Comatose
A/N: This is a repost from my previous account RockTheKaos. I'm back to my first account.
Hello everyone! This is my first Hellsing fanfiction to be posted. Others are currently in development. Anyways, after finishing the series and re-watching Hellsing OVA four over and over, I wondered, what if Rip Van Winkle survived Alucard's attack? A character that awesome should be given a second chance (other than being resurrected as Alucard/Vlad's familiar for only a few pages in the later manga volumes), I think. So, lo and behold, said idea has spawned this story.
Summary: After leaving her for dead, Alucard abandons Rip Van Winkle to return to the Hellsing Organization, having completed his mission. Rip manages to (barely) survive through a rare stroke of luck-in taking her blood, Alucard has destroyed Millennium's control chip making Rip a synthetic vampire-she is now reborn as a true vampire. Realizing she has failed to defeat Alucard and succeed in her mission, Rip contacts Millennium to report the incident. Upon learning of Rip's survival and failure, Millennium disowns her and sets out to destroy her similarly as they had done to Jan Valentine. In a desperate means of survival, Rip is forced to surrender to the Hellsing Organization and submit to her new vampire sire, Alucard. Can the former Nazi rebuke her ways and learn the true meaning of what it is to be a true Nosferatu, all the while attempting to collaborate with her enemies and succeed in taking down Millennium? Read to find out.
Note: References to Rip Van Winkle's favorite play, Der Freischutz, and the antagonist Zamiel (as compared to Alucard in Hellsing volumes four and five) will be made.
I hope you enjoy! Constructive criticism is much appreciated, as well as a plain review!
Disclaimer: I do not own Hellsing. It belongs to Kohta Hirano.
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"I can feel the sands of time
Passing through the hour glass
And it shimmers in my eyes
As I linger in the wake, as eternity escapes
I begin to realize
We'll walk a thousand miles just to see for ourselves
Look behind our eyes; find our hell
And in the light of the sun we go through rain and raging snow
To find the things we do not know
I will go, never laying low
Just tell me how to breathe, and I will make it so
You must know that this is not for show
And if you are not wise, it will be your demise."
-Machinae Supremacy, "Through the Looking Glass."
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Chapter 1: Fearful Symmetry
(Rip Van Winkle)
Three days. Three days had passed-or so she predicted-since they had confined her to a dark cell in the abandoned laboratory that once served as Hellsing's research center. In her first hours in the solitary space, Rip had not thought her accommodations to be uncomfortable; she had proved too weakened by the blood loss to fight back when they had first captured her, so no one thought to chain her to the wall-a mere shackle around the ankle served as her only restraint. Even if she wished to do so, the gaping wound in her chest-now bandaged-still burned furiously anytime she so much as shifted a limb. Escape would be difficult, if not impossible.
Rip found the silence rather comforting at first, a preferable stillness to the loud cacophony of battle. The bombs, the missiles, the screams-sights and sounds all permanently burned into her memory. Images of the battles still flickered across her mind, replaying in her thoughts time and time again like a broken tape embedded somewhere in her subconscious. She shivered at the thoughts, desiring nothing more than to push them away. If only she could erase the bloodshed, the piles of corpses upon corpses, the feeling of her own weapon impaled through her chest, the sharp teeth and glowing eyes haunting her each time she slipped into the arms of unconsciousness.
However, as the hours progressed, at times she found herself drowning in her own nightmarish experiences, reliving them time and time again. The barrage of disturbing memories left her numb afterwards, shivering and cold in the dank cell. It seemed as though the ugly things in her thoughts had somehow come alive again and wormed back into reality.
Reality. What truly defined reality at this point? A French philosopher, Rene Descartes, once predicted that the world served as nothing more than an illusion, that nothing existed. In his search for truth and through his findings, he doubted his very existence as a single entity. He claimed that a human's gateway into "reality" depended solely upon perception and the senses, that reality itself ceased to exist. Now as Rip reflected back on this, she found herself agreeing with him. Perhaps she preferred things that way. She could certainly endure the world more easily if these memories were only a part of an illusion conjured by her misguided perception.
If this theory were true, the string of events that led her to this place would never have happened. She wouldn't be trapped underground in the Hellsing Organization headquarters, awaiting her sentence to death or servitude.
Black. Then white. Then black again. Now red. Always red. Memories and images flickered across her mind, things she'd long suppressed over the past century of her lifetime. As Rip Van Winkle lay there in the midst of war-the empty bombshells, the missile exoskeletons, the rain of bullets and swords and crossfire-she was simply there, merely existing on the line between sanity and madness, life and death, Earth and Hell. No feeling whatsoever crossed her mind; only two things permeated the barrier of her focus: survival and surrender. The corpses of endless victims littered the battlefield of what perhaps once served as a deck of the massive ship. Sickly white bodies bent at unnatural angles and dangled from objects, impaled on stakes and muskets and any other kind of gun or blade. She should have felt disgusted, and yet the Huntress remained numb.
Thick smoke curled upwards from the spreading fires devouring the ship towards the smoggy, polluted burning sky. She was still seeing red-blood, fury, bloodlust, passion, explosions, gunfire, the endless rage of war-it painted the horizon. Soon the dawn would rise. Or would time stay frozen in this moment forever?
Zamiel. Her Destroyer. The very memory of him chilled Rip Van Winkle to the core. So this is what Major had meant when he'd told her that her fate would fall into the hands of her Zamiel, her Death. Clearly the Major had underestimated his enemy, the pet vampire of the Hellsing Organization, and what the enemy was capable of. She had failed.
Rip lay there a few moments more-or perhaps a few hours more, the Lieutenant could not tell-waiting for her death. Why would death not come to her? Had she not suffered enough for her mission? The pain of being staked through the chest with her own musket had dulled now into a tolerable, almost numb ache as she lost more blood. Blood. The Monster took her blood. So why did she still retain consciousness?
'How is it that I am still alive?' The Lieutenant thought to herself. A miracle of sorts?
Despite her confusion, Rip took the opportunity to try and free herself. Simply attempting to lean upwards or raise an arm sent explosive pain throughout her body. Gritting her fangs together in pain, she finally managed to grip the musket. One tug in an attempt to remove the weapon caused her to nearly collapse in on herself as searing agony shot through every nerve. She pulled again, this time stronger. Much to her surprise, the weapon dislodged itself slightly in her ribcage.
Through the pain, Rip marveled at the newfound strength-some part of her felt renewed and fought through her weakness. Ignoring her own cries of exasperation, the Huntress proceeded to jerk the musket out of her battered body, determined to stand again. Her mission was far from over. Of course, she had failed to defeat the Monster-and why Millennium hadn't destroyed her like they'd annihilated Jan Valentine after his failure still confused her to no end-but even if she could not best the Monster in combat, she still had to find some way to bring it down, destroy it at the source.
Finally managing to rid her frame of the weapon, Rip cast her musket aside for a brief moment, doubling over in pain. Crimson gushed from the wound, spilling over her ruined tux coated in dried-blood and dyeing it an even darker shade of black. The vampire convulsed, momentarily retching blood and throwing herself into a coughing fit. Something dislodged in her throat and landed in her bloodied palm. When Rip managed to cease her coughing, her eyes widened. Millennium's control microchip, snapped in half and completely ruined! Now how would she keep in contact with the others?
She would simply have to gain access to the ship's control room-her last resort. That is, if He had not yet destroyed it.
Rip scanned the area once on her feet, her senses now on high alert. What if the Hellsing Organization's Monster still lurked somewhere in the shadows cast by the flickering flames? She stopped her pacing momentarily to gasp at the sharp stabs of pain electrifying her limbs . She grasped at the gaping wound in her chest in agony and staggered against a metal wall of the ship to steady herself. Still dizzy and disoriented, the soldier moved on. 'How am I still able to move?'
Smoke clouded her vision, filled her mouth and lungs. Her fingers pressed against the burning metal walls, searching blindly for a door inside. As her gloved fingers passed over a knob, she quickly grabbed and twisted. The door would not give! 'I will make it open.'
With a forceful shove, the metal suddenly caved and collapsed, the door screeching open loudly. Rip winced at the sound, but quickly seized the opportunity to scramble inside. As she turned to face the control room's mainframe, her hopes soared. The flames had not yet reached this part of the ship, leaving most of the electronics intact! Now to alert the Major via radio and everything would be-
Suddenly, Rip froze. A stab of cold sliced through her, causing her to shiver. Her palms began to sweat inside of her gloves as an all-too-familiar presence loomed behind her. His proximity caused the hairs on the back of her neck to stand on end, her entire frame to tremble in fear.
A low chuckle sounded from behind her. "What do we have here? What an unpleasant surprise. You are supposed to be dead."
Rip did not know how to retaliate in that moment. Perhaps she should have grabbed her musket, or at least have sprinted away. However, time had simply bested her. Before she could even turn around or respond, something hard came down over the top of her head, and her world was enveloped in black.