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He walks in cold loneliness because he feels it’s where he belongs. Where he has always belonged.
There’s a comfort to be found in surrounding oneself with nature’s creations. Alucard knows he’s alone here. If he truly does hold a sense of self preservation, an instinct to guard himself against the world around him, all of it disappears in the woods. The hood of his cloak sitting upon his shoulders while his boots sink into the fresh snow. With winter comes snow and soft flakes adorning eyelashes, caught in
their gentle falling grasp. Yet with the season also comes cold, turning warm blood and skin stiff, unfeeling.
Alucard watches as the snow falls off the overhanging branches, above from the darkened skies, and into his eyes, onto his open palms turned upwards. Wondering if he will feel anything. He doesn’t. Is this how it’s always been for him? Or has he already grown numb?
Snow carried by occasional gusts of wind creates a blurred landscape. They drift past Alucard, the ends of his cloak fluttering alongside. This could very well be a dream. There’s little to see and little to feel. The woods seem softer, quieter in the dead of winter. Unassuming, preying upon those who wander too far or too deep into its clutches. Alucard isn’t foolish or easily swayed. He wanders onwards with a sense of willingness. Towards nothing, no destination mapped out in his mind. Just as he once did as a child.
Children who come from strange families, families who remained out of the norm for safety until twenty years passed and their carefully crafted lives came crumbling down; those children acquire even stranger habits. Temptations caused by curiosity’s sake and the rush of causing a little rebellion. Diverging off the well-tread path into unknown territory against the wishes of well-meaning parents is not a new desire. Rather one that has been with Alucard since the day he could walk.
This habit did not concern mother with her sciences and hands belonging to that of a doctor’s, nor did the lord of their castle raise a single cautious eyebrow towards his son. Until Alucard, then known by the softer name Adrian, began wandering from his bed into the coldest nights. Barefoot, leaving behind a trail soon swept clean by snowfall.
Father never said anything, not a scold or shout. With eyes downcast, he would wrap him in his cape and fly him back to his mother. Quiet as the winter air. Her tears soaked the white ground when she saw her little boy, hair just as sun-kissed as her own. Strange children, strange habits.
He never told them why he did it. Then again, he’s never been able to tell himself. That elusive reason could very well be the inherent comfort of one’s own company. Alucard once knew someone else a long time ago, someone apart from himself, who was well versed in the art of loneliness.
A long puff of winter smoke slips through his frigid lips. Blood rushes to his cheeks in an attempt to warm them, flushing the skin in a soft pink hue. His eyes blink but the water within them feels frozen. He’s been walking for some time now. The landscape is beginning to look the same—as it did centuries ago. Perhaps that’s why he wanders tonight, heavy step in front of heavy step.
Maybe if he tries hard enough, Alucard can pretend this isn’t a different time. A decade in history unknown and alien to him, just as he is an alien to the people and customs of this century. This is not the end of the 18th century where a tight enough corset can snap an entire rib cage and “Wallachia” is now “Romania”.
But Alucard cannot pretend for very long. When retreating to the past to find solace, comfort, and a desperate sense of familiarity where very little feels familiar, he always returns to the present moment emptier than when he left.
Empty and tired, never not tired. Feeling his legs about to give out, Alucard finds a tree with a sturdy trunk to sit beneath. He wraps the cloak tighter around his trembling body, cocooning himself. His coffin was a sort of cocoon yet when he emerged from its confines, he was unchanged on the outside. He can’t say the same about his inside. Not a vibrant butterfly, but a sad moth foolish enough to fly towards an open flame.
Despite his stagnancy as the snow gathers around him, Alucard’s thoughts continue their aimless wander. He wonders how long it will take for winter to consume him if he stays where he rests. Not a serious query and not one in which he is eager to test, but the thought remains out of genuine curiosity. Alucard begins to drift in and out of his alert state until it’s gone. He finds sanctuary in this innocuous thought of his. What will it feel like? How will it happen? Slow and methodical? Quick and merciful? Will the earth take him first, or shall the nighttime wind be the swifter one?
Let anything consume me, he thinks. The snow, the roots, the darkness of night. Take me away from this place where I might never belong. Let me feel something.
It’s not right and it won’t help but Alucard can’t tell himself that because he doesn’t believe it yet. Drifting, ever drifting. Until he hears them. At least, it sounds like them. Two voices calling his name, muffled by the snow and heavy quiet of winter. Alucard. Alucard. Over and over again, growing more desperate.
Alucard remembers those voices from long ago, but now he hears two more. Different, yet the same. Four voices bleeding into each other until Alucard is no longer in his right mind to try and differentiate between them.
“I found him! He’s over here!”
Two figures run towards him, their footsteps loud and heavy in the snow. The details of their faces and bodies are muddied, still deep in a thick haze despite how they kneel in front of Alucard. He knows only this: one is a man, the other a young woman and between them hovers a sphere of light with soft edges. A lantern or a spell conjured by a skilled magician. Alucard is certain that one of them has to be a magician while the other—a hunter. But which ones?
Then in a flash a sanity, he recalls where he is. When he is. This year, this decade, this century, this very moment in time so different from where he originates from.
“What on earth were you thinking?” Demands the girl with hair like wheat fields. Alucard tells himself that her anger is justified, sprouting from a place of genuine concern; for him of all persons.
Something wraps around his curled body, warmer than his flimsy cloak made heavier due to heaps of snow clinging onto his shoulders. Newly sheltered, Alucard feels himself lifting off the ground and into a pair of strong, capable arms.
“We’re taking you back home,” says the man carrying him.
No. Don’t take me home. Home is gone. Everything is gone. Only I remain. Only I was left behind.
As they make their way through the trees, the girl carries on with her scolds, battering Alucard’s muffled eardrums. Because she cares.
“Why do you do these things?” Why indeed.
He’s warmer now, surrounded by weighted furs and soft cushions to sink his shivering body into. They were quick to bring him through the manor doors then up towards the spare bedchamber. For the past handful of days, the space has been occupied by Alucard’s sudden existence into this world. Never quite feeling comfortable with his own bed, clothes, and windows looking out at the vast grounds. No wonder he took to wandering.
Now all it takes for him to lie perfectly still under blankets is a concerning dose of hypothermia and delirium.
The blurred outlines of his two saviours hover over him. One of them, the wheat-haired girl, places something damp and hot atop Alucard’s forehead. The other with broader shoulders (and a voice too similar to another hunter he knew) tries to slip a spoonful of thick scalding liquid into his mouth then down his throat. Alucard knows he should take their remedies, but it’s harder when his eyes won’t open and his head won’t lift itself.
It’s better to not move. Better to lie immoveable, let his teeth chatter and his skin sweat while every breath comes out as a meager wheeze. Thoughts begin to fade between his friends of old and friends of new.
The room smells of woodsmoke and roasted chestnuts. Strong, warm, kindling a fire within Alucard’s core where his heart and soul lie buried. Vital parts of himself that came dangerously close to freezing the night before. They say the lowest level of Hell is an icy wasteland. Above, sinners look forward to the same fires depicted in tapestries and feverish paintings meant to frighten the most devout. It seems Alucard is always narrowly escaping one Hell for something closer to the mortal realm.
His eyes open, heavy with remnants of deep sleep. The cloth covering his forehead has now dried, same as his parched lips and throat. Alucard licks the chapped skin as though the action itself were a silent plea for water. The worst might still be behind him. Night is always darkest before the dawn and every other hollow bit of consolation he tells to others but never to himself.
Gold sunlight streams in through the frosted window panes, made brighter due to the fresh coating of untampered, not yet tread snow. It’s too bright for Alucard to fall back asleep, not when his weary eyes suddenly catch a glimpse of two extra bodies in his room. Or have they always been there? That must be the case since both are asleep just as soundly as he was. A man with long dark brown hair and brown skin, the one who carried Alucard through the woods, slumps forward in a chair next to the bed while the same wheat-haired girl lies curled up along a nearby chaise-lounge. Their clothes are unchanged; perhaps they really did stay the night.
Alucard lets out a breath, louder than he intended, which causes Richter to stir. His stiff limbs crack and reposition in the chair as his eyes forcibly blink themselves into consciousness. He turns to Alucard, face softening into an expression of relief. Once full of idealism now struggling to break free of its own stoicism. He hasn’t known Richter for very long, yet still long enough to make that assumption about the Belmont.
“You’re alright.” He says it less like a statement and more as a question.
By now, the back of Alucard’s head has indented itself far too deep into the pillow for him to easily move it. Instead, he glances towards the nightside table where an untouched pitcher of water taunts him. Richter notices his request after a few awkward seconds.
“Oh. Right, of course.” He pours a cup and offers it to Alucard, who manages to sit up and drink it down in one gluttonish swig. Now his lips and vocal chords no longer feel so ravished.
“Why did you do that last night?”
Belmonts and their blunt, quick to the ugly questions. Alucard doesn’t blame Richter. Many other things are only hereditary. When he hesitates with his answer, finding it better to keep such life-long secrets locked away, Richter backs down. This is the way it’s been with every question pertaining to his life and habits since they welcomed him into their abode.
“Sorry.” He speaks as though to chastise himself. “It’s alright if you still want to keep certain things… private.”
Alucard turns the empty cup in his hands. Neither one finds it easy to look into each other’s eyes for very long. Richter must have his own reasons while Alucard—despite every honest attempt against it—can only see another man who held the same family duty long ago.
“I am certain you also have things you would rather leave unsaid.”
For a moment, he regrets this statement as soon as it leaves his quenched lips. He meant it as a sign of solidarity yet like most things Alucard has said in the past, it simply didn’t sound that way. His heart and the sudden pit in his stomach feel lighter when he hears Richter chuckle.
“You might want to warn me the next time you decide to read my mind.”
Innocent and said in good faith. Alucard can work with that.
“I’m able to do many things. Reading minds is not one of them.”
Richter sits back, looking far more relaxed than before. Alucard takes his change in posture as a good sign. “Shows what I know. I promise, one day I’ll get it straight.”
“It’s alright. Just as I’m the first dhampir you’ve ever known, you’re only the second Belmont I’ve had the honour of knowing.”
“Stop talking so loud…” A third voice slurs from the other side of the room. After moving a clump of long tangled hair out of her face, Maria forces herself into a sitting position, still caught in the throes of sleep. It’s only when she notices that all eyes are on her does she stumble to her feet.
“Alucard! You’re awake!” She rests her hands at the foot of the bed, not caring about how she fell asleep in one of her better suits or the wild untamed animal atop her head that is her morning hair. Each finger sinks into the plush duvet.
“How are you feeling?”
“Tired, but warm. Thanks to you two.”
“What were you thinking? Why didn’t you say anything, you had us both worried to death—”
Alucard’s mouth gapes open ready to make excuses until Richter does it for him.
“Easy, Maria. He just needed some fresh air and lost track of where he was.”
Maria’s grip on the bed loosens as her expression turns plaintive. She fiddles with her nails, picking and scratching at them. This reaction has always been a terrible habit of hers.
“I’m sorry. We thought… you wanted to leave. That you were trying to leave.”
The anxiety mixed with sorrow in Maria’s voice is palpable, felt by both Richter and Alucard—Alucard most of all. These two humans with their fragile optimism have done whatever they can to convince him into staying among the one half of himself. They both must see him as a sort of addition to their household, no matter how odd that addition may seem. Has it been enough? Or too much?
“No,” Alucard firmly states. “I wasn’t trying to leave. I don’t want to leave. Unless…” He struggles with his next query. There is no better or gentler way of asking it. “What would you have me do?”
“Stay, of course.”
“You’ll be surprised to find out that you’re actually in better company here than whatever grim thoughts may tell you otherwise.”
Before Alucard can refute, before those very same thoughts mentioned by Richter overcome his sliver of rationality, Maria speaks again.
“You belong in this house as much as Richter and myself do.”
Validation. Easy to give, difficult to accept even under the best circumstances and intentions. Perhaps it’s all he needed. Hearing those foreign words—”belong”, “stay”, “company”—each one almost makes Alucard second guess their true meanings. Doubt creeps in, pouring its poison drop by drop. The cold woods start beckoning once again. Alucard needs to know one last thing.
“Am I a burden?”
It’s more of a question to himself. Maria doesn’t recognize that; Richter certainly doesn’t either. He takes the initiative to answer Alucard, but not before an insidious thought crosses his own mind.
No more than I probably am.
“No. You’re not a burden. We don’t think that so you shouldn’t either. Don’t ever believe that.”
Alucard forgoes his inherently stiff manners and looks into Richter’s melancholic eyes. He asks himself another question, deciding to leave yet another thing unspoken: how long will it take until he can’t see Trevor’s eyes anymore? Is this the reason why he so often adverts his gaze whenever he and Richter converse?
Not now, Alucard decides. Stop living in that time. Live now.
The morning ends with all three sheltering themselves from the midday snowfall, each with their own bowl of soup and bread to soak up every last drop. Maria reclines on her chaise-lounge, Richter attempts to make different conversation between full mouthfuls, and Alucard continues to take comfort in his bed. Everything tastes as though someone put their entire love into it.
This is what a home feels like. This is what a home should be.