Stitched Up Hearts (Alucard X Fem! reader)

We're Both Going Crazy

"I think mine looks much better than yours." I turn my creation around in my hands, admiring the button eyes and orange fleece hair I crafted into my Sypha doll. The stitches are a little uneven, and it certainly isn't my best work, but at least it looks better than the mutilated Trevor that Alucard has created.

"I think he looks rather accurate." Alucard turns around his doll, displaying the crooked eyes and thick yarn hair he sewed onto his doll. He never was very good at small pieces like this. He worked with wood and metal, not cloth and needles.

"I don't think he'd be very fond of the dress you've put on him." I laughed, leaning over to lightly tug on the white shapeless clothing he put onto his doll. "But if I squint and tilt my head a little..." I demonstrate the action, moving my head to the left. "Oh my word, Belmont, is that you?" I gasped loudly, sitting back upright and using a hand to cover my mouth as if I was shocked. "You've gotten smaller!"

Alucard rolls his eyes at my childishness, putting aside the doll and brushing the dust off his black pants. "Come, let's start getting ready for dinner."

It's getting warmer outside now, and at least for the most part the rain has stopped. Animals are still a little hard to find right now, but the fish are plentiful. I don't really know how long it's been since Trevor and Sypha left, by now my days feel so similar they have begun to blend together. "Aha!" I exclaim, my hands finally gripping the writhing, slimy fish. Its scales are smooth under my hands, and it's thrashing around wildly. I'd never been very apt at fishing, hunting was more my speed. A bow and arrow fit into my hands with much more ease, and even with my hands alone I could kill a deer easily. Fish were different, they were underwater and they said were fast. It frustrated me to fish.

"I did it! I actually caught one!" I laugh even louder, grinning as I hold my achievement, showing it off to Alucard. I knock the fish hard over the head with my fist, causing it to go limp in my hands. I've never caught a fish bare handed before.

"excellent dear." he smiles playfully, placing his own catch in one of the wicker baskets I crafted for us years ago. Weaving was something Lisa taught me when I first came to the castle, as baskets broke very easily there and were somehow always in demand. "We might just make a fisherman out of you yet."

"Fisherwoman, Alucard." I roll my eyes playfully. It feels like it has been too long since conversation flows so lightly between us. I missed this, the simplicity and comfort of domesticity. If I was younger, the thought of being so boring and being so happy about it would have made me sick. I thought I was never made to live this kind of life, that I would always be running, an outcast. Having a home suits me better than I thought it would all those years ago.

The castle is so tall the sun peeks out from behind its tallest towers, the structure looming over the woods. It's intimidating, seeing it there. When you are inside it does not feel quite so large and impending as it does when you look at it from far away. Cold breezes sweep through my hair, kissing my face. A normal person would still be wearing a jacket in this weather, but I feel just fine in my cotton dress. The woods are louder than the castle, the sound of life moving all around us. Deer bound through the woods, and birds hop from branch to branch, with squirrels skittering across the thinnest branches at the top.

By the time we are finished trekking through the forest looking for wild garlic to uproot, and berries to pick, our baskets are full and heavy. I meander down to one of the cellars, inhaling the damp, sharp smell of wine. Though I had cleaned this room, due to its location it always felt somewhat musty, and the wine smell was permeated so far into the walls I don't think it would come out in a thousand lifetimes.

"You'd think Dracula would have barrels in here, not bottles." I mumble to myself, picking up yet another shattered bottle from the shelf and tossing it behind me dumbly. Finally, I find a full bottle, holding it up to the little light that filters into the room in an attempt to read the label. The formerly white paper label is now weathered beyond recognition, and the only letters I can make out are T and S.

"Well I found us... something." I show Alucard the bottle when I reenter the kitchen. Two glasses are on the wooden tabletop, and I pour the wine into them.

"At least you were able to guess correctly that it was white wine." Alucard observes. I laugh, handing one of the glasses to my husband and taking the other for myself. I've never been overly fond of drinking, the after effects didn't seem worth it to me. However, I still liked to indulge from time to time.

The food is amazing, as it always is. Alucard learned well from his mother, and from me the few times I bothered to teach him anything. I look up to see the mangled Trevor that Alucard made, sitting on a shelf. "What do you think, Trevor?" I ask. I must be going insane, everything seems funny to me at the moment. Maybe it's the wine, or maybe it's that I've barley spoken as much as I usually do in the last few weeks. There has been nothing for me to say. 

"I think I hate everything and everybody, so I'm going to get drunk on beer that's been brewed in an old sheep carcass, and then I'm going to stick my tiny penis in a dead dog I found in a ditch to make hate-babies or something because I am actually more stupid than mud." Alucard imitates Trevor in a gruff voice.

I begin to laugh even harder at Alucard's impression. When we were younger, we would sit and listen to other people's conversations, poking fun and imitating them just like this. I pitch my voice to what I think is an appropriate Sypha impression. "You are a horrible, terrible person and many other words for horrible and terrible, because I know all the words because I am smarter than everybody and one day I will go back to live with my flea bitten family in a cart which makes me better than everyone and you will all die in a fire." Alucard smiles at my voice, which by now is starting to catch a little with laughter, but I go on. "A big one."

We both chuckle, smiles resting on our faces before it begins to die down. "Oh my god." Alucard's smile is fully gone now. He must be thinking the same thing I am. "We are losing our minds."

I take a long drink of wine, and place my hand on Alucards. "And, it's only been a month." I stop, trying to remember how many days it actually had been. I certainly lost track a long time ago, I became too busy to keep track of what days had come and gone. "At least, I think it has." I don't want to think about that right now. Today is a good day, better than most at very least. I can forget about things right now, pretend there is nothing wrong, like the blood of his father doesn't stain the air in this castle. I can feel happy, and play like things are the way they used to be. I haven't felt that way in a long time, I don't want to lose it. "Alucard."

"Yes, my love?"

"We'll be alright here, you know. Things are getting better aren't they?" They feel like they are. There are still waves of it that come and go, crashing over me without warning. But they are slower now, and they come less often. I feel I am no longer consumed by all that I have done in the last few weeks, the scars drawn into the castle are beginning to fade. The stains are fading from the stone. But still, there is a feeling in my gut. Something else is going to happen, we are not through with our misfortune just yet. I am afraid of what will happen to us, afraid I have become too soft, too trusting. I fear trust will make me weak, then something is going to happen and I won't be strong enough to stop it.

Alucard looks like he wants to give me an answer that will make me happy. I've seen that look on him before, I know it too well. I also know too well that he wont have it in him to lie to me. "I... don't know."