DISCLAIMER: Hellsing belongs to Kouta Hirano.
~ It's Your Blood That's Red ~
There are just too many. Too many ghouls. Too many guns. Too many inhibitions preventing her from using her vampire strength and senses to their full potential.
Bullets rip into Seras - some going all the way through, others getting stuck in bones or caught in a tangle of organs.
They aren't blessed. They aren't even silver. Even so, the wounds remain open. Because she is still a 'dry' vampire, her body doesn't have the resources to regenerate from something which should only be a minor inconvenience to a creature of the night.
Even with Walter backing her up, more and more holes are drilled into the draculina until finally she collapses to the floor, incapacitated more by emotional distress over the current state of her body than by actual pain from the wounds.
After finishing off the rest of the ghouls crowded into the hallway, Walter kneels beside the fallen vampire and scoops her up into his arms. She blinks up at him uncomprehendingly, her eyes unfocused.
More ghouls begin to shuffle in from the other end of the hallway. There isn't much time before they'll be surrounded by enemies once more.
Her vampire instincts take over.
Upon regaining consciousness, the first thing that Walter registers is the feel of slim fingers wrapped around his own. Someone is holding his left hand in both of theirs.
Seras, he guesses a moment later, judging by the sound of her sobs.
"Why are you crying? He's fine," comes Alucard's exasperated voice from somewhere close by, although not right next to them.
And, surprisingly, he feels fine. Although Walter doesn't exactly remember the events leading up to this point, it doesn't take much for him to figure out what must have happened.
"But-" Seras protests.
"Look, he's awake," Alucard cuts her off, as Walter opens his eyes.
The butler spots Alucard lounging against the wall five feet away, before his attention is entirely consumed by Seras. She leans over him, her red eyes wide and leaking tears. The first thing Walter notices is that she's still crying, although the significance of the changed iris color does not escape him.
More importantly, it appears that all of her bullet wounds have healed.
"Are you alright?" he asks, sitting up and reaching out with his free hand to wipe bloody tears from her cheeks.
"I'm sorry!" she cries. Her grip tightens on his hand and blood continues to stream from her eyes. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to-!"
"It's fine," Walter says.
But she continues to babble out apologies as if she didn't even hear him.
"I'm so sorry!"
Seeing that mere words are not enough to reassure her, Walter gently draws Seras into his arms.
Although all nourishment has already been stripped from it before it was shed in place of tears, he licks his own blood - for it his blood that runs in her body now - from his fingers before burying his hand in her hair.
"I'm fine," he says, holding her tightly against him. "Better than I've felt in a long time, actually."
"No more arthritis?" Alucard puts in, amusement ringing clear in his voice.
Walter sighs and doesn't bother protesting, because while he'd never had that particular ailment, it's true that all the aches and pains of his advanced age are gone now. Vampires don't suffer such things.
"It will come back if you don't feed properly," Alucard says, all humor absent from his tone now. "Until you consume enough souls to overcome the limits of the form you died in, anyway."
Seras tenses up at this pronouncement, and Walter sighs again. Just when she was finally starting to maybe not feel entirely guilty about accidentally losing control of herself and turning him into a vampire in the heat of battle, Alucard just had to go and say something to make her feel worse...
Walter gently strokes Seras's hair until he feels her body relax against him.
"You know," he says, and she lifts her head to look up at him. He smiles and wipes traces of blood from her cheek with his thumb as he continues: "Truth be told, from the very night that Alucard brought you home, I planned to ask you to bite me. I was only waiting for you to get over your skittishness about drinking blood first."
Seras just stares at him for few long moments as the revelation sinks in. Then the corners of her mouth lift in a tentative smile, and Walter leans down to press a soft kiss to her forehead.
~end~