A/N: Another day, another fandom... Call me a fiction whore, whatever, I don't care.

For my first trick, I present to you the Vampire ALUCARD! And his little bird, Seras Victoria...


The Returned.

His belated reunion with his master complete, the No Life King lounged on his throne, relaxing in the dark, cool quiet of his lair. To be back was to continue with the tedium of a half-life and to find no rest in his wakefulness, but he was relieved to be rid of – what he liked to call – all that heavy-lifting. Fighting with himself over a period of thirty years had tired him out and if age had wasted his master, then he had wasted himself. The few droplets of blood she had allowed him left a tang on his tongue. It was not as clean as it once was – polluted by the cancer-sticks she constantly smoked – and had thinned with age, but the fundamental flavour of it was the same as it had been all those years ago when she had first woken him from his slumber. It was underlined by the taste of the Hellsing family.

His canines lengthened as he thought of all the blood he had been missing over those thirty years and he swallowed thickly the saliva that had begun to pool on his tongue. As if to answer his mental summons, there came a knock on the door; light, quick, professional.

"Come." He rumbled, closing his eyes briefly as the faint smell of blood reached him, stifled by the plastic of the medical bag, but still perceptible to his nose.

The figure who entered his domain was not, however, the man he had expected. It was his fledgling, not the butler he had grown so accustomed to seeing and he clicked his tongue at the very idea that it might have been. Walter was dead, long dead and had taken his last few hours to betray them all. Alucard would make sure never to expect him again, or accept if he ever should appear.

His evident displeasure stalled his fledgling in the doorway and she stood, a bucket full of medical bags in her hand, shifting from foot to foot. Uneasy. A snarl from her master very nearly sent her packing and through the fog of her nervousness and the hunger-induced haze that surrounded him he caught a whiff of her disappointment.

There was a clang from the bucket as the put it on the ground by the door and the dull scrapping of her wooden heel on the stone floor as she about-faced, ready to leave.

"Police Girl,"

She thwarted his attempt to stall her with the shutting of the door and he was left once again in silence, the gentle click of his door losing ringing softly around the cavernous space around him. It would have seemed as though a lot had changed while he'd been gone; his master an old woman; his fledgling a matured vampyrress… Two things he had wanted to see for himself, watch them change, watch them grow.

His thoughts turned to the blood in the bucket and he closed his fingers gingerly around them, lifting the cold packet into the air and bringing it closer to his nose. A sniff told him this person was a type A. Not his favourite, but then his favourite was remarkably hard to come by, probably a lot harder to come by now that he had apparently annoyed his main supplier. He wondered if she'd started drinking the blood in earnest yet, or if she was still as adverse to it as she used to be. He abandoned the blood and disappeared into the floor, seeping up through the walls until he arrived in his fledgling's room.

She was sat at the table (rather longer and wider than he remembered) and was thumbing through a copy of Bram Stoker's 'Dracula'. Interesting…

Before he could comment on it however, the chair closest to him pulled itself out and offered itself up for him to sit on. He took it with a raised eyebrow and a pinch of salt, noticing that it was a lot smaller than the one she sat on. Obviously, as the main monster at Hellsing in his absence she could afford more lavish living accommodations.

"I missed you." She said, not even lifting her eyes from the book. "And all I get is a snarl in return. Sometimes I wonder why I even bother."

He watched a page turn slowly in the book, her eyes following it as well as it turned, fingers resting idly on the table top. There was bitterness here, he could feel it in the air. The eyes that glanced momentarily up at him, gauging his reaction – though there was none – were a deep shade of red, almost black. Instead of the rubies he had seen in the Battle of London, these darkened orbs reminded him of thick and congealed blood. What was she eating these days? What had happened to her while he was away?

"Nothing really." She replied and he realised she had been spying on his thoughts. "I took up the mantle you left behind. I've slain hundreds of ghouls, freaks and vampires. I've sewn myself back together more times than I can count and I have seen thirty years of the underbelly of the world." Another page drifted lazily over. "I have feasted on the blood of men, I have slaughtered policemen in their hundreds. I have lost control of myself so many times that now I-"She pulled down the collar of her uniform to reveal a silver chain and plaque, bearing the insignia of the Hellsing family and a seal, much like his own. "- have been branded a monster."

How interesting. He stood from his chair and strolled as lazily as he could manage – the hunger for her blood was almost overpowering – along the table towards her, trailing his fingers along the table-top as he walked. Reaching her, he tucked his fingers under her chin and tilted her head up as though inspecting the silver chain she wore. The dark eyes watched him frostily until he met them with his own gaze.

"And what is to say that I haven't missed you as well?" His deep baritone did nothing to fill the otherwise silent room and he marvelled internally at the way her depression seemed to monopolise the very air.

"Logic." She began and he could tell – through some mental prying of his own – that she was compiling a list. "Your snarling. Your silence. Your expressionless face at my improvements. Your disappointment at my very presence. You wouldn't even drink the blood packs I gave you, even though you're hungry. You would have rathered drink Sir Integra's blood than them. You would have rathered I were Walter."

"Wrong, Police Girl."

"You won't even say my name…"

The tone surprised him, an icy I-told-you-so tone as she pulled her chin from his fingers and returned to her book. His patience was wearing thin and her insubordination was beginning to grate, although her words did hold some logic.

He rolled his eyes and fisted his hand in her hair, dragging her up from her seat. The book slipped from her fingers and hit the floor with a thud as Alucard spun his fledgling roughly around and nearly fell upon her neck, digging his teeth into her neck so hard they hit bone and the pair toppled onto the table top.


A jagged scraping jerked Sir Integra's attention to the laptop by her bedside, the security camera image showing Seras' room onscreen. She smiled ruefully as the two vampires stilled and silence fell over the image again. It was clear that Alucard was hungry; he had pinned his fledgling to the table top, had settled the bulk of his weight between her thighs and had both hands fisted in her blonde hair, his teeth buried in her neck. Even from here she could tell that his eyes were closed and he was drinking deeply, his Adams apple bobbed with every swallow.

For a few minutes now she had been engrossed in a book – unable to sleep from the excitement of Alucard's return and yet relaxed enough to finally be able to enjoy a good read – and snippets of the two vampires' conversation had drifted into her ears. She was pleased to hear that they missed each other, but was slightly concerned about Seras' apparent discontent. It was, after all, the first time she had heard such bitterness in the girl's voice and she had known her long enough.

Picking up the mantle Alucard had left was obviously going to be a hard task, but Seras had done an admirable job and could not have been said by anyone to have failed. The loneliness that she now clearly suffered with was something no one could help her with. Missing her master was just part and parcel of the package.

The source of the scraping was soon made known as Alucard shifted closer and the table legs juddered along the floor. A hiss of discomfort was audible as he bent his fledgling's head further back, allowing himself unfettered access to her throat and her blood. Integra did her best to drag her eyes away from the screen and back to her book, leaving the two vampires in relative privacy.


He reigned in a groan that threatened to escape and shifted to a better, more comfortable position between his fledgling's thighs. The taste of her blood had deepened over the years, become more viscous, more intoxicating. The last time he had had a fledgling her blood had been sweet, saccharine and thin. It was a perfectly pleasant experience, but it reflected the issues she had; too damned gentle for her own good. Mina didn't feed enough. She was too picky about what her food looked like and would only drink from the most delectable of men.

Seras' blood was nothing like Mina's; it was thick, coppery, and so rich in variety… Spicy. It burnt like fire on the way down and it made him feel a little light-headed. But after thirty years of starvation, what could one expect?

At some point in his feed Seras had begun to stroke his hair, her gloveless fingers sifting through the thick dark locks, blunt nails lightly scratching his scalp every now and again. It felt criminally good. Between that and the feeding he had, by the time he released her from his clutches his cheeks were flushed a deep pink. He stood from the warmth of her body and ran a hand through his hair, pushing it from his eyes. She was a beautiful sight to behold; pale and trembling; blonde hair matted in a bloody, sticky mess to her cheek and neck; a dark bloom soaking through her uniform shoulder as the pool of blood on the table spread slowly. Vampire bites were never as clean as they were advertised to be and he was sure he was just as covered in it as she was.

Leaning back over her, he licked gently at the bite wound, aware that he was a lot rougher with her this time than was necessary and that the spot was going to be tender for a good long while. Feeling the flesh begin to knit back together under his tongue, he lifted his head to meet her exhausted gaze. Unable to help himself, he touched his lips to hers, brief but still long enough to leave a bloody kiss mark on her lips when he pulled back.

"Goodnight, little bird…" He whispered.


Little bird… Little Bird… She levered herself off the table a while after he had left and winced at the pain in her neck. The feeling of his teeth on her bone still making her teeth twinge. It was, admittedly, a horrible feeling and one she hoped she would never see a repeat of, but the depths to which his fangs reached was evidence of one thing: how desperate he was in that moment. Whether it was the hunger for blood that over-took him, or that he did actually miss her - despite his surface exhibitions of indifference – it triggered another of those deep-rooted desires, the fulfilment of which left her feeling satisfied, relieved, pleased somehow.

She took herself over to where her coffin lay on the floor and did something she hadn't done in nearly 20 years. She clambered in and shut the lid. When she had begun drinking live blood on a regular basis, the need for her coffin and the soil from her birthplace became something of a moot point and she was free to sleep in the four-poster coffin which had been prepared for her by Walter so many years ago. The extra space it afforded her was very welcome to the young vampyrress, but tonight she needed all the strength she could get and the coffin was the place for it.

The darkness seemed to consume her weak body and she fell into slumber, filled with nothing but darkness the distant cawing of a crow with three glowing red eyes. "Little bird… Little bird…"


A/N: PLEASE tell me what you thought of it, I can only grasp at concepts when my writing is appraised and a verdict given...

I realised while writing this that my estimation of Seras Victoria is a little different from the pictures painted by other writers, but I think this fits very well. Thirty years has passed and even if physically she does not age, the world will still age her mind and the rose tinted glasses she wore in her early days will crack and... hmm... That's rather good, I think I'm going to write that down...

Anyway, my point is that her feeling lonely and bitter about a world she will be forced to walk for eternity is not surprising and - in my personal opinion - should not be unexpected. The mental convergence with the thoughts and feelings of her master is all part of that.

So! PREPARE YOURSELVES! For a darker-than-usual Seras Victoria and a steadily more affectionate Alucard...

-Lapin...