This will be part of a short two part series. Dark and angst…just how Alucard would have wanted it.
Thanks to JeoGraphic for beta'ing. Intelligence is great, but intelligence with grammar is even better.
The stars didn't understand. Even as I looked up into the night sky, I could feel him standing next to me, quietly for a change, gazing at the beautiful blanket of entities with me, probably wondering what a foolish mortal like me finds so fascinating about the stars. His long, silken, ebony hair was restrained underneath his heavy crimson coat that smelled of sweet blood and expensive silk and wine. His long legs were outlines as the breeze molded the coat against his stance, and the usual wolfish grin that he sported at me was non existent as he gazed up into the sky.
"You are foolish," He growled at me. I didn't show my surprise at his reprimand as he continued on a rant, which was not unusual in itself, but I could feel the change in his voice…the deadly warning that came along with the quiet tone. "Do not take your life into your own hands anymore." He demanded. I sighed and leaned back in the wheelchair, my hair falling down around my shoulders like golden silk and falling back to caress the sides of my arms as I looked up into the heavens. Idiotic vampire, thinking that he could tell me…the Master what to do.
"My life is mine to live how I choose to," I insisted. Although, we both knew that this wasn't true. I was a women, but I was bound to my duty to this damnable organization, and I was tied to my role in life as an asexual leader with no more care to my femininity than Alucard gave thought to mercy in his vicious hunts. He sought to protect me from the knowledge that he was indeed a very wild vampire, hard to tame, and he sought to cover the fact that he fed on and killed humans to satisfy his hunger as if it would have shocked or mortified me in some way.
It was a small price to pay for his presence in my life. A very small price. As I looked up to him in the midnight glow of the moon, it glinted off of his jet black hair as a blue omen to prove that the beautiful, powerful being standing next to me was indeed not just a figment of my deep sleep. He was indeed a reality that sought me day after day in the darkness of my miserable life, bringing to me the only relief and gentleness that I knew from anyone. How fitting and painfully ironic that my small burst of light should come from him, the raging killing machine that had perfected itself over many thousands of years!
I stood shakily from my seat, my hands going to the cool stone of the railings of my balcony, and for the first time that evening, I felt him touch me, his hands, frightfully talon tipped, but covered in white silk, wrapping around my waist to steady my movements. His red eyes searched my face as I dared to look up at him, and he gazed down on me grimly with an almost longing expression upon his beautiful face. I, Integra, would not stand for any man to look at me thus, but I found myself at that point drowning in the garnet orbs that had captured my imagination, and I took the courage to meet his gaze before turning my head away.
He left his hands on my body, the tips of his claws pressing through his gloves into my suit, and I should have been petrified at the idea that his touch was so comforting, but as a child, when I'd had nightmares of my uncle's treachery, it was those very hands that held me to a cool chest covered in armor boasting that he was ready to fight any battle for me that I should have chosen for him, regardless of the outcome of his life. He threw himself at my feet like I could control him if he had chosen to leave, but we both knew that it was not true. I could no more control the hands that touched me than he could control my will and drive to move on to bigger things.
He chose to give himself to me. It had been my father that had locked him away in the prison of darkness so long ago before I was even thought in existence, but yet, it was my blood that woke him from his sleep and reminded him that there was something beyond door that had imprisoned him for so long from life and the moonlight and stars which he stared up at this night. His fingers tightened around my waist, and I found him pulling me slowly to his chest, my back to him whilst he wrapped his arms around my waist and looked up to the heavens with crimson, searching eyes.
Even the undead search their potential, it seemed. He was no exception. He was constantly seeking the pentacle of his eternity. Alucard was never convinced that his actions were adequate for his repentance for being cast out of his holy life. Even as he searched, he clung to me as if though I could answer his questions which he only showed to me in quiet understanding. I feared that I, as a mortal, may not be able to answer his misery with the mere amount of years compared to his thousands. He looked to me for something more than just a basic answer. He looked to me for honesty, cold affection, and most of all, he looked to me as the one security that would not turn him away after a lifetime of desecration. How could I? I needed him.
"Your life is not your own." He declared in his deep, rolling voice. It was gentle, but at the same time, it was filled with a certain distaste for my actions, and I felt myself chastised like Walter would do in my youth when I had not been studying hard enough. When he spoke again, my opinion of his declaration changed, and I found in my opinion considering his tone and words again as he spoke them, the tone reaching out and chilling the air around us as his hell hound growled out through his voice in vicious reproach. " Your life is not your own!" He only repeated what he'd said, but then it had occurred to me that the tone was not one that Walter would have scolded me with.
It was laced with great sadness and bitterness, and I found myself shocked to core at the vehemence of his demand and declaration that was made in a single statement. The great Count was telling me that I belonged to him. And even as I opened my mouth to retort to his ridiculous demands, I found myself stopped by a small movement by him, and I felt his lips pressed to my neck coolly, with no hint of fangs pressed against my alabaster skin. Only a small reminder that he longed to spend his eternity with me. I closed my eyes and sighed gently, and with shaking, unsure hands, I curled my fingers about the arms that encased me, and I leaned into him, savoring the contact, feeling the cool of his body seep into me and stop my fever.
I had sliced my own throat so as not to become as him, but then, I opened my eyes to the heavens and looked to the eternal stars that burned over us. He would outlive those stars. He would be immortal, watching the generations go by without a companion, still crying to the heavens over being cast out by God Himself, and suffering as he uttered the precious prayer over the undead that he so unmercifully dispatched to hell. He was doomed to be lonely. Forever. It was no wonder that he wanted me with him. I found him almost sad to my heart, and I felt that if I were to do anything for the years of service he'd offered me, the least I could do would be to love him in return. But that is just a fantasy. In my world. In my reality. In my duties, there was no room to love a vampire. Least of all…loving Alucard.