Notes: This story is for Andii who requested a fanfic about Rip van Winkle, Integra, and Zorin. I went totally, embarrassingly overboard and created an alternate ending for Hellsing Ultimate/manga: Rip van Winkle survives and I try to come with an explanation as to why. The first three chapters are pretty much the original ending with Winkle present. Nothing particularly groundbreaking. I had originally intended on finishing this prior to posting, but–as per usual–I got distracted with another story. I'm going to post what I have as I edit for people to enjoy and hopefully pick this back up later. There's some minor German in this fic. I did study the language but am very bad at it. If you see any mistakes–in English or German–please let me know. Thank you.
Rating: Descriptions of all acts–including violence, gore, and eventual sex–are graphic and rated NC-17.
Pairings: Integra/Rip and Zorin/Rip . Everyone is mean to Winkle. Repeat, everybody is mean to Winkle.
Characters: Rip van Winkle, Integra Hellsing, Seras Victoria, Alucard and Zorin (flashbacks). Minor appearances and mentions: Major, Captain, Dok, Schrödinger, Anderson, and Walter.
Warnings: graphic descriptions, blood, body horror, gore, nudity, Nazism, violence, sexual content, and abuse. Enjoy.
To a vampire, a lifetime stretched like a single day extending forever; mind and body lived in an eternal capsule of a moment, always. Perhaps she felt the length of time so because true sleep never came. Even when resting with eyes closed in a casket, the world never completely dimmed. She could always hear; a hunter constantly aware of her surroundings. Unable to tune out the world, she filled unbearable stretches of silence with cascading operas, the singing ricochet of bullets, and–as Rip van Winkle could hear now–the ceaseless ticking of a clock.
The tick, tick, ticking metronomic beat was both soothing and terrifying, for as long as Winkle could remember, she had rested with a clock in her coffin. The timepieces changed: a pocket watch at first, then a wristwatch, and she'd kept an electric alarm clock for a little while. Schrödinger had recently added to her collection, gifting her a pink battery operated clock. He said he'd taken it while scouting, couldn't remember why it had interested him any longer, and that the dumb, smiling face reminded him of her. Despite the insult, Winkle had kept the clock all the same, finding its face comical.
Time wasn't important to her Millennium comrades. Winkle supposed, though would never admit, that they were correct. The undead had no reason to fear the ticking of clock hands–not in the traditional sense anyway–for it did not etch wrinkles into their skin, gnarl their backs, or whiten their hair. For them, time affected little and meant even less. The Letzte Battalion continued on as it had for more than sixty years, working tirelessly toward the warfare they had so long been deprived.
Only the Major seemed to acknowledge her awareness of time passing. During briefings, he'd spare her newest clock a glance and give a wolfish, knowing grin because they both understood that the beat of time–whether in music or timepieces–signaled a countdown. With gleaming eyes, the Major would preach fervently about warfare's sweet approach. While she agreed with her Führer, the tick, tick, ticking created a dissonance of joy and fear within her. The Major promised her that along with their triumphant return, time's passing also heralded something wicked.
The constant ticking grew louder, echoing in the space of the casket. The beat seemed off, no longer in perfect time. Perhaps the battery was running out, stupid thing. Stretching, Winkle reached blindly for the timepiece, but her arm was snagged by thick, ropy liquid like a fly's wing caught in a spider's web.
Eyes opening, Winkle expected to see the black inside of a coffin. Instead, halos of red dotted the sky above like countless stars. Badly nearsighted, she squinted upward, but the glowing circles remained a blur without spectacles. Unnerved, she tried to move, but arms and legs were stuck as though caught in tar.
Starting to panic, Winkle glanced down to find swirling, vicious red drenching her frame in congealing webs of oozing crimson. Jaw falling open, Winkle slowly raised her head. A bleary, endless red sea stretched before her under an equally infinite, sinister sky.
Screaming at the sight, she struggled in earnest, but cries were cut short as a chorus of wailing–stirred by the piercing sounds of pure fright–rose like a chorus of the damned around her. Frantically whipping her head from side to side, Winkle found she wasn't alone.
In the ocean of red, shadowy bodies clawed to be free. Blurred limbs contorted as the crowd pushed against an inescapable crimson tide, trapped just as she was. A few held aloft weapons. She could make out the hazy gleam of metal in the distance slicing at the bloody sea, but the effort seemed fruitless. The liquid could not be wounded and metal clanged against metal instead, as the trapped were willing to hack at anything–even each other–should it mean a chance at freedom. The tick, tick, ticking had never been a clock at all.
"I'm in Hell," Winkle breathed. Fear fluttering in her chest, she thrashed against molten bonds and cried, "No! No!" Her voice rose above the others. Shrieking at the sky above, the red stars neared as she pleaded, "Let me go! Let me go! Let m–"
Screams died suddenly, throat clicking wordlessly in terror as hundreds–no, thousands of brilliant crimson lights came into focus. Winkle trembled as hellish apertures relentlessly gazed down.
"And why should I?" a deep voice rumbled.
"S-samiel," she croaked, barely audible.
Unblinking crimson eyes stared down at her just as they had when spilling like all-seeing fire from the cockpit of the Blackbird. The aircraft's suicidal nosedive into the Alder's deck still blazed in her mind. The taste of smoke and gunpowder lingered on her tongue, but so too did the tang of blood. Time was up. The Devil had won–just as the Major predicted–and collected his dues with the ferocity of a wolf.
"Begging is meaningless, why should I let you out? What makes you any different than the millions around you?" the demon pressed.
Even in the clutches of fear, Winkle considered the to broker a deal with the Devil wasn't a foreign idea, but it felt like surrender. Saw-like teeth gritted in disgust.
"I beg for nothing, I demand you let me out!" she spat venomously.
There was a pause before Samiel laughed darkly. The surrounding sea vibrated with each mocking cackle, sound resonating in the swell of her chest.
"Even stinking of fear you continue to fight."
"Mock me if you will, but I will not bow to you, release me this instant!" Winkle cried, tossing back her head to bare jigsaw fangs.
The Devil laughed again at the display, howling with pleasure now. The sea churned with each amused roar, quaking her stuck limbs.
"Oh you are delectable, far more entertaining than your devoured comrades," Samiel mused.
Scowling she promised, "Monster! You will regret this."
"I think not," he clipped, "empty threats frighten no one, only amuse. You belong to me."
"I will never-"
"Raise your right hand! Salute your new master," Samiel ordered gleefully.
At the command, her limb immediately shot upward, hand easily cutting through congealed liquid with new strength until it rose high above. Straight as an arrow, the flat hand raised in a red-stained mockery of a salute. Winkle gasped in shock, staring wide-eyed at her dripping hand.
"Talk Nazi to me, " demanded the Devil. "Hail your master's victory. "
Serrated teeth locked together in protest, muffling involuntary words.
"Louder, I can't hear you!"
"Sieg Heil!" She screamed at the glowing eyes in loathing, "Sieg Heil!"
Fury shook her frame as his laughter rang thunderously.
"Delicious."
"Fuck you!" she howled, struggling but unable to lower her arm.
The mocking cackle went on nastier than before.
"Yes, that's right, fight! Fight the impossible if you dare!"
Thrashing with abandon, Winkle tried to tear her body free from the sticky sea, jerking until red drenched shoulders and strings of bedraggled hair were yanked loose. Yet, Samiel was right. Try as she might, she couldn't fully pull herself out, much less wrench her arm down from it's ordered salute. As though in quicksand, Winkle sank despite her best effort.
"While I may not have crushed your mind, your body and soul belong to me. Hunter's keep what they kill, Obersturmführer, but you already know that," He reminded smoothly.
Though it pained her, Winkle knew he spoke the truth, and sharp nails stopped raking ribbons into disobedient flesh. Unwavering arm still raised, she knew now that meat could be sliced clean to the bone and the appendage wouldn't falter, not without being ordered too. The limb, though attached, no longer belonged to her. Just as the Major had foretold, those who were collected by Samiel were owned by him, doomed to be a slave to the Devil himself.
"Enough," he commanded.
Like cutting a puppet's string, Winkle's arm went lax and sank back into the red sea.
"If my carcass is your toy, why let me keep my wits?" she pressed.
"Where's the fun if you're as mindless as a ghoul?" he answered with a question. "Besides, I don't turn a deaf ear to my familiars. You wanted to be let out, and you've made quite the case."
"I've made no deals with you!"
"Actions speak louder than words, and it's time you paid your dues. Obersturmführer Winkle," he said as rich as velvet, "I will let you out."
Eyes closed in from above and a single pupil, larger than a dinner plate, distended from the sky until it gazed directly at her. Winkle ground sharp teeth and in the dilated sphere her monstrous reflection grimaced back. The eye did not stop its approach. When the jelly cornea brushed the tip of her nose Wrinkle shrieked in disgust and jerked away, but stuck fast in the congealed sea there was no escape. The orifice swallowed her, gummy lens easily giving way like gelatin, first engulfing the head then the rest of her body in midnight vitreous.
"Remember, you demanded this," Samiel's voice echoed in the liquid darkness.