AN: Life got pretty bad. But I stood up for myself. I fought for my right. Such fights are exhausting. Unfair, even. But someone's small kindness was all it took to heal all those wounds. I hope such kindness finds all who have been hurt.
Pairing: Alucard x fem reader
Genre: Comfort
"A man of honor."
"One with a sense of humor."
"Handsome and charming. But loyal."
Throughout your lifetime, you had wished for so much, dreamed of love that life owed you. It would be worth stumbling through the world, if only a perfect love awaited you someday.
Or so you had thought. Never, in your youthful fantasies had you thought of one thing that you cherished most in the love given to you. Love, your husband, Adrian, so freely gave.
Gentleness.
Adrian is gentle.
He is the respite you've earned after scorching world. He is many other things. Some teenage version of you would have swooned for his looks or his valor. But this weary, chipped version loves him for his kindness.
He has never raised his voice. Not once. Not in any arguments. You had once thought arguments, family, loved ones were made to clash, to challenge, that their worth was in staying and persevering through tears.
Not with your husband. He will not have your tears. He's never their cause, only their comfort.
You do not have to survive hardships to continue loving him. Loving him is the easiest thing you've ever done. He is ever so careful with your heart.
In the past, you bore your burdens, became a good daughter, good enough sibling, decent friend. You don't have to worry about pretenses with him.
Your heart leaps at how well he reads you. How, for the first time, there is someone who buys the trinkets you adore, who arranges the flowers you love by the dining table.
You love Adrian because his kindness is a gift of defiance. The world has tried its best to break both your brave hearts. To turn the soft comfort of love, into mistrust.
But you have survived it.
He had survived it.
And you have both chosen to be in love.
To trust.
And that has brought the very fates to their knees.
Your hearts are your own.
Adrian loves his wife. His heart, once shrouded in frost and grief, is too full these days.
Even as seasons around him shift, he remains rooted in spring. Unwavering spring of bloom and warmth.
Love was once all but pain. Loss and abandonment wrapped in the visage of familiarity.
Adrian despised it. He despised being capable of loving. Of yearning for it, even when he should have known better.
He had been frustrated then, frustrated at his unwillingness to learn from the past. To let himself be hurt again.
But he had offered it nonetheless.
He had dared to love you.
Because, he could not fathom any other outcome. He could not fathom, not walking the path to you.
To not take you in his arms, and allow himself one last plunge into the risque business of love.
He loves when you cook for him. Adrian has been self sustained since 19. He can cook, better than most. But nothing has felt better than the warm meal you cook for him.
The fondness of it, held in every morsel. It wasn't a grand gesture that won his heart.
It was a cookie offered in the darkest of times. A luxury from your traveling rations, you pushed his way.
Something about that undid him. Adrian accepted the sugary goodness.
His eyes closed, in vain, he could not have held the tears at bay. Not that he wanted to.
He had been cold, alone, and abandoned. But a stranger's small mercy had undone the frost.
He was worthy of love.
Of care.
He was a part of the world. And there in the world was someone willing to offer him a part of their rations.
That was all the strength he had needed to gather the broken pieces of himself and love once again.
And if this love lacks the approval of passionate poets and bards, then Adrian is grateful.
He has not chosen an adventure. But an end to it.
He has chosen to love in comfort and in ease of soul.
I was trying to read my first Stephen King book. My first try with Pet Sematry thirty percent through but I give up.
Authors who monetize violence against women (seen in horror and thrillers) just give me the ick (some descriptions of women's bodies irked me, so I looked up if it is a trend with his other works).
Anyone else felt that? I would have loved to give it a shot and read the entire book but why should I read something or works of someone who dismisses female perspective in their writing?
This is just my take. Not meant to be offensive if you enjoy King's works.
AN: I have been thinking of this all day. Inspired by The Hymn to Dionysus
Pairing: Prince Adrian Tepes (Alucard) x gn knight reader
Genre: Angst/melodrama
TW: OC death
Summary: "No, knights do not marry their lieges," you reply almost at instinct. Such unions were not forbidden, merely... unspoken of.
Part: 2/3
(Previous Chapter)
Are you going to marry the prince?" Your ward asked as you braided her hair. The hair of knights in Wallachia was sacred. It was often kept long, uncut. Braided a thousand different ways that allowed for helmets and helms of any and all kind.
"No, knights do not marry their lieges," you reply almost at instinct. Such unions were not forbidden, merely... unspoken of.
Your ward, then no more than four summers old, had opinions on the matter. She was fond of Adrian. Of the prince who looked prettier than any princess according to your little knight.
She had dolls with his shade of blonde hair. She was smitten.
No one said a word. Not aloud.
But the remarks passed. Whispers about the sickness of the lowborn, about the lesser aptitude of those born without noble blood.
You seldom heeded such whispers. Distance from court had seemed like sufficient protection against courtly games.
You were wrong. Those voices had led to this. To a lost squire. An innocent buried in a fallen kingdom, would the gods who walk those lands be kinder to her, than her own had been?
You are at the ball. The feast to welcome the princess' retinue. Surrounded by fawning men and women who have read of knights in romance novels.
The armor, the cape, the braids make you worth their attention today. Worthy enough that your lowly blood is not much of a hindrance.
So you indulge them. You laugh at a young lord's jest. You compliment a foreign dignitary's youngest niece. And all the while you feel Adrian staring at your back. A weight you refuse to acknowledge.
Flirting with strangers at the first feast of his wedding celebrations. Surely this was an offense to the prince. He, who was no better than his conniving brother.
It is much later when the princess and he make their way to you. Half the crowd is drunk to high heavens, and you are held hostage by another aspiring knight.
"I have heard the dates from Nomen are worth poetry," the princess slides next to you as you extricate yourself from the young knight's grip. "Were you able to try some during the siege?"
You look at her. Her filed nails, her delicate curls, her spotless sleeves. Everything about her is pristine. Untouched by your world. From a world you never will belong to.
"That is all we had for months, your highness," you say. Your words are not clipped. You are not that far gone. Yet. "Fortunately for us, fifteen-year-olds seldom protest sweet rations."
She smiles, pleased with what she imagines is a compliment. She does not understand.
They had been so young. Girls and boys so new to their bodies, starving as they waited for the siege to break. Or for starvation to take them first. You watched them suck on dates to make them last. You watched them stop asking for water because they understood there was none.
You look at all of them. Lords and ladies in their prime, plump and pampered. Fed their whole lives. Fed while children died in a foreign camp.
"After we ran out of rotten grain and leathery jerky, our soldiers did suck the dates," you continue, your voice perfectly pleasant. "Those were abundant. The only thing that was. We rationed bodies for the grave pits because we didn't have enough cloth for shrouds. We burned the ones we couldn't bury before the heat took them."
The crowd falls silent. The princess looks at you, caught off guard at the lack of an answer she had wanted. Off the script she had expected.
Next to the princess, Adrian's face drains of color. That is before you even look at him. You hold his gaze for a moment just that one moment. Then you look back at the princess.
"Perhaps your highness and this crowd here will join the siege next time," you say, and smile. All teeth. No warmth. "The daughters and sons of Wallachia's finest! I'm certain their sacrifice would be most noble."
The silence is absolute now. Even the drunk lords have gone quiet. The princess's hand trembles where she grips her wine glass. Her knuckles have gone white.
Adrian looks as though he might collapse. Staring into his chalice of wine.
And you feel nothing but searing rage, ever-present these days.
You bow, a perfect, courtly bow and excuse yourself. As you turn to leave, you catch your reflection in a mirror hung on the ballroom wall.
You do not recognize the person staring back. Neither the prince whose eyes you meet in it.
Adrian is being fussed over by servants. Someone lays his hair carefully over his back. Another pair of hands tightens the sash around his middle. His aides carefully set down the rings he wears with this outfit.
But he cannot pay them any mind. His eyes are fixed on you. Standing by the door, your hand draped loosely over your sword. Your gaze fixed on the windows beyond his bed, on the world outside.
You do not look at him anymore. A week and a half since your return, and he has counted the number of times you have looked at him. He knows the number. He can count it on one hand.
He deserves it. He knows that. But knowing does not make it easier. Nothing does.
"Leave us," he whispers, and his servants vanish without a sound.
He walks to you slowly, softly. He is afraid of startling you, as though you might disappear. As though you are yet another phantom he has conjured in the long nights since the siege. As though you never truly returned from that foreign land.
"Please," he says. "I didn't..." He doesn't know how to shape the words. "I didn't know. I had...I— just wait. One moment."
He rushes to his desk and retrieves letters. The ones he thought your ward had written. Proof, he hopes. Evidence of his innocence.
"See these?" He thrusts them toward you, his hands pressing them against the cold iron of your armor. "I didn't know it wasn't her. I didn't know what happened. Turin must have, he must have intercepted them, or had them written. You must believe me. Please. He planned this. He swapped her without me knowing. I didn't know!"
He begs. His hands hover near your face, uncertain whether touch is permitted. Whether you would allow it, or shatter at the contact.
"Please," he says again, and too late he realizes he is crying. His voice cracks, becomes something small and panicked, and agitated in the presence of a knight who has only just returned from a battlefield. He had known this then, perhaps he would have waited. Had he known how often wailing of survivors on razed fields and broken towns rings in your ears.
"Talk to me. Please. I thought... I had thought I would die without you. I only accepted the betrothal so the reinforcements would come faster. I didn't mean to leave you. I didn't abandon you."
He feels his knees giving way, and then your hands catch him. They wrap around his arms, and they are warm, so warm, against the cold of your armor. But your eyes remain distant, unfeeling.
The next words you speak break something in him. He will hear them again for hours afterward, turning them over in his mind like a monk with scriptures.
"Then you should have died."
The words are spit with venom. With a hatred so pure it rattles Adrian.
You shove him away. Your face shifts into the calm, cold facade of a knight. A mask he has never seen you wear before. It is somehow worse than any rage.
"Get his highness ready," you call to the servants waiting outside. Your voice is formal, impersonal. "The princess shall not be kept waiting."
With that, you walk out of his room. You do not look back.
You still love him. The fact grates against your nerves like a blade that will not sharpen.
Even as you ride behind, at a respectable distance from Adrian and the princess, that truth persists. It should not. It has no right to.
You cannot erase the sight of his misery. How he clung to you. Pleading, breaking apart like something fragile. How you reacted to it. Your prince had withered like flowers in frost.
You had hurt him. Was that revenge? Was that justice? It brought your little knight no closer to life. It brought back none of the others who were now just gone. Erased from the world as though they had never existed at all.
She would have never forgiven you for what you did. How you made her beloved prince, her friend, cry. Gods, she would have...she would have wept for him. Even knowing what he failed to do, she would have mourned his pain.
And that thought breaks something in you that was already broken.
You are angry. You are hurt. You are so desperately, bone-deep tired that even breathing feels like a choice you have to make consciously. You lashed out at him. And now, watching his drooped shoulders as he shows the princess around the courtyard, it feels less like triumph and more like another wound. One you inflicted on yourself.
Had he truly agreed to this betrothal for reinforcements? Given up his freedom, his future, to end the war faster? And the letters, were they real? Or another trick of these brothers, another game designed to play with your heart until it shatters?
You frown. You frown often these days. The muscles have learned the shape of it.
What would your little knight have done? What would she have wanted from you?
The answer sits heavy in your chest, waiting to be said aloud.
AN: This is very indulgent. I LOVE knights. And I love this literary moment in books where the character is beaten, humiliated, left helpless. It is a Greek literary device called Taipinosis, according to Google. I wanted to write it so bad. Inspired by The Hymn to Dionysus
Pairing: Prince Adrian Tepes (Alucard) x gn knight reader
Genre: Angst
TW: OC death
Summary: He never loved you. It was all a lie, a beautiful, cruel game played to pass the time between brothers.
Part: 1/3
Part 1 | 2 | 3 |
"Ah, here comes our ser knight. The champion of the low-born." Prince Turin smiles from his seat at the royal table. The same cruel, thin smile that betrays his habit of finding amusement in the suffering of others.
You drop to your knees and bow, waiting for the Prince to offer his hand for the ritual kiss. You pray for this ordeal to end, to be allowed back to your corner, away from him, and away from the other who stands beside him.
The one you cannot... no, will not look toward. Ever again. Not in a million years. Your skin still remembers the heat of his touch, a memory that you wish you could carve out with a blade.
So you steel your heart and wait. But Crown Prince Turin, firstborn of the five princes of Wallachia, is a predator who relishes the chase. He denies you the relief of a quick reprieve.
"I heard about your squire," he says, leaning forward, his voice a silk-wrapped dagger. "Your little knight."
The name freezes the blood in your veins. No, you cannot think of her yet. You close your eyes, trying not to cling to the memory of the last time you saw her. Your ward. Twelve summers old. Too small, too young for a siege. It feels as if not a minute has passed since you pulled her from the battleground and buried her in that foreign soil.
A five-year siege. You never wanted her there. Children are not meant for battlefields. You should have protected her. You clench your fists, losing your grip on the present as grief threatens to swallow you.
Your eyes remain fixed on Turin’s boots. You will not look up. You fear that if you do, your gaze will find Adrian. Prince Adrian, the third-born. The man you entrusted your little knight to. The man who once whispered promises of a future against your lips in hours of mirth. He was supposed to keep her safe, far from the blood and the ruin.
"The battle has been won, my Prince," you report mechanically. Your voice is a hollow. It echoes inside you, ringing in your head. But you cannot let them see the cracks. "The spoils await your blessing."
Finally, a hand is offered, heavy with his signet ring. But Turin does not extend it far enough. To reach it, you are forced to crawl. You do it. You crawl across the cold stone, eyes lowered. You are no victor; you are no savior. You comply simply to prevent the pain this Prince might otherwise inflict on others in your name.
You kiss the cold gold and stand, still refusing to look at Adrian, though you can feel his gaze burning into the side of your face.
"Be not so morose," Turin tuts, walking toward you. He begins to circle you like cornered prey. "There are plenty of urchins in the streets for you to take as wards. Much like you once were, ser knight, right?"
You barely hear him. You can only think of her. Your squire. Gone. And it was your fault...you had the audacity to be more than the world allowed. You rose from the gutters to become a knight, a champion to those you ultimately could not protect. Perhaps Turin is right.
You wish you had stayed behind with her. Your little knight who was so terrified of the dark, who lit every lamp so diligently, who insisted on hearing stories before bed. Who cherished sweet rations and wild flowers.
"The crown regrets the delay in reinforcements," Turin drawls, his hand grasping your shoulder. Half of your unit died on that field waiting for help that never came. "We were all so preoccupied by Adrian’s betrothal. But the spoils arrived just in time for the wedding."
Adrian. The prince who once bore your heart. The rage doesn't explode; it festers, a slow-acting poison. He who swore to take your ward as his own. He is nothing more than a wax statue next to his brother. He never loved you. It was all a lie, a beautiful, cruel game played to pass the time between brothers.
Adrian cannot breathe when he sees you. Five years have etched themselves into your skin in the form of jagged scars and a sunken, haunted look in your eyes. He sees the battered armor of a General. He sees the tremble in your hands, as if the thunder of battle drums has never left your ears.
Victorious yet broken, you kneel. You have not looked at him once. He does not expect a smile or a hug, but he expected you to care. He expected the fire that used to ignite between you when your eyes met across a crowded hall. He expected to find the person who once promised to come home to him.
He knows he is no longer worthy of it. But he doesn't realize how much he has lost you until his brother speaks of her.
Adrian’s heart drops. He hadn't known. He had sent the girl away to a backwater village for safety. She couldn't be dead. She was seven when he saw her last; she ought to be twelve now. His messengers had sent a letter of her well-being only a week ago.
Adrian cannot break here. It would only embolden Turin. But you... you look alive only in breath. What else could have undone you like this? He wants to rush to his room, to find those letters, or take a horse to the safe house to find the girl and bring her to you.
She lives, he wants to scream, his chest aching with a desperate, suffocating need to reach out and touch your scarred hand. I did not fail her. Please tell me I did not.
He watches you crawl to his brother’s hand. You, the knight who saved the kingdom from ruin, should never have been subjected to such disrespect. You would have resisted once. You had such pride. But now, that pride is a guttered candle.
Whatever reaction Turin expected, you do not give it to him. He is pleased but bored. He dismisses you with a wave of his hand, but not before handing you an invitation to the royal wedding.
Adrian’s wedding. Adrian’s betrayal, or a part of it.
You met the third prince when you were new to the palace, taken in by Commander Rhea. Back then, you were just a squire. An indulgence in good faith.
You remember the first time he looked at you, saw you. You were fifteen, he was nineteen. He had found you in the stables, exhausted and covered in hay. Instead of walking past, he had sat beside you. He’d shared a piece of fruit and talked to you not as a lowborn, but as a person.
Over the years, that kindness turned into something whispered and breathless. It was in the way he’d linger during your training, or how he’d pull you into his room as you stood guard. He had promised you everything in those moments.
By the time you reach your quarters, your legs give out. You drag yourself inside and slam the door. You crumble to the floor, a sob tearing through you when you see them: her workbooks. Stacked carefully on your desk by a servant.
You press your back to the door, gasping for air. The scent of the lilies placed by your bed, reminds you of Adrian’s skin. It makes you want to retch.
You know what must be done. You have known it since she stepped onto that caravan. Since the day she was denied by the prince you swore your life and your heart to.
Adrian’s knight had left the palace for the war, but that knight did not return. Oaths, loyalty, and the memory of his kisses burned on that foreign land. You left your soul there, buried with the sword he once bestowed upon you. Now, only a nameless weapon remains hidden in your scabbard.
One forged for the sole purpose of avenging your little knight. You could not give her the world she deserved, but you will be damned if you do not carve it for others.
Summary: You kiss him, in front of everyone. You have not done that for the past 6 years. Not since men and women your age had looked your way in judgment.
Part 1
Your daughter is the one you hunt down as soon as she arrives. You pull her away to your study, seldom used these days. From the party, from the arriving guests. She is grown. Your grandchildren are taken by Adrian as always, so you have her to yourself.
You hug her tightly. Two days to go. Before you turn 85. Two days you can fool yourself into living the life you've had for the past 50 years.
Rowena hugs you back. And you almost break. You cannot, not yet. There will be time for that. But you will not show such ruin to her. She deserves to believe her parents are whole.
So, as you had done upon holding her for the first time, you pepper her face with kisses.
Of all your children, she will know. She will have the strength for what little you ask.
Distantly, through the walls, you can hear Adrian's voice rising with delight, and your grandchildren shrieking with laughter. You stand still for a moment, just listening. Then you cross to the old desk, open the drawer, and take out the keys.
You hand them to her. It isn't much but it is all you had once owned. A home close to the castle. Not a day's ride away, a farm for your grandchildren to grow in. Barn, sheds, room for loads of animals and potential for a good life.
Now the difficult part. You cannot bring yourself to look at her. So you look at her hands instead, so much like Adrian's. She ages slow like him. That makes you smile a little.
"The deed is already signed. Everything is in order." You clear your throat. "I would like it if you live closer...to your papa when I..." Her hands clutch yours. And you fight your too tight throat. "Don't leave him alone," you all but beg, your forehead to her hands.
And your Rowena, your brave daughter, hugs you. "He will never be alone," she whispers. She holds you, as you once had held her. "We will be here, all the time. Children, me, Sadeas, and the twins. We will chase away all the peace and quiet as always."
You steal a glance at her. Of all she has of Adrian, her eyes are yours. How lovely they are.
The party was warm. It was bright, loud, and lively. Everything was beautiful and your heart was light.
For a fleeting moment, you were back to past years where your children ran through the halls, you stood by Adrian laughing. Nothing hurt that day. Not even the knees.
Even when Adrian dragged you into the third dance of the day. You joined him, indulgent.
You paid no mind to the pitying eyes of some friends in the corner, or sympathetic distant cousins. Even the overbearing neighbor did not vex you, as he made yet another jibe.
This was your memory. An unblemished memory. One full of joy. One Adrian will have to look back on in fondness.
You kiss him, in front of everyone. You have not done that for the past 6 years. Not since men and women your age had looked your way in judgment.
But that did not stop you on your birthday.
It happens a day after the party. The castle is still humming with the chatter of departing guests. There are thudding footsteps, halls grow colder with constantly opening doors. Adrian did not sleep a wink last night, he was in bed one minute and gone the next, up before dawn to clean.
But you are here. Alone in your bed. Your joints ache, you are cold, your ears ring. Your throat is scratchy in what will inevitably turn into an ugly cough. One you have been swallowing down since morning, waiting, always waiting, for a moment alone.
One day. That is all you took. And this is the price of it.
Better that the guests kept Adrian occupied. Let him be around Rowena, Sadeas, the twins, Opal even. Anyone was easier than you. You were just bitter and old. Yesterday was all you had. And you will learn to be content with it.
You are half asleep in the piles of your blankets when your grandson makes his way to your bed. Hadrian, eight years old, the one who is the antithesis of peace and quiet. He climbs up immediately, bouncing, pulling at the blankets, chattering about something involving the twins and a stolen pastry.
You try. You make yourself smile, make yourself engage, reach for the grandparent you had been yesterday. But today there is nothing left to give.
Hadrian stops bouncing. He looks at you with the grave seriousness only children can summon. "Why do you look so different from Gram?" He tilts his head. "Mummy says you are sick. Are you going to disappear like Old Marrow did?"
Old Marrow, you will later learn, was a dog.
The cough surges up without warning. One moment you are fighting it back, the next Hadrian is hiding behind your beloved, crying.
You do not remember what you said. What you had done to make your grandson cry. But the look in Adrian's eyes is implicating and more than you can take. And the cough is still there, clawing at your throat, and Adrian is still here, and you cannot, you will not, let him see that too.
"What is the matter," he asks. This is the first thing he has said to you all day. It is as if you are already gone. Already dead, died yesterday, buried with all the family and friends present.
You are tired, in pain, and not in a state of reason. "Nothing." You swallow hard against the scratch in your throat. "Go tend to the guests. I am sure Rowena needs help with the twins."
"The twins are fine."
"Adrian." The cough is building again, pressing up behind your sternum, and your eyes are watering with the effort of holding it down. "Please. Just go."
"You are not well. Let me help."
"I am fine. Just tired." You turn your face away, jaw clenched, willing it back down.
He says nothing. "You're lying." A pause. "What are you hiding?" Adrian steps forward, ushers Hadrian out, and closes the door behind him. He is not leaving.
"It is just a cough. I am not dying yet, Adrian," you snap.
Wrong thing to say. You see his face pale. He is by your side at once.
The cough tears out of you then, ugly and rattling, and you cannot stop it, hunched over in the blankets.
"You're ill, not dying," he whispers, covering you up better. Reassuring himself. As if that will change anything.
"I will die one day, and it draws closer everyday." You force yourself to look at him through tears, it is a selfish confession. "How can I forget that?"
And Adrian, your Adrian, looks stricken, as if your mortality never occurred to him. "Not yet," he slides into the bed with you.
"I can feel it. Everyday, Adrian." You bare your heavy heart. "I am so afraid. I have grown old and still not grown wise." You laugh through the sobs. "What do I do? I don't want to leave. How will I ever be at peace?"
He shakes his head, trembling, his forehead resting on yours. "I won't let you go. I will ask a royal court vampire for the venom. Turn you, keep you here. Or find a necromancer. You can't leave." He kisses you, and it is wet with tears.
"You will keep me in this wretched body?" You laugh in disbelief. "Better find me a young host if you are turning a new leaf."
"I like this wretched body," he replies petulantly. "I will keep you in this body. Here with me in this castle." He pulls you closer, snug against him, and you are warm.
He never gets to turn you. Adrian Tepes never does buy the service of a necromancer.
He is wretched, grieving, and alone in ways he had never known when you were there. But he accepts it.
Instead, he buries you by the elm next to the pond. He visits daily. He cherishes his grandchildren and children.
He laughs, cries, and sighs with the weariness of a life well lived.
He misses you, he loves you.
And he does not court Opal, thwarting all your half-hearted schemes. Your Adrian always was a stubborn fool.
AN: Totally unasked for but I love angst at times. There will be a part 2, someday.
Pairing: Adrian Tepes (Alucard) x gn older reader
Genre: Angst. Hurt no comfort for now
Summary: Your 85th birthday will be in 5 days. You will do it then. In the party, you insisted to throw, you will find someone. Someone worthy of him.
Part 2
You awaken in the same bed that you have slept in for the past 50 years. Only difference being, now you wake up with complaining knees and a sore back.
The knee will not be rushed. You have learned this. You wait, breathing, until the pain settles into something manageable.
The hands that were once smooth and soft in Adrian's are now weathered with time. There are dark veins, age spots, loose skin. You make a point of not staring too hard at your hands whenever he holds them. Instead, you look at his palms, untouched and unblemished.
You do not want to get up from the bed. It will hurt, you know it. And it will lead to another day of Adrian witnessing your withering.
His side of the bed is empty.
By now he must be outside, in the garden humming a song to the tomatoes, or in the kitchen making breakfast.
And by some mercy, you are allowed the privacy of marinating in your shame. Adrian is not here to cup your face and whisper platitudes. "You're beautiful. You look not a day over 23." He will kiss you. And will not stop until you smile.
But today you bury your face in the pillow and sob softly. Just quiet enough that he will not hear. Placation does not work anymore. You can see it, the end, the fall, it will get worse.
You will lose your mind, your eyes are weak as is, your hearing dwindling over the years. You do not want to leave him. You want time. More of it with Adrian. Fifty years and it still feels like you are standing at the very beginning, reaching for his hand for the first time, terrified he might not reach back. He always reached back. And soon you will have no hand left to offer.
Breathless sobs tear from your throat, you heave, burying your face deeper to stop the noise. He shouldn't see this. Not if what you planned has to work.
So you get up, groaning, and wincing. You shiver at the first cold draft from some forsaken crevice.
You dress, comb your thinning hair, and look at the mirror. "It will have to be done. Do it for him," you whisper to your reflection, unwavering even when a tear slides down.
Your 85th birthday will be in 5 days. You will do it then. In the party, you insisted to throw, you will find someone. Someone worthy of him. And that perhaps will ease the pain you wake up with everyday.
You will insist on keeping them longer, scheme them into staying longer. And let love find its footing. That is what a spouse who truly loved him would do.
That is right. Yes, the right thing to do.
Slowly you will stay longer in bed. Give him time away from you, so his heart may find another tether. So many were coming. All of his friends, all of yours, distant family, anyone and everyone you knew.
Adrian had loved the idea. His eyes had lit up at the first sight of your enthusiasm for a party. He indulged you.
You should be pleased. A virtuous spouse would care more for their beloved. You should be selfless, focused, and eager to find a replacement. But the entire ordeal feels no less painful than ripping a limb apart from your own body.
And old age has reduced your tolerance for pain. But you will endure. For him, you will endure anything. And who knows. Maybe once you watch it happen, it will hurt less than this does now.
You sit by the hearth. A book open in your lap. You stare at the fire.
Adrian is gone. You have done it. Even before the party began, Opal had walked through your doors. A mage. Beautiful, kind, humorous, intelligent, and most of all immortal.
Opal had arrived earlier than expected, two days before the party, carrying enough energy to fill every room. To lend a hand with the preparations. Gods know you are no help to Adrian. An added chore to his days, even.
You remember the moment Adrian laughed at something Opal said. A real laugh, the kind you had not heard in some time. You had been arranging flowers in the next room. You had stood very still, listening.
They had left for the market today. To meet with the baker, to get decorations, clothes tailored, cutlery polished. To stop at the old cartographer's shop on Fenwick Lane, the one Adrian always lingered in too long, running fingers over maps of places neither of you would ever go. Opal had summoned a cart. Just like that.
Gone for the night.
"I will be fine," you had said as you held Adrian's hand. "Walk around the city and start some mischief for me, will you?" You had managed to smile bright enough to make him chuckle.
Now you were here, alone in his castle, reading his book, missing him.
Why did you miss him? Why had aging not lent you the wisdom? Surely any wise person would see reason. Adrian had to love another, he will break after your death, it is imperative, he has someone.
You did not want him alone. You understood that.
The only problem was that you wanted to be the one with him.
At the age of 85, you want to cling to him with a tantrum no better than that of a 5 year old.
Frustrated tears flood your eyes at the very thought of it. How will you scheme, you cannot even bring yourself to accept it? You throw the book away, you stand up, uncaring of knees or back, you shove the chair away, you crumble to the floor.
This wasn't fair, you want to complain. You want to hide in his arms and beg. "I don't want to go. This isn't fair." You want to be held. To forgo wisdom and just show him how ugly, how selfish your love was. "Please love me, just me forever," you want to plead to him.
You were not worthy. Even now. In 50 years, you had failed to love him the right way.
Adrian missed you. In the crowded tavern, after a long day of shopping, and petting sufficient stray cats, now seated with an ale, next to Opal, who regaled him with tales of another adventure, Adrian's mind drifted to you.
They could still make the ride home tonight. It wouldn't be that dangerous, not with him there.
But the mage was tired. Adrian could see that. And you had wanted him to return with a fresh baked loaf from the baker.
So he will wait.
But that did not mean his heart was not homesick. Not for the castle, but for you, who waited there.
Tomorrow, he will go on a stroll with you. If the skies were bright enough, maybe the pond even. You always stopped at the old elm at the water's edge and said prayed quietly to it. He looked forward to that. He always looked forward to that.
He missed your bed. Your nightly whispers, stolen kisses. He missed running his fingers through your hair. The pleasant weight of your hand in his. The way you still stole the blanket in winter without any apparent remorse.
Just last night, you both had spent hours reminiscing about that time Trevor had pissed off an entire colony of gnomes. The way you both had panted with barely contained laughter, clutching your stomachs. He had thought about it three times today already.
Once the party was done, he will surprise you with the cabin whose papers Opal had just pressed into his hands. It was quiet, tucked away from Wallachia's cold winds, and did not have as many stairs. He was already thinking of where your chair would go, angled just right to catch the afternoon sunlight for a perfect nap.
AN: Inspired by Hazelthorn by C.G. Drews. Anon who sent werewolf au request, istg I will work on it soon.
Pairing: Adrian Tepes (Alucard) x Creature reader
Summary: The spring is warm. It is comforting, and preserving, even to those who believe themselves unworthy of it.
He does not notice at first.
Not the first time he has abandoned his mother's garden. Not the first time grief has crippled his entire body into the familiar shape of a coward.
Alucard buries himself in unwashed sheets, in that room, the very same room he killed his father. Or rather, where his father had let him. Where a father's love had won, and a son's had failed.
He does not cry anymore. He holds no hope for anyone coming for him. His wretched fate is to die alone in the castle he was born in.
So he sleeps. Longer than ever. Centuries perhaps, or decades, or mere days. Alucard does not remember.
He wakes not in the room he fell asleep in. A soft bloom is pressed against his cheek. Unknowingly, Alucard leans into it.
It is only moments later that he manages to pry his eyes open. He wakes in a forest. No, it is still the room, but the room has been claimed by forest.
Long vines hang from the ceiling. Moss makes the carpet. His bed is littered with stubborn branches of bloom, forcing their way in through the cracked window.
The garden had found him. In his absence, in his abandonment of it, the garden had reached back.
Smelling still of the lilies his mother had adored, it had snuck in and tethered him to life. He can see that in the narrow sapling that has burrowed itself into his wrist. Keeping him in the world of living with the ichor that flowed through it's thin capillaries.
Alucard should be alarmed. He cannot bring himself to be. He cannot even summon the annoyance to pull the sapling from his skin.
And then there you are. By his side. The bark lining your fingers is coarse against his cheek. "You are awake at last," your voice heavy, supple with all the life you carry with you.
"You had me worried, friend." Your arms, made of aspen, wrap around him.
The violets growing in your hair brush lightly against his forehead as you press a kiss to his cheek. "Adrian, my friend." You draw a long breath. Your eyes, bright as starlight, find his.
He had forgotten you. The phantom of his childhood. The garden spirit his mother had shown him from his nursery window.
You, his friend, who had walked the grounds of the castle with him. Ran through the halls. Plucked the ripest fruits that the squirrels envied.
You had found him. Even when he had not wanted to be found.
In the winters of Wallachia you had slumbered beneath the hardened earth, and in those days Alucard had anxiously counted the days until your return. The arrival of spring. Of the season when his mother wrestled him into the garden instead of making him read by the fire. When he got to race sparrows with you.
"Adrian," you call him by his old name, oblivious to all that has come to pass. His father had destroyed the garden after his mother's death. Dracula had left it trapped in winter. Forbidden from blooming in the absence of its countess.
Now it had returned with a vengeance.
You press a soft plum into his hand. "Your favorite," you smile, as though time had not ripped Alucard apart at the seams.
For one fleeting moment, he wants nothing more than to tear the garden apart. To force it back to winter. To pack the ground in snow, make the soil freeze so hard that you never get to see him again.
He wants you gone. Just like all else.
Why you? Why not his mother? Why not his father? Why had fate not given him the ones he had needed most?
His hand finds the sapling at his wrist. Fingers closing around it.
But before he can enact his rage, you slip into the bed beside him. Your arms still around him. You bury your face in his neck.
There are parts of you he had not seen in childhood. The proud antlers. The long wisps of your lashes, no less than trailing willows. The scent of your hair, petrichor and turned earth.
This was spring. Wild, forceful, and enduring. And Adrian knew that no matter how deep he buried you, you would find him. Every time.
So he lets you. Wailing into the blooming hollow of your collar, Adrian sobs. As a child, as a friend, as something broken and in pain, until the tears fail him again.
For a while there is only the weight of your arm across him. The warmth of your breath against his neck. The slow rise and fall of you, soft rustle of a hare, shuffling noise of a robin as it built a nest somewhere in the room next door.
The spring is warm. It is comforting, and preserving, even to those who believe themselves unworthy of it.
He lets you feed him the plum, the stubborn berries, a pear. All the while the vines around him bloom. Flowers of every shade fill the room.
Request: I hope you are doing well. ❤️ If you are not too busy at the moment, can you please write a Adrian x female reader comfort story 🙏 The reader is feeling terrible about herself, she feels lost in life. She even had thoughts to harm herself. Sorry if can of this made you uncomfortable. I am just rambling. I am sorry.
AN: anon, you do not make me uncomfortable. It is okay to feel lost, to ramble, to experience both good and bad. I hope you are doing better. And I hope this brings you some comfort.
Genre: comfort TW: depressed reader
Pairing(s): Adrian x gn Reader
Summary: A caravan runs on small necessary tasks and he is nothing if not capable of patience. He falls into step beside you when the road narrows. Chooses the fire nearest yours at camp.
Adrian notices you before the caravan has cleared the first valley.
It is not difficult. He has seen that particular configuration of a person before. Has worn it himself, in the long years after, when the castle was empty and the roads all looked the same.
You carry it in your body. The dark circles sitting so deep they look like bruising. Eyes that track everything. Exits, threats, the people around you. Your hands, when you are still, have a faint tremor you may not know about. You probably don't sleep. When you do it is not restful.
He knows all of this within the first hour.
He says nothing. He has learned, across centuries, that there is a kind of person who will bolt if you reach for them too quickly.
He watches instead. He waits. Adrian has nothing but time.
The first thing he sees you do is give away your bread.
Not even consciously, it seems. A child at the edge of the group, watching the adults eat, and you glance at them and then glance at your portion and then you are simply eating less, breaking a piece off and setting it within reach without looking at them, without making it a thing.
The child takes it. You look at the road. Your hands are trembling slightly around your water skin.
Son of Dracula makes up reasons to be near you.
A caravan runs on small necessary tasks and he is nothing if not capable of patience. He falls into step beside you when the road narrows. Chooses the fire nearest yours at camp. Asks, once, about the maps he has seen you tracing by firelight.
You look at him when he asks. As searching for a reason for his presence. Motive behind his kindness.
You tell him about the maps. Adrian listens without filling the silences and when you stop talking he does not push, and something in your mental guard drops.
Later he notices you didn't eat again. He says nothing. He puts food within reach and looks at the fire devouring kindling.
You eat with soft careful bites.
The rain comes on the third night and with it the argument. A merchant, sodden and furious, turning it on the nearest available target, which turns out to be an old man who had asked only to share the shelter of a wagon.
Adrian watches you move.
There is no hesitation. You are on your feet and between them before the merchant has finished his second sentence. Everything that is hollow and exhausted and barely-held-together in you goes somewhere else.
Your hands are not trembling.
The merchant backs down. They always do, Adrian has noticed, when faced with someone who can look them in the eyes without a flinch or care for consequence, cowards tend to disappear.
You help the old man settle. Disappear back to your corner. Sit with your knees drawn up, arms wrapped around them, staring at the rain with those hollowed eyes, and you are small again, and tired again, and the tremor is back in your hands around your water skin.
He brings you tea. You look up at him. He sits down beside you without asking and hands it over and looks at the rain and says nothing for a long time.
"You don't have to keep doing that," you say eventually.
"Doing what." Adrian asks, his eyes still following the rain.
"Being near me." A cautious pause as you look away from him. "I'm not good company."
"I am several hundred years old," he says. "I have had worse."
Your lips lift. Not quite a smile. The memory of one, maybe. A lovely one.
"When did you last let someone do something for you," he asks.
You are quiet for a long time. "I don't remember," you say, picking on your fingers.
Adrian nods, he had expected that.
"I'm very tired," you say finally. You blink rapidly looking away, as if saying the words had cost you the composure that you held so close to your heart.
"I know," he says.
"I don't know how to stop...moving" you say, the word bitter on your tongue. "I don't know what happens if I stop."
"Nothing catastrophic," he says. "I will still be here. The road will still be there. The sky will remain blue, the soil will provide, and you will come to find, not just cruelty, but the kindness of hands that come to hold you in the dark."
You look at your hands. "I don't know if I believe that," you say.
"You don't have to," he says. "Not yet."
The attack comes without warning, the way they always do.
Three nights later, moonless dark. The sounds begin at the perimeter of the camp. Not human sounds, not animal sounds. Something else, something vile and blood thirsty.
He is already moving, blade drawn, when he sees you.
You are standing between the creatures and the caravan.
He can see it from here, the exhausted set of your shoulders, the tremor in the hands gripping your weapon, the dark circles and the hollow eyes and the body that has been running on nothing for so long.
You are standing there because there are people behind you and you are in front of them and that, for you, is sufficient reason.
It has always been sufficient reason. Even now. Especially now.
This, he thinks, crossing the distance between you in the dark, is what it looks like. The last of it. Hope given freely, to strangers.
He steps up beside you. Shoulder to shoulder, blade levelled, eyes on the dark forest.
You look at him. And you realize, you are not alone in the standing. Perhaps you have not been, for a few days now. Perhaps you are only just feeling it.
You look back at the treeline. So does he.
"Together," Adrian says almost smiling.
You exhale. Steady your grip. The tremor in your hands settles somewhat. "Together," you repeat his words.
