Work Text:
What he does not say aloud is ‘Father, it’s time.’ For the moment, he only thinks it.
Alucard follows his father’s shadow into the cathedral. A solemn darkness takes them in, but something is still happening on the street. The pavement trembles and puckers, the cement shifting and breaking like skin over the beast of the world as it stirs. Where it cracks, the earth vents clouds of sulfur and veins of fire course in the deep beneath.
A fissure widens and swallows a car before splitting like a web under the wreck of the passenger jet. It groans and staggers, the steel whining as the nose tears from the body of the plane and falls into fire. It should be dawn, but dawn does not come. The sky glows like fire and smoke in the night, a brightness that is choking.
He watches this but only for a moment before the doors of the cathedral swing shut with all fatefulness again, and the thunder and grinding of the city crumbling is shut out. The collapse of the city continues, soundlessly, as a skyscraper rising as a silver line in one of the Great Church’s windows stiffens and buckles. The building changes, like a cursed creature caught under a full moon. Its thousands of windows shudder like skin before they shatter, raining so much glass. A tower peels out of the skyscraper’s ironwork, its bones—a black, reaching tower, alive somehow and crawling with gargoyles. It is the highest in the city, and it flies a single banner—dyed in blood and emblazed with a dragon with wings open, black and cross-shaped. The rest of the skyline follows suit, the rejuvenated walls of Castle Dracul taking shape from humanity’s engineering. The emerging castle drives man’s electricity before it, like a tide of lights desperate and fleeing.
Alucard does not need to see it to know that the drawbridge has taken form within a storm of fog and crashed through a highway interchange. There are torches lighting on ramparts still rising, building themselves with the ruins of civilization. He does not need to hear the river, running dark and thick under the Sciences District, to know it rouses from sleep and overflows its banks. It surges with a dark heart and floods the streets until it laps at the walls where Castle Dracul will sit.
Perhaps he might have done something different.
Perhaps this is inevitable.
Perhaps he too held onto childish wishes.
The Great Church, however, does not fall. Its dusty saints do tremble, a little, and their stone eyes appear to gaze up as the flames fret over candles puddling together in wax at the altar. The windows redden, the twisted skyline falling away, and when Alucard moves, his steps shiver with the floor. Somehow, the Great Church begins to lift, as if by great, invisible hands, and climb slowly through the air, higher and higher, until the skyline sits beneath the keep as the distant castle wall it is.
The saints are not saints anymore. Serpents choke and become them. Christ and crucifix have removed themselves without sound, and the altar candles burn all the brighter for the ruling presence of a black door. A black door that waits for the return of a king.
In the shadow of this black door, this waiting door, is his father. A wind from nowhere lifts his coat, touches his hair, and welcomes him ‘home,’ Alucard realizes coldly. He steps back and draws on the darkness till even his gold eyes are hidden. Light shines in his eyes, as it does in a beast’s, and then he glances away. If he does not act now, he may never have the chance again.
Everything, everything, has been for this moment, and he will not permit his family to be used by fate any longer.
— — —
For a moment, he doesn’t remember his name—he learned it, but the sight of this door wipes it away—
He frowns.
—More like his name runs from this door like a dog. It runs and hides, ignorant as it is, like he might have ever escaped from this. Until now, he knows he has only faced a figment, a fragment of the wretched reality of this deathless place, his deathless curse. This now is no dream; this is insatiable void, ever starving darkness embodied by this door. It was all fun, all easy to pretend this door wasn’t going to come for him. That this door had not been waiting. That this door wasn’t going to open for him—graciously. He hears it already, its ponderous sigh over the stone under the witnessing eyes of golden angels and pillars and dragons, of course dragons. Its sigh that proves that all had waited, all would be as it was.
That now, his throne awaits him, after these many, many years of separation, and once he sits there again, once he assumes his place, they will begin the grand campaign again. After all, Satan is dead. What greater darkness walks the earth—ever walked the earth—his earth—than he? The world is ripe for the taking, and it does not even know he comes for it—
But first, the door asks an offering. After a taste of his familiar blood, it will open and welcome him back to where he belongs. He goes to bite into his wrist—
“Father,” asks a voice that is small, and smaller still for the immensity, the majesty of the hall. The voice cannot hope to carry far, and the unsmiling, marble creatures carrying the hall’s arching beams on their shoulders ignore such a tiny, insignificant sound. The shadows come to weigh it down; it might have been a voice from a forgotten dream, an imagined memory.
But he turns at once at the voice, like it has spoken his name. In the fog of the hall, in the fog of his heart, he cannot remember his name, but he knows this boy’s name. This boy is his child—this boy is—“Trevor.”
His son might have been smiling once, but he looks uncertain now and meets his eye carefully. There is an unfamiliar gauntness in his young face, like the boy has gone hungry—and all this while, the castle is still hungry for him. The shadows thicken, and run like dark blood, and they flow from the walls until the light that surrounds Trevor flares and brightens. The shadows of the hall sulk and slink away, to wait; they can wait, but the boy still lingers unsurely.
“What is it, son?” he asks, but when he leaves the door, all of the castle moans its loss—but it can wait. He comes to Trevor’s side and the boy looks up at him, his eyes are the color of his mother’s. Trevor looks ahead, past him, at the black door.
“Are you not coming with us, father? It’s time.”
His voice sounds—automatic, even to himself. “Where are we going?”
“Where we belong,” Trevor answers.
The darkness of the castle builds at his back as he watches his son, a blue, flickering phantom of a boy. His spirit light seems full of tendrils of some nature that swim, pale and thin, from the boy and out into the dark. They all travel in the same direction, but their paths fade when he tries to follow them. He looks from the waning light down at his son.
“Where is that?” he asks again. He does not want to ask, but he must. The look of hurt on Trevor’s face puts a pain so swift through his heart, he feels like the greatest of traitors—but he must know.
“Where we will be together,” his son says. “Where we will rest—where mother is.”
“Where your mother is,” he echoes, and he kneels to see his son eye to eye. He strokes his dark hair once, and it feels downy as dogling fur. He feels the deep ache of knowing he would have liked very much to have raised this boy, to have patted his head when he did well this way, to have been his father in earnest—all the things which fate forbade him. Trevor’s warmth becomes almost painful, and once he is free of the touch, he drops his hand on his son’s shoulder and he explains: “Your mother dwells forever in a gleaming city, a city larger than this one, larger than any—where the sun never sets, where the rain never falls, or the snow. The air is always warm, and there is always music, always laughter, always peace. If there is night, it is gentle and full of countless stars, because it is always bright where she is. Nothing where she is ever knows pain, anger, or hopelessness, and the walls around her are high and white and shining and seal out all suffering—”
“Mother said,” Trevor interrupts. “Mother said the walls are high, but there are gates, and the keepers are—”
“The keepers and the gates seal out suffering, and those who would bring it,” he says with a heavy voice. He takes Trevor’s shoulders with both hands. “My son, do you think such gates, that stand with such principles, would let me—me, who is master of this place, this engine of suffering—pass?”
Trevor rushes to him, and like any young, frustrated boy, he pounds his fist on his father’s chest. “But I want you to go!” He bows his head, and his voice cracks. “You—you can’t stay—You’ll—you’ll lose yourself again if you stay. Please come.”
“I cannot,” he says. “With all I have done, to the world, to your mother, to you, I—I am not even worthy of standing at the bottom of the city wall, where I will wait for all existence for only a glimpse of you, which I have still not earned. For even that, I am undeserving—”
Trevor throws his arms around his neck and hugs him fiercely, and the arms of a spirit child nearly take the breath from him. Their warmth is cold, phantom fire, and Trevor trembles until he takes hold of the small shoulders, the small back, and his son stills. He does not cry, or argue anymore, though he reaches up and wipes with his sleeve at tears that haven’t fallen. He straightens himself as a young warrior and grips suddenly tighter.
“Father, if you won’t go, I will stay with you—”
“Trevor, no—” But his voice is not alone, and a raging ‘NO’ thunders from all sides, all stones; it vibrates as a massive, furious heartbeat through the castle. Though he can only look at his son, the pulsing rage drowns out his own voice. A great wind pours into the keep and forces the black door open, and the throne waits like doom, the jaws of dragons hanging over it. Tiny hands seem to seize him and pull him with the wind, but as the wind drags at him, it forces Trevor back. If he lets go, the castle will drive the spirit of his son out, cast him away and send him to paradise alone—
Trevor holds tighter against the wind, which rears up and roars, and bits of rock caught up in the wind snicker over the stone. The castle roars like it hates little else like it hates this boy. It has hated for centuries, but small as he is, Trevor holds on.
“It won’t happen again,” the boy shouts into the castle’s din. “It won’t—I will stay this time—”
“Trevor,” and he holds his son, through the fiercest wind, in an embrace he was never allowed—and because is so forbidden, he feels in his heart, it cannot last. It must weather and break—it must be beaten.
“Father,” Trevor says in his ear, and his voice seems no longer a boy’s. “You know I can’t go—I can’t go into the city either—I—I never could.” And when his father can find nothing to say, Trevor reminds him: “There is always a choice. I chose—I choose.” With every word, the young voice grows older and older. Years collect, grow heavier, the resolute voice a man’s. “I will stay. You are my father, and I will not permit you to be used again—by this place, by God, by any power but your own. It will not happen again.” Trevor rests his head in the crook of his father’s neck suddenly and leans there a moment before he says: “Forgive me this.”
The wind manages to loosen them, and he slips from his son in the storm. The throne waits, and the castle cackles, its prince within its grasp again at last.
But when he falls on the blade, on Crissaegrim, all goes silent. The storm breaks. Somewhere the castle weeps for defeat, for death.
— — —
“Forgive me this,” Alucard says again, for he had always imagined something different, though he knows not what anymore. He kneels with his father as he coughs brutally and vomits blood so deep and red, it is nearly black. His father leans heavily on him, and Alucard does not move—they stay this way, embracing, their foreheads touching as they wait. He wishes he did not hesitate before he drives Crissaegrim deeper, but he cannot do it heartlessly—however quick the stroke, it will bring his father greater pain. Still, he forces the Crissaegrim further through ribs and heart, and the sword reaches long and redly from his father’s back.
His father gasps before more blood spills from his mouth. It seems endlessly red, pooling the floor, as his father pales, his hair grays, his body shrivels, and his eyes sink in wrinkles and shadow. His power ebbs away, and the castle decays around them. It shrieks from far, far away, almost from long irrelevance, as Alucard holds his father, his father now thin and ailing as an old man. A part of his heart seems broken somehow, as his father watches him with clouded eyes.
Alucard wonders if perhaps he cannot hear anymore—perhaps he fades, as the castle fades—but his eyes stay on his son. Alucard does not look away, but still, he feels like the greatest of traitors: he had imagined something so different. He had not imagined this ache, this unwillingness, but ‘It’s time,’ he tells himself.
His father continues to breathe, to stare, even though there is no blood left in his body to purge. His armor has dissolved in smoke, and dusty rags clothe him now. An unwelcome chill takes to him, and he shakes, even as Alucard conjures a red cloak from the air and his own blood and pulls it around his father.
“This ends now, father, I promise you—” But something about the stare does not break, it holds on, regretting. He barely hears his father’s voice as his shrunken chest heaves with agonal bellows.
In this last hour, their places seem to change. His father’s heart slows, but he still whispers, in a voice made small and child-like with its last regret. “You—son, you cannot go into the city—”
“There are gates, father, and my choices led me from them long ago,” Alucard tells him. “Even if such gates go sealed forever, I will wait with you at the bottom of the city wall—for whatever glimpse awaits us.”
The roof melts, and above them is true dawn, however weak and shallow the sun rises on a bleak city. Alucard does not need to see it to know that it gleams wanly this morning—a high, shining city, with high, shining walls.