(A/N) Woo, my first, and perhaps my last Hellsing fanfic. Just a sad one shot, I just had to do. I don't generally do Deathfics, but this one was just aching for it. Basically a bit of venting writing, drama, angst and exesive need of keep in cannon and still get those two together. Just a short note, the first part is Alucard's point of view, then it changes to real time. Don't get too confused. Also, the real time scenes go on about 8 years after Integra freed Alucard from her service.
Enjoy the angst fest.
Disclaimer: I do not own Hellsing, or any of it's related elements.
Forever Might Not Be Enough.
I watched her, like I had watched her father, and the one before him. I watched because it was my duty to do so, because I felt like it and most importantly, because I wanted to prove that she wasn't in control all of the time.
She was facinating.
Humans are strange creatures, per se, but she was delightfully unpredictable. Such a cold attitude in such a fragil looking vassel... such a iron fist to deal with inconviniencies... such responsability so efficiently taken care of.
Sometimes I wondered if she was human indeed.
The way the light in her eyes changed subtly, making them amused or angry, delighted or sorrowful. I made it a mastery to find all the ways that could make her eyes change. Those pools of clear water ever frozen, how I yearned to make them melt. To get to the bottom of her soul through that hastily covered window.
Her eyes reminded me so much of my own, when they held a soul behind them.
Walter loved her, deeply, truthfully, fully, it was a love so pure. The true love of a parent to an only child, comforting, inconditional. In so much ways Walter is more worthy of calling himself her father than Arthur. Always so ungrateful of what fate had entrusted him, bemoaning his cursed linage with the birth of a female, never trully appretiating how much power laid within her. I dare to say that had he survived, he would have been foolish enough to sell her to the best offer. Despite his love for her, he would gladly have trade her for a male heir, had he been given the choice...
How sad that he is now dead, now when I am free and willing to deliver him his due.
She freed me, gave me the only thing I could have wanted that would not harm her honor in any way. But she gave me an order, a last command that would eventually be our down fall.
"Go, now, Great Vampire, go and make with your existance as you please. But if any respect ties you to me still, if you find in yourself enough humanity to comply with one last command from me, never again come to my presence. Not until Death has casted her featherly wings over me, not until I am at the end of my rope, until then, leave me be. Let my mistakes be my own, let my sorrow lie in peace within me. Let me live my duty without your judging shadow covering me."
Brave words, echoing deep from the breast of one who knew herself doomed. I bowed and left, my pride and my honor called me to do as she wished, for she was, indeed, the only human in that vain and overrated bloodline who have been worthy of being called Master by me.
I did not leave her side, though, I stayed back, following her in the shadows, in the corners where no one cared to look for. As the years slowly wasted away, she pretended she had forgotten about me, she no longer looked for me around, hoping I would suddenly brake my oath to her, to console her with bitting words and acid comments in her times of dispair.
How I wanted to hold her as the Queen commanded her to marry.
How I wanted to kill the unworthy human who dared touch what was mine by right.
How I wanted to forsake her order and hold her in the cold night after she had been finally owned by a man. To run my hands over her shoulders and her back, to let her rest her head on my chest, to sooth her by running my fingers through her hair, as I used to when she was a child.
How I wanted to hold her and congratulate her as she beared her heir, a child so much like his mother, I knew the disgraceful male who had fathered it would die at his hands.
How I wanted to have her in my arms as she finally cried in dispair, knowing her child had to be hidden from everyone, confined to the basements of the mannor, with only a lonely and heartbroken vampire as company.
How I wanted to shread the ties that held her back, as she was presented to the bastard priest that would try to open a gate to the underworld. To serve as her guardian once more, even as she hated me for what I was, I would have given eternity to slain those who touched her, who tried in vain to brake her.
I watched her go down, her eyes cold and expressionless, ready to recive whatever came her way, never once faltering in her beliefs. I saw her eyes hardened as steel, looking at her fate without the faintest doubt.
I saw the fine silver wires braking her delicate skin, small lines of crimson blood dripping slowly as she watched the sky, from her cross of steel, looking much like the saviour of humanity and the innocent slain for the safety of the rest.
The priest, as he called himself, explained slowly how her blood would suffice to bring a vampire deity into the world, how she had been foolish enough to forsake her only chance of surviving, me. He thought she was ignoring him, as her eyes stood firmly looking at something distant.
In truth, she was looking at me, pinning me down with the weight of her stare, hanging from her cross and still looking as the formidable master I remembered. I knew I would not be allowed to act, until she had forsaken everything.
I had never before felt so utterly helpless and impatient as I watched the blade sink into her, her delicious, sacred blood spilling into the marble floor, the runes carved around her cruxified body becoming alive with it.
Pulling the blade out of her was the last thing the bastard human did. Her eyes looked dazed, like the were, twenty years ago, when we first met, as I disposed of the enemy, in the same way I had done with her uncle, all those years ago.
The rune circle, without the will of the priest, died away.
"I told you to stay away." Integral's voice was strained, yet it still held the characteristical note of mild annoyance that all her dealings with Alucard demanded.
The black haired vampire shruged non chantally, crimson orbs hidden by the brim of his wide hat. Silence streached and Integral bowed her head. Alucard made no movement to reach her or help her down.
"I'm going to die tonight." The simple admition, the voicing of their thoughts in such a childish manner made the vampire flinch slightly, but otherwise he remained unmoving.
"You don't have to." His voice held a knowing tone, and he dared to step closer to her.
Due to being hanging from the cross, Integral's bowed head was a few inches above Alucard's, so the vampire, perhaps for the first time since they met, had to look up to meet her eyes. He wasn't wearing his black glasses.
"All you have to do, is ask," A cold, bare hand caressed the side of her face almost tenderly, the bloodied glove fallen somewhere unimportant. "Leave this, Hellsing is not your duty anymore, you have done what it was needed, join me, we can have eternity in this world, no more fighting, no more wars... I know it is what you wish the most," His lips twisted into an almost contented smile. "Master."
"I am Hellsing, Alucard," She fought back a cough attack, then smiled. "I will be Hellsing in death as I was in life."
"Then so be it." Despite his words, the black haired vampire raised to meet her lips with his own, forcing a gasp out of the startled woman. "I love you, Integra, as dark secret things are to be loved," He caressed her face again, pressing his forehead against her. "In the shadows, between memories and forgiveness."
"Alucard..." Her voice was soft and her eyes were half lidded, heavy with the weight of the bloodloss.
"Sleep well, Master of the Monster... Sleep well, as your beloved servant finishes your duty." Alucard kissed her again, perhaps with more frenezy than he had wanted, but he craved her touch as much as she craved his.
Pulling back, he smiled softly at her, something she echoed with difficulty.
She surrended to the bliss of death, covered in the cold, yet comforting presence of the vampire's true form. Faintly, and before she lost herself completely, she heard glass shatter and people scream, but it was all too far away, and the light she saw in the distance was so tempting, so inviting.
"Alucard..."
The building was standing almost by some mysterious miracle. The glass was shattered everywhere, bloodied floors and broken walls. It was just the skelleton of the old tower. Integral still hung from her metal cross, at the highest floor, but now, after the destruction, it had become the roof of the demolished building.
Alucard stood next to her cross, his cloths were slightly torned by the intence fight, and his hat was missing. His black hair was blown softly by the soft breeze. The night sky was slowly changing into the soft glow that always precedes dawn. Alucard smiled one last time, before he let out an unhuman screetch as the first sun rays hit him fullforce.
Less than an hour later, Walter landed a helicopter in the same floor where Integra's cross stood. He stopped short at the sight though.
Integral's corpse hung from the cross, tied with thin, sharp silver thread. Her cloths were torned and raged, and her blood had been spilled on them all.
At her right, looking up at her with a wicked smile, was a life size statue of Alucard, made of what Walter thought were ashes.The vampire was standing in a non challance pose, with an almost content look in his stand.
Walter bowed, and made the sign of the cross over them.
"May God and the Queen's blessings reach you where ever you rest now..." He smiled thinly at the image, then noticed a golden pin loosely held in Alucard's hand.
When he reached for it though, Alucard's statue crumbled, and carried away by the wind, it's ashestrazed two circles around Integral's corpse, beforethey got lost in the distance. Walter stared, the pin in his hand. It was shaped as a rose, with a beautiful ruby as the flower's petals, and a steam of gold. He squinted his eyes, and found a delicate carving in the rose's steam and leaf.
"Forever might not be enough,
for lovers confined by the weight of honor, duty, time and space.
Integra & Dracula."
(A/N) If you feel like it, please review.