It was always Alucard who wandered, late at night, into her chambers. While for a decade he had done so in secrecy, looking at her sleeping form through mirrors, a myriad of eyes fixated on the warmth and life that emanated from her, he now entered and she was already waiting for him, expectant, even as she denied it.
Stone walls had been rebuilt, suzerainty re-established, all in his absence. What possible excuse of a purpose could he have in her service? If Integra had managed to hide her fondness for her monster behind strategy for a decade, now it was really an empty facade. Perhaps that was the reason she did not even try, gave no explanations to her other servant or subordinates and resumed his use of him as if thirty years had not gone by.
No, he had no business there.
And yet he staggered, like a broken soldier after battle, like a hound, to ask for his well-deserved soothing. She had been reluctant at first, not out of embarrassment, but out of the very same modesty that wanted to save others the spectacle of her aged flesh.
He had laughed at the idea that a mere three decades could deter him from something he had so wished, lusted after, tortured himself by denying completion. Humans were indeed interesting creatures.
His plight for sanity was as relentless as his hunger and he clung to physicality so he would not splinter into a thousand pieces, lost in both space and time, even if the only way not to lose his sense of self was to bury himself deep into another, to find himself in that bond again and again until it was asserted. He would spend minute upon minute tracing the scar over what was left of her eyelid with fingertips and lips in fascination, part of which, she suspected, was the guilt for not having been present when the deed had been done.
He would, of course, not be content with such innocent caresses, for he was after all a man and a monster, but his Master did not reject him like she might have done years before and now it was two that converged in her office, in her bedroom, in the library, against the silent walls of the mansion where sighed words and moans remained unheard.
It was only after those sleepless nights, ear pressed against the Knight's dark belly and focused on the constant of the blood flow through her veins that he would drift off to the sleep of the dead without the fear of dissolving before opening his eyes again.