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 6 of 6, with Author's Notes

So I suppose that brings us to where we are now.

Oh, I'm sure you hear the stories about it, from all your friend's ancestors who've done it. It's not as grand a tale as you think...

It's not that. I don't care if he's my father. God knows he's never cared if I was his son. It's just... too soon. I don't want to talk about it.

Why are you so stubborn? If I tell you, then will you leave me alone, finally? I've never met anyone so difficult!

Fine, if that's what you have to have, I'll tell you. How I killed Count Dracula.

***

Once again the clock was at the heart of everything. Its bells chimed crazily as Alucard stood before it. Part of him didn't know what he was thinking, bringing all the pieces of Dracula here, but he knew with certainty that this was the only way it could end. This Shaft person had control of Castlevania and all its horrors. If he tried to escape with the means of resurrecting the castle's true master, they would only pursue him...

The clock exhausted its protests, and the ceiling opened above him. He took a breath, closed his eyes, thought of the fall, and flitted up through the opening on membranous wings. The place he found himself in after that was pitch black, and although he didn't feel like talking, he had to throw out a series of squeaks to hear its shape. Narrow tunnels up and around; sounded like rough masonry walls. He suspected there were some sort of glyphs carved in them; they hit his ears like distant strains of music, just tickling the edge of recognition. Now there was a hole in the layer of sound; an entrance, a cavernous place below that he lowered himself into.

Torches burst to life with a suddenness that blinded his bat-eyes; instinctively, he reverted to his less-fragile human shape for the short drop to the floor.

"The son of Lord Dracula," came a voice: Shaft, the Dark Priest who had posessed Richter Belmont. "How kind of you to come. I sent every creature I could to collect the pieces of His Lordship for me, but I was beginning to think I would have to chase you myself."

"Don't think that I came here to cooperate with you," Alucard said. His vision was clearing, offering a view of an old man in arcane robes, with four orbs of green light floating around him, and a stone casket standing in the center of the room. Dracula's ashes...?

"That is too bad," he said. "Because now you've brought everything I need to resurrect Lord Dracula. The missing pieces of his body, and a suitable sacrifice. I had thought that would be Richter Belmont, but you'll do."

"Is that what you wanted the Belmont for?" Alucard asked, stepping back and placing a hand on his sword---the dream-sword from his mother, which he had found again.

"Only a small part of it," Shaft replied. "Many have tried to revive Dracula through the ages, but all were stopped by the Holy Power wielded by Vampire Hunters. Of all of them, Richter Belmont was the strongest. So with him on our side, no other could stand against him. And when the hour came, I thought that Lord Dracula would particularly appreciate the gift of his blood."

Alucard drew his sword. Although it had been difficult to see it past Shaft's evil influence, Maria's friend was, in a way, Trevor's child, and such villainous words stirred up a protective impulse. "You wretch! If you're going to sacrifice blood, sacrifice your own!"

"Oh, but then there would be no one to give our message to Lord Dracula." One of the floating orbs flattened and folded into a seat, on which Shaft settled and let it lift him off the floor. "I and my Brotherhood will never forget what you've done for us."

The three remaining spheres hurtled toward him, and he raised the dream-shield to deflect them. He hardly even felt the impact as he brushed them aside and charged Shaft. Before he got there, he saw him begin to dodge away; he knew the sword-stroke would miss but he followed it through, all the while concentrating on a small flame, so intense as to be almost solid... On the tip of his sword was the best place. He spun around after the charge, saw where Shaft had dodged to, and swung the sword again, not to slash, but for the momentum to throw that flame. The green orbs were coming toward him again, but they were knocked off-course as the flame hit Shaft and knocked him from his perch.

The floating seat returned to spherical shape, and all four of the green lights dropped up onto the ceiling where they rested yet held shape, like drops of mercury. Shaft twisted his head around and watched Alucard closely as he picked himself up, clutching his ribs where he'd been hit. "The son of Lord Dracula... I should not have underestimated you."

Alucard didn't even respond to the comment. "Why are you trying to resurrect my father? Isn't there enough suffering in the world?" he asked, sword still trained at the Dark Priest.

For a moment, Shaft almost seemed taken aback by the change of subject, then smiled like an old man. He eased himself down to a seat on the step before Dracula's casket. "Yes, too much suffering, and with no purpose. Suffering is attendant on society, but perhaps you don't know that. You haven't seen so much of this age, I'm told."

"You are hardly in a position to patronize me," Alucard pointed out.

"Suffering is measured out by law and authority. It is part of the structure, the order of things, and yet it occurs at random. Pointlessly, meaninglessly. Wars are indiscriminate, the law is blind, and this is what we call ordered life. But I say it is not ordered at all. It is the most nebulous and chaotic of all. Order has choked on itself and become that which it sought to oppose, when all things were new. It has gone too far and must be checked. It has grown old and clouded, and must be wiped clear with its opposite. This world must be bathed in chaos."

"To revive Dracula would be to bathe it in filth!"

"Then perhaps we have gotten too far from the dust we came from," Shaft said, then sighed. "But I suppose arguing now makes no difference..."

They both fell silent. What shall I do with him now? Alucard wondered. Kill him? What else could he do? How else could it end? Obviously the man was unrepentant. But now, he was only sitting here. To kill an old man in cold blood...

A shadow stretched over Shaft's face, and Alucard realized that it was his own. But the light had been from above---"What!?" He spun, and for a moment his vision flooded with blinding green light before an impact in the side of his chest sent him spinning to the floor.

Shaft laughed as he rose, almost casually. "Perhaps you should not have underestimated me."

He was within striking distance. Alucard tried to raise his sword as he picked himself up, but his hand wouldn't move, not even to let him rise. He looked down to find that the green orb had wrapped around his wrist like a bracelet and was holding it in place. Suddenly it jerked upward, wrenching his shoulder as it knocked him off balance. He managed to get to his feet, sword still in hand. He still had some free motion of the wrist... But even as he thought it, Shaft grasped the blade in his hand, or rather in the green light that he had wrapped around it like a glove. Holding it near the hilt, he pivoted the blade out and around, and Alucard's arm twisted painfully as he fought to keep hold of the sword. No! I can't lose like this! His heart was beginning to pound out that familiar strength, but whatever force was in those lights was insanely powerful, and at last the sword came loose from his grip, and the light reshaped to fit it into Shaft's hand.

Desperate, Alucard brought his other arm around, but another of the orbs flung itself into his shield like wind in a sail and slammed it against the wall, dragging Alucard behind it. He barely heard the clang of the shield against the stone before his head was thrown against the wall.

By the time he came to his senses, both his wrists were pinned to the wall by Shaft's luminous servants. His feet were still on the floor, but were likewise held in place. He lifted his head to see Shaft standing in front of him, and beyond him, the casket, now standing open. He knew he couldn't let it end like this. He knew he had to fight, he had to do... what!? The dizzyness from the blow was as much his opponent as Shaft. Somehow he no longer fully understood what was happening, even as the Dark Priest searched through his clothes until he found the bag containing the pieces of Dracula, crossed the room with them, and arranged them carefully in the casket.

But he knew that this wasn't right. He was losing; his life was in danger. That was enough to know, and he fought desperately against his glowing shackles. With all his strenth and weight, he tried to pull one of his wrists away, but it wouldn't budge even an inch, and he fell to catching his breath.

Shaft crossed the room to him. The hand holding Alucard's sword still wore that luminous glove. "Everything is nearly ready." With his free hand, he reached for Alucard's face. "I'd like you to---"

Alucard struck forward with his head-at least he could still move that-and clamped his teeth down on Shaft's outstretched hand. He screamed and tried to pull away, but Alucard poured all his strength into biting down and sucking...

Shaft swung with his other hand, punching with the green light surrounding the hilt of the sword. It impacted on Alucard's face with such force that it tore his teeth out of Shaft's hand, and the wrist-shackle that kept him from being knocked away by the punch drew blood in doing so. He spat blood, first Shaft's, then his own; his mouth was bleeding, and several teeth had been loosened.

Shaft's high manner was all gone now, and he spoke with obvious anger, nursing his torn hand. "Much as I wish you could be here to see Lord Dracula's return---"

"I'll see you in Hell first!" Alucard growled.

"Be that as it may, I can't risk having you disrupt the ceremony. But I'll be certain to tell him what a nuisance you were. I'm sure he'll be proud."

Alucard's heart was still pounding, harder now, as Shaft raised the sword. He squeezed his eyes shut, trying with one last Herculean effort to pull himself free...

The sword felt red-hot as it lanced through him, inward and up. It stopped the pounding of his heart, but not the force behind it, as if it had been thrust into the gears of a clock, which then kept grinding and trying to turn until they shattered. His last breath was released with a scream of pain, and he couldn't take another one. Already his lungs were caught up in the vacuum of pain surrounding the blade. He couldn't even feel his hands and feet.

His eyes must have come open; images danced before him like dreams. His face was leaned over the sword. Shaft had fashioned his green orb of light into a sort of chalice, to catch Alucard's blood as it ran copiously down the blade and drizzled off the hilt. It was hypnotizing to watch it, to listen to the sound it made, like the laughing of running water. He couldn't help leaning lower and lower over it...

The cup disappeared, and so did his bonds; his entire body sank like lead. He had no strength to lift his head and watch Shaft walk away from him, but only kept leaning over the hilt of the sword until it caught against his chest, just for a moment. The point of the blade, his last tether, pulled loose from the wall and he fell headlong into darkness.

He couldn't say how long he was falling, he only gradually realized that nothing was happening. He couldn't imagine where he was or what to do, and tried to reach out for anything that might be there, although his arms were numb. Numb until something-someone-took them with a gentle grip, guided them to where they were supposed to go, pulled him closer ever so gently and embraced him.

"What's wrong, Adrian?"

Mother...? She was holding him in her arms, as she had when he was a little child. Somehow he was that small again. It was a sensation he thought he had lost forever. He wanted to enjoy it, but he couldn't help resting his face in her shoulder and crying.

"What is it, sweetheart?" she asked, stroking his hair.

He didn't know what to tell her.

"It's all right; you can tell me. Your father will be home soon, and he won't know what to do if he finds you crying."

"No! I don't want to see him!" Adrian could feel his father's presence distantly; it felt like he was in a rage, and he clung tightly to his mother.

She turned to place herself between him and Dracula's presence. "Now, now, you should at least give him a chance. He is your father."

"But he always frightens me! He's always hurting me..."

Gently, Lisa cupped a hand around his head and lifted his face to hers. "Adrian. You know that I love your father, and I always will. But it's wrong for him to hurt you, even if he doesn't mean to. I'll do everything I can for you. Remember, I gave you your armor and shield and sword to protect you."

The sword...! Adrian remembered what had happened, and buried his face in his mother's shoulder again.

"Adrian?"

"I... I died!"

"Shhh. No, you didn't."

"But the sword..."

"I gave you that sword to protect you. Do you think I would let it kill you?"

He stared at her incredulously. How could he not be dead, after being stabbed through the heart?

"Here," she said. "Let me show you." Gently, she knelt and lay him down on the ground. Her hand found and gripped the hilt of the sword in his chest, and she bent over his face and kissed his forehead before drawing it out in one swift pull.

Alucard woke with a start, gasping for breath. There was a clatter of metal, and suddenly he was snatched up, smothered in a body cold as winter earth... "Father, let me go..!"

"Thank God you're alive!" Although those words were a spark of humanity, Alucard shuddered to hear Dracula's voice again. His father held him at arms' length, admiring him as a child would a Christmas gift as he carried him across the room and set him on the step below the casket. "Oh, my sweet child, I thought that human pig had killed you!"

"Shaft...!?"

"Oh, was it that one again? I thought I'd seen it before... No matter now. He won't bother us anymore. Come! This is a night to celebrate!"

Alucard found that he couldn't rise. Even if dying had been a dream, he had felt his heart stop, and it left him weak and trembling. He dreaded his father's sort of "celebration," but what could he do? He was too weak to stand, let alone resist. "No... don't..."

"What!? How could I not? My son, you can't know! It's been almost four hundred years since I saw your face, and you look so like your mother..."

So, it has been four hundred years...

"In all this time, you can't imagine the comfort, the joy it has brought me to know that somewhere, you were alive. Even if I never saw you. Always when I woke, I would ask the spirits about you, and they said that you were alive, but always sleeping. Some curse or spell no doubt... It was those curs who turned you against me, wasn't it? The Belmont and that witch..."

"No! No, not them..."

"Then who?" Dracula asked, taking him by the chin. "Say it and they and their kin will be sorry for it. Tonight! And that would be a celebration, wouldn't it?"

Alucard had gained his bearings enough to turn his head away. "Then you'll have to punish yourself and I. I went to sleep of my own will."

His father stared at him incredulously for a long moment. "You... How could you do such a thing!?" he roared. "Why!?"

"Why? Because of you! Because of your cursed blood in my veins! How could I live, always hiding, always fighting to protect the people I loved from myself and my thirst for blood?? That is my legacy from you! That I'm a monster that was never meant to live!"

"I gave you life! And power that humans only dream of!" Dracula turned away in frustration. Alucard had been expecting something worse by now. "You always were so ingrateful..." Dracula said. "Do you think this is the kind of life your mother would have wanted for you?"

"And would she have wanted the kind of life you have, leaving a trail of death and misery wherever you go?"

"Humans!" Dracula insisted. "Forget them! Nothing more than prey animals!"

"Mother was a human."

"Your mother was divine! She was above them, and for that they killed her! Have you forgotten that??"

Alucard paused slightly. "How can you ask me that? I was there when she died, I had that moment burned into my mind for all time. Every time I try to think of her, I remember it and break my heart."

"Then how can you defend the beasts who did such a thing?"

"Mother did. Even then, at the last."

"You can't be serious," Dracula hissed. "You wouldn't dare lie to me about her..."

"No, I wouldn't, but I must beg her forgiveness, that I never told you her last words..."

"Tell me now...!"

Alucard took a deep breath to compose himself, and met his father's gaze steadily. "She said, "Do not hate these people. Do not hate humans. If you cannot live with them, then at least do them no harm, for they have enough troubles just in themselves." He paused for a moment, and his father only stared. "And she wanted me to tell you... that she would always love you, for all eternity."

At last Dracula found his voice. "That isn't true. It can't be; Lisa would never say such a thing!"

"How can you say that?? I knew her only as a child, and I know those are her words. I would recognize them as her voice, even if I hadn't heard them from her own lips. You accused me of forgetting her---have you??"

"You don't know anything!" Dracula shouted. "You can never understand her! You aren't human enough to understand her!"

I'm more human than you, Alucard thought, but didn't dare say it. "I may be too much a vampire to fully understand humans or live among them, but I'm far too human to dismiss them as you do."

"They want nothing to do with you!" Dracula argued. Unexpectedly, he took almost a pleading tone. "Why do you chase after your human half when all they give you is scorn and hatred? Give them the same and then you can be happy, don't you see? If you hold onto them, they'll only hurt you. If those you knew before were better to you than your own father, where are they now? They're dead!"

Alucard flinched at that.

"I and mine will always be here," Dracula said, sitting down on the step beside his son. "I will never leave you alone."

"I can't do what you say," he replied, coldly. "And even if I could, I wouldn't."

"It is what you must do!!" Dracula insisted.

"I will do as I choose!"

"And put yourself to sleep again? Perhaps forever this time!? Not while I live!" He grabbed Alucard's arm and roughly yanked him forward to take a handful of his hair. "I'll teach you to forget them. We'll do away with the claim they have on you."

Perhaps it was still the shock of his injury, or perhaps an instant of denial out of fear, but Alucard wasted a precious moment in realizing what his father meant by that. Only when he felt the cold kiss on his neck was he able to react.

"NO!"

***

---To turn me into a vampire, to take my human soul from me. In that moment I forgot everything else. Defeating him didn't matter, living or dying didn't matter, only stopping that. Only never to be a vampire. I can't imagine a death so horrible that I would not prefer it to such a fate, and I can imagine quite a lot.

I'm not even sure how it happened. I was still in shock, so weak... And he, as always, was unbelievably strong...

***

Alucard spilled across the floor with a stunning impact on his back and his head. He had no idea how he had managed to get out of his father's grip, but it didn't matter. Thinking about it now would be wasting needed time...

But already Dracula's black cloak was sweeping down on him again, and this time he was on the floor, up against the stone step; there was nowhere left to dodge. He tried to push his father away with his hands, but Dracula took his wrists and bent his arms back as if it were nothing. Alucard was screaming, tears running down his face.

"NO! No, don't do this! Oh, God, no! God help me, PLEASE!"

When they were face-to-face, he switched his head back and forth, frantically trying to protect his neck. At last Dracula grasped the hair of his crown and yanked his head back.

"No, PLEASE!! NO---!" He took a small gasp as the fangs pierced his skin, and stopped screaming.

The bite was a sharp, cold, somehow delightful tickle. Even the stinging of the blood being drawn out from it was a strangely pleasant sensation. It relaxed him despite himself, with a paradoxical leftover tension that felt like holding back a laugh. But that laughter would never come; his entire body was lulled even beyond that. So this is what it feels like... This is why they never fight... He thought of Joan's husband; it was such a blur, but he was sure that man never resisted after the initial bite. One could be content to die like this; it was a difficult temptation to resist...

If it were a matter of dying, Alucard would likely have given in to that temptation, but he had even far more at stake. It took every ounce of strength and will to lift his hands and even begin to try to push Dracula away, but that strength was diminishing moment by moment as his blood drained. His hands were numb. Through the black gloves, he could no longer tell if they were touching anything.

There was a metallic clatter as his knuckles hit the stone floor. The noise roused him into a moment of clarity, enough to recognize the shape of the sword-handle. Power. Power to stop this... He aimed the point of it blindly. Whether it found him or his father didn't matter. He wasn't striking at either of them, but at the event, at the point of transfer, the cold sweet sting in his neck.

He didn't feel the blade slide into place, but then, he might have been beyond feeling it. Some sensation changed. Cold flowing over him... A sound, a growl, and suddenly that narcotic kiss turned into a predator's crushing bite.

The spell was broken. With a cry of pain, Alucard struck out against it. The sword swung out in a wide arc of blood.

The cold and weight and blackness that had been Dracula fell away. Alucard seized the opportunity and dragged himself up the stair. Turning over his shoulder, he saw the corpse laying like a black island in a crimson sea of blood. It seemed the entire floor of the room was awash with it, and he scrambled up the steps to the coffin, certain that it would climb after him like floodwaters and overtake him.

Suddenly he realized that he hadn't seen the head, and immediately clapped a hand to the wound in his neck, lest it still be there. But no, there was only the hot sting of his glove against the open wound. When he lifted it and looked at it, it glistened red with his blood.

A groaning sound reverberated through the stone of the castle all around him. Rippled grooves were forming in the sea of Dracula's Blood as it found the joints and cracks in the floor. Any moment they would start coming apart; the castle would begin to collapse.

Alucard looked to the opening in the ceiling. He had to become a bat, had to escape... But his mind was growing hazier by the moment, and the search for the knowledge of the transformation was maddeningly futile.

Why...? Why bother to get out? What would there be for him, even outside the castle? Trevor and Sypha and the others had all been dead for centuries. It was some strange new world out there that had nothing to do with him...

He let his body sag backward, and being dizzy, he tumbled off balance into the open casket. The groan of the masonry had swelled to a roar when the floor lurched with a crack like thunder. The heavy stone lid of the casket was shaken loose, and fell into place with an almost-deafening boom.

Then nothing. Had the lid fallen in and crushed him? No, there was still sensation; Alucard could still feel the hard-packed earth against his face, the smell of dirt and old blood. He was in Dracula's coffin, loathsome as it was. Somewhere he had probably read of some supernatural effect this could have for them both, but he couldn't remember it now. Only somehow, the coffin had sealed out the sight and sound of the collapsing castle.

He knew it couldn't last, that any moment some mass of stone would smash through the coffin and crush the life out of him. But somewhere deeper, he knew that that would never happen. That was all suddenly very far away...

***

I didn't get out. I waited there for a very long time. It must have been hours. By the end, I couldn't tell at all how long it had been, but still I waited. I didn't know what was happening. I might have opened it up to find the fires of Hell. But finally I did open it, and I was there, on the bare earth where the castle had been, and it was night. With Castlevania gone, night is more gentle to me...

I had nowhere to go. I suppose it was only by chance that I encountered you and your friend again. I'm glad that he is well.

***

"And suppose you hadn't chanced to see us? Would you just have left like that, without a word to anyone?"

***

I might have. Who would I give word to? You must understand---

***

"Understand what? You told me this entire story and I still don't know. What about it was I supposed to understand?"

Alucard gave a long-suffering sigh. He couldn't imagine how she could hear the whole sordid story and not understand, but he couldn't begin to put it into words... All the words that had gone before had exhausted him. And rest was so close... He was sitting on the very casket that Trevor had bought him, still full of the same earth. It called to him with the siren voice of warmth and peace, and oblivion. But here she was, golden-haired, blushing Maria, standing between him and that sweet song... "Then just understand... that I'm tired.

"I am so tired..."

"That could be from the bleeding," Maria said. "Let me look."

"That isn't what I mean."

"You've been hurt, let me look."

She pulled off her gloves and reached for his collar, and despite himself he let her touch him, untie the jabot and fold the collar aside. He thought about it as she tipped his chin up with her hand and felt around the bite with her warm fingers, and supposed he had shown her far worse wounds already.

"Well, the bleeding's stopped. There's a bit of a mark but I think it'll be fine."

"I heal quickly."

"Your body does."

Alucard looked up and met her eyes. For the first time, it seemed that she had been listening to him all along.

"Listen," she said, taking one of his hands between hers, "I understand how you feel, as best I can, at least. But I heard everything you said, and you never did anything that was that bad."

"I killed someone..."

"Once. In self defense. Compared to I-don't-know-how-many people you protected from harm at great personal cost."

"I had to do that. For what I am... Somehow I had to pay it back if I was to live among people. But it wasn't enough..." Maria touched his shoulder and shushed him gently, but suddenly he wouldn't have any of that. "'If you cannot live with them, then at least do them no harm, for they have enough troubles just in themselves.' I cannot live with humans. I tried. I tried so hard, and it can't be done. The least I should do is leave them---you---in peace. Or I should say the most I can do..."

"I'm sure that isn't what your mother meant."

"Oh, no?"

"No. And if it is, then she was wrong."

Alucard looked up at her incredulously.

"And in fact, I think that she would---or at least very well should---be very proud of you."

"Why...?" he asked. "The best thing I've ever done is to kill my father, whom she loved."

"Because you tried. You did everything you could and everything you thought was right. No one can ask for more than that."

"Maybe I did."

"Definitely you did," Maria insisted.

He paused. When the words came they were catching in his throat. "Perhaps that is the cruellest fate of all. That it still isn't enough."

"Yes, it is!"

"Why are you so stubborn!?" he burst out. "What do you want from me!?"

She sighed and settled into her seat beside him on the stone casket. "I know you must be pretty annoyed with me. You were thrown into the middle of my fight, and I guess I took advantage of that, and of you. It wasn't exactly a good start. But, let me make it up to you. I want to help you."

"You could help me a great deal by leaving me alone."

"No. Haven't you been listening to yourself? You miss your friends. You feel alone in this time and it hurts you. But you don't have to. You're not alone. You can find a place here and now. I'll help you. I don't want you to go."

"Why!?"

"Because you deserve better!" Maria cut in again before he could respond. "And because your best is more than enough for me. And I want you to accept that you are more than good enough for me. Do that, and then you can do whatever you want. I won't stop you."

"Fine! Whatever you say, I will accept."

"No. You don't understand. You have to look at me; look me in the eyes."

Obediently, he looked at her, but her face was so open and serious that he could do nothing but return the sincerity. Slowly, she reached toward him and rested her palm against his cheek.

"Do you believe me?"

"Yes," he answered. Her hand was very warm, her touch gentle, somehow unrefined but all the better for it. Her skin was rosy with health and sun. He had been annoyed by her stubbornness, but her face at that moment was full of emotion, so direct and honest that she fairly glowed with that humanity---

"I love you."

Alucard jumped back from Maria in shock. He had opened himself up to the blow; he believed what she said, but he couldn't accept it. "You mustn't do that!" he blurted.

"But I do! When I saw you again after the castle fell, I thought so, and now that I've talked with you like this, I know."

"Then stop! Forget me! Can't you see? I would only hurt you."

"So if I hate you, then I can be happy?"

He stammered, off balance as he recognized the reference. "That isn't fair!"

"Well, I can't and wouldn't follow that advice any more than you," she said. "I know bad things happened before, but this isn't any of those times. This is new. We can decide what will happen this time, and we can make it turn out right. Unless you leave."

Why did she have to say that...? To go to sleep and be able to say that he'd done what had to be done and no one was the worse for it... It would have been so easy... "Why did you have to make it so difficult...?" He was surprised to hear his voice breaking. It had been hundreds of years since he had heard that, and his face tightened to hold it back.

"Shh... Come here," Maria said softly. She gathered him to her shoulder, and despite himself he accepted the gesture, rested his head on her shoulder, and began to cry.

"It's all right," she cooed. He couldn't speak, but listened through his sobs. "I know it's a lot to ask. I know it's hard. But I'll help you. I know you can do it. You've been so brave already..."

Eventually Alucard grew still enough to find his voice. "I might bite you."

"I can take care of myself," Maria said. "Maybe not like you, but I at least held my own in Castlevania, and it wasn't the first time I'd been there, either. I was there when Richter fought your father. And I know you're not as bad as him."

"No," he said, and with tremendous effort he smiled a little.

"So will you come with me?" she asked. "At least for a little while?"

He was silent for a long moment, considering. "Later... I am so tired..."

"It's all right," she said. "We'll wait until nightfall. I can find my way home in the moonlight."

End

Author's Notes:

Of course this story is primarily based on Castlevania, but my take on vampire lore was also influenced to varying degrees by "Buffy: The Vampire Slayer" and "Vampire: The Masquerade." While I hadn't read Bram Stoker's novel Dracula, I did have some working knowledge of it from the Cliff's Notes, as well.

As you can see, this story is told in two "tracks," the presentational/narrative track, and the representational/scenes track. I can even tell you why I did this (although I only realized it some time after the decision had been made). The story covers such a large span of time that coming up with enough representational scenes to tell the story smoothly would be cumbersome in the extreme. Exposition was needed, but flat exposition would be insufficient for the job. There's a reason writers are known for saying "show, don't tell." So, I used the first-person narrative format so that even the exposition would be emotionally engaged. In fact, I think there are some events whose import is expressed more fully by the way Alucard tells them than it would be if the events were "shown." Conversely, his narration could not have done justice to the scenes included. Notice that he only relates dialogue a few times, and then it's hearsay. And then in the case of several of the later scenes (the meeting with Maria, the Succubus, and the fake cast of Castlevania III), there could be no narration because either the listener already knew all about it or Alucard literally refused to talk about it.

Speaking of those, the coverage of Symphony of the Night is admittedly spotty. This is mainly because of the differences in demands of the medium between video games and fiction, and these are vast. They can be seen not only in my omissions, but also in my handling of some of the scenes that were included. The final battle with Dracula here bears little resemblance to that in the game. The fact is that the game are combat oriented. It would've been a boring game if Alucard didn't go around killing scads of monsters, and would've been seriously remiss if it had not ended in an epic battle with Dracula appearing as some huge multi-headed monster. But the other fact is that in my experience, prolonged or frequent fight scenes in prose are just as boring as the lack of them in adventure games. If for example, instead of the "head job" that Alucard got from the Fake CV3 Crew, they had just, as in the game, shown up and started pounding on him, and he'd pounded them back and eventually killed them, I imagine it still would have had some effect of pointing up Alucard's sense of loss and isolation due to his temporal displacement (God I love those $64 words...), but it wouldn't have been nearly as extreme or as meaningful.

So anyway, most of SOTN gets skipped over here because the fact is that Alucard had no one to meaningfully interact with for most of it. From my point of view, nothing particularly interesting was happening. As I envisioned it, even his relationship with Maria didn't develop much until after it was all over, and as mentioned above, her scenes could hardly be narrated anyway because the listener-Maria-was there for them when they happened, making it ridiculous to tell her about them. "The Demon's Tale" notwithstanding, the familiars don't appear here either, because I didn't think "animal buddies" would fit the mood of the story at that point.

The story goes through an odd shift as the scenes chronologically catch up to the narration. Alucard starts holding back more. In fact, while all the scenes prior to SOTN were things that Alucard actually described, only one of the SOTN scenes did Maria get to hear.

Speaking of Maria, throughout the story she occasionally asks questions or makes comments during the narration. I apologize if this is jarring because her comments are not actually inserted---all of a sudden Alucard acts like something has been said to him, and I tried my best not to let him do the old "What? Repeat everything you say to the audience so they'll know what I'm talking about?" trick. I think this was important in establishing that he is talking to someone, not just talking from some timeless narrator vantage-point, and the format just had no place for someone else's speech, until at the very end, the two tracks of the story meet, and you see my sort of desperate transition into the final scene.

I disregarded a certain amount of accepted Castlevania canon when I did this. The original Castlevania timeline holds that Alucard is significantly older than Trevor for one thing-in my version, a relationship with Sonia Belmont and the possibility of Alucard being Trevor's father are obviously out the window. It also seems implicit that Alucard did some evildoing with his father at some point, and here you can see that as Maria says, he never really did anything bad enough to justify how much he hates himself.

That is, perhaps, my greatest insecurity about the story. I like it this way, but one can't help but worry what readers will think, and my fear is that this story made Alucard seem too virtuous, indecisive, young, weak, depressive, friendly, pathetic, rebellious, dependent, fearful, moral, victimized, emotional, intellectual, shy, and wordy all at once. However, while I can't quote her word-for-word from memory, my best friend Kati (the story's first reader other than myself) put my mind at ease about this when she offered her opinion:

"The 'problem' is that you made him seem human."

I can only hope that I did.

Oh, and uh... I like to write author's notes. Thanks for bearing with my pretentiousness. ^_~