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I don't know what to call him, Dracula thought with panic and dismay.
He'd given him the name Alucard as a declaration of everything he had wanted to take back. A literal reversal of his own name and a rejection of the darkness that had brought them both so low. He'd never heard him use it and thought it likely his fledgling hated it, just as he hated his sire.
It was so rare that the Prince of Darkness would see Trevor. There was no way to approach his fledgling without alerting him to his presence and he had accepted that the White Wolf wanted nothing to do with him. Worshipped, adored, hated, feared, Dracula was many things to many creatures. He was father to none. He was loved by no one.
He had created others of course, but none of them held the power of the Belmont line in their body, or the quantity of blood and memory that Dracula had given Trevor. It’d been an accident, an unintentional consequence of his panicked attempt to save his son. Usually, when Dracula granted blood, he emptied it of his thoughts and infused it with pleasure and command.
Dracula regretted passing on all those memories to Trevor, but he couldn’t take them back. They were weapons against him now; images of wanton lust, violence, and rage. Those he could explain; those he could even forgive himself for. It was the grief and the madness he regretted. And the love. Those were the memories and the emotions that made his throat clench and his heart bleed.
Dracula knew better than most that his history with love was a disaster. He was a murderous death to those he loved. Even if it was unintentional, even if he was blind and ignorant when he’d done it, the end result was always death. After he’d murdered Trevor, he’d panicked and tried to turn him. He had dropped the full depth of his despair and rage over discovering he'd killed Gabriel’s son, into Trevor's still-warm corpse, alongside his immortal blood.
Worse, he’d passed on the very potent, suicidal, self-loathing which roared forth, and swamped him in that moment. Everything he felt for what he’d done to Marie had magnified and entwined with what he had done to Trevor. All his madness, his rage, his misery and sickness—he put it into his son. How Trevor woke lucid was a miracle. Dracula barely survived handling these feelings himself, much less having the cocktail of all of them at once and at full strength.
As horrible as that was, it was before Dracula realized that he’d forcibly turned the man into a vampire without any consideration as to what his wishes were. He’d sent Trevor’s soul to hell for eternity. Out of love. What kind of love was that? The kind that fostered hatred, he acknowledged. Was it any surprise when Alucard awoke, his fledgling had wanted to kill him?
It had been the one thing the Prince of Darkness could give him; the serenity of feeling some sort of vengeance. To end the evil curse of Dracula’s love alongside the remaining survivor of the Belmont line. In truth, Dracula didn’t want his bloodline to exist any longer. All the Belmonts could burn as far as he was concerned, but his need to give Trevor something, was far more powerful. In truth, his execution had been somewhat healing. For a moment, just an instant, Alucard had held him. He had felt the cool skin of his son, and felt such an intense wave of need rise up in him that it had burned his eyes and filled his throat with a prickling ache. Dracula needed this connection, needed his love and his acceptance. It would never, ever happen.
The agony of knowing he’d killed his only chance for understanding and happiness in this immortal life pierced his heart far more deeply than Trevor’s combat cross ever could. By the time Simon drove the weapon into his chest, every fiber of the Prince of Darkness’s being was begging for the end. So, when it came, and he felt his fleshly form disintegrate, there had been relief and a feeling of fragile hope. He had hope that this might give Alucard something to build upon; a reason to believe that this sick, twisted tragedy had all been worth it.
Dracula knew that his death would be short-lived, but his rest under the collapsed ruin of his castle had allowed his mind to fragment. Some of those hideously huge and awful emotions had eased somewhat, bleeding off into helpless grief. By the time he had risen to the night to rebuild his empire, he had buried that unrequited love deep within him, letting it rest inside the hollow where his soul used to be. The only love he could ever expect to receive from Alucard would be the celebration and love for his death. He understood that.
Whether the world knew it or not, they benefitted from the love he felt for his fledgling. Dracula rebuilt his empire, but he never declared war on humanity again. Instead, he brooded in his castle, and was content to watch the world tear itself apart. That was, until the Brotherhood decided to send Roland de Ronceval, and what looked like a million knights. It was nice to know that some things never change, Dracula had thought, while a smirk played on his lips.
He'd surveyed the wreckage of bodies around him and was absently enjoying the heat of the molten cross in his hand, when he felt a presence he had not felt in half a millennia.
When he'd turned and saw the shadow, he'd known despair. I cannot die Trevor, he'd thought, or I would have given that to you already. He pushed it down and watched his fledgling draw close.
I don't know what to call him, Dracula thought with panic and dismay, realizing that the man was waiting for him to speak. "Trevor?" he asked softly.
The vampire did not smile and his voice was flinty when he spoke, "Trevor died a long time ago Father. You made me what I am."
The impact of 'Father' shattered Dracula's composure completely. Centuries of practice was the only way he kept his face impassive. But inside of him, in the space where his soul used to be and love had been sent to die, something was cracking. Like eggshells, his defenses flaked away and love oozed out of the exposed core. He acknowledged what we are; he voiced the bond, Dracula thought, and was staggered by it. I am allowed to be his father.
"I stand before you, reborn a vampire. I am Alucard," his son said, pride in his spine and something smoldering in his gaze.
He took the name, Dracula thought, fresh shock pluming in billowing stacks. He could have wept. What had seemed impossible all this time was happening in the space of mere breaths. Answers to hurts that had festered, and burrowed inside of him were cooling salve on the open wounds.
Whatever happened here, Alucard had already given him more than he ever could have dreamed. He didn't want to fight it, this love and hope flooding his body like it had been infused into him. It was the end of all semblance of resistance or protection against this man, his fledgling and his son. Here was the heir to his kingdom and the one person who might understand him. This was one person who might end this unbearable loneliness.
Whatever Alucard wanted, Dracula would give it to him.
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Here is a song from the wrong side of town
Where I'm bound to the ground by the loneliest sound
That pounds from within and is pinning me down
Here is a page from the emptiest stage
A cage or the heaviest cross ever made
A gauge of the deadliest trap ever laid
And I thank you for bringing me here
For showing me home, for singing these tears
Finally, I've found that I belong here
-“Home,” Depeche Mode