your fingers spasmed in the water uncomfortably. “It’s fine, really, I just - I just need to know, okay? So that, if you don’t want it to happen again, it won’t happen again, right?” - oh God, you were rambling now - “Because like this… I don’t want to make an idiot out of myself, since I obviously liked it and would like for it to happen again” - Jesus fucking Christ - “But we should be on the same page and -”

That was when he finally chose to stop your word vomit, first with his hand on your elbow, and before you could even process that, you were turned around pressed against the wooden counter, with Alucard in your personal space. 

And then he was kissing you.

For real this time. 

His big hands cradled your face as his lips pressed against yours, not softly or chastly but insistently. 

You gasped in surprise, your eyes immediately falling shut. Alucard inhaled the breath right from your lungs while your trembling hands settled on his upper arms, drenching the expensive cotton with water and soap. 

Your body was set ablaze by that familiar fire, only that it was a thousand times worse this time. 

Or, no, not worse, just more intense. More all-consuming. 

Without thinking about it, without needing to be coaxed further, you let the tip of your tongue travel across his lower lip, and it was his turn to tremble. Still, he matched your fervour and then his tongue touched yours. 

Your knees grew weak as he deepened the kiss, one of his hands burying itself in your hair and the other snaking around your waist, holding you upright as if you weighed nothing.

Finally, you understood why the fire of the bond seemed to burn deeper than before… because the bond had been opened, somehow widening itself. It was as if Alucard no longer had enough control to suppress it, causing you to not only feel your own desire but his as well. 

He desired you. 

Jesus, fuck, you were going to melt on the spot.  

Alucard ripped his mouth away suddenly, but not to stop the kiss entirely, instead mouthing along your jaw, pressing heated kisses to the side of your neck. 

A thrill shot up your spine when you briefly felt something cold and sharp brush against your skin…

His fangs. 

You had stood against maybe a dozen vampires over the past - your past - and always felt that sense of all-encompassing fear at seeing their teeth, knowing that they’d be all-too-willing to kill by ripping your throat out, but this…

Imagining that he could feel the thunderous flow of your blood, your rapid heartbeat beneath your skin, and bite down, take a part of you into himself… it shouldn’t have been this exciting, this arousing, and yet it was. 

You moaned loudly at the thought and grabbed for purchase at his broad shoulders, digging your fingers into the skin through his shirt. 

Through the opened bond, you could feel it immediately, even before he flinched: the moment he sensed your nails digging into his skin, into his scars, and the memories violently returned. Of the last time he had kissed so passionately, had been kissed so passionately, had let his guard down like this and come to regret it afterwards. 

Immediately, you raised your hands in a defensive motion, letting go of him, but it was too late. 

In a flash of red, he was halfway across the room, leaning a hand against the table and trying to take deep breaths. 

 “So-sorry… I’m sorry”, you whispered breathlessly, trying to fight against the way your head was still swimming. 

Jesus, you weren’t inexperienced, not really, but with him, like this, with this bond between the both of you… everything was different. New. More intense. 

You wanted to drown in that feeling, and yet your stomach turned itself into tight knots at the knowledge that he didn’t feel the same. 

Couldn’t feel the same. Not while being scared like this. 

Scrunching his eyes shut, Alucard shook his head jerkily. 

“I mean it, I shouldn’t have -”

“Stop, stop it”, he demanded harshly, before inhaling another deep breath, his voice turning softer. “It isn’t your fault.” 

“No, but I should have -”, known, you wanted to say. Known to be more careful than this. 

“You shouldn’t have to do anything”, he insisted angrily. Angry at himself, you realised. “You are perfect as you are and I…” am not. He didn’t have to say it for you to know what he had wanted to say. 

“Adrian”, you breathed, “of course you are.” Realising that that was a bit of a weak argument, since you didn’t believe him that you were perfect either, you corrected: “You are to me.” 

He just shook his head again, without really looking at you. “I am broken, and you know it.” 

“But -”

“Can you excuse me?”, he asked then, all of a sudden. “Please.”

You wanted to continue arguing with him, but didn’t have the heart to do so. If he felt that he needed space now, who were you to deny him. 

“Of course”, you whispered, your shoulders sagging in defeat. 

A flash of red and he was gone. 

___________________________________

It was night, far later than you usually stayed up. But Alucard had not returned after dinner, not for your science lessons and not for your shared reading time in the library.

Petulantly, you remained in the library, curled up on one of the wing chairs with your head leaning against the side of the backrest. You were staring at the pages of the book in your lap without really reading it. 

A part of you wanted to regret what had happened that evening, wishing back for the weightless simplicity of your connection and those light touches, but…

But the other part couldn’t forget the feeling of his lips against yours, his tongue in your mouth and his fangs on your neck. How it had felt to be so enveloped in his arms. 

It had felt so warm and safe and… argh, you didn’t know. 

Like home. As if that was where you belonged. You wanted to crawl underneath his skin, pushing out all of those fears and instincts, filling him with the same warmth he seemed to pour out inside of you. 

You jumped in surprise when warm fingers encircled your wrist, his other hand pulling the book from your grasp. You hadn’t realised that he had entered, hadn’t heard him come closer or seen him crouch down in front of your chair. 

But there he was nonetheless, throwing your book on the nearest table and reaching for your smaller hands again, pressing them against his face and closing his eyes, as if this was the first time he felt at peace in hours. 

“It is late”, he finally breathed. 

“Yeah, I know”, you mumbled back and your body joined in with a heartfelt yawn. 

His lips quirked at that. “You should sleep.”

“And you?”, you wondered stubbornly, “Another night of roaming around the castle like a ghost to avoid your nightmares?” 

With a sigh, he let go of your hands, but remained on his knee in front of you. “You don’t understand.” 

Huffing, you straightened your back in order to get a better look at him. “No, I -”

“You don’t understand”, he repeated, more firmly this time, and managed to basically stare into your soul with those piercing golden eyes of his. “You wondered, earlier, whether that is not something I want, but that is not it. It’s the opposite really. I want, believe me, I want so much that it hurts. I can feel it through the bond, the way that you yearn for me” - well, that was embarrassing - “and I feel as if your skin is calling out to me. To touch, to worship you, to…”, he swallowed tightly and you grew lightheaded. “And the smell of your blood… I have never experienced anything like it. I do not thirst for human blood, not like vampires do, but I… your scent causes my resilience to grow weak and I… I feel as if I am not strong enough to resist. If you believe little else, you can believe me that I want you.” 

You could only stare at him for long, sheer endless moments, trying to wrap your head around it all. “I… I don’t really know what you’re trying to tell me”, you confessed eventually, dumbly. Sure, yeah, you heard his confession, understood that he wanted you back, and it set your heart on fire. 

But what was he trying to say with it, really? 

“If anything, I believe that this evening has proven that this is still as close as we can… as we should be”, he admitted quietly, interlacing his fingers with yours. 

“But”, you licked your lips nervously, sensing that this was a pivotal moment between the both of you, “if I learn what you’re okay with and what not, maybe we can… kiss in a way that it doesn’t hurt you at all.” 

“Kissing you is not all that I want”, he whispered and my, you were going to faint. “It doesn’t matter, though. I am not afraid of the hurt, I’ve lived with it for so long… but it would only take one wrong move, one wrong sensation, and I feel as if I am tied up again, completely at their - at anyone’s mercy, and I cannot bear it. I’m afraid that I will lash out, feeling the need to defend myself, and hurt you in the process.”

Chewing on your lip, you were trying to weed through all the things he had just said. “What if we start slow… we do not have to - y’know, go all the way right away. We don’t even have to kiss. Maybe we could just… cuddle?” You sounded pathetic, even to your own ears, but you would take anything he was willing to grant you. Carefully, you reached for his hand and it was your turn to press it to your face. “Chase the nightmares away a little?” 

His eyes widened slightly, but he didn’t pull away. “I fear that would be even worse”, despite his harsh words, his thumb caressed across your cheekbone. “I feel my most vulnerable asleep, in my bed, since that is where…”, he pressed his lips together tightly, knowing that he didn’t have to finish that sentence. “You would just have to breathe wrong and I would feel threatened.”

Your shoulders fell, deflated, and you let your head hang low. Was there really no way for the both of you to relieve this tension - this desire to be close - in any way? “Maybe you should tie me up”, you joked dryly. 

Alucard huffed and shook his head immediately. 

Your eyes widened with realisation and you repeated: “Adrian, what if you tied me up?” 

His gaze swept across your face, eyes wide and shocked when he recognized that you were serious about this. “Have you lost your mind?”, he asked sharply. 

“Why not? We don’t have to do anything, we could just - I don’t know - sleep or whatever, but it would be worth a try, wouldn’t it? You would know that you were safe, that I couldn’t unexpectedly touch you and -”

Alucard shot to his feet with an almost disgusted expression, pacing a few steps away. “Absolutely not. If you think that I would subject you to the same thing that they did to me -”

“It wouldn’t be the same”, you insisted and climbed out of the chair as well, stepping closer to him, “I would know that I am safe. I am always safe with you, and you would know the same. No surprises, no unexpected moves or attacks. We have to at least try -”

“No!”, Alucard insisted sharply and shook his head again. “No. Go to bed. You are obviously mad with the lack of sleep.” 

“Come on, I just…”, but he was already crossing the library with long strides. 

The doors fell shut behind him with a resounding bang, the wood trembling against its hinges. 

_________________________________

 Breakfast was spent in tense silence. So was lunch. 

Apparently, there wouldn’t be any lessons that day either.

Lisa had been a practical woman, obviously, being a scholar and all, which meant that she had pockets sewn into pretty much every one of her skirts. It was a nice benefit, being able to carry stuff around this way. 

Which was why you spent all meals that day fingering the strip of fabric you had shoved into your pocket that morning. It was the remains of one of the skirts you had shortened. The nail you had been biting on for hours the previous night snagged against the still existing previous hem. 

The fabric was deep red and silky smooth. It felt rich and expensive. 

And you had it in your pocket despite the fact that he had said no. 

You had thought about it all night, barely getting an hour of sleep in the process, but couldn’t come up with a better idea. 

He was so set, so stuck in his self-loathing, that he would always be afraid of being hurt or hurting someone else if he didn’t eventually take a step further. 

Additionally, his words refused to leave your head, playing on repeat. 

I want, believe me, I want so much that it hurts. 

I feel as if your skin is calling out to me. To touch, to worship you…  

Kissing you is not all that I want.

Honestly, how was a girl to come out of such a conversation without stupid ideas inside her head? 

Granted, you knew that you weren’t much to look at today, had seen the dark circles beneath your eyes and the mess that was your hair this morning, after tossing and turning all night. You had fought to get the brush through your hair and splashed cold water in your face, but that could only help so much. 

Staring at your dinner plate glumly, feeling as if you could hardly breathe in this stifling silence, you poked around your food with the fork you were holding in one hand. 

The other one still beneath the table, fingering that piece of fabric. 

A silly, vengeful part of you almost wanted to refuse to help with the dishes, but you weren’t spiteful enough to do that. You also had a teeny tiny hope that your hands might touch while handing plates back and forth and that that would somehow initiate a conversation. 

A continuation of the issue from last night. 

Barely having eaten anything, you followed Alucard’s movements from the corner of your eye, waiting for him to finally finish his fucking food.

He drank the last of his wine and cleared his throat a little awkwardly before rising to his feet. You followed suit immediately, shooting up yourself. 

Maybe it was the blood rushing to your head too fast, but - honestly - you knew that it was more than that. 

It was that swoop inside your stomach, your body giving a jerk, the urge to be pulled back into your own time overwhelming for a second. Your vision blackened out and your knees grew weak. You tried to grab for the edge of the table you could no longer see and grasped nothing but empty air. 

Falling backwards, your elbow connected with the chair painfully, pushing it over 

Cold air whooshed past you and you squeezed your eyes tightly shut. 

No, no, nonononono -

You couldn’t leave, not now, you were so close, you had to - 

Your back connected with the cold stone floor, but your head landed softly. 

Keeping your eyes shut, you swallowed painfully and listened. 

There was the humming sound of a fly trapped somewhere against the walls. The crackling of the fire that was still burning in the hearth. There was someone else, close, breathing sharply. 

Your eyes flew open. 

Alucard stared back at you with wide, golden eyes. He was leaning over you, one of his hands beneath the back of your head, the other holding your arm tightly, softening your fall. His hair had fallen over his shoulders and was tickling your face and neck. 

Your nose twitched, fighting a sneeze. 

You had to blink a few times to clear your head. Alucard used the time to take a hold of you beneath both of your arms and lift you back to your feet easily. 

“I’m fine”, you pressed out, though a little weakly while his hands swept over your head, checking for injuries or maybe a possible fever. “I just got up too fast.”

His eyes bored into yours with a sceptical expression. 

“Maybe eaten too little…”, you continued, shrugging sheepishly, “and… and slept too little as well?” 

One of your hands snaked itself into the pocket of your skirt, fingering that piece of cloth as if it might bring you comfort. 

Those sharp, dhampir eyes caught the movement immediately. “What is that?”, he asked hoarsely. 

You stiffened. “Nothing.” 

Your name sounded sharp, the way he said it, and yet there was still a shiver crawling down your spine. He had such a unique way of saying it, always enunciating it with care, as if it were something special. 

Slowly, without really forcing you, he tugged on your wrist and you let your hand slide from the inside of the skirt. 

Red slip of fabric, the perfect length to blindfold someone…

… or bind their hands, hanging between your limp fingers. 

Alucard was clever, far too clever for his own good, and immediately recognized what that bit of trash was to you and your intentions. His eyes closed with a pained sigh. 

“I’m sorry, okay”, you pressed out, even though - for once - you didn’t sound sorry at all. You sounded angry and petulant and - maybe - even a little bitchy. “I’m sorry that I don’t just want to accept that you’re broken and I’m helpless and that this is just all there is. I’m sorry that I’m trying to find a way to fix something, that I want to help you and that I want you and -”, a breath hiccuped its way out of your throat and it was just then that you realised that there were tears in your eyes.

“Wait”, Alucard breathed and reached for you, but you wound yourself out of his arms. 

“I can’t help it, okay? I just - I can’t accept that this is all there is to your life now. There has to be something more, some way to…”

“Don’t cry”, he demanded gently, his eyes looking pained as he finally managed to take a hold of your face and swiped his thumbs beneath your eyes, wiping the tears that had managed to fall away. “Please, don’t cry. It’s like a knife to my heart.” 

You inhaled a shaky breath, unable to look into his eyes. 

When your tears finally stopped, Alucard didn’t stop touching your face, as if he couldn’t help himself. One of his thumbs swept down your cheek and pressed against your lips gently, causing a deep flush to settle over your features. 

“Would it -”, he swallowed tightly, “would it make you happy if we at least tried your stupid idea?” 

You couldn’t help the little laugh that bubbled out of you at his exasperated tone and choice of words. “Yes”, you breathed, staring stubbornly against his clavicles instead of his face. 

“Then we will at least try”, he conceded and pressed his lips to your forehead. 

_______________________________________

You had to admit that you felt a little guilty for the entire thing, about five minutes later. 

Had you basically coerced him into trying this by practically fainting at his feet and crying afterwards? 

It’s like a knife to my heart. 

But it wasn’t as if you had done it on purpose! Whether the pull into the present grew too strong one day or you would simply die of old age, Alucard would be alone again, eventually. And as you had said, this couldn’t be all there would be to his life, right? 

Suppressing both his pains and his wants? 

You also had to reluctantly admit that you maybe hadn’t thought this thing entirely through, as you unlaced your stays in your own bedroom. 

This was the fifteenth century. You slept in nothing but a light cotton shift. 

So did Alucard, probably. 

Jesus, you felt practically naked as you ditched your day-chemise for the sleeveless shift you had altered for the summer weather. 

Maybe, just maybe it would have been smarter to start cuddling on one of the library couches or making out with your hands tied behind your back instead of outright sleeping together. 

But you had made too much of a fuss out of all this already to back out of it now. 

Perhaps the proverbial jump into the cold waters would be good for both of you. You had been dancing around each other for months, after all. 

So, that was how you ended up knocking against Alucard’s bedroom door in nothing but your shift and a red strip of fabric wrung tightly between your hands. 

Your knuckles had barely connected with the wood when the door was ripped open and - 

Yup, Alucard was wearing a shift as well. Even though you full well knew that this was era-appropriate and that he didn’t even know about different sleep wear, you still had to fight the urge to laugh a little…

… until you saw the most you had ever seen of those long legs naked and blushed. 

There shouldn’t be something sexy about seeing someone’s knees for the first time, but well. 

Here you were nonetheless.

“I feel the need to point out that this is still a terrible idea”, Alucard muttered hoarsely. Apparently, he couldn’t look at your face anymore than you at his. 

“Yeah, okay, duly noted”, you nodded to yourself as you stepped inside, eyeing the huge bed with white sheets, your heart beating in your throat. “This isn’t the… the same room, right…?”

“Of course not”, he replied, almost affronted. 

“Sorry, just checking”, you twisted the fabric around your hands even tighter, cutting off the circulation. 

“If you changed your mind -”

“Of course not”, you mimicked his tone of voice and smiled at him shyly. 

Alucard simply shook his head, but you could see the hint of a smile he tried to hide behind his hair. 

You were moving around each other like skittish animals. As if you were shy teenagers instead of two adults past their mid-twenties. Shimmying on one side of the bed, you sat on your butt and took a look around for a minute, thinking about how to best do this. 

The headboard was an intricate thing, fashioned from some kind of metal. It would have to do, you decided, flopped down onto your back and raised your hands over your head in a submissive motion. 

Alucard came up to you then, now being the one holding your would-be manacle. Since he was doing everything to avoid looking directly at you while looping the fabric around your wrists in an intricate pattern, you took the time to study him. There was a blush sitting high on his cheekbones and he swallowed tightly as he fastened your hands to the headboard. 

“You know, in my time, no one would judge this”, you pointed out while wiggling your fingers, checking whether your circulation was cut off by this position. “It’s considered a kink, really.” 

“I do not know what that means”, he replied quietly. 

“That people like to tie up their partners and -” 

“Just shut up, please.” 

“Okay”, dutifully, you pressed your lips together. 

Alucard went around the room, blowing out the last of the candles, and you continued to assess the situation. You had no idea whether it was instinct or whether Alucard was educated in tying intricate knots as well (had Dracula been interested in nautical matters?), but your bonds were surprisingly soft. If you lay relaxed like this, they almost seemed loose, but you noticed that you could actually not get away, if you had the intent to struggle. 

Which you didn’t. It was just good to know that you could still move in your sleep, laying on your side and all that. 

Eventually, the last flame went out and all that remained were the pale moonlight and a nervous dhampir. 

The other side of the bed dipped, but Alucard remained seated on the mattress, with his back to you. 

“How are you feeling?”, you asked and yawned. Just now, with your head on these incredibly soft pillows did you realise how tired you were. 

But it wasn’t just that. You were so close now to each other, in more than just a physical sense. This was another step forward and the bond was practically humming with it. You felt warm and safe in his presence and your body practically turned to liquid the longer you stayed like this. 

“Sceptical”, he replied quietly. “You?” 

“Tired”, another yawn, “and hopeful.” 

Alucard simply huffed humourlessly. Apparently, he had no intention to lie down yet. 

“We can just talk”, you pointed out. “Until we get more comfortable.” 

“Hm”, he made non-descriptively. 

“So…”, you licked your lips with a cheeky expression that he couldn’t see, “... was the big bad Dracula the type to read bedtime stories?”

Your bedmate huffed again, but there was definitely a smile in his voice. “Sometimes. It was my mother more often than not, but whenever she was travelling or out tending to her patients, my father would take up the task.” 

“And what did he read for leisure activity?” 

“Grant stories, as you might imagine. The Illiad, Divine Comedy -”

You could only snort a laugh at that. Of course, little Alucard had been pumped full with the classics at a tender age. 

Sometime during your talking - or rather, your interrogation of lives long past inside these castle walls - did your eyes drift shut, lulled to sleep by the deep, gentle rumble of his voice. 

You woke up briefly when your body shifted with the additional weight of someone lying down next to you. Still lying on your side, you noticed a piece of hair that was tickling at your nose. 

Unable to remove it with your hands bound above your head, you tried to blow it away clumsily, still half asleep. 

The warm hand of your companion came to your aid, pushing the strand behind your ear and caressing your face afterwards. 

Squinting one of your eyes open, you could barely make out the shape of him in the sparse light of the moon, but could have sworn that you saw his golden eyes glowing. “Hi”, you mumbled quietly, smiling into the side of your arm. There was a certain triumph in all of this. So far, this experiment wasn’t a disaster. 

“Hi”, Alucard breathed back and you couldn’t help the blissful hum that left you at the way that his deep voice vibrated through your chest at him being so close. 

Satisfied, you fell asleep. 

___________________________________

You woke up lying on your other side, having slept far better than … well, than ever before, if you were honest with yourself. 

Despite the fact that your arms felt a little strained and your neck a little stiff. 

Still more asleep than awake, you squinted one eye open, noting that the light shining through the window was still faint and orange. It was barely sunrise. More than enough time to go back to sleep. 

Shifting slightly, you finally noticed it. Maybe it had even been what woke you up. 

A heavy arm slung over your waist, holding you close with a large hand splayed across your stomach. Your back was pressed against a warm, broad chest, rising and falling gently with Alucard’s sleeping breaths. 

Breaths that were tickling the hair at the back of your neck, causing you to shiver at the sensation.    

So, this is what heaven feels like, you thought as you burrowed deeper, messily intertwining your legs with his. 

Staying asleep, Alucard yielded, pushing one of his strong legs between both of yours and pulling you closer, his lips subconsciously pressed to your neck. 

The bond was blazed wide open, communicating nothing but bliss. 

And just like that, you fell back asleep. 

____________________________

You woke up again hours later, the sun shining warmly onto your back, warming it through the thin shift. Rolling around, you settled on your back, eyes still closed, and yawned heartily, holding a hand in front of your mouth. 

Hang on, your hand -

You sat up in an instant, getting a little nauseous at the sudden motion, staring at your freed hands. Twisting around, you noted that your bounds had been loosened, allowing for you to slip free. You also noticed that you were alone in the bed. 

“I let you out when I got up”, a voice from your right alerted you to his presence.

Whirling your head around, you stared at Alucard, who was sitting in a chair to your right. 

“Please tell me that you didn’t watch me sleep”, you asked. 

His lips quirked slightly. “Only for a moment, wondering on how to proceed.”

“Proceed?”, you asked dumbly. Oh God, had you done something embarrassing in your sleep? 

“Wondering on how best to wake you”, he elaborated. “It is noon, after all.”

“It is?”, you asked and turned towards the window, realising that the sun was sitting high in the sky. 

“Yes”, Alucard rose from his chair swiftly. “So, what will it be, breakfast or lunch?” 

You flushed red, petulantly refusing to answer. 

“You snore, by the way”, he threw over his shoulder as he exited the room. 

 ____________________________

The entire day, you were basically buzzing with energy and excitement. 

All you could think about was that the night had been a success. But had it been a success for him as well? 

Alucard seemed to be in a good mood at least, continuing your lessons, teaching you how to control your tiny flame and reading with you in the library after dinner. 

You couldn’t help stealing glances at him over the pages of your book. 

“You can’t possibly be reading if you watch me more than the words on those pages”, he eventually pointed out dryly. 

Caught, you trained your eyes back on the letters. You would not at all have been surprised if you had been holding the book upside down. “You will have to say something some time, you know”, you told him stubbornly. 

“About what?”

Letting your book drop into your lap, you stared at him with a frustrated expression. 

“If there’s anything you want to ask me, you can always do so”, he pointed out with a shrug. 

Smug bastard, letting you do all the work. “Was it bad?” 

“No”, he replied, returning your gaze now. At least he didn’t make you elaborate further. 

“So, could we consider the experiment successful?”

“I guess.” 

You licked your lips nervously. “Can we do it again?” 

One of his brows twitched up, but his expression gave nothing away. “Do you want to do it again?” 

“Yes”, you answered, as if on instinct, blushing immediately, but added nevertheless, “very much so.” 

He nodded slowly. “Then we can do it again.” 

You inhaled deeply, biting your lip to keep the silly grin inside.

Keeping quiet and actually reading for some time, you eventually added a final question, looking at the pages of your book this time. “Did you like it?” 

“Yes, you snore-monster, I liked it.” 

________________________________

“Then we can do it again” turned out to be an understatement. 

From that day on, you didn’t spend a single night in your own room. It took some nights, but eventually Alucard pulled you close before either of you fell asleep, instead of doing it subconsciously sometime during the night. 

It took some more nights before he came close when the both of you were still engaged in your conversation. He just played with your hair at first, before caressing your face or your naked arm. In time you ended up with your head resting on his arm, his hand playing with the hair that was falling into your neck. He was so close that you could feel his breath fanning across your face. 

“Are you happy?”, he asked quietly, deep into the night. 

You sensed that he didn’t mean this particular moment or even the situation with sharing the bed. He meant the overall conditions, of you being here, with him. 

“Yes”, you replied, your eyes already closed. 

More than ever before. 

_______________________________________

The next morning, he kissed you awake, just a gentle press of his lips against yours. 

Your body responded before your mind had even set into gear, pressing closer and matching all of his motions. 

Alucard buried one of his hands in your hair, you tangled your naked leg between both of his. He opened his mouth, you deepened the kiss. He moaned at the feel of your tongue pressing against his, and you whined high in your throat when his teeth teased across your lower lip. 

Pulling away swiftly, Alucard still held your head close, inhaling a few harsh breaths before letting his lips trail across your face, pressing them against your forehead, your chin, your cheeks and the tip of your nose, causing you to giggle. 

“I will start breakfast”, he breathed into your ear, pulling away - but not before he loosened your bounds, allowing you to cuddle deeper into the sheets and keep on dozing for a while longer. 

______________________________

Summer’s full bloom was already over, but the late summer was just as magical. 

There were wild flowers all over the meadow around the castle, waging a strange war of aesthetics against the staked night creatures. 

You managed to nag Alucard into taking strolls with you outside the castle, even though he always insisted on taking his sword, worried about stray night creatures and vampires who wanted to challenge his claim over Dracula’s estate. 

Not allowing his tense demeanor to dampen your mood, you plucked flowers into big bouquets, decorating the kitchen and foyer. 

You ran barefoot through the creek inside the forest, wetting the hem of your skirts despite hiking them up in your hands. You laughed as you kicked the cold water in his direction and blushed those two or three times you cut the soles of your feet against the small stones, causing him to bandage your foot gently and admonish you with a mirthful sparkle in his eyes. 

You wove flowers into a crown, trying to set one upon his head, but he managed to always evade your arms. Your laughter echoed through the trees as you tried to chase after him through the high grass, never causing him to really break out into a run - instead he easily strode away from you with those long legs. 

You read underneath the gentle sunlight, sitting amongst the flowers and bees and flies that strayed to the back of the castle from the rotting corpses, leaning back into Alucard’s firm chest. His long legs were on either side of yours and his arms both tightly wound around you. 

The sword was still always in his reach, lying unassumingly in the grass that was gently moving in the warm breeze. 

He didn’t bring his own book, instead choosing to read yours with his chin propped onto your shoulder. 

You wondered whether he wouldn’t get bored, since you knew that he could read much faster than you, but he wasted time by smelling your hair or pressing kisses to the back of your neck, so you guessed that he wasn’t really suffering after all.   

Lowering your book, you let your head drop back against his shoulder and squinted at the slowly setting sun. 

“Are you happy?”, you asked quietly. 

Alucard pressed his lips to the side of your head and released a pleased hum. “Yes”, he breathed into your hair. 

________________________________

It was a morning like all those others, when the light shining in through the window was still grey, since the sun hadn’t peeked over the horizon yet. 

It was far earlier than you usually woke up, when Alucard gently kissed you and rolled you onto your back. 

Still half asleep and not worried in the slightest, you kissed him back lazily. 

His lips pressed against your neck then and there was this thrill of fangs which caused your body to jerk slightly. 

Alucard moved lower, trailing his mouth across your throat, letting the tip of his tongue dip into that hollow between your collarbones. 

Moving lower still, his hands pressed against both sides of your ripcage, broad and strong. You shuddered when he caressed your skin above the shift, his thumbs stroking against the undersides of your breasts. 

You were waking up rapidly now, in sync with your thunderous pulse, and your eyes flew open. 

With his lips against the centre of your chest, pressing a kiss right over your wildly beating heart, Alucard hesitated. For a moment, you sensed that he wanted to ask for permission to continue, before realised that it was wholly unnecessary. 

You were open through the bond, letting him know all that he needed to know: that you were willing, that he could do with you whatever you wanted. Your arms twitched against their restraints, proving that he had nothing to fear. 

His lips dragged lower while his hands landed on your thighs, warm and calloused, pushing your shift higher. 

Swallowing, you noted that your breathing seemed unnaturally loud inside the quiet room. 

Higher, higher, higher your nightgown was pushed, until the morning air hit your most intimate area. You shuddered, wanting to alleviate some of the tension by pressing your thighs together, but Alucard’s body was in the way, steadily lowering itself. 

His lips pressed beneath your navel. 

His fangs nibbled at your hipbone. 

His breath fanned across the wetness coating your lower lips. 

You shivered violently. 

Alucard inhaled deeply and your face flushed. Could he smell your arousal as distinctly as your blood? 

“Adrian”, you whispered longingly…

… and then he kissed you. There. 

His hair was impossibly soft, the way it was splayed across your thighs, in stark contrast to the firm hands that were keeping your body in place, one pressing down against your thigh, the other against your ribcage. 

He licked straight up your slit and a broken moan left you, fingers tightening themselves inside the red fabric holding them in place. 

A groan vibrated straight through your core when your taste hit his tongue and you almost came right then and there, thighs spasming on either side of his head. His tongue trailed around your clit in lazy circles, causing you to go almost mad, and then it was inside of you. 

The sounds that were leaving you were absolutely inhuman. Your hips twitched and his hands flew to your waist, clamping down harshly and yet aiding you in your motions, grinding against his face as his tongue returned to your clit, pressing against it in earnest now. 

The world was drowned out as your insides tightened and the peak of your pleasure washed over you in a tidal wave. For a moment, all you could see behind your eyelids were varying shades of white and gold. 

Still catching your breath, you slowly returned back to earth. 

Alucard’s lips were pressing gentle kisses to the side of your jaw, one of his hands caressing your naked side, the other your hair which was splayed across the pillow in a wild mess. 

“Was that -”, he swallowed, “- was that alright?” 

“Huh?”, you made dumbly, still blinking blearily at the ceiling. 

“I have never done this before”, he added quietly and your eyes shot to his. 

“Oh”, was your unintelligent reply. 

Nervously, his tongue swept across his lower lip and you went nearly cross-eyed while following the motion. Could he still taste you there? “I just… I really longed to do that.” 

“Well, you’re really fucking good at it, so if you ever wanna do it again…”, you shrugged weakly when a smile widened across his face - sparkling eyes, fangs and all.

God, he was so beautiful. 

“Yes?”, he wondered. 

“Hm-hmm”, you nodded and he pressed his lips to yours then, allowing for you to taste yourself. 

“And I did not hurt you?”, he asked when he pulled back, eyeing the red marks on your wrists where you had subconsciously fought your restraints. 

“I did that to myself, I think, and it doesn’t hurt at all”, you replied easily.

“Are you certain?”, he pressed on, his thumb now sweeping across your waist. 

You shifted in order to look down on your own body, fighting the blush at seeing your own body hair at the apex of your thighs (calm down, you told yourself, this was the fifteenth century, body hair was normal) and noticing the finger-shaped bruises that were already starting to bloom across your waist. 

Oh, yes, supernatural dhampir-strength. 

Fuck, that was hot. 

“My, the Lord of the castle has marked me”, you whispered playfully and bumped the tip of your nose against his, “I guess I am yours now.” 

Alucard smiled wryly and leaned forward to nibble on your bottom lip. “You have been held hostage by the mad Lord of this castle for months now”, he shot back in kind, “I am afraid you never had a choice but to be mine.” 

You decided against arguing with him in lieu of kissing him.     

_________________________________

You were lucky, the next time an intense bout of that pulling-back-to-the-present sensation hit you, you were on your own in the library, searching for a particular book. Sensing it approaching, you took a moment to sit down, clawing with both hands into the armrests of your chair. 

Lucky, except for the fact that once the worst of it was over, blood shot out of your nose. 

“Fuck”, you cursed, cupping your hand beneath your nose. Due to the lack of tissues and long sleeves, you had to gather the edge of your skirt to try and stop the flow. 

About two seconds later, the doors burst open. 

“What happened?”, Alucard asked, searching for you with wide eyes and stepping towards you with long strides. 

“It’s just a nosebleed”, you assured him when he crouched down in front of you and pulled your hand away slightly to assess the situation. “It happens to humans sometimes, no big deal.” You conveniently forgot to mention that you weren’t a person who usually got random nosebleeds. 

“Hm”, he made, not sounding convinced, but the blood had almost completely stopped flowing, so some of the tension left his body. 

“How did you get here so fast?”, you wondered. “Was it the bond?” 

“No”, he shook his head, “I smelled your blood.” 

“Oh.” You wondered briefly whether he had smelt it for the past couple of months when you had gotten your period, but guessed that you didn’t even want to know the answer to that question. “Is… is it bad? To smell my blood?” 

His eyes met yours, and there was an expression in those golden depths that you had never seen before. It was hard to pinpoint it, somewhere between surprise, shame and desire. “No”, he finally replied, swallowing. “The opposite, really.”

‘And the smell of your blood… I have never experienced anything like it. I do not thirst for human blood, not like vampires do, but I… your scent causes my resilience to grow weak and I… I feel as if I am not strong enough to resist.’ 

Those had been his words. Was that not in itself bad? If your blood smelled so good that he wanted it? More than any other human’s blood?

“Would you…”, you stared at your hands, some blood smeared across your fingers, “Would you ever want to -”

“No”, he interrupted you firmly. “I have never drunk human blood and have no desire or need to do it now.” 

“Alright”, you mumbled, biting your lip and using all your might to hide your disappointment from the bond. 

__________________________ 

Alucard still kissed you at night and in the early morning, his hands wandering across your body in that oh-so-gentle way, but it wasn’t enough. 

Nothing would ever be enough. 

About a week after he had put his mouth on you, you were ready to beg. 

The night was quiet. Clouds were hanging heavily over the moon, drenching the room into darkness. Alucard had bound and joined you, hand lazily stroking through your hair as he pressed gentle kisses to your jaw. The both of you were lying on your sides, facing each other.

“Touch me, please”, you begged hoarsely into the quiet. 

Moving the hand from your hair to cup your neck, Alucard dragged his nose upwards across your cheek, his breath fanning heavily across your face. “Where?” 

“Anywhere”, you whispered. “Everywhere.” 

“Are you certain?”, he asked, sweeping his thumb across your pulse calmingly. “I know it is not ideal, like this.” Even without seeing him, you knew that he was looking at your bound hands. The darkness probably did little to hinder his vampiric eyes. 

“I honestly don’t care”, your voice rose in pitch, coming close to whining. “I want you… You can do whatever you like, truly, I just - I need…” You didn’t know what to say. There were no words to express the depth of what you wanted from him. 

His touch. His body. His love. His soul. 

Everything.  

 Alucard released you from your misery by kissing you, his hand - the one that was free, since your head was resting on one of his arms - trailed down your body, briefly caressing your breast and peaked nipple through the shift before trailing lower. 

You twitched at the sensations and in anticipation. 

Alucard pressed out something that sounded like a low curse when his hands reached between your legs and felt how wet you already were, from wanting alone. 

His fingers swept over you cleverly, teasing your clit for a moment before easing a long finger inside of you. Your thighs shook and you couldn’t help but moan, especially at the image of his length replacing that finger. 

Breathing harshly, Alucard pressed his forehead against yours. “Stop, stop thinking that…” His voice sounded broken. 

Had he sensed your fantasy through the bond or had your thoughts simply been too obvious?

You could only whimper in return, rolling your hips against his hand. “More, please…” 

He obliged you by adding first a second finger, then a third, letting you take your pleasure by pumping your hips against him. 

“Please, if you can…”, you swallowed heavily, but couldn’t stop yourself from asking, “More, please.” 

Alucard nodded slowly, removing his fingers from your core. “Carefully, yes? Gently.” 

“Whatever way you want”, you agreed. 

Taking a firm grasp of your thigh, Alucard threw it across his hip and then you felt it pressing against you. 

Him. 

Your breath came in sharp, short gasps. “It’s me, remember, it’s just you and me.”

“I know”, he breathed and for once, he sounded certain as he pressed his lips to yours hungrily. 

And then he was pushing inside, slowly and oh-so-carefully. 

Your eyes rolled into the back of your head. Fuck, you should have known that he would be big, judging from the rest of his body alone, but this still overwhelmed you. Between your missions and the months you had spent here already, it had to have been long over a year since you had last had sex. 

The stretch was burning and yet delicious. Shiver after shiver crawled down your spine and you clenched involuntarily around him the deeper he pressed forward. 

Alucard groaned into your throat, the hand behind your head burying itself inside your hair, holding your head steady as he devoured your lips in a searing kiss. His other hand held your hip in a bruising grip, stopping you from moving against him. 

That was fine by you, really. If he needed to be in control for this, he could be in control. It was enough for you to let him kiss you senseless, taking him into your body with each incredible push forward. 

Finally, he was fully buried inside of you and you were all but ready to drown in this feeling of him, hot and heavy and deep. 

“I can’t…”, his voice sounded broken as he breathed against your lips, “I can’t last long, I -”

“It’s fine.” You moaned loudly when he thrust lightly into you. “Fuck, you feel too good, I wanted you for so long, I…” Jesus, there were tears inside your eyes due to the euphoria, the victory you were feeling. 

“You are perfect”, he whispered while kissing the tears from your cheeks, “My perfect, beautiful girl.” 

You nodded like an idiot while he took to thrusting in earnest now, causing your eyes to fall shut and senseless sounds to tumble from your lips while pleasure shot hotly up and down your spine. 

All too soon it was over, with Alucard pressing a harsh moan into your neck while burying himself inside of you to the hilt. You shuddered at the sensation of him filling you with his warmth. 

It took long minutes for both of your breathing to even out, but Alucard eventually slipped out of you, causing a disappointed whine on your end. 

You wondered, for a brief moment, while he pulled you against his chest, feeling his come seep out of you, whether you should tell him that you couldn’t get pregnant while in the past like this (some magic-science-stuff the mage had once tried to explain to you in confidence. You hadn’t really understood it, but the main information had still come across). You decided against it, though, pushing that conversation off for another day. 

“You are too good to me”, he said into the quiet, ripping you from your thoughts. 

“No, I’m not”, you shot back immediately. “If anything, it’s the other way around.” 

“No, it’s not, and you know it.” 

“Please”, you snorted an unflattering laugh and nuzzled your face into his hair, “you are gorgeous, courteous, rich beyond imagination, kind, attentive, a terrific lover…” 

Alucard huffed a dry laugh. “Liar.” 

“Oh, you are one to talk!”, you replied indignantly. “Calling me perfect and beautiful in one moment, and a snore-monster in the next.” 

That caused him to laugh in earnest. “Yes, that too. My beautiful, little snore-monster.” He said it while pressing kisses to your chin and throat. 

“Shut up”, you demanded, “I’d like to get to the snoring now, I’m tired.” Despite that, you sought out his lips to kiss him deeply. 

“Hm, as my Lady commands.” 

________________________________

The next morning you were tickled awake by Alucard’s breath fanning across your forehead. 

The dhampir was still - or again? - holding you tightly in his arms. His hair was sticking to the side of your face. 

Undeterred, you stretched forward to press your lips against his neck, teasingly nibbling at his throat with your blunt teeth. 

Alucard hummed low in his throat, letting his hands drag over your back soothingly before settling one of them on the back of your neck, holding you in place as he moved to kiss you. 

Your whole body shivered when his tongue met yours, even more so when he rolled you onto your back, his hard length already evident against your hip. 

Huh, vampires apparently got morning wood as well. 

Your eyes flew open from your blissful stupor, though, and your mouth opened in a silent ‘oh’ when his free hand trailed upwards and, with one skillful tug, released your hands from their bindings. 

“Sure?”, you asked him quietly. 

“We’ll see”, he replied hoarsely and swallowed. 

You nodded carefully. “Can I…?” You sat up slowly, stretching your arms, one of your joints popping back into place. Using his moment of silence and your own bout of bravery, you grabbed the bottom of your shift and pulled it over your head, messing your hair up even further than sleep had already done. 

His golden gaze seemed to be everywhere at once and you swore, you could almost feel it like a physical caress. “Don’t look at me like that”, you asked after a few tense minutes, your arms twitching with the urge to cover yourself. 

“You ask the impossible”, Alucard shot back immediately. “You are too beautiful to look anywhere else.” 

Rolling your eyes to hide just how much his compliments did for your self-esteem, you tugged against the collar of his sleep-shirt shyly. “Do you think you could…?” 

He hesitated for a moment, and then it was his turn to nod slowly as he pulled the white cotton from his body. 

You swallowed tightly. Jesus, you certainly weren’t the beautiful one in the room. Knowing full well that he wasn’t completely human, the way his body was built still took your breath away. You had no idea how a person could be so broad and strong and yet lean and elegant at the same time. 

He was gorgeous, even with the scars. Damn, especially with the scars. 

He was more than an intellectual, a scientist and a poet, after all. 

He was also a warrior. The son of Dracula. Saviour of mankind. 

The urge to touch him was almost overwhelming, but you managed to find a shred of restraint, not wanting to overwhelm him so soon. Instead you let your body fall back, opening your thighs invitingly. 

This time, different from last night, it seemed that he wanted to take his time with you. He stroked your hair, kissed your shoulders and whispered across your clavicles. 

He also kissed your breasts, letting his tongue teasingly dance around your hard nipples. One of his hands worked between your legs in the same torturously slow rhythm while you buried your hands in the sheets and moaned sweet nothings at him. 

Eventually, when you couldn’t take it any longer, you let the heel of your foot dig into his lower back, pulling him closer. Thankfully, he got the hint without you having to beg this time. 

Even though you knew full well that you would always beg, if necessary. 

This time, when he slid inside of you, the stretch was less painful, but no less pleasant. Shivers rolled down your spine when he moaned into your mouth at the feeling of being enveloped completely by your tight warmth. 

You couldn’t stop yourself any longer when he started to shallowly thrust inside of you: This angle was much better than last night, allowing him to reach deeper and your toes curled. So, it was probably natural that your hands migrated to his back, holding him closer still. 

The both of you gasped when his torso came flush with yours. There was so much skin-to-skin contact and the bond was open so wide that you had no idea where your body began and his ended. 

Alucard held onto you so tightly as if he might die were you to disappear. Just the thought of the possessive bruises he would leave on you this time caused you to clench down around him. 

But it could never be this simple, could it? 

Once again, the bond was so wide open that you knew at the same moment he felt it - your hand brushing over one of the scars Taka and Sumi had left behind. 

Unlike the last time, the moment wasn’t broken, however. You were so well in sync that your arms raised themselves above your head on their own accord. Within the same second, one of Alucard’s large hands curled itself around both of your wrists, pushing them against the pillow securely. 

He looked at you for a long moment, frozen in his movements, as if to see whether this was still alright with you. He needn’t have worried, though. If you were fine with being tied down, why wouldn’t you be fine with this? 

No, quite the opposite really: There was something about the fact that it wasn’t a piece of cloth holding you in place, but him… The way your wrists fit so neatly between his long fingers… the fact that he was strong enough to hold you down so easily… how he caged you in like this…

There was something so dominant and possessive about it that you truly couldn’t help the loud moan that escaped you. 

For a split second, he seemed surprised, before succumbing to the pleasure himself and starting to thrust in earnest, hitting spots inside of you that you hadn’t even known about. 

When his free hand found your clit, you were absolutely lost. It couldn’t have taken more than seconds. 

Your body seized up so tightly that it almost hurt when you came around him - for a moment you were surprised that he could keep moving at all. 

Alucard followed you not too shortly after, kissing you deeply while the low groan fought its way up his throat. 

I love him, you thought with a sudden clarity while he used the time between his heaving gasps to kiss your face. 

God, how much you loved him. 

___________________________________

Despite the fact that he hadn’t shown any worry about it, even though he had come inside of you twice now, you told him about the no-pregnancy-while-time-travelling thing. 

“Oh”, he made with slight surprise crossing his features while staring at you across your breakfast, “I suppose I should have told you as well.” 

Your brows furrowed. “About what?” 

“Most hybrids are unable to procreate anyway”, he explained quietly. “I cannot know for certain, of course. Though, additionally, pregnancies between vampires and humans are quite rare. I have not heard about another being like me in this century, despite the fact that many vampire lords take human slaves as lovers. It seems that I am a bit of a biological miracle.”

You couldn’t help the grin that was tugging at your lips. “Yeah, you are.”

Rolling his eyes, Alucard tabbed your shin underneath the table with his foot. “I am serious.” 

You shrugged, deciding that you would need some time to wrap your head around all of this later. For now, it was enough to know that you were safe from that. 

It would just make everything a million times more complicated. 

It was just like the issue with realising that you loved him, had loved him for months now, probably. You’d need time to figure out when the right moment was to say it. 

_______________________________

Alucard no longer tied your hands when sleeping. He had learned by now that you had no reason or desire to intentionally hurt him. Additionally, it seemed as if his instincts and fears were placated by the fact that he now knew for certain that he was both fast and strong enough to stop you before anything could ever get worse enough for him to hurt you. 

It was one of those nights during which you were simply lying next to each other when you were awoken by a horrible pain in your… Well, everywhere, really.

You sat up with a hiss, holding your hurting stomach, your head swimming. The moon was sliced in half but still bright enough for you to make out the shapes of the sheets and the man next to you. Shifting, you let your feet drop to the ground, sitting on the edge of the mattress, hoping that the position would help ground you against the sickening nausea. 

“What is it?”, Alucard asked from your side. 

Of course, he’d wake up right the moment you moved. 

“I don’t know…”, you breathed heavily. “I don’t feel so good -” 

And right then and there, to your utter mortification, you threw up between your feet, right in the middle of his bedroom. 

Oh God. 

You could sense his use of magic through the bond and in the next moment, every single candle inside the room was lit. 

Horrified, you stared at your vomit, able to make out the rest of your dinner and… blood. 

“Adrian…”, panic rose inside your voice, giving it an almost shrill note.

He was by your side instantly. “Don’t worry about it”, he was already wiping your face gently with a wet cloth you had no idea from where. “We will -”

You could tell exactly when the smell of blood belatedly hit him underneath the stench of vomit. 

You thought that you had seen him terrified a few times, when recalling everything that had happened to him, but nothing compared to this. 

_____________________________

The feeling of nausea, that pull in your stomach, the fucking pain refused to go away, even an hour later, when you sat curled into a blanket on one of the chairs in Dracula’s study, with Alucard going frantically through some books. 

“You don’t have to -”, you started for the hundredth time. 

“My mother was a doctor”, he interrupted you. “Whatever is ailing you, we will find a solution and -” 

Breathing deeply, you decided that it was time to come clean. You had suppressed the realization of what this was for too long already. “I’m not sick”, you whispered quietly. 

“I appreciate your bravery, but -”

“I know I’m not sick”, your eyes met his over his new book, “For certain.” 

Noticing the gravity in your voice, he lowered the book slowly and returned your serious gaze. “Do you?” He didn’t sound sceptical per se, rather…guarded. 

You nodded sadly and reached your hands out to him, making grabby motions. Immediately, he came to you, interlacing his fingers with yours as he crouched at your feet. 

Fighting tears, you let your head drop against his. “Do you remember when we first met? How I had to leave right before your battle with Dracula?”

“Of course.” 

“I told you that the magic was pulling me back to my time. It starts with a gentle tug in my stomach. I can pull that feeling closer, if necessary, or push it away, if I’m not done with what needs to be done. But…”, you licked your lips nervously, “... if I push it away for too long, it gets more insistent and more uncomfortable, since the magic knows that I don’t really belong here, in this time.” 

A moment of silence followed.

“How long?”, he asked. Too smart for his own good, as always. “How long have you been pushing it away?” 

You shrugged helplessly. “A few months, I don’t know -”

“Months?”, he repeated and then it was his turn to groan as if he were in pain. “You are telling me that you are killing yourself fighting the magic that brought you here itself -”

“I couldn’t leave you”, you stared at him with teary eyes. “I didn’t want to. And I don’t want to now.” The tears started falling and you lowered your head in shame. 

“Shhh”, Alucard made gently and forced you to look into his eyes again with a gentle hand underneath your chin. “You don’t - We don’t have a choice.” 

“No. No”, you shook your head petulantly. “I won’t - I can’t -”

“This magic has the potential to pull your body apart, if need be”, he breathed and you could see that the prospect of being alone in this place once more was paining him as well… but the alternative was worse. “I cannot watch you die like that.” 

A sob broke out of you and Alucard kissed it straight from your lips. 

“I’m sorry”, you hiccuped, “I’m sorry.” It didn’t matter that it wasn’t your fault. It still felt like it. 

“You also told me, when we first met, that I was the one who sent you, in the future”, he forced a weak smile - for your benefit, no doubt. “So, I know that we will see each other again.” 

“It’ll be a long time -”

“It doesn’t matter.” 

Breathing deeply, you felt how the pain got worse once more. Doubling over, you tried to breathe through it harshly. “What do I do?”, you asked desperately. 

“Just let it happen”, his thumbs swept across your cheeks gently. “I will wait for you. Always. No matter how long it takes.” 

You took the moment to kiss him.

But you knew, deep down, that you couldn’t push it off any longer. Maybe the damage was already irreparable. 

Your control over it all loosened for only a second, and the world turned dark and quiet. All of a sudden, you were alone in absolute nothingness. 

All you could think about was that you hadn’t told Alucard that you loved him.

Chapter Text

 Chapter 6

Of Inhuman Patience

The present

You awoke slowly, with a dull pain pressing against your side and bright, white lights stabbing into your eyes. 

Groaning, you closed your eyes and shifted, crisp sheets rustling around you. 

Someone said your name as if it were a question. 

Reluctantly, you re-opened your eyes. 

“Lenny…?”, you mumbled. Your tongue felt as if it were made of cotton. 

Rationally, you knew that your friend looked the same as the last time you had seen him, but… that felt as if it had happened a lifetime ago. 

“Jesus”, he cursed and moved a hand through his hair. “What the hell happened?” 

Your brows furrowed in confusion, not really knowing what he was getting at. 

He sat down inside the chair at the side of your bed, leaning in closer. “You come back from your little adventure to Wallachia, hold a gun to the mage’s head, disappear for weeks and then you just turn back up, unconscious and bleeding internally?”

Oh. 

Oh. 

Taking another look around, you noted that you were lying in a hospital bed, which certainly explained the white aesthetics surrounding you. 

“Am I… okay?”, you asked carefully. 

“You had to get surgery, but it’s fine now. You’ll have a scar.” 

Hm, that explained the pain in your side. 

“Why did you leave like that?”, Lenny pressed on. “Why didn’t you just talk to us?” 

You swallowed tightly. How could you possibly explain? 

Explain the need to return to Alucard after leaving him before the battle with his father? Explain the last months that you had spent inside Dracula’s castle?

Explain the healing that Alucard had had to do? Explain the fact that you had fallen in love and fucked said Alucard - who was Lenny’s lifelong hero-figure? 

“There was stuff I had to do”, you whispered weakly. 

________________________

You were released from the hospital and Lenny drove you home, helping you carry groceries up to your apartment and throwing out the old and mouldy food from the fridge. 

He was still your best friend, but there was an insurmountable wall standing between you. 

You knew that he was angry with you, because you refused to elaborate on your unplanned adventures in the fifteenth century. 

Maybe even because you had betrayed his family and their trust, in a sense. 

Additionally, you weren’t quite… yourself. 

You were walking as if through a fog. Never before had you spent this much time in the past. 

The sounds of the city were too loud. The smells were all wrong. Fuck, even the season was wrong. It wasn’t supposed to be late winter. 

It was supposed to be early autumn. You were supposed to be in a castle. 

With the man you loved. 

You felt lonely, a sort of loneliness that the people around you couldn’t fill. Your apartment didn’t feel like home. 

You wanted to talk to Alucard. To hear his voice, his thoughts. To touch his skin, his hair. 

You wanted simple things. To eat his food, to read his books. To see his handwriting. To sleep next to him at night.  

______________________

Your life as a ghost continued for about two weeks while you took pain medication and eventually returned to the hospital to have your stitches checked and pulled. 

The money from the Belmonts still arrived on your account in time, but Reynard was punishing you with radio silence. Lenny checked in, but he seemed at a loss for what to do with you. 

You for your part were lying around a lot. Sometimes you read, sometimes you slept. 

Honestly, you cried a lot, especially at night. 

This was the life where you belonged, as your body had proven. But it wasn’t the life you wanted. 

Some other, old friends from school and college texted, called and visited you. They all agreed that you seemed strange. 

Weird. 

Far away. 

The tickling on the back of your neck, the feeling of being watched was especially bad during those weeks. 

Maybe you were really going insane with it all. 

Even worse: you knew full well that it had to be worse for Alucard, some six-hundred years away from now. 

You had friends who cared for you, to varying degrees. You had the Belmonts who provided for you. 

He was alone again. In the castle where he had killed his father. In the castle where he had been raped. 

Where he had spent the last months with you. Where he had been happy. 

And you could only cry again. 

___________________________

Reynard didn’t call you personally, but one of his assistants left a voicemail. 

You were being summoned to the estate. 

__________________________

You were sitting in the chair opposite Reynard’s desk. 

The head of the family was standing behind said desk, hands clasped behind his back, shoulders rigid. 

Lenny was leaning somewhere against the wall behind you. It was the first time in years that he didn’t sit beside you to face his father’s wrath. 

“I do not think that it is necessary for me to concoct a speech on how deeply we are disappointed with you”, Reynard finally said. “Such behaviour on your part is unacceptable and won’t be tolerated again.” 

His voice was not only sharp, but bitingly cold. It cut across your cheekbones and caused your teeth to ache. 

“There are very specific rules to your employment here, if you recall. In the last years we have gotten lenient with you, for a job well done and earning our trust. This trust is now revoked. If you are not on a mission, you will check in every day through the agreed upon channels. You will not leave the city without our permission. You will travel absolutely nowhere in time without our leave. All medical appointments and measures that need to be taken will be arranged with our knowledge. Should you not adhere to these conditions, you are cut off immediately.” 

You ground your jaw so much that it hurt. You knew that the stipulations stood in your contract, but had never had to adhere to all of them in the past. A part of you wanted to argue, wanted to remind Reynard that - at this moment in time - you were the only traveller he had at his disposal. Even if he found a new one tomorrow, that one would have to be checked, prepared and trained. 

He needed you. 

On the other hand, you knew that if it came to a power struggle between the both of you, he had the patience and means to bleed you out before you got what you wanted. 

You depended on the apartment provided by his family, on his money and all that. 

Also, Lenny was still your friend and you believed in the overall cause. There was an emotional connection as well. 

And the Belmonts had the mage. The mage who sent you back in time. 

Who could send you back to him. 

“I understand”, you declared loud, clear and reluctantly. 

“Good”, Reynard unclasped his hands. “Then you might recall that there is still a mission for you to finish. In France. After that, we will see how we will continue with you.”

___________________________

If Lenny’s and Reynard’s reaction to your going rogue had been worse than expected, the mage seemed to not be bothered by any of it at all. 

If anything, he seemed amused and… intrigued. 

“Did you find what you needed to find?”, he wondered when he joined you inside the room where the both of you always met. 

Lenny had helped you prepare, as always, straightening your waistcoat and giving you your hat. It warmed you, a little, to know that you hadn’t completely lost him, even if things were strained for now. 

Right at this moment, your friend shot you a confused look. 

You could only shrug. “Yes, I… I suppose so.” 

“Good”, there was a mirthful twinkle in the mage’s eyes. Not for the first time, you wondered just how much he could sense through the magic that surrounded everything. 

Just how much he knew. 

“Let’s proceed then, shall we?”

_______________________

1793

Even Paris didn’t seem the same. 

Over two-hundred years from where your body belonged. Over three-hundred years from where you wanted to be. 

The bond didn’t feel the same as well. You knew that Alucard was here, of course you knew. But the bond was different from the fifteenth century. 

You could feel that it was older. It weighed on your shoulders more heavily, somehow. As if it had grown with age, even though not a lot of time had passed for you. You could also tell that it was suppressed. Not as much as it had been when you had returned to Alucard after Dracula’s death, but you were aware that you couldn’t feel everything there was to this bond. 

Alucard was hiding things from you. But he still left enough for you to know that the bond was there, that he was there.

It was enough for you to find him. 

______________________

You caught up to them at some sort of tailor’s shop. 

The house was small and modest, but still looked nice and emanated a sense of safety. 

Which could also have something to do with the dhampir that was loitering around outside, holding his face into the swiftly approaching sunrise. 

You hadn’t known how you would react to seeing him again, hadn’t really thought much about it beforehand… which could explain why you were so surprised by your own reaction.

This wasn’t the same Alucard you had left behind in Wallachia, after all. 

It wasn’t only that he looked different: his clothes darker, different in shape due to the change in time and style. His skin paler, his hair whiter, causing his eyes to glow even more intensely in their golden colour. 

He carried himself differently, giving off a different… vibe. Definitely older but also, somehow… less human. 

This wasn’t the man who had kissed your face and stroked your hair a few short weeks ago. Who had read to you and taught you and held you and made love to you. 

This was the man who had stared at you without explaining why he was reacting to you so strangely. The man who had told you that you were friends sometimes. Who had sent you back to Wallachia and the fifteenth century without a single. Fucking. Warning.  

Not telling you that you’d end up in a time before Dracula’s defeat.

Not telling you that you’d return to find that unimaginably terrible things had happened to him. That he’d almost kill you by throwing you out. 

That he’d grow to trust you and you to trust him in return. 

Not a single word on what the both of you would become to each other. 

With those realisations came a sudden anger that you hadn’t been prepared for. 

Alucard saw you at the end of the street and the gold inside his eyes glowed with a certain, strange kind of fondness. 

“You fucking bastard!”, you yelled, breaking out into a light jog only to slam into him, shoving hardly against his chest. 

The fact that he did not seem surprised by your outburst at all only caused your anger to grow. “Would a god damn warning have been too much, huh?”, another punch against his shoulder, and you meant it. “That I would have to go back twice? That things would most certainly not go as planned, both times!”

The dhampir caught your flailing wrists easily, his lips twitching with a smile. “I did not want to spoil the adventures to come for you”, he replied dryly. 

You gaped at him. 

Spoil. 

Spoil?!

You glowered at him.

Why wasn’t he angry?, you wondered. It had been three-hundred years since he had seen you. 

You had helped him, healed him, held him, kissed him and loved him so long ago, only to leave as abruptly as you did, with the distant promise that you’d see each other again… only for it to be three-hundred years until then. 

Had all those years diminished the memory so much? Were you nothing more than a fond past to him? Not worth an extreme reaction or emotion? Centuries of the life he had lived in-between sat heavily between the both of you and suddenly, you didn’t know how to breathe anymore. 

For you it had been three weeks. For him three centuries. 

Why wasn’t he mad? Why didn’t he - 

“Uhhhh, Alucard…?”, Richter's voice came from inside the shop and the young Belmont yanked the door open. “Oh, you’re back”, he blinked at you in surprise, his eyes shifting to where Alucard was still holding your wrists. He was immediately distracted again by what was going on inside the shop, though. 

Namely, by the levitating Annette. 

“What the heck?”, you breathed. 

“Ah, yes”, Alucard replied simply. “She’s been doing that for hours.” 

______________________________

Richter and Alucard filled you in on what had happened in the days you had missed. 

Erzsebet was now in the possession of both of Sekhmet’s souls. 

Alucard had garnered the support of the revolutionaries. 

Richter and Annette had figured that there might be a third soul in the spirit world. 

Which Annette was currently searching, leaving her body in this world behind to… levitate, apparently. 

While you had a rough time wrapping your head around all of this, Richter seemed worse for wear. Pacing around his friend’s body, his hands flitting around her as if he didn’t know where to touch. Whispering stuff to her and pacing again. 

Meanwhile, you were lost in your own thoughts, biting your nails and trying to pointedly not look at Alucard - and failing miserably. 

The immortal seemed incredibly amused by the both of you and Richter. 

Leaning against one of the wooden tables casually, his trusted sword by his side as always, he finally took pity on the Belmont and simply said: “You should tell her.”

Richter stopped in his tracks, throwing a hesitant look at Alucard. “Tell her what?”

The dhampir lowered his eyes with the hint of a smile playing around his features. “I’m pretty sure she loves you too.”

“Oh”, Richter cleared his throat awkwardly and even you blushed slightly when he cast you a furtive glance before returning his attention to Alucard. “Did she… say something?”

This caused Alucard to smile in earnest now. “Yes. Yes, she confessed it when we were braiding each other’s hair and talking about you.” For added effect, he twirled a strand of his light hair easily around one of his fingers. 

You couldn’t help but hide your own grin behind your hand. No matter how angry and confused you were right now, it was nice to see some of the easy banter which you had also witnessed between him and Trevor return. 

Immortality did not seem to change everything, after all. 

“Funny”, Richter huffed dryly, his shoulders sagging. 

Alucard chuckled. “She laughs at your jokes”, he continued. “She debates your ideas. She understands what you have lost.”

Oh God, was he looking at you now? Stubbornly, you stared at your boots. 

“You should tell her. Preferably before you get old.” 

“What are the chances we’ll live that long?”, Richter wondered. After a moment of hesitance, he added: “You must have been in love… Over all that time.” 

Jesus. Without you having any power over it, your eyes were drawn to those golden ones. 

He was staring right back at you. “Countless times.” 

Something inside your stomach clenched, painfully tightly. 

“Show her who you are beyond the Belmont bravado”, Alucard told Richter. “You said you’d be here. Make her feel it’s true.” And once more, you could have sworn that his gaze swept over you like a physical caress. “That she can always come back to you.” 

Tense silence followed and you wanted to vomit. 

Why would he say that, you wondered. After it had taken you so long to come back. 

Too long, as always. The thought alone hurt. 

Additionally, there was a different kind of pain inside of you. A pain that felt awfully close to… jealousy. 

‘Countless times’, he had said, and you did not want to think about that. 

About what other people had consoled him in the years that followed your absence. People who had loved him better, been better in bed… had not taken too long to tell him how they felt. 

You wanted to die on the spot. Especially when Alucard kept looking at you. 

Richter had gone back to staring at Annette, looking miserable as well. As if there were things he wanted to tell her, but didn’t want to say them in front of you and Alucard. 

“Yeah, um”, you cleared your throat awkwardly, deciding to be brave for once. “You do that, Richter, the showing and stuff, meanwhile -”, you looked pointedly at Alucard, “-I need to talk to you.”      

Nodding, the dhampir followed you into one of the backrooms, leaving Richter to watch over Annette.

___________________________

Okay, you hadn’t thought this through. 

This room was tiny. Stacked from floor to ceiling with bolts of fabric. There wasn’t an inch of wall to see. The only light that fell inside stemmed from a tiny window, drenching the room into dim, orangey pink light from the rising sun. 

Trying to gain as much space between the both of you as possible, you went to the very back, perching your ass against a small mountain of scrap fabric, while Alucard leaned against the closed door. 

And he just. Kept. Staring. Casual, mildly amused staring. 

“What?”, you asked, nerves fried. 

He merely shrugged. “You wished to talk.” 

Sighing deeply, you tried to find a shrapnel of calm and reason. “Okay, listen, Adrian -”

A pleased hum left him at the sound of his name, almost like a purr, and his stature visibly relaxed.

Immediately, you remembered calling him ‘Alucard’ here in Paris - for him it had only been a few days, for you it had been months - and the pained sound he had made back then. 

He had asked you not to call him Alucard, in Wallachia, especially not you… but you hadn’t known that the last time you were here. 

That familiar blush returned to your face. “I’m sorry, okay?”, you pressed on bravely, “That it took so long for us to see each other again.” 

At that, his brows furrowed. “I had gathered it wouldn’t have been so long for you, since you just returned from Wallachia, judging from your reaction outside this shop.”

“Well, yeah, for me it has only been three weeks, but for you it was over three-hundred years”, you reminded him. 

His eyebrows shot up and an amused expression returned to his face. Very quietly, and very slowly, he said your name. 

Your hands grew clammy and you started to stumble over your thoughts at the familiarity. Like this, just the two of you in this tiny, cosy room, it seemed like not so much had changed after all. “Listen, I know that -”

“We have seen each other in these past three-hundred years”, he interrupted you, gently but firmly. “The places vary, just like the circumstances, but it is something that happens. I am aware that those instances have not happened for you yet, but I had assumed you would get to that conclusion by yourself.”

Your wild thoughts scurried to a halt. “I - what?” 

“Well, did you truly believe that this would be the last mission Reynard Belmont will ever send you on?”

“No, but I…”, the sentence died in your mouth. What had you thought, really? Alucard was immortal, it wasn’t that much of an abstract thought that he could just meet you… in-between. 

“Those meetings are out of order, naturally, at least for you, in my perception”, he continued breezily, as if this was nothing. “Things happen sooner for me and later for you, or the other way around. Often, you are different and yet the same, and I always have the pleasure to get to know those new versions of you again.” He smiled, as if thinking of a particularly fond memory. 

Oh, okay… your head was swimming at this sudden turn of events. 

“I did not tell you about what was to happen in Wallachia, to make that experience as natural for you as it could be. Apart from that short instance in Paris a few days ago, our first meetings were - almost - the first for both of us. I wanted it to remain that way.” 

Which made sense, somehow. 

“But, if you wish it, I can tell you a little about the life I have lived in these past centuries, of the moments we have shared and the travels I have undertaken in between -”

“No”, you interrupted him suddenly, panic rising in your throat. You didn’t want to know how he had moved on from you, from your time in Wallachia, so much so that you were only friends sometimes. 

So much so that he had fallen in love with others… 

Noticing his renewed confusion, you tried to swallow the lump inside your throat. “I don’t - I don’t need to know about those other people.”

His confusion was growing, you could literally see it. “What other people?”

“You know, the countless people that you - that you fell…” in love with. 

You couldn’t say it. 

The surprise on his face was so genuine that he looked so human for a moment. Then he sighed deeply, letting his head hang slightly in frustration. 

And in the next moment you could feel it: how he stopped suppressing the bond, letting it all wash over you. 

How relieved he was that you were here, with him, once more. That now you knew what you had been to him, once, during that time in Wallachia. 

What you still were to him. How much he had missed you since the last time he had seen you. 

How much he yearned for you, how much restraint it took for him not to touch you, knowing full well that you weren’t there yet. 

The depth of his feelings, of the connection the both of you shared, it was overwhelming. So much so that it hit you like a brick wall. 

You stumbled slightly at the weight of it all. 

Alucard stepped forward, steadying you with his hands on your arms. At the same time, his gaze softened in a way that made your stomach clench with memories, anticipation and that particular kind of magic. “Oh, my little traveller”, he breathed. 

At last, you understood - the final puzzle piece clicking into place. 

This wasn’t the first time he had seen you since the 15th century, he had said. 

Countless times, he had said. Alucard had been in love countless times over the centuries. 

With all those versions of you that he met. 

With you. 

No matter where or when or how, Alucard had always and only ever been in love with you. 

“How -”, you licked your lips, your throat feeling too dry, “How long has it been since you last saw me? I mean, before Paris?”

Alucard sighed, one of his hands rising to caress your cheek with the back of his fingers. “Twenty-two years.”

Twen - 

Holy shit. 

Sure, you had thought three centuries to be a long-ass time, but then you had also thought that he had moved on in some shape or form, loving other people, touching other people, living his life. 

Knowing what you knew now - feeling what you could through the bond… he never moved on. He didn’t touch anyone else. All this time spent waiting, yearning for another few days, for some stolen moments in which he had you back… How could he bear it? Where did that patience come from?

“I admit that it was a long time, but… not the longest I have ever waited for you.” 

Somehow, that just made it worse. 

You reeled back, evading his touch on your face. “But… isn’t that terrible? To just… be left behind and wait and -”

“No”, he shook his head vehemently and took a hold of your face with both hands now, gentle yet firm, stopping you from moving away, “On the contrary. You have no idea how tiresome it is to grow fond of new humans only to watch them all die. But you… I know that you will always return to me. It might take longer sometimes than others, but… at least I have hope.”

“But -”

“You don’t understand”, he chuckled lowly, fingers continuing to caress your face as if you were the most precious thing in this world, “And how could you, with your mortal mind? You will have to believe my word when I say it. The vision of you is what sustains me in the lonely vastness of this immortal life. I would choose centuries of solitude for a few stolen moments in your presence. To see your beautiful face or hear your voice. Every second I am granted to touch you is a pleasure unknown to mankind.”

Your mouth opened to argue, but no words came out. What could you possibly reply to someone declaring such things? Especially to a simple, ordinary human girl like you. Apart from a few stray genes, there was nothing special about you. 

Yet, somehow, you were everything to this extraordinary man in front of you. 

And, judging from your vegetative state the past three weeks, it was not that hard to believe that he was everything to you as well. No matter what version of him. Or what version of yourself.

No matter the year or the place. 

A sort of acceptance settled it. The confidence that this was right, that this bond had not led you astray, but to where you were supposed to be, from the very beginning. 

You could tell that Alucard sensed your enlightenment through the bond and he took the moment to bend his head down and kiss you. 

You were unprepared - so wholly unprepared - for how he would kiss you. 

This version of Alucard kissed you like a man who had waited to kiss you for over two decades. 

Like a man who had loved you for three hundred years. 

Like a man who was sustained through eternal loneliness by the thought of you. 

There was a tenderness and a hunger in the kiss that you could barely comprehend. Additionally, this version of him knew you - knew your body - better than you did yourself, probably. 

He knew exactly how to press his fingers to the back of your neck, how to slide his lips against yours. 

How to move his tongue inside your mouth and to mould his body to your own in order to make your toes curl. 

Pinning you against the stack of fabric, he enveloped you in his arms securely, spreading his hands across your back to allow for you to arch backwards, pressing his lips to your jaw and throat. 

“I always knew the day would come when you would see me for the first time”, he confessed heatedly against the side of your neck, kissing the tender skin there passionately, “ever since the moment you told me that I had sent you to Wallachia myself. Yet, I was wholly unprepared for the moment I looked into your eyes and saw that you did not know me. It was maddening, not to speak to you in a familiar manner, not to touch you -”

You shuddered, angling your head in order to catch his lips in another searing kiss. 

This man wanted you so much that it caused a bond between the both of you that withstood the laws of time and space itself. How was a girl not supposed to melt? 

His mouth was devouring yours - the bond and his being surrounding you were so all-consuming that you managed to forget everything around you for a moment, burying your hands in his hair and pulling him closer. 

You wanted him to continue, to devour more than just your lips, to take your body and soul and - 

Alucard moaned and a low chuckle followed when he broke the kiss, pressing his forehead to yours. You whined high in your throat, not wanting for this to end. 

“As much as I enjoy your fervour”, the dhampir in front of you breathed and pressed you even closer against his broad frame, “I am afraid that this is neither the time nor the place.” 

You swallowed, blinking rapidly to clear your head and remember why you were here in the first place. 

Erzsebet, your mission, the queen…

“Yeah, I should probably…”, you started, thinking about Temple, where Marie Antoinette was still imprisoned and probably wooed by some vampire, but your voice died down as your heartbeat settled. 

The situation sank in slowly. The suffering of the last three weeks diminished by what had just been said. You hadn’t lost Alucard by leaving three-hundred years ago. You were bound together eternally, by the bond and so much more than that. 

You hadn’t lost him. You would never lose him. He was willing to wait for you for decades - centuries. 

The relief was so heavy that tears gathered in your eyes and you pressed your face against his chest to hide them. 

“Shhh…”, the dhampir made soothingly, yet his voice seemed tight as he smoothed his hands over your hair. “Tears?”, he asked then, sounding almost uncertain.  

 Please, don’t cry, you remembered him saying once. It’s like a knife to my heart.

You shook your head against the fabric of his expensive coat. “It’s not… I just can’t believe how lucky I am”, you mumbled. 

“There is a vengeful vampire goddess to kill while you will have to face your own vampiric opponent”, Alucard pointed out dryly, hiding behind the situation at hand. “Perhaps you should re-assess the luck of your situation.” 

“You know what I mean”, you insisted, gathering your courage to look up at him with still wet eyes. “I was so scared to lose you when I left Wallachia…” 

His lips pressed together tightly for a moment as he swiped the tear stains from your face gently. “You could never lose me. The earth itself would sooner have to turn to dust and ashes.” 

A wavery smile appeared on your face. “This. This is exactly what I am talking about.” Your smile widened at his puzzled expression. “How many women dream of men just telling them that they look beautiful and here you are, throwing out lines like that. How did I get so lucky?” 

Alucard hummed lowly. “Words always seem insufficient in your presence. They can never quite express the severity of what I feel for you. But it is nice to know that you appreciate the effort.” 

Snorting, you pushed against his shoulder weakly. “Three hundred years and you are still a smug bastard.” 

“Some things never change, I suppose”, it was his turn to smile and he leaned back in for one more soft, mind-numbingly sweet kiss. 

“I have to go”, you sighed deeply afterwards. “I need to check out Temple, find a way inside and find out what the vampires want with the queen.” 

“You should wait for us”, Alucard pointed out, his hands tightening around your face subconsciously. “It might be dangerous.” 

You shook your head slightly. “If Annette doesn’t find a way to contact Sekhmet’s soul, it might all be for nothing anyway. If you are attacked here, Richter might not be able to hold this shop on his own. Especially not in the state of mind he’s in.” You knew all too well how stupid love could make you. 

“Even more reason to wait. Once Erzsebet is stopped -” 

“It might be too late”, you swallowed, staring back into his eyes. You had no more desire to stand face to face with a vampire than he had for you to do so. But you had wasted several days already since first coming here, and couldn’t risk it being too late. 

Reynard was right about this: If Marie Antoinette was turned, history itself would change, possibly wiping out your own existence. Even Alucard’s love couldn’t bring you back then. 

The expression on his face was very severe, but you could sense him yielding, if only slightly. “Make sure to keep the bond open and close to your mind”, he stated firmly. “If the danger turns too great, I will sense it and come.” 

Your brows rose slightly. “Even in the middle of your own fight? If Richter and Annette need you?”

“I will come”, was all he said, expression not changing. 

You swallowed, not brave enough to examine the meaning of that just yet. “Alright.” 

Alucard brought your face closer with his hands. “Be careful, my love”, he whispered hoarsely while pressing his lips to your forehead. 

Your face flushed a deep red at the endearment, but you weren’t quite willing to examine that yet either. 

________________________________________

It took you almost all day to find a way inside Temple without being detected by the guards. Your trusted gun and a dagger were by your side, strapped to your belt beneath your coat, but you had no intention of shedding anyone’s blood. 

It took you even longer to find your way through Temple without being seen. For a prison, the place was still pretty spacious and next to the guards, there were also  servants streaming about. Imprisonment for the royal family was obviously still very different from the life of commoners. 

Following some servants about, you eventually found your way to the queen’s quarters. 

So concentrated were you on not being seen by any of them, that you basically barged in, coming face to face with the woman sitting at a small desk inside the room. 

She seemed oddly calm as she blinked back at you, wearing a plain dress and a white cap over her voluminously styled hair. 

You had seen paintings of Marie Antoinette, watched movies and documentaries… but she looked nothing like you had expected. Not that you had thought she might look like Kirsten Dunst but… she looked older than her thirty-eight years. Three years of living in hiding, on the run or in varying prisons had obviously taken their toll. 

She didn’t look like a queen either. She looked like a woman living in desperation, having lost her husband, two children… terrified to lose any more children, any more of the life she had once lived. 

“Are you one of them?”, she asked, which might explain her strangely calm exterior. 

She was wondering whether you were a vampire as well. Finding out about that had probably rocked her world enough to not be shocked by some woman dressed in men’s clothing barging into her room. 

“No”, you shook your head and removed your hat to show at least some respect. “The opposite, really. I am someone who is trying to stop them.” 

“Ah”, she made, her eyes falling to the desk in front of her. 

To the glass filled with blood. 

Of course, you thought. Biting a human was only a part of it. 

Maybe she had already been bitten, who knew. But drinking a vampire’s blood was what sealed the deal. 

“So, you are here to stop me as well?”, she wondered. 

Your fingers twitched at your sides, unsure of how to proceed. She was closer to the blood than you were. If she were to reach forward and get even a sip down her throat, it would be enough. 

You should have gotten here days ago. The fact that the vampires seemingly gave her a choice to drink the blood was already more lucky than you should have gotten. 

The queen’s hand twitched further towards the glass. 

“You would turn your face away from God?”, you asked quickly. Religion was often a way to reach people’s hearts and minds in the past. “He would not appreciate the demon you would become.” 

She laughed humourlessly. “God? What has God done for me in the last years? He has taken my eldest son, my husband… my life. I need to think of the children I have left. Can you promise their safety? Mine? Are you from the times to come, like them?”

Oh, so the vampires who had come had told her. Well…

“I am”, you admitted quietly. 

“They said that I am to die”, her voice shook slightly, even though her posture remained rigid… brave. You could admire that about her.  “That my - my little boy will be tortured and die in this horrible place as well. Can you promise me differently? This way -”, she pointed towards the blood, “- I can take a hold of my own fate. I can save myself and my children.” 

The sun was starting to set through the large windows behind you, setting the room in gloomy, grey light. 

Nightfall was swiftly approaching and with it, a sense of urgency. Darkness meant that vampires might come out to make certain their plans were taking root. 

And yet, you didn’t know what to say. You could not kill the queen to stop the vampires’ plans, that would change history as well (never mind that you didn’t want to do that). 

But what were your other options? To lie? 

To tell her that all would be well? She would die, a few short months from now. Her child would be tortured and die. 

She would be remembered in the most horrible of ways, for centuries. The blood was indeed a way to change her path. 

And here you were, trying to stop her from it. 

“You cannot”, she decided with grim satisfaction, reaching for the glass. 

“Wait!”, you called and in the same moment, the moon behind the windows turned red. A gruesome screech could be heard, the battle cry of a monster. 

Marie Antoinette shot to her feet, staring at the window with wide eyes. Night creatures were filing through the streets below, their sounds utterly inhuman as they marched. 

“Is this what you want for your children instead?”, you asked, voice tense. “If the vampires win, this darkness will remain. Your son and daughter will never see the sun again. Even worse, these creatures have no respect for human lives”, you pointed towards the window. “In order to save them, you would not only have to sell your own soul, but theirs to eternal damnation as well. And for what? For never-ending, sunless darkness? For a world where blood-thirsty vampires and monsters reign? Is that what you want?” 

The queen turned back to you, her eyes wide and terrified. You could see it then, the shadow of a girl who had always been afraid, overwhelmed by her position and the gravity of the choices she had had to make. If she had been born a farmer’s daughter, or maybe even that of some lowly lord, she might have been happy. She might have been enough for that, but alas, she had been born to be a queen. 

And failed. 

“Is this the world you want for your children?”, you wondered, still pointing at the blood-red darkness and the monsters below. 

The woman in front of you trembled. “Will they be safe?”, she asked you. “Will my children be safe?” 

No, you thought bitterly. Her son would die, his heart cut out of his little body and shipped across the world. Her daughter would die alone, having fought the rest of her life for a doomed monarchy, remaining childless. 

“Yes”, you lied, guilt sitting heavily inside your stomach, draping itself across your shoulders like a wet blanket. 

With a desperate cry, the queen lunged forward, knocking the glass across the table. The christal cracked without shattering, and the blood splashed across the wood and onto the carpet, thick and almost black in the sparse light, filling the air with a metallic scent. 

In seemingly the very same moment, the door was pushed open, the glowing eyes of a vampire staring at the scene. 

You stepped forward, yanking on the queen’s arm to pull her back, shielding her body with yours. If they killed her now, all would still be lost. 

Your other hand fell to your side, yanking your pistol out. 

“You”, the vampire spat as he saw you, hissing with his fangs on display. 

Your brows furrowed in confusion. You didn’t recognize him, but then again, chances were high that he was a traveller as well. Maybe he had seen you before, in an instance that hadn’t happened to you yet. “He isn’t here to save you now.” 

Before you could understand what that meant, he was crashing forward with another hiss. 

On instinct, your arm rose and you fired your single shot. The silver bullet cut through his skull, causing his body to be yanked backwards. Immediately, his skin turned ashen as his eyes lost its unnatural glow. The corpse fell to the floor. 

The queen screamed. 

Two more vampires were filing in. 

Fuck. Panic was rising in your throat. You had never stood against more than one vampire at once. Fear pulsed through your body and an echo answered. 

Not your own fear, but someone else’s. 

Alucard. 

He had felt your terrified panic. He knew. 

Now, all you could do was hold them off and hope that he was fast enough. 

“No time to re-load now”, one of the vampires - a woman - hissed as she circled you. Her companion, another man, chuckled lowly as he lifted the discarded glass and bit his own wrist, letting new blood fill the christal. 

Marie Antoinette withdrew further into the room, as if the vampires might forget about her if she just hid behind the bed. 

The female vampire laughed and drew forward as you yanked your dagger free. You were no good in hand-to-hand combat, but it was still better than an unloaded pistol. 

She grabbed for you and you slashed at her arm, the pure silver burning through her skin. The woman cried out and punched you hard in the temple. You tumbled backwards, the dagger falling from your hand uselessly as she advanced. Your head felt dizzy from the impact and you could feel something warm and wet trickling down the side of your face. 

The blow from her fist had split your brow, causing you to bleed. 

She laughed again when she had you by the lapels of your coat and slammed your back into the wall, knocking the air from your lungs. Leaning forward, she licked across your cheek and hummed in pleasure at the taste of your blood. 

You reeled back in disgust, your hands finding purchase on her clothes. 

It wasn’t the warmth of the bond that filled you this time, not the love or passion you felt for Alucard… 

No, it was the white-hot anger of this entire fucked-up situation, of Reynard forcing you from one dangerous mission to another, of the weight of saving this stupid world time and time again, of being separated and re-united with Alucard constantly, without having any say about your own fate - it was all of this that caused your fingertips to ignite suddenly and set the clueless vampire on fire. 

She screamed and you refused to let go of her, holding on to her cloak and giving more strength to the fire, just like Alucard had taught you, centuries ago. 

You let go of her when she stopped moving, the fire dying out instantly as her body lost contact with yours. She fell to the ground like a sack of potatoes, her hair burned off, her face beyond recognition.

The last vampire stared at her for one incredulous moment, the glass in his out-stretched hand to the queen, who was cowering in the corner of the room. 

With an annoyed sound, he let the glass fall once more and moved towards you. You could tell by his movements alone that he was older, more experienced. Silly magic tricks would do little against him. 

He lunged and you flinched. 

A flash of red, a streak of silver and his head fell from his body. 

The queen was apparently beyond screaming and simply fainted. 

To be fair, you felt close to fainting as well as you stared back at Alucard, who was at your side in two long strides and caught you when your knees buckled. His hands were free, since his sword was hovering beside him. 

“Always getting into trouble”, he mumbled quietly as you pressed your face against his chest, but his voice sounded a little brittle, even to you. 

“We need to get her out of here”, you whispered weakly. “In case that more will come.” 

“I doubt that Erzsebet knows about this”, he replied. “It’s more likely that this was the sole plan of the travellers. What use could the messiah have for France’s de-throned queen?”

“Still”, you insisted. 

Alucard helped you to carry the unconscious queen to some servant’s quarters and leave her there. That would have to be enough for now, there were more pressing matters. 

He yanked you through Temple by your arm until you reached a dark part in some hallway where he pushed you into an alcove, assessing your face in the dark. 

“I’ll live”, you assured him, but he didn’t seem amused at all as he wiped your blood away with his gloved fingers. 

“You should have waited”, he argued darkly. 

“I was almost too late as it is”, you shot back and then swallowed tightly, as you remembered what you had done. “I lied to her”, you breathed, “I knew that her life would end in ruins, that of her children as well, and I lied anyway. Becoming a vampire might have saved her.” 

Even in the dark, you could see his face soften. “And I convinced the revolutionaries to join this fight. Many have died already. Had they fled the city, they might have been safe. Sometimes, we have to become our own monsters, to stop the worse ones.” 

You nodded slowly, fisting your hands into his coat, remembering through his words that there was more at stake than your little mission. That there was a bigger fight raging on. “How is it going, anyway?”, you asked, your voice small. 

Alucard shrugged. “Sekhmet’s remaining soul has taken possession of Annette’s body. Richter is worried that the possession might kill her and, quite frankly, so am I. Erzsebet’s monsters tore through the revolutionary army and Erzsebet herself seems stronger than ever. I trust Richter to handle it for now, but not for long. Besides, it is Drolta I am worried about… Oh, and Mizrak was injured. Olrox has taken his body and left.”

Your brows furrowed in confusion, not knowing what to make of the last names. “Who?” 

Alucard chuckled wryly, despite the seriousness of the situation. 

“Is there anything I can do?”, you wondered, feeling useless, now that your mission seemed to be over. 

“Yes”, the dhampir in front of you nodded slowly, “there is.” He pulled you closer then, holding your head in his hands and breathing in the smell of your hair. “Concentrate on me, on the bond. Can you feel the magic?” 

“Yes”, you nodded confidently. It was even easier now than it had in Wallachia. It was there, even easier to grasp when he was holding you like this, pouring all of himself into you. 

“Good. Try to grasp it and use it to go back home.” 

“What?”, you reeled back, “Right now? But…” But he had waited twenty-two years to see you again. All of it just to send you away again so soon? 

“I know”, he breathed, not needing you to say it. “But I cannot fight for these humans if I am concerned for you.” 

You swallowed thickly. I will come, he had said, even if Richter and the others needed him, and here he was. A trembling breath escaped you and you kissed him. 

You couldn’t help yourself, really. 

Immediately, his hands cradled your face tightly, kissing you back as if he knew that it would be years before he got to see you again. 

This was a kiss that had to send a soldier off to battle and you gave it your all, rising onto the tips of your toes, winding your arms around his neck and pulling him impossibly closer as you tried to put all of your love and desperation and want into this single moment. 

Alucard moaned lowly and he tore himself away from the kiss. “You are fighting with unfair weapons, my little vixen.” 

You blinked, almost feeling ashamed. Almost. He hadn’t moved away, still so close that you could barely make out his features as his nose brushed yours. “I will leave, I promise…”, you sighed heavily. “... since there is nothing else I can do, apparently.” 

Alucard hesitated. 

You stared back at him. “What? What can I do to help?”

His golden eyes lowered for a moment, staring at your chin instead of your eyes. “You have just returned from Wallachia”, he stated the obvious. 

“I have.” 

“So you have never…”, he shook his head, “I cannot ask this of you.” 

Your brows furrowed. “Ask what? You can ask me anything”, you stole his line from all those library-sessions in Dracula’s castle. 

He sighed deeply, screwing his eyes shut, as if to weigh his options. “Fighting Erzsebet, Drolta and Sekhmet herself might demand a strength neither I nor Richter possess”, he admitted quietly. 

Your hands started to shake behind his neck. Had he been worried about this all this time? And joined the fight anyway? 

Jesus, Lenny was right. Alucard really was the kind of hero humans couldn’t imagine. 

Alucard inhaled a deep breath. “It is the human blood that grants vampires most of their strength”, he whispered. 

You stared at him, for a moment not quite understanding what he wanted to say. Then, you blinked in surprise. “But… but you said …”      

I have never drunk human blood and have no desire or need to do it now, he had said in Wallachia. 

Although… three hundred years was a long time, and you had already realised that he seemed more vampiric than human in this time. It wasn’t that much of a stretch to imagine that he had tried drinking human blood since then. 

“Would it help, if you drank human blood?”, you asked, mind focusing on what was really important. 

“It would make me stronger”, he admitted. “But if you do not want to …” 

You pressed your lips into a thin line. “Of course, I want to, if it somehow helps to aid you and keep you safer…”, your voice shook slightly. “Besides, if it wasn’t my blood, you could simply…”, well, he could drink from anyone else, really. 

“I have never taken blood from an unwilling person”, he argued back, sounding almost affronted when he guessed your thoughts. “I have never drunk anyone’s blood except yours.” 

You blinked again, almost dumbfounded. 

Of course, of course he hadn’t. It was probably an intimate act, naturally, the man who waited decades just to touch, just to kiss the one person he had ever loved, would also refuse to drink anyone else’s blood as well. 

You were starting to get a hang of the commitment he felt towards you, and the more you understood, the more exciting and yet terrifying it was in its intensity. 

“I’m willing”, you told him honestly, deciding to leave all other revelations to be examined later. “Believe me, I am.”  

He nodded slowly, hearing the honesty in your voice and feeling it through the bond. Then, he kissed you again, more softly this time. The movement of his lips against yours was slow, sensual, causing you to almost forget where you were and what you were doing. 

Which was probably the point. His lips left yours when you were a trembling mess, trailing across your cheekbone and jaw, littering kisses across the skin there. 

Dragging lower, until he reached the side of your neck. 

Your entire body was trembling in anticipation, but all he did was press a single kiss above your pulse point. “Don’t be afraid”, he breathed. 

“I am not”, you replied, and despite the crack in your voice, you meant it. 

You knew that he would never do anything to hurt you. If anything, you were more excited than afraid, having wondered about this ever since he had let you see his fangs inside the Belmont hold. 

He hummed in acknowledgement, granting you a few more kisses up and down the expanse of your neck, causing you to almost melt against him … and then he bit down. 

The moment his fangs broke your skin was a strange one. It hurt, hurt like a bitch, but only for a split second. 

In the next moment, you could feel it, the way your blood was flowing from your body into his, staining his lips and filling his mouth. This was more than a physical act, it was another thing that sent the bond ablaze, but in a way completely different from physical touch, kisses or even sex. This was more primal, an ancient, intimate ritual. It was pleasurable in a way you could never have imagined. 

His fangs inside you made you feel like you were his in a sense no other physical act had done. 

Alucard sucked, swallowed and moaned when your blood ran down his throat. Your fingers tightened in the coat across his shoulders painfully tightly as you gasped, your thighs clenching. You could feel his excitement through the bond, the way the act of sharing blood was arousing him, making him feel the same kind of possession over your being you yourself could feel. 

Wetness was seeping out of you, drenching your thighs, and you wanted him to be inside of other places as well, wanted him to take everything from you, as long as it made you feel a part of him like this. 

You gasped and whined when one of his strong thighs slotted itself between yours, pressing right up against your wet centre, pushing your entire body even deeper into the wall. 

The moment of drinking was over way too soon, with Alucard having to physically yank himself away from your neck. You could sense it through the bond, the restraint it cost him not to take too much, in order to leave enough of your own strength for yourself. 

Instead, he grabbed your jaw tightly with his fingers digging into your cheeks, pressing his stained lips to yours in a savage kiss, smearing your blood across your own face. 

And you loved it, taking your pleasure as you moved against his thigh, kissing him back just as wildly and violently. 

The savagery of it all, the animalistic want and lust. 

God, you couldn’t wait to do this naked, with him inside of you. 

Alucard groaned, his fingers on your jaw tightening almost painfully when he physically ripped himself away, only holding you up with an arm around your waist. 

You whined at the loss of pressure between your legs, the loss of his lips against yours. 

“As much as I would love to ravish you against this wall”, Alucard started, his voice sounding lower and darker than you had ever heard it, “there are more pressing matters to attend to.” 

You nodded slowly, looking at him and -

And blinking in surprise as you saw his eyes. There was still a ring of gold around his pupils, but the rest of the white was washed away by the deep red colour of blood.

Sometimes, we have to become our own monsters, to stop the worse ones.

Alucard could be your very own monster whenever he wanted to. Even like this, with blood on his mouth and the truly vampiric eyes of Dracula, he was beautiful. Even like this, he was yours. 

“Go, now”, he pressed, “before you looking at me like this causes us to lose even more control.” 

You nodded dumbly, knowing full well that there was more at stake right now. “Help me?”, you asked, your voice small, and he let his forehead drop to yours. 

Letting magic wash through your bond. 

You found it, the miniscule tug inside your stomach, the call-back to a time where you belonged. In your mind, you took a hold of it with both hands and yanked as hard as you could. 

The world around you turned black and Alucard’s touch disappeared as you were pulled away. 

__________________________________

The present

Since you had been in France for less than twenty-four hours, it had only been a few minutes for Lenny and the mage before you jumped back into the room. 

You stumbled and fell into the next best wall, noticing right in that moment - for some stupid reason - that you had lost your hat again. Reynard would be pissed, as always. 

Lenny was by your side in seconds, helping you to stand up straight with a hand at your arm. “How did it go?”, he asked curiously, “Did you manage to -” Then he got a good look at your face and his eyes widened. “Jesus Christ, what happened?” 

It must have been a terrifying sight to him, the blood on your neck and across your face. 

The medic, who checked you out a few minutes later, confirmed his greatest fear: Yes, you had been bitten by a vampire.

The mage, for his part, had left before you had even entered the examination room somewhere within the mansion, that all-knowing expression ever present on his face. For the tenth time, you wondered what he knew.  

“It is fine”, you assured Lenny who was pacing through the sterile medical room restlessly. You had been inside this room numerous times, but never for this reason. 

“Did it make you drink its blood?”, he asked quickly, stopping his pacing. 

For some reason, your skin crawled at his use of the word it, as if he had personally insulted you with it. Still, you fought for control. “No”, you shot back and then, “I managed to shoot him before he could.” 

Hesitating for a moment, you blinked at your own words. You didn’t know why you lied. 

Maybe the truth would have been too complicated. You hadn’t told him what had happened in Wallachia, how could you possibly tell him now that you had had a vampire - well, damphir, technically - bite you willingly? 

It was probably better this way. Easier.

Still, you felt the familiar stabbing of guilt inside your stomach. This was your best friend and you were creating even more distance by piling up a mountain of lies between the both of you. 

“Seems like everything is fine then”, a detached voice from the door called and Lenny whirled around to look at his father. 

Reynard only regarded you for a short moment. The medic had already put a big plaster across your neck after cleaning the bite and was now assessing whether or not your brow needed stitches. “Taping will suffice”, she decided after cleaning that wound as well and finished her work. 

“Dad, this was a really close call, maybe we should -”, Lenny started, wringing his hands nervously. 

“Remember, son, that this is a business transaction”, the head of the Belmont family stated while glaring at you. “We are evening out the danger by paying for it handsomely.”

You swallowed tightly, feeling the damage you had caused in your relationships more than ever. Reynard had always been detached, but never showed outright contempt for your well-being like this. 

“Besides”, he continued. “Now that this mission went well, we will have to re-assess on how to proceed with this arrangement of ours, after your past actions”, he was talking to you now. “As long as no other urgent mission comes up, you will be put on strict house arrest. No travelling for minor issues, as before. You better get comfortable in the present, for now.” 

Your hands clenched themselves into tight fists at the realisation of what he meant. 

No going into the past for the foreseeable future, despite the fact that you had just risked your life to do everything he had asked of you.  

No going back to Alucard. 

Well, wasn’t this just great?   

Chapter Text

 Chapter 7

Over the Centuries I

The present

There had been times, in the past, when you were younger, when you had hated everything the Belmonts had demanded of you. 

Travelling through time, sometimes several times within one week. Training sessions in-between, workshops on history and working out to build your strength and stamina. It happened quickly then, to exceed a fifty-hour week, since time moved differently while you were in the past.

More than once you had wondered when you would get burned out… simply collapse one day and leave it all behind. 

Never in your life had you imagined that the opposite would one day become your problem: That you would start to hate the endless amounts of free-time stretching out in front of you, wasting time in front of the TV, browsing through shops and spending time with old friends aimlessly. 

Reynard demanded your presence at the mansion once a week. It was a useless meeting, spent with him asking questions of no importance, letting the both of you know full well that he just wanted to make sure that he wouldn’t lose the investment he had made of you. 

Lenny demanded that you joined him for training sessions. Even apart from that, you started to spend more time with him again. 

Things between the both of you almost went back to normal, to the way it had been before… Almost. In truth, nothing would ever be the way it had been before, because you weren’t the person you had been before. 

Before going to Paris twice. Before spending almost a year of your life in Wallachia. Before realising just how deeply the connection between Alucard and yourself went.

Your day to day conversations felt empty and inane, compared to the way he would talk. The subjects inside your books weren’t challenging enough, compared to what you had read inside his library. Even Lenny’s training sessions seemed subpar compared to the demands of learning magic. 

Never had you thought that you could miss one person this much. It was more than just yearning to see his face, to smell his scent, to feel his touch… the bond, you could feel it now - even here, even in the present.

But it felt strangely empty, as if one half of it was missing. 

You felt alone. 

You were alone. 

And there was no sign of Reynard finding the need to make use of you and your unique talents. 

__________________________

The feeling of being watched was still there, still ever-present, just the way it had been before. Sometimes you wondered whether it was your state of mind that made it feel worse…

Maybe the schizophrenic tendencies you had always had were heightened by this strange sort of depression making itself at home inside of you. 

But one day, the feeling felt different, more… tangible, somehow. You were on your way home from another training session with Lenny, face still hurting from laughing so much when he had fallen flat on his ass. 

You were sweaty, your hair a mess, hurling some groceries around in a bag that you had gotten on your way home. 

And there he was, unassumingly standing in the street where you lived, a few paces away from your apartment building. 

The mage. 

You could only blink at him owlishly. Never before had you seen him outside of the Belmont mansion. 

He wasn’t a being that belonged on a regular downtown street. He belonged in dusty rooms, filled with incense and magic. 

“Hello”, he said casually, his hands buried inside a fancy, extravagant coat, proving that he wasn’t quite a normal person. 

“He-hello”, you stuttered, still dumbfounded. 

“Well”, he shrugged after a few tense moments, obviously amused, “Aren’t you going to invite me in?” 

“In?”, you repeated inanely. “Into my house?”

His brows simply rose at your incredulous tone. 

Huh. You guessed if he intended on harming you, he could have simply incinerated you right then and there, in the middle of the street, and disappear into a puff of smoke. 

“Okay”, you mumbled, reasserting the grip on your groceries and searching for your keys inside the pockets of your jacket while walking towards your house. The mage was simply following you with long, measured strides. 

If the mage loitering around on your street had been weird, him just standing around inside your tiny living room was freaking you out. He seemed too tall, his coat too long and fancy. Similar to Alucard, he had that air about him that wasn’t entirely human. 

It wasn’t as strong as it had been around Alucard, at least in the eighteenth century, but it was still there. 

Maybe you should have gotten numb to that sort of thing by now, but you didn't have the same kind of grip on the mage as you had on Alucard. With Alucard, you could always reach out through the bond and find reassurance. 

With the mage, there was just this empty feeling of mystery and secrecy. 

“Do you want to sit down or…”, you gestured to your small couch weakly, “ or want something to drink?” 

The mage chuckled lowly. “No, thank you.” 

Tense silence. 

“Okay, this is freaky, what the hell are you doing here?”, you finally cracked. “Did Reynard send you?” 

“No, I am acting in my own interest at this moment.” 

“Ah…”, you made, none the wiser.

“I believe”, the mage finally started, “that our gifts might be beneficial to each other, if we were willing to work together.”

Your brows rose so high, they almost jumped off of your forehead. “Huh?” 

He simply shrugged. “There are certain experiments I would like to conduct with my spells. In return, I can assist you with what you seek.”

You swallowed. “And what is it that I seek?” 

“Time in the past, apparently”, he answered non-chalantly. “For some reason, your spirit seems dulled whenever you are in the present. In contrast, you were willing to point a gun to my head in order to be sent back.”

“Yeah, sorry about that”, you muttered while staring at your feet, not replying anything to the rest he had said. “And what is it that you propose?” 

“I can extend the spells I cast for the Belmonts”, he explained slowly. “Grant you more time in the past. Apart from your bout in Wallachia, your visits in the past have always been quite brief.”

“And what would I have to do in return?”, you wondered. 

Once more, a casual shrug. “I am interested in how the influence of time shapes the composition of magical objects. Take objects into the past for me and return others. I would like to study them. That is all.” 

Your brows furrowed. “But won’t that change the timelines as well? If I simply leave random stuff lying around?” 

He huffed a laugh. “If that were the case, every lost hat and every fired bullet you left behind would have changed the present. I do not believe time itself to be so fickle. In addition, the objects wouldn’t be inherently modern. Start with this”, he produced a coin from inside his coat. 

It seemed to be comprised of a strange material, some dark sort of metal. It wasn’t a currency that you recognized. Carefully, you took it into your hands and stared at it. “What is it?” 

“Does that matter? Don’t worry, it won’t harm you or others. Just leave it behind, the next time you travel into the past, and take another object with you. Something similar, if possible, but I am not too selective.” 

Chewing at your lower lip, you stared between him and the coin, two, three times. “I wouldn’t keep my hopes up”, you told him then. “I don’t think Reynard has any intention of sending me back any time soon.” 

“Ah, yes, I had wondered why he didn’t call”, the mage hummed in contemplation. “How about an extension of the deal? As a show of good faith, so to speak. I can send you back right now, in order to test our deal. But your visit would have to be brief, as I understand that you have to contact the Belmonts daily.” 

Your mouth fell open as you stared at him. “I thought you would only send me back if the Belmonts asked you to do it? That you wanted to get paid?”

“I do”, he laughed. “It makes sense, doesn’t it? The Belmonts can provide the equipment, the clothes and all else that keeps you from sticking out, in addition to paying me handsomely. But the pursuit of science might be payment enough for now. Besides, see it as a show of good faith, as I said. I do not wish you harm, little traveller.” 

“Hm”, you made, staring at the coin in your hand and thinking about what he had said. You had no historically accurate clothing here, that was true. No weapons either. Going into the past unprepared like this would be extremely dangerous. 

On the other hand, there was the promise of seeing Alucard again, even if you wouldn’t have much time, due to Reynard’s stipulations. 

“Can I choose the time and place?”, you asked, your decision taking shape. 

“Of course.” 

You took some time to sort your groceries away. Then, you changed into the longest dress you owned and into a long coat that was the most inconspicuous you had. All the while, the mage stayed inside your living room, eerily quiet. 

“Should I ask for your name?”, you wondered after pinning your hair up haphazardly. “If we are to be partners?” 

“That is unnecessary. I am the mage, you are the traveller. That is all we need to be.” 

“Alright”, you conceded. 

“So”, there was a particular sparkle inside his eyes, as if he enjoyed this going rogue almost as much as you did, “where would you wish to go?” 

“Paris”, you replied immediately, without thinking. “As close to the last time as possible.” 

“Hm, 1793”, he affirmed. “It is close enough that I will probably manage to send you within a few days of your last visit.”

“Just…”, you hesitated, “Make sure that it is after Erzsbet’s defeat, alright? I don’t want to accidentally end up before that or in the midst of it all.” 

“Of course”, he nodded and held out his hands, the same way he always did before muttering the spell. “Remember the coin and our deal.” 

“I promise”, you breathed and closed your eyes, excitement causing you to feel your heartbeat in your throat. 

Soon. 

Soon, you’d see him again. 

“I will aim for nighttime”, you heard the mage say, “to make your get-up less obvious.” 

You wanted to reply something in return, maybe even thanks, but were stopped when he already started chanting the spell. 

__________________________________

1793

It was insane how different the city looked from the last time you had seen it. 

Despite the fact that it was already nightfall when you arrived, it wasn’t dark. The Seine seemed to glow, reflecting the golden lights of the street lamps. 

Streets and squares were filled with laughter, men drinking beer, having their arms around each other and swaying. Even though the people of Paris still had years of fight ahead of them - for now, the victory over the forces of actual evil seemed to be enough. 

It certainly felt like enough for you too. 

You drew your coat tighter around yourself, lowering your head in order not to garner any unwanted attention. 

You felt naked in your modern clothes, sticking out like a sore thumb. 

Still, there was a certain touch of freedom to it all. You had no mission, no bigger picture to keep in mind. You could drop the stupid mage’s coin anywhere you wanted, grab anything else and be done with that. 

Apart from that, you were free. 

Free to spend what little time here you had in whatever way you wanted. What a thrill. 

Additionally, you could feel it. That you weren’t alone.

That he was close. 

So, he hadn’t left Paris yet. For once in your life, you weren’t too late. 

You found him standing at the edge of the river, looking regal and otherworldly and devastatingly beautiful amidst the golden light and the peaceful glow of the night. He was joined by two other people, a man with long white hair, and a girl with even longer, blonde hair. 

There was something beautiful about the moment he noticed you. Maybe he hadn’t been paying attention to the bond, since he knew that you were gone, or he had been too engrossed in his conversation with his companions to notice your arrival. 

Nevertheless, once you stepped closer, within a few paces of their small group, his head rose as if forced by some involuntary pull and his eyes widened slightly when he saw you, glancing over the head of the smaller girl. 

The girl, who noticed the change and turned around, looking at you in confusion. 

“Hello”, you greeted them shyly, giving an awkward wave. 

 “What are you doing here?”, Alucard asked, sounding almost breathless, his eyes burning with an intensity that made you shiver. He didn’t sound angry or annoyed …amazed more than anything. 

“That’s a bit of a long story”, you lied through your teeth. It wasn’t really, but it wasn’t a story you wanted to share with these strangers either.

The older man took his time to gaze at your clothes and your strange demeanor before stepping forward and bowing slightly. “You must be the traveller - Richter told me about you. I am Juste Belmont”, he introduced himself. “I have to say, I am curious. The only other traveller I have ever read about in connection to the Belmont family was one that Trevor Belmont met, three hundred years ago. You must have known that one as well, right, Alucard?” 

The dhampir in question didn’t take his eyes off of you. “Yes. She was quite the character.” 

You bit your lip to keep from doing anything stupid while exchanging pleasantries with Juste and the girl - who introduced herself as Maria. 

They told you that Richter had left with Annette two days ago. That Mizrak and Olrox (whoever they were) had disappeared. That the revolutionaries had started to behead humans who were rumoured to have joined the vampires. 

Pleasant conversation was flowing for a little while, hindered only by the fact that it was getting harder and harder for Alucard and yourself to keep your eyes from one another. 

Juste’s smile was growing wider with a certain kind of wisdom. 

Maria’s eyes were narrowed into slits, her expression souring. 

“Please, excuse us for the night”, Alucard finally put you out of your misery and swiftly stepped around his friends, taking your hand before you even realised what was happening. You gave Juste and Maria another awkward little wave while you were dragged down the street, heart galloping in your throat. 

As you turned, you could feel Maria’s glare like a physical stabbing in your back. 

“I think the girl likes you. A lot”, you told the dhampir beside you sort of restlessly. 

He chuckled quietly. “Human lives are so terribly short… she will forget all about it soon.” 

“Hm”, you made, excitement causing your palms to sweat. Thankfully, he was wearing gloves. “Where are we going?”, you finally wondered, after walking beside him quietly for a few moments, immensely enjoying the simple gesture of your hand in his. 

“I have acquired several benevolent patrons over the centuries”, Alucard replied conversationally. “One of them was kind enough to accommodate me, once I decided to stay in Paris and help Juste and Maria settle in.” 

“How awfully kind of them. And you”, you said pointedly. 

Swiftly, Alucard pulled you forward by your joined hands, dragging you against the dark wall of an unassuming house, caging you in with his body. “Jealous, my love?”, he wondered mirthfully. “I have not weathered decades alone waiting for you, so that you can shrivel at the glare of a teenage girl.”

“Shrivel?”, you repeated, high and affronted. 

He opened his mouth, probably to banter back, but your patience was wearing thin and he was so close now. Burying your hands in the lapels of his coat, you dragged him down and kissed him. 

Or rather, assaulted him, dragging your teeth across his lower lip and biting down playfully. 

Alucard pulled away swiftly, staring down at you with blown pupils. “How - how long…?”, he started. 

“A few weeks since we last saw each other”, you interrupted him, wanting him, wanting him so much it hurt. “We are sort of on the same page. I haven’t seen you since then and you haven’t seen me. Additionally, for once, I am the one who waited longer for this than you.” 

An arrogant smile spread across his face at that. “Are you going to describe the torture of those few, short weeks to me now, my poor little traveller?” 

You glowered at him for no more than two seconds. “Are you going to mock me, or to take me to those accommodations?” 

The gold inside his eyes seemed to glow as he yanked you forward. 

_______________________________  

The ‘accommodations’ turned out to be a very spacious apartment in one of Paris’s finest hotels. There was a salon with upholstered chairs and a large dining table, a desk and stationary for free use. The windows were covered by heavy, velvety drapes in a rich, deep red colour. 

The same blood red as the colour of the silky sheets and curtains upon and surrounding the truly enormous, four-poster bed. There was also a huge, claw-footed tub next to the bed and wash stand. Not that you saw any of it at first. 

As the door had closed behind you, Alucard had managed to somehow get your coat off of you and press you against said door before you could even get a good look at the room. 

His kisses were scorching across your face and neck, fangs nibbling at your lower lip before his tongue was granted entrance. You could barely keep up, content with taking hold of his shoulders and letting him devour you for the moment. 

“No offence, my love”, Alucard breathed into your neck as his hands eased up your trembling sides, “but what are you wearing?” 

Oh. 

You laughed when you realised that he had probably noticed the lack of boned and structured undergarments beneath your dress just now. “It’s a dress from my times”, you answered. “I was rather in a hurry when I set off on this journey.” 

“Hm, you will have to tell me about it”, he acknowledged, “Later.” 

You nodded frantically while helping him figure out the simple wrap dress you were wearing. A moment later, the knot at your side was untied and the dress fell from your body. He raised a brow, both in appreciation at the speed with which this modern dress could be discarded as well as in fascination at your padded bra and panties. 

You didn’t allow for him to linger on that for long, getting rid of your underwear. In the time it took you to get naked, Alucard had barely managed to set his sword belt and cloak aside. 

He didn’t seem to mind, though. Before you could get used to the feel of the cool air of the large room on your naked skin, you were lifted up and sat upon the smooth edge of the even colder wooden table, with the fair head of your dhampir between your legs. 

This was completely different from the first time he had performed this act for you in Wallachia.

There was no hesitance, no softness to it. 

You could feel his fangs scrape against your lower lips in a hint of danger, could feel the ache in your hips when he forced your thighs wider apart with his hands as he fell to his knees in front of you. 

His tongue was merciless, both against your clit as well as inside of you, skilled with centuries of experience and patience. He drank from your centre the same way he had drunk from your throat: wildly, savagely, unhinged. 

Your thighs were trembling on either side of his head, one of your hands finding its way into his hair, the other scrambling for purchase at the edge of the table, probably breaking a nail or two. 

You were so close that the sounds leaving you were utterly inhuman, and then - 

And then it was over. 

Alucard pulled away from you, straightening and slowly - very slowly - discarding his own clothes. 

“What - ?”, you started, dumfounded, your eyes wide and legs twitching. 

“Not yet”, was all he said, voice sounding way calmer than his heaving chest - and the straining front of his pants - would suggest. “I have waited twenty-two years to feel you, my little vixen. When you come undone, it will be sheathed upon my cock.” 

Your eyes nearly fell out of your head as you stared at him. This was miles - no, worlds away from the Alucard you had left behind in Wallachia. There was no shyness left to this man, no shame or fear of sexual acts. 

As you watched him undress, you realised that he was unmitigatedly, shamelessly sure of himself and his ability to please you. 

He took his time with his clothes, allowing for you to drink every newly revealed inch of him in with your eyes. 

His skin was paler, granting his entire being that otherworldly glow. With his white hair and golden eyes, he looked like an archangel, come to the earth from heaven to defend mankind. 

That metaphor stood even more firmly when you noticed that he had acquired more scars since the last time you had seen him naked. The most prominent one was still the injury his father had left across his chest, all those years ago. It was joined by a wound high on his chest, close to his right shoulder. It was a closed cut, but still looked fresh, pinkish, with a similar looking gash on his right forearm. 

The scars Taka and Sumi had left felt faint and unimportant in comparison. 

“Watched your fill?”, he asked darkly once he was naked. 

You nodded shakily. 

His hands were on your hips then, lifting and turning you around, until your front was pushed against the table. The cold material was pressing against your chest, causing your already hard nipples to tighten to almost painful peaks. You let your cheek rest against the wood as well, your breath fogging against its surface while the man behind you arranged you to his liking, kicking your feet further apart, even though your toes could barely touch the ground anyway. 

“You have no idea how I have yearned for this, little one”, Alucard leaned forward, his chest pressing to your back, the words breathed into your ear. “Two decades… just to feel the rush of your blood beneath your skin, smell your arousal…”, his fingers found their way between your legs, working your clit in torturously slow circles, making you moan, and he continued, “hear the sweet sounds you make. By all the Gods, I want to feel you, I need -” 

“Oh God”, you sobbed, legs twitching beneath you, “Just do it already, please, Adrian, please…”

He groaned deeply at your begging, the sound vibrating from his chest right into your body, before he straightened and - ah, there it was, the press of him inside you. 

He was slow at first, steadily pushing himself inside of you while you twitched and fluttered around him.

Jesus, it had been too long… he felt so big, so - 

Finally, he couldn’t take it anymore, just slamming forward and causing the table to skitter across the floor a few inches. With both of his hands at your waist, he set a rough rhythm, pounding into you in a way that filled the room with the sounds of creaking wood and the slapping of skin. 

Your eyes were rolling into the back of your head, so utterly filled, filled so deep that it was almost painful, but still not enough. He was inside of you in more senses than just the one - his being invading yours through the bond, swimming through your every thought, every desire, and allowing you to feel his own in return: 

To have you like this, always. To weather the vastness of his immortal life with you by his side. To be able to fuck you every day, have his hands beneath your skirt whenever he wanted, showing you the most beautiful places of the earth just to take you in their hidden corners. 

His hands found your clit again and you fell apart, violently and all-consumingly, your vision blackening out for a moment as he continued his pounding. 

The sound of his pleasure, his deep groan as he came, put you back to earth. Still rhythmically pumping his hips against your backside, Alucard made sure not to waste a single drop. 

When he pulled out of you, you hissed, both at the loss of contact and the immediate soreness. To your embarrassment, your knees buckled as well, and you slid down the table about two inches, before he caught you and lifted you easily. 

Immediately, as soon as you stood up right, you could feel his release dripping out of you. Alucard chuckled lowly into your hair as you tried to stand on your own shaky legs. 

“That was just… wow”, you breathed dumbly. 

“Hm”, he made, pressing his smile against your neck. “Sometimes I forget how young and innocent we still were, all those years ago, in Wallachia.” 

“Hey”, you mumbled in weak protest. He made it sound as if you were a prude. 

“Don’t worry, my sweet”, he breathed in the scent of your neck greedily, “as I said before: You manage to make me fall in love with every version of you.” 

   ____________________________________

You found yourself in a hot bathtub mere minutes later. Since Alucard didn’t have the patience to wait for any servants, he had the tub filled almost to the rim with a few quick spells, the water steaming around you, smelling faintly of roses and another scent you couldn’t quite place. 

Some extraordinary plant he had discovered on his travels to Asia, apparently. 

There was something about this, this peace and quiet surrounding you, just the occasional sloshing of water and the flickering of the candles as you leaned with you back against his chest, the water up to your collarbones, his arms tightly around you. There was a domesticity to it that felt almost like those times back in Wallachia. 

He had removed the pins you had quickly put your hair up with and, you had to be honest, there was something about his long hair, wet, white and glistening, that made it painful to look at him. He was too beautiful for you and you wondered, once again, how you had gotten so lucky. 

Resting his chin on your shoulder, Alucard looked down your naked body intently, causing you to flush once more while he traced the scar on the side of your abdomen with light fingertips. 

The scar from the surgery you had had to get after staying in Wallachia for too long. 

So intent was he on it, tracing it up and down, up and down, that you felt the need to say something, eventually. 

“Surely, it’s not the first time you’ve seen it”, you whispered. The scar would be there forever now, so naturally, he had to have seen it several times when you met over the centuries. 

“Of course not”, his breath fanned over your wet clavicles, causing you to shiver. “But I have never seen it like this. So new and… fresh.” 

You could hear the regret in his voice and just now understood the issue. The scar was still pink and gnarly - you could still see where the stitches had once pierced the skin. He had probably seen it in a better condition, more healed. 

Turning to other matters, you took a hold of his hand to stop his tracing and started to touch the fresh injury across his forearm. “You are one to talk. Where does this come from then? And -”, you turned your head slightly, pressing your lips to the similar wound on his shoulder, “- this?”

He hummed non-descriptively. “Drolta impaled me on my sword.” 

You froze, your eyes wide. 

“No need to worry”, he assured you, pressing his lips to your temple. “Injuries like that have always healed fast. Additionally, some little human was kind enough to lend me some blood for the battle.” 

“Some little human, huh?”, you repeated dryly, but couldn’t help the small smile playing around your lips, grateful to have been able to play at least some small part in their victory. 

“Hm-hm”, he agreed and let his hands drift, one of them wandering to your chest, pinching your nipples with teasing touches, while the other submerged itself deeper into the water, finding your aching core. “One particularly stubborn, beautiful, extraordinary human…”

You moaned as his hands found their destination and coaxed a gentle orgasm from you, right there inside the quiet bath. 

________________________________

“We don’t have a lot of time”, you breathed when you were lying in the enormous, extremely comfortable bed. 

You were resting on your side, facing Alucard, who had assumed a similar position. It felt so similar to your time in Wallachia, and yet entirely different… there was no denying it: He was still so different that it hadn’t stopped to be difficult to wrap your head around it. 

“As I said, my departure was rather rushed… the Boss-Belmont from my time is currently refusing to let me travel”, Alucard’s brows shot up at that, but he waited for you to finish speaking. “So I had to strike a secret deal with his mage. But I have to check in with the Belmonts daily, which is why he couldn’t send me away for long.” 

“No Belmont should have the power over you to decide where you go and when”, he pointed out with a certain, dangerous edge to his voice. 

“Well”, you shrugged, “unfortunately, this one does. I depend on his money and his mage. Otherwise we would never see each other again.” 

Alucard’s expression darkened, obviously not amused by this. “And what sort of deal did you strike up with this sorcerer? What was his price?” 

“Nothing important, don’t worry about it”, you hurried to say and instead traced your fingers across his sculpted chest in light touches, hoping to distract him. “What I wanted to get at was that we don’t have a lot of time. I will probably have to leave soon.” 

Apparently, your efforts were successful, as the gold inside his eyes melted and he swiftly rolled you onto your back, molding his body to yours. “Then we should make the most of the time we have”, he whispered. 

You nodded and sank into his touch. 

______________________________________

Wrapped in his arms, with his steadily rising chest at your back and his breath caressing your neck, it was the best sleep you had gotten in months. 

_____________________________________

The present

You awoke the next day naked, in the middle of your living room, alone. 

Not having had the opportunity to grab an item from the past, the mage would have to be satisfied with the fact that you had left his coin there for now, somewhere with your clothes. 

___________________________________ 

 1864

Right at this moment, it was hard to imagine that you had been so glad when the call from the Belmont estate had come that there was another mission for you. 

Seven weeks. 

Seven fucking weeks since you had seen Alucard. 

You had been absolutely ecstatic, causing both Lenny and Reynard to stare at you in confusion while briefing you. 

The mage had winked at you playfully while pressing another object - an old-timey pen - into your hand with a mirthful smile. The Belmonts hadn’t noticed. 

You could tell from the look in his eye that he would keep his word - to grant you and Alucard as much time as possible. You had been practically buzzing with excitement. 

Which - again - was hard to imagine right now. 

The mission had been simple: foist some forged documents to the right generals of the Confederate Army in order to convince them that retreating from Atlanta and leaving the city to the Union Army wasn’t that bad of an idea. 

Easy peasy, or so you had thought. 

The mission itself hadn’t been that hard and was done fairly quickly. 

The retreat was causing problems. You had planned to jump on a supply train of the W&A and get the hell out of the city before it fell. 

But the city was under fire by the heavy cannons of the Union Army and it was hard to find a way practically anywhere when the ground was shaking so hard that you felt it in your teeth. 

You knew that time was running out. It was the end of August already - General Sherman would soon start his final attack on the supply line and its railway. 

In short - you were pretty fucked. 

It was too warm and you felt constricted in your cotton shirt, vest, jacket and loose trousers. Right now, you would have loved to ‘accidentally’ lose your hat and jacket. 

The closer you got to the city borders, the more dust seemed to hang in the hair, both from the impacts of the cannons as well as the frantic running around of people. 

Mostly soldiers. 

You barely managed to slide to a stop after turning a corner and before knocking into a group of soldiers. You weren’t on the run per se, but still didn’t want to garner any unwanted attention. 

Running through a narrow alley though, your luck ran out. 

Another cannon hit, shaking the houses and walls around you. A cloud of dust was stirred up and finally you fell… losing your hat. 

You coughed as you fought your way to your feet, cursing the invention of cannons and firearms in general (hypocritical, since you still loved your own guns).

“You, boy!”, a voice behind you called and you swallowed heavily as you leaned against the brittle wall beside you. 

Your hair had been styled in a low bun beneath your hat, slowly falling out of its bounds. Ignoring the male voice behind you, you pushed forward. 

“Hey!”, the voice was closer now - and in the next moment a large hand curled around your arm and whirled you around. 

Pushing you back against the wall so hard that you hit your head and bit your tongue in the process. 

You blinked up at the filthy men in front of you while tasting copper in your mouth. 

“Look at that, Ted”, the man who held you drawled. “Not a boy at all… a girl.” 

“Yeah, look at that”, the other one repeated and laughed, his voice sounding rough and his teeth looking almost black. “Where were you running off to, little mouse?” 

Both of them looked filthy. Beneath the thick layer of mud and dust, you could make out the rest of their uniforms… deserters? In the middle of the city? Why were they loitering around and not making their way towards Union lines, in order to switch sides? 

“I’m not looking for any trouble”, you told them, fighting for your voice to sound steady and cold. Unfortunately, your heart was beating so heavily that you could hear it in your own ears and dust and soot was clogging your throat. 

“Well, that’s good”, the first one - Not-Ted - smiled at you in a sickening way. “How about we help you out, huh? Take you to our hiding spot? You can repay us…”, his eyes travelled down your body slowly, “... one after the other.” 

“I want to go first!”, Ted interjected. “I saw her before you did!”

“And I’m the one who managed to get a hold of her!”, Not-Ted threw over his shoulder at his companion dismissively. “I get to -”

You used their moment of arguing to find the dagger hidden inside your belt and yank it free. 

Ted saw it first, his eyes widening, but before he could call out you had managed to shove the dagger into your assailant’s armpit. 

A potentially fatal wound, but you couldn’t bring yourself to care right now. 

Not-Ted was so shocked that he fell to his knees immediately, letting go of you entirely. 

Ted caught himself within a few short moments - sadly - and widened his stance, holding out his hands as if readying himself for a fight. “Wanna dance, princess? Think you can beat a seasoned soldier up close?” 

Rolling your eyes, you lowered the dagger and lifted your other hand, conjuring a flame out of thin air. “Wanna burn as a deserter, princess?”, you shot back. 

His eyes widened and he scrambled backwards. “Witch…”, he whispered and then yelled, “Fucking witch!” 

You quickly decided to follow his example, but turning into the opposite direction, stepping over Not-Ted’s twitching and yelping body to then make a run for it. As a precaution, you replaced the dagger in your hand with the gun. 

You basically slid around the next corner when another tall person stepped in your way. 

“Jesus!”, you yelled in frustration and raised the gun before looking properly. 

Your hand was pushed to the side swiftly, your shot cracking through the air, hitting nothing but the empty sky. 

There was something about the firm fingers around your wrist, their grip almost bruising, that felt eerily familiar. 

“I - I almost shot you!”, you yelled over the roar of the next round of cannons as you stared with wide eyes at Alucard. You must have been too wrapped up in your surroundings to sense through the bond that he was this close. “How…” 

He pulled you close without waiting for you to finish, shielding you with his body against the falling rubble from the nearest house. “I am glad to see you too”, he breathed sweetly and pressed a kiss to your filthy hair. 

As soon as he granted you the room, you took a moment to look at him. He was dressed similarly to you, only that his suit was infinitely more fancy and his hair -

“You have a ponytail”, you stated the obvious. 

A low ponytail of perfectly white hair. 

Alucard looked at you in a way that made it clear what he thought of your comment. 

That it was incredibly stupid.

__________________________________

The next hour was a blur. Even though you were there, you couldn’t have told later how exactly Alucard managed to get you out of the city. 

To be fair, as soon as you had seen him, your brain had basically given the go to the rest of your body to hand over responsibility. Alucard would know what to do. He always did. 

Somehow, you found yourself outside of the city, standing at railroad tracks. 

“I had the same plan”, you mumbled weakly, unimaginably tired by now. “But I wanted to sneak my way on a wagon at a station.” 

“Well, we will take a shortcut”, Alucard replied simply and swiped your feet out from under you swiftly. 

An embarrassingly girlish sound left you at the sudden action and you wound your arms around his neck quickly - as if he needed you to hold on. 

And then you could hear it - the rumbling inside the ground and the distant whistle of an approaching train. 

_________________________________

The constant rattling of the train had managed to lull you to sleep. 

Hidden in the very corner of a supply car, all that mattered was that the air was somewhat clear (compared to Atlanta), that Alucard was beside you and you felt safe. 

You awoke slowly, peacefully, noting that the man beside you had pulled you into his lap, your head resting against his shoulder and one of his arms lazily strewn around your middle. 

“Uh”, you made in disgust as your other senses woke up - most insistently, your nose. You hadn’t had the opportunity to wash in days, and the smell of your clothes cemented that fact. “I’m filthy.” 

“Hm”, Alucard made, pushing some loose hair away from your forehead. “So you are. Do not worry, soon we will be in a place where you can wash up.” 

You wrinkled your nose. Soon did not seem soon enough. “Where are we going, anyway?” 

“I acquired a house in the North of Maine some years ago. We should be relatively safe from the fighting there.” 

You groaned. That would be a long-ass journey, even by train. Then, another thought crossed your mind. “How did you know that you would find me there, in Atlanta? At this time?” 

He looked at you in surprise and then a small smile spread across his face. “Ah, so you are a relatively young version of yourself, I assume”, he pointed out. 

You could only glare at him. Stupid, over-four-hundred-year-old dhampir. 

Alucard only chuckled again and pulled you closer. “You have given me a list in the past”, he explained softly. “Oftentimes, you… how do you say it? ‘Update’ it, as you go. So that I always know where to find you.” 

“Oh”, you made, allowing for your head to fall back against his shoulder. “But you didn’t know that you would meet me in Paris in 1793?” 

“No, I did not. I always assumed that it was your revenge, since I did not warn you about what would happen in Wallachia.” 

Huh, yeah, that sounded like you. 

“I’m not going to apologize”, you told him firmly. 

You could hear the smile in his voice. “And you never have to.” 

_______________________________________

You didn’t ask what city or state you were in or where exactly the hotel was. All that mattered to you was that you had stopped for the night and would be able to get out of these fucking clothes. 

Alucard disappeared for a while as you busied yourself with the washstand inside the room. You didn’t mind, not needing him to see just how filthy you had gotten. 

When you were done, the wash cloth was probably beyond saving and the water was brown. Gross. But you felt at least somewhat clean. 

Looking around the room, you couldn’t find any clean clothes to change into, so you wrapped yourself inside the quilt that had been laid across the bed and sat down in the chair that stood close to it. You let your eyes fall shut and took several long minutes to enjoy the peace and quiet. 

No cannon fire, no shaking ground, no screaming from scared civilians, no soldiers bellowing orders. Only the sound of a few buggies on the road below, some chatter and the occasional neighing of a horse. 

Then there was a creaking on the wooden floorboards outside and the door was pushed open gently. Alucard entered with a strange, soft bundle in his hands. 

“Good evening”, he greeted you, golden eyes trailing over your naked shoulders briefly before putting the bundle on top of the small bureau in the opposite corner of the room. 

“What do you have there?”, you wondered, craning your neck, but unwilling to give up your comfortable position to satisfy your curiosity. 

“Clean clothes for you”, he explained, “and…”

He turned around and held out a piece of bread for you. “It is not much, but at least…” 

He trailed off as your eyes widened. God, you were absolutely famished. Stale bread sounded absolutely fabulous right now. “Jesus, I’m starving”, you breathed and couldn’t help the goofy smile as he came to you to give you the food, so you wouldn’t have to stand up from your little spot. 

Alucard had also brought some cheese and an apple. He crouched down in front of you and presented the food to you as if it were a sacrifice to a Goddess. 

You snatched the bread from his hand and inhaled its hardy smell. “God, I love you”, you told him absent-mindedly. Just a moment later, when your mouth was already full, did you realise what you had just said, and your chewing slowed down, your eyes widening slightly. 

That was the first time you had ever said it out loud. 

Over some fucking bread. 

“Are, um…”, you swallowed painfully. Alucard for his part was still kneeling at your feet, watching you eat gracelessly as if you were the most precious thing in the entire world. “Aren’t you going to eat?” 

“I am not hungry. I will eat later”, he promised quietly and urged you to eat more. 

Once you were done, he rose to his feet and lifted you into his arms, the same way he had done before jumping onto the train - bridal style - and carried you to the bed.     

You only had to pull on his shirt slightly to get him to slowly start taking off his clothes while you remained huddled into your quilt on top of the blanket. “How long has it been for you?”, you asked curiously. “Since you last saw me?” 

“Not that long”, he answered calmly while pushing down his cotton trousers. “A little over a year.” 

Not that long. 

You had wanted to claw your own eyes out after seven weeks. 

“Thank you”, you breathed sincerely when he took a seat on the bed as well, and let your quilt drop. Without wasting any time, you ushered him to lean against the headboard. For once it was your turn to be the one who did all the touching, tracing his shoulders, collarbones, chest while littering kisses across his face. 

“Thank you for always coming for me”, you whispered, the words sitting heavily on your tongue. “For putting everything on hold to get me out of trouble. For always accommodating me, for…” 

He took a hold of your face then and pressed his lips to yours hungrily. “It is nothing.” 

“No, it’s not”, you shook your head insistently, fighting against the thickness inside your voice. “It’s everything. I don’t want you to ever think that I take it lightly. All that planning and organising and waiting.” 

“I know that you don’t”, he promised. “I can see it in your eyes each and every time. Can you see it in mine?” 

You looked at him, at that liquid gold swimming inside his irises. You could see loneliness there, but also the relief to have you back again. The willingness to sacrifice, utter devotion. Love. 

“Yes.” You kissed him in return, first his lips, then his jaw. When you reached his neck, you bit down teasingly, as if you were the vampire. 

Alucard huffed in humour, his hands carding through your hair, fingers fleetingly pressing against the bitemark on your own neck, as if in memory. 

You travelled lower, mouthing across his chest, feeling his steady, immortal heartbeat beneath your lips. 

He breathed your name. 

“Shh”, you made dismissively, ignoring the slight pull he was now using on your hair. “I want to thank you.” 

You took him in your mouth, trying to hide the fact that this was the first time - at least the first time for you, doing this for him - behind bravado and effort. He was too big for you, but you still gave it your all, moving up and down his length until your jaw ached, using your hands on the part you couldn’t reach. 

“Enough”, he finally hissed breathlessly and pulled you up by your hair, easily arranging your limbs so that you were sitting in his lap, your thighs bracketing his. He used his supernatural strength to lift you with his hands beneath your arms easily. You reached down to align him with your centre and sighed in bliss once he lowered you down, filling you slowly, inch by excruciating inch. 

“I missed you”, you breathed as you started to swivel your lips. 

“And I you”, he returned, pressing one hand between your shoulder blades to allow for you to arch backwards, using the freed space between your bodies to mouth across your chest. “I always miss you. Every second of every day. With each dawn, with each sunset. I miss your light in the dark and your voice in the quiet. I …”, he trailed off as he wrapped his mouth around one nipple and you cried out when you felt the teasing prick of a fang. 

You could only stand his ministrations for so long before you planted your hands on his shoulders, pushing his back against the headboard with a loud thud. He smirked at you, obviously enjoying your forceful control during this, but you ignored it. Instead, you took his face in your hands and pressed your lips to his in a messy, demanding kiss. 

Your teeth knocked together and there was saliva tripping down the corner of your mouth, but you didn’t care, not when you started to rock your hips against his in earnest, the white hair leading down from his navel deliciously scratching against your clit. 

“I love you”, you moaned into the small space between your faces when you tore away from the kiss to breathe. “I love you, I love you, I love you…”, again and again, as if it were a prayer, until you came. 

Alucard planted his hands on your hips firmly, prolonging your motions until he followed you with a drawn out moan. 

You stayed like this for long moments while your breathing evened out, his arms now tightly wound around you and pressing you against his chest while he rested his cheek on your hair. Your head was resting on his shoulder, face pressed to his neck. 

You didn’t know why, but you felt the need to say something. To say it. 

“That was the first time I said it”, you mumbled lazily, your fingers behind his back playing with the ends of his long hair. 

“Hm?”, he made calmly, still lost in his own bliss. 

“It’s the first time I told you that I love you… at least for me”, you swallowed tightly, fighting the urge to cry. “I should have told you in Paris… Jesus, you had waited twenty-two years for me then and I couldn’t even bother to say it. Worse, I should have said it in Wallachia, before I -”, your voice choked off and you buried your face deeper into his neck. 

But he didn’t let you hide. With firm hands on your face, he pulled you away and let his thumbs sweep across the red blotches that were blooming on your cheeks with your distress. “There was never any debt”, he told you sincerely. “You don’t owe me any words. You stayed when no one else stayed. You return for me time and time again. Through the bond I can feel your heartbeat as clearly as I feel my own and I know. You never had to say it for it to be true.” 

“But I still should”, you whined. 

“You do”, he smiled, “You have said it thousands of times to me during the years. And I never tire of hearing it. Do not worry yourself about such simple matters, my love. These things… they have their way of falling into place over the centuries. You will see.” 

Nodding shakily, you allowed for him to draw you into another kiss. 

Simply putting your trust into his words.

__________________________________  

Maine was wonderful. 

Completely different from what you had expected, but wonderful. 

The house was small, made of wood painted in white. Inside, there wasn’t much space: just one bedroom, one room to wash up in and a larger room which served as the kitchen, dining area and everything else one might need. Compared to Dracula’s castle, it all seemed terribly tiny and backwards - but between convenient spells and your romantic bliss, none of it bothered you. There were no other houses for miles. This one had once been part of a ranch, as proven by the barn and coral that still stood. 

There were some horses, a cow and a handful of chickens. 

To your utter surprise, you loved this life. It was like tending to your very own little farm. 

Alucard taught you how to ride properly. How to take care of the animals. 

You should have known, of course you should have known, that a being as educated as him would also know how to tend to the animals, how to keep the house in order, how to live this kind of life - but it still impressed you to no end. 

It wasn’t just the education, it was also experience. So many lifetimes he had lived, so much he had learned. 

You spent months in Maine, thanks to the mage’s meddling. You gifted Alucard the pen and took to wearing an old necklace you had found in a small shop on your travels to Maine. That way, you would take it with you, no matter when you left, and the mage would have something to experiment on. 

With the winter came a surprising cold, but at night, when the stars were sparkling outside, when there was a fire flickering in the hearth and you were lying pressed to Alucard’s warm, naked skin, it didn’t bother you at all. 

Your face still hurt from smiling one night, after having won against him during a vicious snowball fight - even though you knew full well that he had let you win… there had been no need for him to capitulate at all.

“Do you think this life would still be enough for us if we were normal people?”, you wondered into the quiet, enjoying the way his fingers were softly scratching down your spine. “If we were both mere mortals?” 

“What life?”, he pressed, so close that his breath was ruffling through your hair. 

“A simple life like this one”, you continued. “Tending to the horses. Feeding and milking the cow. Fixing the house. Going to town to get food and other supplies. Just working, day in and day out. Or would we want more than just the same routine? Wouldn’t we want more extraordinary days, instead of this every-day-stuff?” 

Alucard huffed a laugh and pressed a kiss to the top of your head. “Every day is all there is, my love.” 

You thought about that for a long time. 

Yes, as long as he was by your side, every day was truly all there was. 

But what when you were gone? Every day felt unbearable then. 

_________________________________

You were pulled back one day in early January, while Alucard was tending to the horses. He wouldn’t see it, but feel it through the bond. 

Returning home filled you with a regret that was unspeakable. It tinged the world in grey colours, laying itself across your eyes like a heavy veil of regret and wishful thinking.

Chapter Text

 Chapter 8

Over the Centuries II

The present

“You were gone an awfully long time”, Lenny told you a few days after your return. “Several weeks. How…”, he hesitated for an awkward moment, “how long was it for you?” 

You were both bent over history books inside the Belmont library, trying to stock up on useful knowledge. 

“Hm?”, you made, lazily tearing your eyes from your book, noticing that this kind of response was something that you had picked up from Alucard. “Oh, I didn’t keep track”, you replied dismissively. 

Lenny’s brows furrowed. “You used to tell me that your time in the past was much longer than the time that went by here. Was it still like that?”

“As I said, I didn’t really keep track, I was busy with your father’s orders”, you let your eyes fall back to the book, trying to hide from your own pain and guilt. 

There was an unspoken accusation between Lenny’s words: You had used to tell him a lot - basically everything - about your travels to the past. But ever since your bout in Wallachia, you were awfully tight-lipped, only reporting what you needed to for the missions. 

It was enough for Reynard. 

It wasn’t enough for a friend. 

Unfortunately, talking about Alucard in the present would make it real. Your loneliness. How far away he was. You knew full well, deep inside yourself, that speaking about it would open a dam you wouldn’t be able to control. 

You would cry, you would despair. You couldn’t give in like that. All you could do was live from one day to the next, until you would be allowed to see him again. 

 _____________________________________

Things came to a head when you entered the mansion two weeks later, having been called for another mission. 

There was this familiar buzzing again, underneath your skin. You were desperately hoping that the necklace you had given the mage had been good enough - that he would be willing and manage to send you back for several months again. 

When you entered, though, there was the muffled sound of yelling inside the walls. Furrowing your brows, you climbed the huge staircase, stopping short of Reynard’s office. The double doors were closed. 

You could hear the screaming, but not quite make out the words. The voices, on the other hand, were quite clear. 

Reynard, his words ending with icy finality. 

Lenny, loud and desperate. Unwilling to give up. 

The fight stopped and the doors burst open, the younger Belmont marching out. 

“Lenny!”, you called after him, seeing the shadow of tears inside his eyes. 

Not since a close cousin, with whom he had grown up like brothers, had been killed during a vampire hunt had you seen Lenny cry. 

“Lenny, wait!”, you demanded, catching up to him halfway down the stairs and taking a hold of his arm. 

But he yanked himself away before you could say anything else. “What? What do you want!”, he was basically screaming in your face. 

You blinked back at him in surprise. “I just… I want to help you.”

“You do?”, he spat, “Since when do you care? This”, he was pointing up the stairs, to where his father was undoubtedly still fuming, “has been going on for weeks. But of course, you don’t know what it’s about. You don’t know anything and you don’t care about anything anymore. My best friend all of a sudden no longer gives a fuck!” And with that, he stomped down the stairs, leaving you behind, confused and dumbfounded. 

It was the first time in years - apart from your stunt with pointing the gun at the mage - that you got ready for a mission on your own. Lenny had always been by your side. 

He was always there to make sure that you were okay. That you were feeling better about whatever you had to do. 

Even when you had travelled to the past those first times, his words and confidence had travelled with you. When you had had nothing, there had been his friendship. 

God, you were a terrible person. 

You were a terrible friend. 

_______________________________________

 1501

Jesus, this dress was stiff. 

Not necessarily too tight, just… stiff. England in the sixteenth century was certainly not shaping up to be one of your favourite periods. Fashion-wise. 

And weather-wise. It was November and fucking cold. 

Not just cold, but wet. The fog that had hung over London since the early morning had cleared a little, but refused to dissipate. Additionally, it was raining slightly - so slightly that it was hard to even make out any drops. It was more like a wet film, settling over your skin and hair. 

All in all, pretty uncomfortable. 

You had no idea why the travelling vampires would choose this historical event, of all things. The marriage of Catherine of Aragon to Arthur Tudor didn’t seem that important, in the grand scheme of things. It made sense that Arthur wasn’t their target, but why Catherine?

Why not one of the Henries? 

That didn’t really matter, though, did it? 

Your target was one vampire who would try to kill Catherine before the entire wedding party entered St Paul’s Cathedral. Again, you had no idea how Reynard had gotten this information or why this was that particular vampire’s goal. 

Why wouldn’t he attack sometime during the public celebration or the wedding feast? Even the bedding ceremony would make sense, somehow. 

But right here? In front of all these people? It was weird. 

Still, you loitered around in your stiff, plain dress, hidden in some alleyway, fingers closed around your gun inside the voluminous pockets of your skirt. That was a nice fashion trait, at least. 

The Archbishop of Canterbury greeted the royal family. Catherine and Arthur were both dressed in white satin and looked so very young with their fifteen years that it was almost painful to watch. 

There was movement to your right and you turned. And there he was, another incredibly young looking, scrawny vampire, making his way to the end of the alley parallel to yours. 

This is too easy, you thought as you took out your gun and aimed. Way too easy. 

Drums were being beaten as if to give a marching rhythm and the crow hollered and cheered when the young couple waved at them shyly. Your shot was lost in the noise, only a few people at the edge of the crowd turned at the sound, but they didn’t see anything. 

You jogged over to the other alley, grabbed the greying corpse beneath the arms and pulled it further into the dark street, away from prying eyes. 

A deep sigh left you once you deemed to be hidden away far enough to just leave the corpse, when you turned around and froze. 

They had to have moved with an eerie, quiet efficiency, not even allowing themselves to breathe. A group of what - ten vampires?

It made sense, all of a sudden, why this had felt too easy. 

It wasn’t about the royal family, had never been about them. This was an ambush, a trap. 

They wanted to kill you.

The pesky traveller who kept getting in their way. 

“Come on…”, you whined under your breath. How come that no mission seemed to just go smoothly since you had met Alucard?

Speaking of the devil: A shadow fell over the other end of the alley, from where you had come, and the centre of your chest was warmed with the effects of the bond. 

To be fair, you had still expected a fight. The vampires’ eyes, however, widened one by one, until the first one dropped their weapon and pointed over your shoulder. 

“It’s him”, he muttered in fear, and then his voice rose to a scream, “The son of Dracula!” 

And just like that, the vampires made a run for it, some dropping their weapons, some not, but the alley was still cleared except for the one corpse in about ten seconds. 

“Wow”, you said dryly as you turned around, but your relief disappeared when you saw the way Alucard was looking at you. 

He was tense, his eyes guarded and lips pressed together in a tight line. “What are you doing here?”, he asked quietly, lowly. 

Ah. Okay, so this was before the list he had mentioned in America. The one that you would give him, detailing where to meet you and when. 

“I’m on a mission… for the Belmonts?”, it sounded as if you were asking a question, as if he would have all the answers. 

“Hm”, he made, but it sounded more detached than what you were used to. 

“Aaaaand… what are you doing here?”, you wondered awkwardly, stepping from one foot to the other. Why was he staring at you like that? 

“I was alerted by… an acquaintance that vampires were rotting together in London”, he shrugged almost dismissively. “That seldom bodes well.” 

You nodded. “Makes sense”, you mumbled, waiting out the awkward silence for a few more moments before peeking at him from under your lashes. “What?”, you snapped then, unable to handle his strange, guarded gaze. 

“What?”, he repeated, voice on edge. 

“What are you staring at me like that for?” 

His brows furrowed as if he were angry now. “Why, excuse me. It has only been almost nineteen years since you disappeared from the castle in the middle of the night.”

Oh. 

Oh. 

Of course. It hadn’t been that long since your stay in Wallachia, at this point in time. This was the first time he saw you since then. 

God, you were such an asshole. “I’m sorry”, you breathed, dumbfounded. “I - I had thought…”, but your voice trailed off weakly. 

He took an impatient step towards you. “Had thought what?” 

You could only swallow painfully. “It’s sort of a long story. Maybe we should find somewhere where… we can at least sit down.”

_______________________________________

“So?”, Alucard said hollowly, several minutes after you had sat down. 

The tavern was small and cramped. You weren’t sure whether that was a blessing or not. 

There were so many people talking at once that probably no one would listen to the insane stuff either of you was going to say. You knew full well that Alucard would be able to understand every word, despite the loud volume, due to his vampiric hearing. 

Additionally, the large room was quite warm with all those people around. Almost cozy. 

Still, there was a ball of ice sitting heavily inside your stomach. So much had happened since you had left Wallachia that you couldn’t remember everything anymore, but you were pretty sure that you distantly recalled him saying that he would wait for you. 

“So”, you finally agreed. “How have you been?” 

He inhaled a deep breath and pushed it out of his nose, obviously fighting for patience. “Miserable. Then busy. As you have noticed, I somehow managed to acquire a reputation, at least among the vampires.” 

“Yeah”, you nodded. “So you have been fighting?” 

“Here and there”, he shrugged. “It is a better way to pass the time than wallow in self-misery.” 

“Who is watching the castle?” 

Another inhale and long exhale. “I believe it is your turn”, he stated flatly instead of answering. “How have you passed the time, since we last saw each other?” 

Teeth chewing on your lower lip, you stared at your hands while trying to find the right words. This had seemed so simple, when he had explained it all to you in Paris, but then again, he was always better at words than you. 

“It hasn’t been that long for me”, you finally started, “at least not as long as it has been for you. A few months, I think. I’ve been miserable too, at first. Everyone at home was really angry for the way I just took off to… well, to be with you. But eventually, they sent me back on missions, you know, like the one today. Through different points in time. And…”, another heavy swallow before you looked into those beautiful golden eyes, “I’ve been seeing you… across the time.” 

He hid his emotions well, only looking slightly taken aback. 

“I told you, once, that you were the one who sent me back to Wallachia, at a different point in time and… well, we meet each other. At different points in time. I have met you several times since leaving Wallachia. In France and in America, but that’s years from now, so…”, you shrugged, “it hasn’t happened to you yet.” 

Alucard for his part swallowed and sat in silence for a long time. “And what then?” 

Your brows furrowed. “What do you mean?” 

“We meet, in France or America, and what then?” 

A startled huff left you, earning you an almost indignant glare. “What do you think? The same thing happens that happened in Wallachia. The bond is there and we are consumed by it and each other. For the time we are given, we share our bed, our thoughts, our…” You couldn’t continue, not when finally the gold inside his eyes seemed to melt and he was looking at you like that. 

All relief, yearning and warmth. “Yes?”, he wondered, and for the first time since meeting him here, his voice sounded almost small. 

“Yes”, you agreed and reached across the table, tangling your fingers with his gloved ones. “Yes, always. You have no idea how… every time they tell me I get to travel into the past, I want to jump out of my skin and just be with you already. If there weren’t people around, I would have kissed you senseless already.” 

A small smile stretched across his mouth and he squeezed your fingers reassuringly. 

The sweet moment was destroyed, however, by the insensitive growling of your stomach. 

“Hungry?”, he asked you and immediately managed to catch the attention of one of the maids busying themselves around. 

The poor girl tripped over her words every time she looked into his beautiful face. You might as well not exist, but you couldn’t blame her - everything about him was disarming. 

You ate some chicken stew with bread that would have been better if he had made it. “If we are lucky”, you told him afterwards, “I will be here for several weeks, maybe even months.” 

“Hm”, he made and it sounded familiar now. “There was somewhere I wanted to travel. You could join me, I suppose.” 

“Neat”, you grinned at him warmly. “When do we start?” 

“As soon as my business here is finished. Hopefully, I can drive the vampires out of this city tonight.” 

“Okay, and what do I do?”, you wanted to know, already thinking about ways to help. 

He looked at you for a long moment, before smiling again. “Sleep, I wager… you look tired.” 

You were, but unwilling to admit it. “I have nowhere to stay. Even if this tavern has rooms, they will never let a lone girl rent one.” 

“I will take care of it”, he declared simply and rose from his seat before you could disagree. 

Soon, he returned and led you up wooden stairs to a simple room. 

“What did you tell them?”, you wondered.

“That we are travelling and need a room for the night. I will disappear my own way, so they will think that I am up here with you.” 

Your brows rose. “And they were just okay with that?” 

There was a mischievous glint in his eyes. “Well, I did tell them that we are married.” 

Ah. 

The blush that spread across your cheeks and neck was truly embarrassing. 

_____________________________________

Alucard woke you the next morning, with the first rays of sunlight streaming through the window. 

There was that hopeful buzz underneath your skin again at having him so close in privacy, with him sitting on the edge of the bed, his hand soft against your hair. 

Unfortunately, he ushered you back into your dress instead of being open to romantic advances. “We need to hurry, I booked us passage back to France.” 

Which was how you found yourself on a ship across the Channel… discovering that you were prone to seasickness. The amounts of time you threw up across the side of the ship or into a bucket was truly embarrassing, only worsened by Alucard’s occasional smile at the entire, terrible ordeal. 

Naturally, your travel on the ship wasn’t something that inspired romance either. 

“Where are we going now?”, you asked once you had steady ground beneath your feet again in France. 

“Trier”, Alucard replied and dragged you onwards, not really minding your unstable gait or weak demeanor. 

You were on your travels for weeks - weeks - and he hadn’t even kissed you yet. 

Belatedly, you realised that it was your turn. In France, when you had still been too dumb to realise the extent of what all this between the both of you meant, this commitment to each other, he had been the one to explain everything, to kiss you and admit to the depth of his feelings. 

Right now, he was the one who was young and dumb - and it was only fair of you to return the favour. 

At first you travelled over land with a covered wagon, but the progress was slow, sleeping on the wooden floorboards was wildly uncomfortable and the nights were starting to get far too cold for that. Needless to mention that it annoyed you when he wouldn’t join you at night. But he could go a long time without actually sleeping and preferred to stand watch while you rested. 

Alucard was impressed when you assured him that you could simply travel by horse - and even more amazed when you told him that he had been the one to teach you how to ride properly. 

By the time you had ditched the wagon, spent an entire day on horseback and finally found another tavern to spend the night in - as husband and wife, no less - you were, once again, about ready to spontaneously combust with sexual frustration. 

Sometime during your stay in 1501 you had changed your dress to men’s clothing, which was infinitely better for riding, and also easier to get off by yourself. You had already filled the basin on the washstand with what little water a maid had brought up and were chugging off your boots and pants, while Alucard was simply standing at the window with his back turned to you. 

Making no motions to undress. 

That just wouldn’t do. 

You got rid of your jerkin, but left your shift and stays on for now, as a concession to him. You just getting outright naked might be a little too much for the innocent front he was currently putting on. 

Quickly, you ran the wet rag beneath your arms and across the back of your neck, getting rid of the sweat from a day of riding. 

“Are you going to sleep tonight?”, you asked him then. 

“Probably not”, he replied evenly, still not looking at you. “This is a strange place in a strange country, better to keep alert.” 

A humourless huff left you and he cocked his head slightly, staring at your reflection in the window. “We both know full well that you would still be able to hear any sound and make out any unbidden movement, even if you rested”, you explained, your voice growing laboured while you were trying to untie the stays at your back - a task that proved to be more difficult than expected. The bow had somehow become severely knotted. 

“Nevertheless”, was his flat reply, still without turning around. 

You rolled your eyes while still contorting. “Seriously, are you really going to - argh!”, you made in frustration and stomped your foot once, like an angered child, when all you managed to do was tighten the damn thing. 

Then you wondered what the hell you were doing. There was another person with really deft fingers in the room - you knew that from experience. 

“Can you help me, please”, you finally relented and turned your back to him, “before I manage to suffocate myself?” 

You could hear his footsteps and your heartbeat was starting to race inside your throat when you could feel him right behind you. The bond was faintly humming, but you could tell that some parts of it were suppressed. 

Swiftly, he moved your low ponytail - as always practical to hide beneath a hat - from your back over your shoulder in order to see the laces better. His fingertips brushed your neck and you visibly shivered. 

The humming grew more tangible. 

Alucard was so close now that you could feel his breath at the back of your neck while he worked the dratted knot free. 

“Adrian?”, you wondered breathily when you could already feel the whalebones loosening around your ribcage. 

“Hm?” 

“Have I…”, you swallowed, “have I somehow grown hideous since you last saw me?” 

His hands stilled. “What?” 

You shrugged, as if it were nothing. “Apart from you holding my hair while I was vomiting my soul out across the Channel, this is the closest you have been. Is there something wrong with me now?” 

“Of course not”, he replied and finished his task. Swiftly, he pulled the laces from your stays and you let them drop at your feet. Turning around to face him, you knew that your shift left little to the imagination, but he was looking into your eyes nonetheless. 

“Alright”, you nodded slowly, trying to be understanding of what might be going on inside his head. “What is it then? We were together, in Wallachia. Shared a bed and… more besides”, Jeez, his older version was right, you were still a prude, “What changed?”

He swallowed. “That only happened for such a short time, in retrospect”, he admitted quietly. “Most of your time in Wallachia was spent in other ways… with reading, learning and teaching, and mostly my sulking.” 

You truly couldn’t help the way your lips quirked at that. At least you couldn’t fault him for being incapable of introspection. 

“And now it has been nineteen years… I feel almost as useless in your presence as I felt before…”, his hand came up to push a strand of your hair behind your ear reverently, “and I keep wondering…”, but he didn’t finish that sentence. 

Not breaking eye contact, you took a step forward, your chest almost pressing against his, as you asked: “Wondering what?” 

Another tight swallow. “When you met me, centuries from now, I am surely different. More healed. More experienced. Easier to be around. I wonder whether you might… prefer him, who I will become? Over me, the one I am now?” 

You blinked at him, dumbfounded for a moment. “No”, you breathed, almost incredulously, “In all honesty, there was a long time when I wished you would still be the way you were in Wallachia. But without any doing on my part, I find the charm in every version of you. It doesn’t matter where or when or how, it is you that I want. Always. You can’t imagine how… when I am home, in my time, all I can think about is how much I want to be with you. I don’t even care about the time. Just you.” 

“Are you certain?”, he wondered, that old insecurity of Wallachia back. 

“Yes. I love you”, you could see the way he shuddered, his eyes widening at those words, and remembered that this was the first time for him to hear you say it. “I love you. I love you. Always and forever.” You raised your hands and wound them into the lapels of his coat, as you tended to do. “And if you don’t let me kiss you now, I am going to start screaming and won’t stop until -” 

He kissed you.

Finally. Finally. 

You were the one who ended the kiss about two seconds later. “Get out of your clothes”, you demanded as you pushed him towards the bed. His brows raised, but there was amusement inside his eyes. “Get out of your clothes, respectfully”, you tried again and he chuckled quietly. 

While he was working on his coat and shirt, you started on the laces of his trousers. You managed to push them down slightly by the time his torso was naked, and with a final push he had to sit down on the bed. 

You dropped to your knees between his spread legs immediately. 

Alucard breathed your name in surprise, but you were far beyond patience. Besides, you needed the practice - it wouldn’t do for him to stay ahead in these kinds of matters. 

He was just as big as you remembered, and just as delicious. This time, though, he seemed to be wholly unprepared, and far more vocal about it. The sounds he was making alone were enough to drench your thighs and fill you with an unhealthy amount of pride. 

“I won’t last long, if you keep doing that”, he finally pressed out, his fingers caressing your working jaw gently. 

You released him for a moment, still pumping with your hand. “Would that be so bad?”, you asked teasingly and looked up at him, flickering your tongue out and across his head. 

He let his head drop back slightly with a groan, but still found his voice. “There are other things I would still like to do.” 

“Fine”, you huffed, as if stopping was an inconvenience for you. 

Lifting you effortlessly from the floor, Alucard quickly kicked off his boots before turning you around and settling between your thighs again. “Nineteen years”, he whispered with his lips close to yours as he laid the both of you down on top of the bed, “There were times when I wanted to die.” 

“I’m sorry”, you breathed, pulling him closer with your legs around his waist, “but I’m here now.” 

“Hm, I want to say that this is worth it, but I don’t want to get ahead of myself.” 

You grinned. “Then we will have to make it worth it.” 

He entered you then and you were beyond words. 

 _______________________________________

You were lying next to each other afterwards, enjoying the silence that came with the resolved tension of the last few weeks. 

Wanting to feel more of him, though, you sat up and grabbed the edge of your shift. Alucard followed your lead and got rid of his pants, but you hesitated. 

“Don’t freak out”, you told him before pulling the shift over your head, “but I have a few more scars since you have last seen me naked.”

His brows were furrowed when you turned to him, still kneeling on the mattress, and took his hand to put it against the scar on your side. Better to get this out of the way now. “They had to cut me open and fix me… after Wallachia.” 

Eyes widening, he pulled his hand away and jerkily sat up. “What?” 

“There’s nothing to worry about, truly”, you assured him, shifting closer and taking his face in your hands. “I barely felt any of it. They made me sleep during and afterwards there was only a little pain. I don’t have any problems now, and I will never do anything like that again, I promise.” 

His mouth was tense, his jaw tight, but you managed to release some of the tension by pressing your lips to his face - his forehead, his cheeks, his jaw. 

“And…”, you continued weakly, not wanting there to be any lies between the both of you. So, you removed your hair from your shoulder and bent your neck, showing him your other scar. 

“You were bitten by a vampire?”, he asked incredulously, stiffening once more. His fingers came up to trace the pearly-white scar. “But they didn’t turn you?” 

“Hm-hm”, you made.  

“Where? When?”

“Does it matter?”, you looked back at him. 

“Yes, so I can know whether I will ever have a chance to kill them.” 

You couldn’t help but laugh. “That might be a little difficult.” 

His brows furrowed. 

“Adrian…”, you shifted closer, until you could settle in his lap, “...please don’t freak out over this and ruin everything but… it was you. You were the one who bit me. Not for the first time, apparently, at least that’s what you said.” 

He stiffened, but didn’t push you away. “What?” 

You nodded and then shrugged, a blush spreading so far over your face that it reached your neck. “And to be honest with you, it… it was kinda nice. Really nice, actually, because …” 

“No”, he shook his head vehemently. “No. I won’t. I refuse to believe that. Or to do that.” 

“Um, that’s not really how this time travelling stuff works”, you pointed out. 

His jaw tightened. “You were the one who told us before the battle against Dracula that the future is never certain. I will challenge that future of yours.” 

You inhaled a deep breath, not wanting to ruin this night. “Fine”, you conceded, dropping your forehead against his. “Whatever makes you happy.” 

His arms tightened around you and he pressed his lips to your neck - to the other side. “I would never do anything to hurt you. Tell me that you know that.” 

“I know that.”

_________________________________

“What is in Trier?”, you asked more than once during your journey, but Alucard would only smile at you, tight-lipped and mirthful.

Your days were spent raining, both through rain and sunshine. One day, it even started snowing. 

Your nights were spent in small, warm taverns, lying close to one another and whispering all the things you had never had the time or mind to say in Wallachia. 

Eventually, when winter started to show its face in earnest, you were considering to tell Alucard that you couldn’t go on like this: It was getting too cold and soon enough, you’d catch your death out here. 

But then, at the edge of some woods, in the middle of nowhere - or rather, the middle of Trier - you reached your goal. 

A medium-sized house made of grey stones and a straw covered roof. The afternoon was dark and grey, but the light inside was warm. Even from a distance, you just knew that it would be comfortable inside. 

“Alright, where are we?”, you pressed once more, but the door was already bursting open and a small girl with strawberry coloured hair and large grey eyes bounced into the snow. 

“Uncle Alucard!”, she squealed in delight. 

“Wait, what?”, you asked, your head whirling around towards your companion. 

Who was already getting down from his horse. “I feel the need to point out that I never told them to call me that”, he told you dryly while effortlessly catching the girl in her assault and lifting her in his arms. “Your mother will freeze me on the spot when she catches you out in this weather without shoes on, little one”, he told the girl. 

As you climbed down from your horse as well, the mother in question appeared and it all started to make sense. 

“Sypha!”, you gasped and a wide smile stretched over your face. 

“Oh”, she made, huge blue eyes widening in surprise. 

In no time, your horses were tugged away inside a barn behind the house and you were sitting inside the warm, cozy house, as if you belonged nowhere else. 

____________________________________

It was amazing, how Trevor and Sypha could look so different and yet be the same. 

The same bantering, the same teasing smiles and knowing touches. 

It had been over twenty years since you had last seen them - at least for them - and Trevor’s hair was more grey than brown at this point. You could see the lines in his face at the places where you had expected them to be, outlining his usual frown. Every time his gaze lingered on his wife or one of his children, however, his expression was so warm and soft that they seemed to disappear entirely. He was still broad, still strong, but a little hunched over at times, as if his back was bothering him. 

Sypha had gotten a little rounder around the face and waist after bearing several children, but her energy hadn’t been diminished in the slightest. She had the house completely under control, even with two teenagers and their little girl in there.

Apparently, her and Trevor had had five children, four boys and one girl. 

Their oldest sons were travelling across Europe, hunting monsters, as you should have expected. Trevor usually joined them, but had departed early to help Sypha prepare for the winter. He begrudgingly confessed that their little girl, over ten years younger than the boys, only existed because Sypha had apparently pestered him into trying one last time, since she had wanted a daughter. Though, when you looked at the way Trevor interacted with the women in his life, you refused to believe that he was suffering at all.