Summary: Alucard and Walter after death. The reasons for the latter's betrayal comes to light in a not-so-fun way. AU

Of Angels and Old John Bulls

Walter meets Alucard in Limbo. He's back to his old form again, thick raven hair and blue-tinged skin. The small, colorless lips that always walk the edges of a pout. His eyes are like hellfire in the darkness.

"Angel," he says casually, as if they've just bumped into each other at the market. There's no accusations of betrayal, no hate-filled glee. There's nothing at all.

Nothing except that name and how it echoes through Limbo.

Angel.

"I never understood why you called me that," Walter says, for lack of anything else, "I suppose reaper or death was more like me. But not an angel."

"Yes, you are quite like death, aren't you?" Alucard muses, tilting his head, but it is not meant as a mockery. Nothing that Alucard ever said to him was. Walter is finally beginning to understand that.

"But you are quite like an angel as well," he tucks his hands behind his back, leaning on his heels, like that young maiden he remembered surrounded by charred corpses and fire, with that smile like a knife.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that you are cold, Walter. Cold like the ninth circle."

Walter stiffened, feeling a flash of anger in him, pulled from somewhere in the depths of his soul. Alucard is not really smiling, but there's a vague curve around his lips as he continues.

"The angels in Revelations, do you remember when we read that? The destruction they wrought, the lives they extinguished. They had loved humanity since the beginning of creation and yet with one order and one word, they threw away that love without hesitation."

"Shut up," Walter snaps, clenching his fists.

"Do you suppose they longed for paradise as well? Perhaps in their greed they no longer cared what the cost would be."

"Shut up!" The sound is so ugly, blacker than the darkness around them. But Alucard isn't silenced; his face is smooth and his lips barely move, though his voice booms like a god's all around them.

"Or maybe they were afraid. What would God do if they disobeyed? Would he cleave their wings and hurl them from the Heavens, watching them burn as they fell? Were they damned to mortal lives, forced to endure the passage of time, forced into white hair and feeble bones? Maybe they resented age, Walter, much like you did," Alucard's eyes burn, "Maybe they thought they would grow repulsive and useless. They did not want to lose their power. So they threw away their love, threw away everything, because maybe all they could think was how ugly I'll become, I will be forgotten."

Walter punches him. It doesn't hurt him (it never does), but his face twists to the side with a crack and there's the indigo smudge of knuckles across his small pale cheek.

"Shut up!" he screams, and punches him again, "Shut up! Shut up!"

He kicks in the side of Alucard's knee, hoping to shatter bone, wanting to give him a taste (just a taste) of how he feels inside.

"You bastard!" he roars, punching him again as Alucard falls, "You goddamn bastard! Why won't you die?"

There is nothing to land on, so Alucard slumps backwards, still floating, his hair fanned around him. He does not bleed anymore and just lets Walter hit him blue-black, eyes like opaque gems.

Walter wrenches him close by a white rouge-stained collar.

"You know I wasn't afraid," he hisses, "You know I really wanted to be an old John Bull. I wanted to serve tea and dust out cobwebs and die knowing I mattered to someone. I had Integra, Alucard. I had Hellsing. I had my country and my honor and I-I gave it all away, because…"

Because…

He swallows convulsively, ice beading around his neck. Walter wraps a shivering hand around Alucard's pale throat, so deceptively frail. How he longs to hear bones squish and shift.

"Fuck you, Alucard," he whispers, "Fuck you. I never wanted to be selfish. I was ready for wrinkles and aching bones and death, but you just kept living. You wouldn't fucking die, no matter what I did."

His hands clench, quivering and aching. He is surfeited with rage, drowning in despair. Alucard looks at him the same way he had fifty years ago, steady and unfazed, like he's seeing a child even now.

Walter digs for anger, searches for that hot, blinding spite that will make him forget the way Alucard use to weave him ancient stories of the past or drag him out to watch the moon. How he told Walter, who was nine and orphaned and more alone than a child could ever be, that if he so desired, that if he did not mind a monster, then they could be friends.

He fails spectacularly and finds tears instead.

"Y-You always told me, what a joy it was to die," he grit his teeth, feeling salt trails scorch down his face, "I knew you wanted death, Alucard. I knew you wanted an end. That's why you accepted slavery, that's why I…"

Walter swallows again, the words keep collapsing in his throat. He shouldn't need to breathe, but Limbo is thick and suffocating in its vastness.

"I couldn't die," he chokes out, "I couldn't die, knowing you'd be h-here forever. I had to…I had to kill you. I had to…"

He cannot bring himself to say it. Guilt constricts his chest and scorches the inside of his mouth, and Walter squeezes his eyes shut, because the pain is more unbearable than bullets or blades or any mortal thing could ever be. Some rotting part of him still thinks, I sacrificed everything for a monster and then Oh, God.

A cold hand touches his jaw line, cupping his face. Walter almost doesn't want to open his eyes.

Alucard's face is soft and filled with pity; everything he lacked and spared no one in life.

"Maybe I was wrong," he said, wetting a thin icy thumb with his tears, "Maybe you are too warm. Even your tears are burning me."

He brushes hair away from Walter's eyes, tucking it behind his ears. Another thin hand lands across white-knuckled fists, wrapping gently around clammy, loosening fingers.

"You fell in love with me, didn't you, Walter?" Alucard's eyes are old and sad, "Arthur sealed me away not just for Integra, you know. It was for you too. He wanted you to forget about me and I thought, for all his innumerable flaws, he was right. But even though you were Walter the Angel of Death, Walter the Reaper, your human heart couldn't, could it?"

Walter's face is crumpled and red, stained with tears and regret, even as Alucard wipes them with the edge of his palm.

"Ah, why did you throw it away in the end? The beauty in you, Walter Dornez. Your age was your kingdom, your throne. And then you too, in that single moment of fear and weakness, you threw it away. You ran into the darkness and never found your way out again."

Alucard smiles and for once, it is stripped of malice and insanity, just small and unfathomably tired.

"It hurts, doesn't it?"

And with that, whatever immeasurably small shred of dignity Walter had clung to shatters. With a broken, agonized howl, he presses a tear-stained face into the hollow of Alucard's collarbone.

"I'm sorry," He sobs, not even breathing, because what does it matter if he is? He is still dead. And Alucard…Alucard isn't. Alucard will return and continue to live. He will live and live, until he is all alone. Until no one is left to save him. Walter has given everything and failed.

Slender, child fingers card through his hair

"Walter," a soft voice hums, as if taking a liking to it, "Walter the Old John Bull."