I just went "fuck it" and decided to rewrite this whole thing from scratch rather than wait on getting my data off the old hard drive
so yeah, Anniversary chapter 1 version 2
here we go
Life is full of anniversaries, birthdays and weddings being only the most notable examples. It's something deeply ingrained in our nature as humans to mark the passage of time by noting how many times a certain thing has happened. Vampires, being ageless and timeless, have no such need.
Well...
To every rule, there must be some exception.
Seras stared at the clock as if she could somehow force it to move faster through sheer force of will, and who knew? maybe she could, she'd discovered several powers she never knew she'd had over the years, maybe control over time was in her powerset somewhere, she'd never know unless she tried after all. But that wasn't what was important right now, what was important was that she was minutes away from a major milestone in her life, er, unlife, whichever. Anyway, the point was that in about a minute or so, she would cross a threshold of sorts.
"This is it, I have now officially been dead longer than I was alive".
And there it was, this was the point where she had to start worrying if she was going to start forgetting what it had meant to be human, even if she had held on to the last scraps of her humanity longer than most. She idly wondered what her master would have thought of her marking the occasion like this. For him it had been several centuries after all, and by all accounts he had abandoned his humanity even before he had truly become a monster, the way he interacted with humans making it seem like he no longer remembered that he'd once been one.
Honestly, she missed him. Sure he'd been terrifying and harsh, but with the benefit of hindsight Seras could see that he'd been trying to help her the only way he knew how: by working on making her a better vampire, even if she hadn't been truly ready to fully accept the consequences of her choice. It was truly a shame that she'd only had those six months with him, it was nowhere near enough time for a fledgling vampire to learn everything she needed to know to survive the world of the night. She was fairly sure that besides having been sired by the single most powerful vampire in existence, that she was only still around thanks to copious amounts of luck. She'd been managing on her own, had even learned a few neat tricks, but it would be so much better if she still had her master around to show her the ropes.
Well...to be fair, she still had a master, the only problem is that she was human, and had no actual direct control over anything Seras did. However, Integra had been a fixture in Seras' new life from day one, taking the frankly bewildered newborn vampire and turning her into one of humanity's secret weapons against the darkness. Seras had often wondered why she hadn't been bound to the woman's will the way her master had, perhaps she trusted Alucard to keep his new fledgling in line. Add to this the fact that she had gone out of her way to fight for the sake of humanity and Seras was left to assume that she'd simply managed to earn the imposing woman's trust.
She had said once, all those years ago now, that she had refused to drink his blood because she was afraid of losing something precious inside her. Well, that precious something was long gone now, dead the night she had eaten Pip, the night she had dismantled Zorin and her squad for daring to attack her home, the night she had taken on a werewolf and beat him to a pulp with the help of her new familiar, Pip's soul having become a part of her forever. Of course all of this came after she had gotten in a gunfight with a zeppelin and won. That had felt good, but once again that wasn't the point. The point she had been meandering towards was that she was now ready, ready to walk the night as a free vampire. She was more than certain now that there was nothing left of the naive police girl who had died that night in Cheddar 19 years ago. Hell even the human shape she wore was more out of convenience and habit than anything else, only her left arm giving any hint of the formless mass of chaos that was now her truest form.
but in the end there was only one thing that mattered: her master was coming back to her someday, she knew it, and Integra did not doubt her. The two of them would make do while they waited, keep Britain safe from the forces of darkness until his triumphant return. And then? when he was finally back? She would be ready, she would ask for her freedom. And from there? who knew what might happen?
However
One thing was for certain: she would never stop helping, would never stop standing against the darkness to protect the light, even if she had no place in it.
Seras could think of nothing better to do with the rest of eternity.
ah yes, that looks much better
in other news, I already have an idea for a third chapter, so that should be done within a month
other than that, the desire to write has returned in full force, even if my motivation is still a bit shot, but once I get that third chapter of this out, I should be able to get chapter 5 of Blood Moon finished off
I make no promises though, and after that point I can say with certainty that it'll be a few months before the next one comes out, just because of how much work I need to do on it