Integra's lips bent and her narrowed eyes left the page. She slapped the book shut in her hands, but as she stood beside the crowded bookcase, with Walter in attendance, Integra found the option to throw the journal on the floor distasteful. But returning the book to the shelf was unbearable. So she held on to it, though she hated it, and said so. "Walter, this is all rubbish. That's all any of these notebooks have. Rubbish." Disgust pinching her face, Sir Integra viewed the books she had collected at the table. She took a chair, and added the most recent finding to their number. Then she stared at them, her hand holding her mouth as she thought.

Walter had taken all this time to respond, and yet he provided nothing useful for his mistress. So she flipped through pages as he explained, once again, "They are an important part of your inheritance. Your great uncle studied vampires for years, but Alucard was his main interest."

Grunting, Integra muttered over a page, lifting it and letting it fall to reveal the next face of text. "And yet it's rubbish." Her hand selected among the gathered notebooks, and pulled forward a dark blue leather booklet. This too, she saw, had been printed. The pages were thin between her fingers, Bible-like, and unable to block the light that shone through them. Integra looked up as she noticed Walter had come closer to the table. She viewed the printed texts again. "These were published."

"No," Walter thought and composed his answer. "They were printed, duplicates were made, yes, during Van Hellsing's lifetime. But they were not distributed among the public."

Sir Integra's lips parted gently, and she sighed. She closed the blue booklet and pushed it towards the others at the center of the table. "It's wonderful to know that my great uncle's research is available for any of our enemies to steal."

Walter watched the unchanging shelves, and then looked at the empty patches, where Integra had removed the notebooks. "I believe he gave the books to important colleagues. He did not want to lose his life's work, so… that is how I understand these things, Sir." He paused, "They've survived two generations to reach you. There's always a touch of the miraculous when the past manages to act in the present."

Sir Integra's finger traced a glinting graphite line. It was just one of the many lines her father had drawn in the notebook. He had underlined and creased pages for himself. And Integra read the words he had chosen, feeling sick, somewhere inside her.

Hanging is an effective treatment for the Vampire Alucard for two reasons. First reason: Alucard's neck is as sensitive as any vampire's, if not more so. High collars are favored among the undead, because this may provide a feeling of safety, to have the throat covered is comforting. Any pressure applied to the neck is distressing. The tightened noose takes advantage of this weakness by constricting the whole of the neck. With the vampire's hands tied, he will experience a sense of vulnerability, of violation, as his own body is what tightens the rope, and he is made powerless to relieve himself of his discomfort.

The second reason works on the undead's reluctance to remain dead. This reluctance is engrained in their nature. It is what drives them to step out of their graves when the moon rises. But whereas being buried in some sense, or placed in a coffin, is comforting because it suits the just path they continually turn away from when they rise, hanging provides no source of comfort. Beyond the sensitivity of the neck, the vampire is left in a state of purgatory that is not Purgatory and carries the helpless, hopeless isolation of abandonment. They are strung up as the dead are, but they will not die. If not cut down by you, the living, they will hang indefinitely. They are dead, but not dead. Already killed, but not killed. They can taste death, but it will be outside their reach. It will terrorize them. They never sleep while they are hanging.

Sir Integra left off the page, and shut the notebook. Wincing and irritated, she looked over the collection she had laid out. And this was only a fraction of what her father and great uncle had left for her. "Walter, I won't be continuing this tradition. It's barbaric."

Walter said nothing.

She turned to him, her expression hard. "And what would I change about him? What could I do to improve Alucard? How could he be improved, when he's already nearly invulnerable?"

"Alucard is not unconquerable, Sir," Walter reminded her. He smiled faintly, and Integra watched. But she did not know how to interpret the smile, and this disturbed her. However, the sickness bred by her predecessor's words was much worse than any ambiguous expression.

Walter tried to coax her into understanding, "It was not barbaric for the time."

Scoffing, Integra growled at 'her' notebooks. "It's barbaric for any time. The time is irrelevant. It cannot change what was being done to him." A cobalt glower was drained of color as Integra's revulsion stared back at her, reflected in the polished wood of the table. "It disgusts me."

"Alucard was a different creature during their time. He was not what you've inherited." Walter viewed his mistress' bent back as she listened but did not face him. She still stared at her reflection, and Walter sighed, "If not for what you call barbarism, the Alucard that serves you so effectively and willingly today would not exist. I knew the Alucard Arthur dealt with. And I can assure you, he cared for nothing and no one." The old man's skin was cold, but his gaze was colder still. If Integra had turned to him now, she might not have chosen to continue listening to her butler. "He was indifferent, reckless, disorganized, and held no sense of self-preservation. Van Hellsing had stripped him down to nothing. He bore no image of his humanity. He disregarded even his sex, the world, the war. He discounted the events around him. They were a fantasy to him, because he no longer believed he was real.

"You see sir?" Walter's voice thawed, although Integra had not noticed when it had hardened. She had not heard Walter's voice, she had heard the constitution that had carried the Hellsing Organization through decades upon bloody decades, the descending years like the splattered rings of a dripping ladder. Even she had bloodied this ladder. But for the first time, it had been initiated with Hellsing blood.

Walter brought tea to the table, breaking Integra out of her reverie. Time had passed while she had been unaware of its progression. She watched his old, scarred hands as Walter arranged the china before her. He provided a newspaper she would not read.

Walter did not let their discussion die so simply. "What was done to Alucard was necessary."

"And would anyone ever expect us to repeat it?" She sipped her tea like it was molasses. It barely passed beyond her tongue. "Could we repeat what they did to Alucard, could we transfer that pain, that brainwashing, that defilement onto Seras Victoria?"

The idea hit Walter hard in the chest, and he shook his head wearily. "No, Miss Victoria does not require it. She is under Alucard's complete control, and Alucard is under your complete control. Those are how the reigns are woven through this. But Alucard should never have been able to sire Miss Victoria."

A near grumble came from Integra's throat, and she tapped the lip of her tea cup glumly. "Yes, we've gone over it with the Council. Again, and again, and again- until I thought I was going mad with boredom." She sighed sharply, and scowled, "It's not my fault. What could I have done? Walter, you know that we have certain limitations. We can't protect all our borders at once. There are holes in everything, and Alucard happened to find one that night."

Walter stared at the table. "And he took it."

The woman growled, angry, but not at Walter. "Yes, yes. He took it, I know he took it. By God, they won't let me forget he took it. But it benefited us. Didn't it? It did no harm."

"It harmed Miss Victoria."

Integra was not prepared to think so. "Fate may exist in some realms of this world. The undead are unnatural enough, perhaps fate guides them at times. Alucard felt something and acted. That girl has shown no signs of distress. She does not feel cheated. She is content with her new existence. Her human life was damaged already, so it did no harm to let her leave it behind."

Walter came into view as he stood on the other side of the table. He sifted among the notebooks without looking up. Integra watched him.

The butler murmured quietly, trying gently to make his mistress perceive the situation in full, "Miss Victoria does not yet understand her position. You have not taught her."

Integra's frown grew heavy, and creases formed in her face. "What is her position, Walter?" she asked, her tongue harsh and her voice bitter. "I've never treated her like Alucard. She does not know what it means to be a vampire. Not yet."

"Sir. Both Alucard and Miss Victoria are your slaves." For that moment, Walter met his mistress's gaze, but her expression cut him, and he searched through the notebooks diligently. He organized them into columns on the table, opening and shutting some briefly. Scanning the pages of others before sorting them.

Integra argued, remaining stubborn but trying to avoid her temper, "No Walter. They are not my slaves. Alucard is my servant. And Seras Victoria is a Hellsing officer."

Softly, Walter said what his previous master would have, had he not died ten years ago, "They are not supposed to be your equals."

Integra's mouth twitched, it jerked with something akin to anger and frustration. "I do not treat Alucard as my equal. I know what he is, and I know his place. It is the place I have put him in. And I will not let anyone else decide where he should stand."

The butler hummed or spoke too quietly for Integra to hear. But he said more clearly, "Know that this is not based on my own feelings. This is simply what the Hellsings have been doing since the founding of the Organization." Their eyes met, and his bare expression was examined closely by the heiress. He continued, being blunt because if he had been less direct, Integra would have never allowed herself to hear him, "Miss Victoria is not to be your equal. That would be their advice. Your father's advice. And Van Hellsing's judgement."

Huffing and slouching in her chair, Integra turned her face away sourly. "My father. My father has no advice that can do me any good… If that," she pointed to the notebooks, hostility roughening her tone, "…is his advice. Van Hellsing's wisdom. I don't want it."

"…Miss Victoria should not hold the rank of officer."

Integra hissed, her narrowed eyes flaring, "There's no one else who can. They're all dead, Walter. Dead. And all I have besides you is a teenage girl who barely knows her heart doesn't beat anymore, or that she'll never have children, that her family's line has been cut and she's been thrust into a half-mad vampire's lineage. …And you know I have to, out of necessity, keep my distance from Alucard. I can't give him any honors. And he's been taught not to take them. They taught him to desire pain, to desire degradation at the hands of a Hellsing, to seek out our callous dehumanization and deindividuation we are meant to force upon him. Walter, I can't hurt the girl. I can't treat her the way they would have. She doesn't deserve to be punished. Alucard earned his misery." The muscles in her face stung, and they felt thickened, numbed, impossible to ease away from the pained wide-eyed grimace she now wore. Shame punctured her lungs, and her bare hands tightened. Clipped nails could not dent her palms.

"Sir, it's not only a matter of complying with the Council. It's a matter of your safety, and the survival of the Organization." Walter looked after her when Integra rose to leave her study. "You must acknowledge that Miss Victoria is a monster. That you must not push aside, merely because it's unpleasant or unfair. She is the fledgling of the most powerful vampire your family has known."

"I'm sorry," her lips twitched at the corner, showing something of a hollow, undesired smile, while her dry voice clawed its way out of her throat. "Maybe I find it hard to respect the demon in a vampire who's younger than me." A breath of humor loosened some of the muscles in her face, and Sir Integra stood quietly for a moment. And then she looked at Walter, and saw the age in his face more so than his regret.

She was already gone when Walter spoke. "Sir. Most vampires do not outlast the living. Alucard lost his humanity for a reason."

Walter viewed the organized columns and stacks of notebooks for a time, and then spoke to them. "…It was a hard, grueling process. Miss Victoria could be spared that suffering. But her reluctance to drink… That weakness is not promising."

Silently, he selected among them, one at a time, and reinserted the notebooks into the shelves Integra's predecessors had sacrificed years of their lives, and much of their own sanity, in order to fill.

And with the notebooks penned or printed by Van Hellsing or Arthur, Walter put away the hundreds of lines and notes he had scrawled into these books, when he had read them. Of his own volition, or by Arthur's orders. He stowed away the chapters which described how to handle the appearance of Dracula's old fledglings, his chest still weighted by the knowledge that not one of the chapters could aid his mistress for this matter. As none had accounted for the impossibility that was Seras Victoria.

...

..

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I sent this to chadtayor020, but I've never laid out the numbers before to explain the great-uncle Helsing vs grandpa Helsing connection to Integra. So here:

If Walter is 14 in 1944, and he's 69 at the end of Hellsing, the year is 1999. So Integra had to have been born in 1977. And even if Arthur is 22 in 1944 (and he doesn't look 22 to me), then he was born in 1922. If Abraham was 55 in 1897, he would be 80 when he had Arthur (perhaps 79 when he was making Arthur, but that one year of youth doesn't seem to provide any additional vigor).

If Abraham had a younger brother, we don't have a 79 year old man knocking up a woman who has to be around half his age.
(nice image though, am I right?)

:(

Note: I use both the grandpa and great-uncle versions. Great-uncle just makes more sense to me, but that's not correct according to Hellsing. It's just me making something up.