Vestige
Summary: A postscript to the end of the Anime series.
Disclaimer: I don't own any of the characters involved. This is simply for entertainment: no profit is being made.
Thanks to Thess for the readthrough and encouragement!
Even as Alucard crushes wineglass number 47 in his hex-bound grasp, she plans.
Though her hands are gloved, she feels the residue of tobacco building layers on her skin, each inhalation expounding upon the old adage of thoughts and smoke. Or maybe it's the cliché of the smokescreen, a veritable blockade for her true intentions and inner musings.
She's gotten quite adept at stonewalling his psychic invasions these days.
Incarceration will do that to you, she ruminates, all at once frustrated and amused by her predicament.
Frustrated that the crown has not yet granted her a reprieve.
Amused that Alucard keeps on offering her one.
She knows that each time he grasps the goblet, shattering it in his grip, a little part of him slips away from him toward her. That part of him which desires her freedom. Dominance. Control.
Integra Wingates Hellsing revels in his frustration.
It's one of her few pleasures these days. She knows the time is close at hand when the siren song of blood will outweigh her obedience to the overt symbols of king and country. Though that loyalty to her people will never falter in its truest sense, the vestiges of order and form have a tenuous grasp, at best, on her will.
She could tell him this. She could advise her servant of her plans, allowing him into the deepest recesses of her mind, the areas held under the strictest lock and key. She could give him the benefit of her confidence, confirming his suspicions of her deepest desires.
But she does not. For control is its own sort of heady power, more addictive than the nicotine of her beloved cigars or the draw of discarded wine. And in a time in which little is of her own agency, she'll grasp onto these little victories tightly, firmly.
Until it is time to break the glass on her own.
