En Medias
by Half-Esper Laura
Based on Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (and a little bit on Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse) by Konami
Part 2 of 6
***
Joan told me later that she heard me fall. Within a few minutes she found me there, unconscious, and took me to the infirmary. Of course, the game was all up then. With the wounds on my hand and blood in my mouth, and these hollow teeth... The diagnosis of vampirism was swift and certain.
When the doctor pronounced this sentence to me, I was overcome with despair. I thought surely I was about to die, like my mother did.
But that was not the case. I still have not decided whether it was lucky for me or not, but the doctors, and the priest whom they consulted, supposed that I could not be a true vampire. This because I was able to walk in the sunlight and read from the Bible, and perhaps they gave me some small measure of credit for sacrificing myself to avoid harming Joan. But it was the idea of a vampire that could go to church and read scriptures that seemed most unbelievable to them.
That's foolishness, by the way. It takes a little care, but my father has read the Bible. He has even quoted it to me. Don't misunderstand me, Holy Symbols are perhaps the greatest defense against vampires, but don't focus on their effect to the exclusion of anything else.
In any case, it was decided that my vampirism was mild and curable. I was uncertain whether this was good news. Cures for Lycanthropy have included amputating the patient's arms and legs. I must give my doctors some credit for good sense, however, although it was little help to me. They even devised a treatment that would not likely be fatal to an innocent human who was subjected to it. It was reasoned that, as vampires were destroyed by sunlight, if I were exposed to the sun's rays, that vampire-element that was plaguing me would simply burn away and be gone.
I have mentioned, I trust, that I have burned easily in sunlight since my childhood? And I recall noting just now how their good sense and benevolence in designing the treatment did me no good.
I was bound to a sort of plank, clothed in the bare minimum of dignity, and set out at dawn, in a place where I was not on public display---I thank God for this, at least---but would experience the direct light of the sun for as much of the day as possible.
Have you ever been burned? Gotten your hand too close to a fireplace, or made a wrong move while cooking or boiling water for tea, or anything? Then you at least know what a particular kind of pain it is. By sundown of the first day I was nearly out of my mind with it.
And Joan, dear, blessed Joan, she was there, and William and Robert and Richard. And when at sundown they brought me back inside, Joan did her best to apply medicine to my burns, but it stung so terribly that I fear I didn't repay her very well for that kindness. I cried out in pain long into the night, until at last I fell senseless from exhaustion.
In the morning, my burns seemed miraculously improved. At the time it was taken as a sign of the treatment progressing, although now I know that this was caused by the properties of the vampire blood, not the reasserting of the human.
And of course, I wasn't cured yet.
***
"Yes, this is very good," the doctor said. "Last night he manifested the wounds the sun had done to this vampire-infection, but see today, his human body is rejuvenating itself."
Adrian heard them speaking distantly. The doctor's words seemed to be true. The last he remembered, his entire body had been alive with burning pain, and now it was peaceful, although every inch of his skin felt tender, like the new skin uncovered by a scrape.
"Hear that, Adrian? It'll be all right." Joan was looking down at him from above his head, so his half-opened eyes saw her face upside down. She was stroking his hair.
"So it's cleared up, then?" William asked.
"We can't know for sure. I wouldn't declare it gone until he stops burning in the sun. Tonight we'll see."
The doctor's response sent Adrian's groggy mind reeling, struggling to right itself. "Tonight? You're doing it again today?"
"Yes, of course."
"No! No, I can't! I'll die!"
"M'Lord, if we wait you could relapse," the doctor warned.
"When evil once defeated reasserts itself, it often roots itself even more deeply than before," the attending priest concurred.
"No, the night is as long as I am willing to risk waiting between treatments, and that only by necessity."
"Please, no!" Adrian cried. "I won't be able to stand it! If you care for my life, then for God's sake, don't do this!"
"Someone in your condition should not speak the name of God," the priest insisted. "Only trust Him. Bear this mildly and you will be saved."
Joan moved aside as two attendants took hold of the plank to which he was tied and began to carry it to the doorway.
"NO!!" he screamed. "STOP! I WON'T GO OUT THERE AGAIN! I WON'T LET YOU KILL ME!!!" He writhed in his bonds, straining against them, his face pinched tightly and holding his breath, until at last he let it out in a roar of effort and rage. As one, everyone watching jumped back from him in terror as that cry opened his mouth wide to reveal fangs---Adrian's eyeteeth had lengthened a quarter-inch beyond the rest of his teeth, into wicked, needle-sharp points, and when he opened his eyes, they glowed blood-red.
The attendants managed to keep their hold on him until he twisted his head around and snapped at the nearest wrist. Only by jerking his hand away instantly did the man avoid a bite, and even then one pointed fang opened a cut as it grazed across his flesh. But in saving himself, he dropped Adrian to the floor and sent him tumbling out of the grip of the other attendant.
With another bellow of rage, he pulled against the ropes that held him back, so powerfully that they groaned and bit into his arms, and ruby-red drops of blood trickled from them across his pale white skin. At last the cords could not stand against his wrath, and strand after strand of them snapped until they lay limp over his shoulders, and he pushed himself away from the wooden plank, his arms freed.
Everyone in the room screamed and scattered away from him like sheep from a wolf, except one.
Adrian screamed in agony and collapsed as the priest pushed the crucifix against his skin. He picked himself up again to find it dangling in front of his face. Almost tangibly, the violence bled out of him; his eyes faded to their usual silver-blue, and he stared at the cross, transfixed.
"My son." The priest began to speak as the others watched him apprehensively from the periphery of the room. "There are two paths open to you. You can go out into the sun, the light of Our Lord, and allow it to burn this corruption away from you. Perhaps it is true what you say, that you will die, but what is death to you if you save your soul? By your death you will rid yourself of evil and enter into the presence of God.
"The other path is to remain in here, shielded in the darkness. If this is what you choose, then you choose to accept the evil within you. Then, you are truly a vampire, and we will deal with you accordlingly.
"So, which do you choose? Do you want to be cured?"
Adrian let his head fall, and his breath came in gasps as he began to weep. "Yes. Yes, I want to be cured."
"I knew that you would choose righteously," the priest said.
"But please... Father, before I go, please give me the Anointing of the Sick.* I know I won't survive..."
"Yes, of course I will," the priest said. "I see that you are wise and firm in your faith. It is a tragedy that such a curse should befall one such as yourself."
***
You look a bit skeptical. I must stress to you that I truly believed that I would be cured. Even now, looking back on it, it brings back the pain I felt the day I discovered that there was no cure for the curse I bear.
But I believed at that time that there was, and even if I found it in death it was worth it to me---it still would be, if I could give up my life to become no more or less than human. And at that time this faith allowed me to go back willingly, out in the sunlight that I knew would be the end of me. My vampire-half had exhausted itself, so there was nothing left to save me.
By noon that day I could hardly even feel the pain, only the life ebbing out of my body. I was only waiting to die. But I was not unhappy. In my delirium, I dreamed of my Mother. I thought of being rid of my curse and of seeing her again, and I was content.
But at around mid-day, I was brought back inside. At first I didn't understand why, but as I came to my senses, I was told that an envoy had arrived from my father, and they insisted on bringing me home. Their story to the doctors was that, since vampires were more common in this country, the doctors here were adept at curing vampirism, and so everyone was assured that I would be in good hands.
They really should have found the coincidence suspicious, that my father would send for me unannounced at just the time that this was happening. Only supernatural means could have allowed him to find out about my predicament and send someone for me in the space of a day and a half.
Again, I was seduced by the promise of a cure, and one that wouldn't kill me was all the better. So I bid farewell to the friends of my youth-I had no idea that it would be so long before I saw them again-and set out for my father's estate, blissfully unaware of what awaited me. Before I left, I promised Joan that I would secure my father's blessing for our marriage, if she would still have me after all of this. She said she would, bless her soul. She even gave me her necklace, to be sure that I wouldn't forget.
The trip seemed to go by very quickly, but I didn't think much about it. I'd been burned within an inch of my life, badly enough that even vampire blood would take some time to recover from it, so I imagined that I had spent most of the journey unconscious, and indeed I was sort of coming and going for awhile. I don't even remember being brought into the castle. I must have awakened and found myself there several times, however, because I believe I was already used to it the night that I awoke and found my father at my bedside.
At first he tried to hide everything from me, and brought it off, if you can believe that. I fear to ask where he hid all the reanimated corpses. But I ate dinner with him and we talked at night, and I asked him if I might marry, and he said that I should know more about my inheritance first, and that he would reveal it all in good time. I also asked him repeatedly when he would take me to see a doctor about my affliction. He avoided the issue with answers like "when it gets a little cooler," "a day when the sun isn't so bright, to keep you from burning," or simply, "in a few days." I grew more and more impatient with this, until the first words out of my mouth when I saw him each evening were that question.
And finally, as he was wont to do, he grew frustrated with me.
***
"Do you want to know the truth?" Vlad asked, stopping in the hallway and turning to face his son directly.
"Yes!" Adrian insisted. "I don't understand why you keep putting it off while I feel as if I can't bear this horrible condition another day!"
"Then feel differently."
"Excuse me?"
"There is no doctor, not in this country, or in Britain, or in all the world who can cure your craving for blood."
Adrian only stared at him for a moment, his mind struggling to grasp this revelation. "What are you saying?"
"I'm saying that there is no cure," his father repeated. "Vampirism is a part of what you are. You will simply have to live with it."
"No! That's... That can't be true!" He buried his face in his hands and turned away, wandering down the hallway as if fleeing blindly and slowly. "Oh, God, how did this happen? What did I ever do to bring this on myself?"
"It has been with you from birth," his father said, pursuing him closely. "...As the child of a vampire."
He immediately whipped around. "My mother was not a vampire!! I don't care what anyone said about her, there was nothing evil in her! No witchcraft or vampirism or---"
"Calm down, Adrian," Vlad ordered, taking him by the shoulders with a strong grip. "What you say is true. Your mother was not a vampire."
At this retraction of the imagined insult, Adrian was able to calm down and slip back into despair at his irredeemable fate. A vampire forever? Bound to crave blood---human blood---forever... If this was the kind of life he was fated for, if this was the kind of creature he had been from birth, then why hadn't he died in the sun like the monster he was? Why was it his mother who had been killed, and not him?
And then he began to realize that he felt no warmth from his father's hands, although they were still gripping his shoulders. It recalled winter evenings at home as a child, in his father's lap and wrapped in blankets against the cold of it. While he had his mother's features, it was from his father that he had inherited his strikingly pale complexion, and then, as now, their visits were only at night...
He looked up into Vlad's eyes, and somehow, without words, the confirmation was there. He opened his mouth to scream, but found his voice, his feet, his entire body frozen with terror, unable even to take his gaze away from the vampire's eyes.
"My son." With those words Vlad wrapped his arms around Adrian, with one hand cradling the back of his head, and held him close.
The paralysis fell away, and immediately he began to struggle, trying to pull himself away from his father's abhorrent embrace. "Let me go!"
"I'm sorry, Adrian. It was wrong for me to send you away for so long, to let the humans corrupt your thinking. But I won't let you go again."
Vlad's grip was inhumanly powerful, and Adrian was helpless to extricate himself from it. The words he was hearing were unreal, like a nightmare. It seemed impossible for such evil to be uttered by a real creature. Such was more fit for the villain of some allegorical morality play...
"Now I will show you your true inheritance. I will show you how far you sit above those human sheep who killed your mother, and who would have killed you, as well. Well, don't worry. You'll see them reap the reward that is due them. The streets of their pathetic habitations will run red with blood, until neither of us will ever go hungry for it."
Unable to free himself, unable to raise a hand against this monster, Adrian wept with helplessness. "No, please..." he pleaded through his tears. "Don't do this! Please, let me go!"
But Vlad only held him in those inescapable arms and tenderly stroked his head, running gloved fingers through his thick black hair.
***
The secret was broken, and over the course of days, the full horror into which I had been delivered was presented to my view. Suddenly I was surrounded by the undead, and all manner of evil creatures, with whom my father consorted as allies and friends. At first I despaired. I began to think that the exposure to the sun must have driven me insane, and that these horrors must be the product of my own diseased mind, but gradually I realized that there was too much permanence and substance about them, too much regularity, and yet also too much unnatural perversity for them to be imagined things. Worse yet, I learned that these monsters were being turned loose upon humanity, that as retribution for my mother's death and my own mistreatment, my father had declared bloody vengeance on the entire human race. I tried to dissuade him. I tried to tell him that neither Mother nor myself would approve of such violence, but he would not be moved.
Even as I began to understand that I had been brought to the gates of Hell itself, I remained strong in my faith, and even grew in my determination not to lose my soul to my vampirism, or to my father and his minions. This determination sustained me, and yet I lived a miserable life, mentally and spiritually fighting in this way without a moment's rest. I wrote a letter to Joan, telling her that I would not be able to marry her, no, in fact I could never see her again, and that it was of the most grave importance that she make no attempt to contact me or seek me out. But I couldn't bring myself to send back her necklace. See, here I still have it. Because it's a cross, it's painful for me to touch it directly, but I always wear it despite that.**
But eventually, as I severed all connections and found myself alone in this nightmare-world, responsible for no one but myself, my sorrow turned into bitterness. If I died fighting against this evil, what did it matter to me? What had I to lose except the endless, wretched procession of days that my life had become?
No, Trevor Belmont was later. But I did become very combative and rebellious. Outspoken, if you can imagine me thus. It was at this time that I began calling myself "Alucard." I won't insult your intelligence by pointing out the wordplay. Suffice to say my point in this was the complete rotation, my declaration that I was the opposite of my father.
It's Adrian. Thank you. I'm not sure... I think that the way my life has developed, I want to save that name apart and protect it from harm, because... Well, perhaps because that's what my mother always called me, and what Joan always called me. It sounds silly, I know...
I would wish for the boldness I posessed in those days, if I didn't know it had its source in my hopeless abandonment of my life and future. But still, if only I had been able to keep that spirit of action...
***
Alucard looked down on his father's sleeping form, repulsed as ever by everything surrounding it. Rather than a bed, Dracula lay in a box like a corpse, except that the box was half-full of earth, packed and smooth from being used in this way so many days. Except for the candle that Alucard had brought to it, the room was dark as a tomb, sealed deep inside Castlevania, far away from the sun outside.
Thinking of himself as the child of this creature still filled Alucard with shame and anger whenever he thought of it, and yet Dracula insisted on treating him like a child, like his own child, surrounding him with items of horror and disgust in a twisted attempt to coddle him. It seemed somehow wrong that the one spark of humanity the ancient vampire posessed would be his undoing, but how could it be otherwise? Who else would Dracula allow access to the chamber where he slept, except his own son? So whatever injustice it might represent, it was to that son that the duty fell.
Alucard paused for only a moment to gather his resolve before producing the carefully-procured and carefully-hidden oak stake from his cloak and raising it over his father's chest.
Just as he was about to strike, his wrist was captured by a skeleton hand, and Alucard whipped around to find a skeletal figure hovering over him. The animated bones of the dead had become all too familiar a sight to him, but this was different, this was a creature of such darkness and unnature that it lived in this skeleton form, draped with fine and tattered robes, and holding a scythe over one shoulder-the very image of Death itself.
Alucard truly intended to be brave, to accept his fate gracefully. Hadn't he known this attack was a dangerous move? Hadn't he nothing left to lose? But despite himself he was crippled with terror and dropped the stake on the floor. "No! Please!" he cried, though the words were not in his mind. "I don't want to die! Please don't kill me!"
The skeleton hand released his wrist and let him stumble back against the nearest wall, cowering in fear that he did not intend or understand. That same hand took him by the chin and raised his face so that his eyes were forced to meet the empty, red-glowing eye-sockets.
"If you were anyone else, I would kill you," the skeleton said. "But your father would be angry if I killed his child, even for such a foolish act as this. Go back to your room, Boy. When your father wakes I will tell him of this and he can deal with you."
Alucard accepted this and hurried from the room with a strange mixture of relief and dread, thick also with shame at having acted with such cowardice. Such was his haste that he forgot the candle and felt his way through the darkness back to his room, where he threw himself on the bed. He buried his face in his pillow and obscured himself with blankets as a child would do, trying to shut out everything until he had to face the evening.
***
When my father came that night he was surprisingly lenient with me, but he didn't give me that sort of chance again. It seems odd, given the treatment I recieved for lesser things. Dracula is not known for having a peaceful temper. At times my rebellious words angered him, and I had the bruises to show for it. Normally it was a backhand or open-handed blow across my face. He is inhumanly strong, so such was enough to knock me across a room, but it was nothing I couldn't stand. In fact his abuse perhaps strengthened me, as the suffering of the early Christian martyrs seems to have deepened their faith. After such incidents he would tend to avoid me for awhile; I believe it was guilt.
At times I consider such small sparks of humanity. When I think of my father, they are like stars. Light is light, but the night is still dark.
As my time there stretched on into years, my opposition to him was as a wind against a mountain. I beat myself against him day after day, and nothing ever came of it. It was only a matter of time until he took the fight out of me. I could even tell you the night that he did it.
***
"I don't even understand how I could have been born!" Alucard said, as his father led him yet again through the corridor to the dining room. "I can't imagine my mother with a monster like you."
Dracula stopped and turned to face him. "What did you say?"
Alucard didn't back down. "My mother was the most kind and virtuous person I have ever known. I can't imagine how she would love such a vile creature as you!"
His father took a step toward him and he tensed, ready for the blow that he knew was coming as Dracula raised his hand. But in the next moment, it was not on his cheek that he felt that hand, but around his throat. Before he could react, he was lifted from the floor and thrust up against a wall, trapped against it so that that hand still shoving him back compressed his throat and began to choke off his breath.
"You forget so easily," Dracula hissed, leaning close to Alucard's face, squeezing his throat just a bit harder to silence his struggles to interrupt. "When those vermin who killed your mother left you out in the forest to die, when those fools of doctors left you to burn to death in the sun, to whom did you owe your life then? I didn't have to spare you. I still don't! I could kill you here and now, and at times you make it tempting, you ingrateful little wretch! At the very least I ought to reach into your throat and tear out that waspish voice of yours."
By the end, Alucard could hardly hear his words, the desperation for air rang so loudly in his mind. His father glared at him for another torturously long moment as he pleaded silently, his mouth forming words without the breath to voice them.
Please let me go... Please don't kill me!
Dracula's face twitched, and he threw his son aside, onto the floor. He departed down the hallway with the resolute swiftness of anger and disgust.
Alucard lay there for some time, gasping to catch his breath, before finally picking himself up and making his way back to his tower room.
***
Perhaps it was that this, combined with my earlier attempt on my father's life and subsequent introduction to his friend Death, made me realize that no matter how noble and abandoned my intentions, the idea of dying was terrifying to me. Or perhaps it was the utter helplessness that I felt in that moment, as my father told me---and quite convincingly demonstrated---that it would be but a small effort on his part to end my life, that all the force I could muster against him could be crushed so easily.
But whatever realization it was that caused it, it was on that night that I learned to keep silent. From then on I did what I was supposed to do. When my father came at night, I had dinner with him without protest, and when I spoke to him I said only polite and substanceless things. As time wore on, I think he was unsatisfied with me acting that way as well, but if so, he brought it on himself.
I began sleeping at night. There's no sun in Castlevania anyway, as you've seen for yourself. This way he and I only saw each other at dinner, although now and then he would come in very late, thinking that I was asleep, and sit by my bed at night. Most often I was laying awake, or was awakened by his approach, but I only lay still when this happened and pretended to sleep.
I apparently put on a convincing show for him, but I was... very disurbed. Every day that I lived in that castle, I felt myself come a little bit closer to madness. I went through periods of heavy drinking, to make myself senseless of my misery, but when I felt the thirst for blood coming upon me, I gave it up, afraid of what I might do with my sense and will thus impaired. At those times I would spend entire miserable days laying in bed, and would bite myself until my hands and forearms ran blood and stained the bedsheets with it. Then that evening, I would bind it all up with bandages and put on my long sleeves and black gloves and talk to my father as if nothing had happened, all the while feeling the pain in my arms and hands and thinking I might not last through the night, through the next day...
Yes, I did try. There were months that passed as one long, subtle, frustrated escape attempt. I had lost the courage for a bold move, but I spent a great deal of time exploring the castle, testing the feasibility of any exits I might find. And in the end, I was forced to conclude that there was no escape. I could get out into the courtyard, but not past the walls or the gates. Only in the peripheral towers were there windows to the outside, and these were unfailingly barred shut.
The window in my own room was one of these, looking out above a cliff with forested hills below. I would spend days sitting at that window, longingly looking out. Once the Librarian told me I had been doing this for so long and had leaned against the window-bars so that the pattern of them was impressed on my face. Of course, with no mirrors in the castle, I couldn't really tell.
Oh, you didn't meet the Librarian? He tends the castle library, obviously, and although he's human, he's even older than I am. The story I heard was that he was an insatiably curious scholar, and when he grew old, he lamented that he would die with so many mysteries still unknown to him, and wished that he could live forever so that he would have time to know everything in the world. Dracula was amused by this wish, or so the story goes, and granted it. And from that time on, he has been bound to the castle library, but cannot die until the day that he knows everything in the world. I don't think he tries very hard at it anymore.
He is an ally of my father's, but I think of him as an old friend. In the times that I was just telling you about, I began to spend most of my time studying in the library, still being drawn to scholarly pursuits as I was in my years in England. Of course he posessed knowledge of all kinds, so he and I spent many hours conversing about art and science and philosophy. And it was he alone of all creatures who knew what was truly becoming of me. I did not hide myself from him, as I did from my father, and it was the Librarian who witnessed my daily small descents into madness and despair.
I think that sometimes he told my father about such things at night, after I had gone to bed. At times things that Father said hinted that he knew, but still... He was so thick-headed about it. It was as if he couldn't wrap his mind around the idea that I couldn't stand it there, or more likely he failed to do so because he didn't want it to be so. But he was so shocked when... Well, suffice to say it was my last great act of defiance. I won't say anymore about it.
I told you, I don't want to talk about it.
So, what was after that...?
...
Oh, God, now that I've thought of it I won't be able to have it out of my head until I've said it... That last great act of defiance. Of all the things I have done in my life, that is the one that causes me the most shame. Perhaps it shouldn't be so. I've committed worse sins, I suppose, but it is the most embarassing.
No, I think there's some reason why I'm telling you this. I don't know what it is. Perhaps there is something to be learned from my whole sordid history. Or if, as I originally thought, the point of this exercise is to convince you of why I should disappear, I suppose the most horrid of illustrations would be the ones most suited to that point.
There's nothing to gain by dancing around it. I... I tried to kill myself. Yes, I know that suicide is a mortal sin, but I had been trapped in that hellmouth of a castle for years at that time. I was daily going mad with the feeling that its evil was seeping into me. I didn't see what better choice I had. Perhaps, in the long run, it was the only way to save myself from falling into even greater sins. I think I was mistaken about this now. Of course, it's easy to see in hindsight what a wretched thing it was...
But that's not the worst of it. The worst is that I survived. ... I hanged myself, and I didn't die. No, you see, vampires don't breathe. They don't need to. I suppose they are such demonic creatures that the sustaining presence of God in the air we breathe is beyond them. It seems I inherited some part of this. And yet, it was so painful! It was as painful as you can imagine that death by hanging would be, and there was no merciful death to end it. I'd been choked before---you remember the incident with my father that I mentioned..? I knew it would be torture. I knew it would feel like forever, and so I didn't even realize that anything was wrong until I heard the clock strike the hour. Then I knew it had been far too long, that there was no way I should have been alive that long... But I was, and so I remained. I was in so much pain, I wasn't even able to free myself, and just stayed there like that for hours and hours...
That night my father found me. By that time I had fallen still with exhaustion, so he must have thought that I was dead when he saw me. Although I'm ashamed, I must admit to taking some perverse pleasure in giving him such a fright. I don't remember his precise reaction, though. All I remember is being able to breathe again.
When I came to my senses, I was in my bed at night. I think a day or two might have passed. For weeks my throat was unimaginably sore, and I was unable to speak above a whisper. I'm sure I must have borne some hideous marks from this, but I never saw them. There were no mirrors in the castle, and from then on I avoided looking at glass or water or polished marble or anywhere that I might see my reflection because I knew they were there and I didn't want to see. Years later when I was at last presented with a mirror, I was still half-afraid to look into it for fear there would be some ghastly red mark on my throat. Even then, I was never totally satisfied until Trevor---the only other person to whom I have ever related this deplorable incident---assured me that he saw no sign of it. He took my chin in his hands, and tipped it up, and turned it this way and that, and even felt around my neck with his fingers, and told me he would never have known.
I do bear one "scar" from it however. I wasn't quite so tall before that.
I spent a good deal of time in bed after it happened. Partly because I didn't feel well, and partly because I was so eaten up with shame and guilt, I didn't want to get out of bed and show my face to anyone. And most of these nights were ones that my father chose to come and sit by my bed while he thought I was sleeping.
***
Alucard lay still in bed, chest down and head twisted to the side in a way that pained his still-sore throat, but it couldn't be helped. His father sat beside him quietly, as he had so many nights before. Dracula didn't even breathe, hardly made any sound at all, but Alucard could keenly feel his presence, and feared to move lest his father realize that he wasn't asleep. At the least, this position placed his back toward his visitor, and his face tucked away from view.
"Why did you do this?" Dracula asked softly.
Alucard felt his heart sink with dread. Did his father know he was awake...? He remained still and silent.
"Why would you do such a thing? And every day you go out of your way to tell me nothing is wrong. I have done everything in my power to make you happy. What haven't I given you? What have I done so wrong that you would torment me this way?"
Alucard realized with relief that his father spoke in the detatched tone of someone not expecting answers to his questions. Dracula still thought that he was asleep. He felt that cold, heavy hand rest on his shoulder and rub it up and down.
"Why have you closed yourself to me? ...I remember when you were a little boy, how you would smile and laugh when I came into the house, how you sat and fell asleep on my lap... I haven't changed so much since then. What happened that made you change so? What happened that made you hate me? Tell me what's wrong."
Alucard could no longer hold his peace. "Do you really want me to tell you?" he asked, in a hoarse whisper.
A very small pause. "Yes."
"Everything is wrong. I can't bear living in this evil place."
"This is your home."
"No, it isn't. It's my prison. You're keeping me here against my will, and I can't stand it. If you're asking what I want that you haven't given me, I want the wind, and the sunlight, and the world---" At that point his voice broke, sending him into a painful fit of coughing.
"You're very tired," Dracula said.
"I would say this at any time. I think this every waking moment."
"And you want me to send you out there, among those human beasts? Do you forget why I brought you home?"
The thought in Alucard's mind was that it was his father who was the beast, but he didn't say it. He was in too much pain already to risk being struck, or worse.
"It will all come in its own time. When humans are no longer the rulers of this world, then it will be safe for you, and then you will have the whole world, as you say."
Alucard still didn't speak, but tensed and grasped his hair in consternation.
"Can't you understand? I'm not doing this as a vampire, I'm doing this as your father. I want you to be happy."
"I was happy before you brought me here."
"Even when they bound you out in the sun to die?" It was a statement, not a question, as if there were only one answer.
But there wasn't only one answer. Alucard thought of those days in England, with friends and a beloved... Even remembering those days in the sun, when he had been so sure that he would be freed from his curse, that he would see God... Even looking back on that filled him with regret at its loss, and he sobbed against his pillow. "Yes."
Dracula paused for a few moments. "Will you do this again?"
Alucard shook his head.
"Will you try to kill yourself again?"
He shook his head again.
Dracula sighed heavily, and didn't ask any more questions.
Alucard could still feel his father's presence and silent watchfulness as he wept. It hurt so badly to swallow back his tears...
Continued in Part 3
Footnotes:
*Anointing of the Sick: one of the sacraments of the Catholic Church, intended for those who are facing imminent death or serious risk thereof. I think it was actually called "Extreme unction" this long ago, but I use the modern term.
**Check your equipment before you meet Death at the beginning of Symphony of the Night. Alucard starts the game equipped with the "Necklace of J."
