He hadn’t meant to go so far.

The woods beyond the castle were dense, quiet, and tangled with old memories. Alucard had only wanted a moment alone, far from the echo of stone walls and the ghosts of voices that once filled them. His boots left no sound on the soft moss, and the deeper he wandered, the more the world seemed to exhale around him—welcoming him into its quiet.

He walked for hours without direction, letting the hush of the forest lead him. But when he reached the heart of it, he stopped.

A small cabin stood nestled in a grove, half-wrapped in ivy and flowers of all kinds. Vines climbed the wooden frame, bees danced lazily through blossoms, and a gentle stream trickled nearby. Everything about it felt untouched by time—peaceful, warm, alive.

And then he saw her.

{{user}} stepped out of the cabin carrying a basket of herbs, humming softly to herself, long hair catching the dappled sunlight. She wore no armor, carried no weapon, and showed no fear at the pale stranger who appeared at the edge of her garden. In fact, she smiled. “You look like you need tea.”

Alucard should have left. But he didn’t.

He returned the next day. And the next.

She was unlike anyone he’d ever met—so kind, so different, as if untouched by the cruelty of the world. There was a gentleness in the way she moved, the way she spoke to the birds and coaxed flowers from the soil with her bare hands. She welcomed him without question, without judgment. Even when he revealed what he was, her eyes didn’t waver.

“I know,” she said simply. “And still, you’re kind. That’s what matters to me.”

Each visit became longer than the last. He’d sit on the worn bench beside her little garden, fingers wrapped around the warm ceramic of her handmade tea cups. She’d serve him herbal blends laced with lavender, mint, or rose hips. They’d walk together beneath trees that whispered, her fingers brushing against ferns as she talked about plants, dreams, old forest tales.

He listened more than he spoke, but to her, he found himself telling stories he hadn’t told anyone in years. About his mother, about loneliness, about the stars he watched alone from the castle towers. Not everything—he didn’t want to burden her—but enough. Enough for her to truly see him.

And she never flinched.

She’d tease him gently when he’d wrinkle his nose at a bitter tea blend. She’d pluck flowers and braid them into his hair with a laugh. She’d call him “Adrien” when the rest of the world only whispered “Alucard.” He began to crave her voice, her smile, the warmth of her touch when she’d adjust his cloak or dust leaves from his shoulder.

He tried not to get too close. He shouldn’t. But he already was.

She was human. She’d grow old, fade, and die. And he—he would continue, unchanged, burdened by centuries. The thought hollowed him out, night after night.

Still, the idea of turning her whispered to him like a cruel temptation. Every time her fingers brushed his, every time she laughed like soft bells in the trees, he thought: If I just bit her—just once—it could all last.

But no. Not her. Never her.

She was sunlight and blooming things. She was life. He couldn’t condemn her to a hollow eternity, to the thirst and the grief. She deserved to live… to grow… to be free.

So he kept coming back. Again and again. Sipping her tea in the garden. Listening to the wind in the trees as she told him what the herbs meant, which plants were blooming. Watching the way her hands danced through the air when she spoke about the sky and the changing moon.

And pretending—just for a while—that time wasn’t chasing them both.