Dreams of Memories
Summary:Alucard. Keeping her alive through her struggle, with the memory of her first meeting. Following the incident in Episode (10?) Integra allows herself to dream of other memories. The first night she slept with alucard beside her as her guard. Binding him. Becoming a knight, with her dark champion beside her. Discovering what it meant when he stopped smiling. And even more, when he wept. Learning respect for each other. So much has passed between them. Hellsing fan-fic.
Chapter One: Waking and Dreaming
Integra blinked tired eyes. Her throat hurt. Her neck hurt. The oxygen mask was uncomfortable, and she could feel the medication induced sluggishness, the slowness of her thoughts.
But she was alive. Not that she'd ever intended to die. She'd cut her own throat knowing the danger, but determined to survive, without that damn blood-suckers filth in her body. Still...it had been a close thing.
A whisper of sound made her turn her head, just as the trailing edge of a blood-red coat flicked out the door. A smile creased one corner of her mouth.
Alucard. He had entered her mind, entered her dreams, and showed her a memory. She closed her eyes, seeing again the the child and the monster, the vicious taunting followed by laughter and a pledge of loyalty that had never faltered. Heard again the brief words that had passed between them as she'd crossed from dreaming to waking.
'You treated me like such a child back then.' She had known for a long time that he'd never intended her harm, had only meant to test her resolve and her nerves.
A low laugh in her mind, carrying a genuine warmth he only rarely displayed in the waking world. 'You will always be that little girl to me.'
Even as drugged and dazed as she was, she heard the two-fold meaning. She was incredibly young by his standards, and fragile, and he had looked after her for a long time. But there was another meaning there, wrapped in the shadowed words.
He would never forget the raw character she had showed him. No matter how much circumstances forced her to change, no matter how often politics forced her down the path of expediency, rather than choice, no matter how confusing the world might become, he would always remember who she really was. Who she had been, in her core, before adulthood had shaped and polished her. He had confronted her at a time when she could afford no pretenses or masks, and would forever carry that identity with him. If she ever lost her way, he would show it to her. Just as he had done this time.
Only Alucard. Not even Walter had such a bond to her, and he had practically raised her, along with her father. But Alucard knew her, inside and out, in a way that could never be lied to, even if they both sometimes maintained masks with each other.
It wasn't surprising, really. After all, it could be said that the reverse was true. There were things she knew of Alucard that she was willing to bet no one else had seen in him. Things she had spoken of to no one, and doubted he had ever spoken of either.
She sighed, and allowed herself to relax a little further. Memories drifted through her mind, and she reached for them. Memories of darkness. Of her monster, and the strange bond they shared.
Author's Note: Some things shared between Alucard and Integra. Based off the original anime, but will reference Ultimate and the manga.