This place was a nightmare.
The castle moved, breathed. A living thing tied to the soul of his father, the walls had a life of their own, exhaling on his skin in hot, sticky tongues that pressed against his skin and coated him in the endless mountains of flesh that came before.
The walls heaved, and Alucard's eyes narrowed as he pressed onward, deeper into the night.
There was a Belmont here, imprisoned in these walls. It wouldn't be the first time that he's protected a new Belmont, and it wouldn't be the last. He had held them, many of them. Bouncing them on his knee, close friend of their mother and father. Uncle Adrian, he'd been. Beloved family, beloved of them, and they beloved of him.
Mortals, though, tended to die.
And vampires would never forget them when they did.
He stepped into the room, silver handle of his mother's sword tight in his hand, the trained form of a fencer as his undead flesh turned even more grey with tension. Three graves-a trap by his father for any unfortunate hunter that came for him. There were things inside. There were always more monsters spawning from this place between hell and the mortal plane.
He wondered, sometimes, who the real prisoner of Castlevania was.
The lids of the coffins opened, as laughing spirits crept from the walls in ghastly, black fingers. Fat, saturated drops of blood that seeped through the cracks, a haunting in a place that was long since damned. Alucard took a step back while the undead stirred, and he fell into a proper fencing position. One hand behind his back, fist so tight his nails bit into his palm, the other held out in front of him in first position, en guarde.
He dropped the sword when the monsters emerged.
It was a mockery.
Rolling eyes, a jaw that hung open and dead, and flesh that fell in thick patches from muscle and bone. Bloated, greyed and black and rubbery things, with spindling fingers and nails that were tinged purple with coagulated blood. Thick, bloody clots from teeth that hung out of the mouth, lost and collected only by thick strings. Hair that fell in patches, necks cracked to the side and digits that hung limp and loose while bodies shuffled themselves in ways that shouldn't move, shouldn't be here, shouldn't be here.
What did they do to you?
"No." He whispered, taking a step back, away from the fallen sword, almost tripping over himself. "No."
Sypha Belnades grinned a toothless grin, an eye missing and her nose fallen off. Hands missing fingers rose above her head, her robe crawling with maggots. Flies were tangled in her hair. He watched a rat chew on her bones.
(Sypha's arms around him, teasing him, her laughter and her smile, soft hair and softer hands, she was married and she was pregnant and he never stopped loving her.)
Her voice was dead and gone, and her spell was black magic that restored them, restored all of them. Strength and power, and Trevor Belmont removed his whip from his waist, snapping it to the side with a crack that pressed against Alucard's eardrums.
(There was never a man like him. Never a man so stupid and frustrating, never a man Alucard found more obnoxious in his life, never a man Alucard wouldn't die for again and again to keep him one more day.)
It couldn't be them. It couldn't be them. The castle was alive, and the castle was hell, and there was no way they were here. They were dead. They were dead.
They wouldn't go to hell.
Hell was for vampires.
He grabbed the sword in shaking hands while Grant climbed the walls, while Sypha rose into the air, while Trevor circled him with the whip and his knives, and Alucard choked back his tongue and took his first strike.
They were dead again in ten minutes. Doppelgangers. Illusions.
He buried them a second time.
He had nightmares for weeks.
He didn't sleep a second time.
"Alucard, do you ever get scared of anything?" Richter asked, years later.
The old guardian of the Belmont family stopped, glancing at the youngest of them. Setting his mother's sword in his lap, he regarded the descendant with careful, quiet yellow eyes.
"My memories."
"Your memories?" Richter blinked. "Why? They can't hurt you. They already happened."
Alucard hummed, running the tip of his nail along the edge of the blade.
"Sometimes, they don't stay dead. And they always hurt more the second time."
A/N:
Finding out about this boss battle fucked me up man.
This is an AU where Alucard didn't nap until after Trevor and Sypha died. Because I like threesomes that's why.
