He was doing his homework—all the teachers insisted that homework was the key to a University, and the University was the key to getting out of this life he lived at the moment. The door to his room opened and he looked up, frowning at the sudden intrusion only to see his 5-year-old brother sneak in and shut the door before going to the bed and curling up with a pillow in his hands. The brown eyes stared straight ahead as he clutched the pillow for dear life.
"What is it?" he asked his brother wearily, setting the pencil down on the paper with a sigh. The tiny boy looked up at him, his dark hair falling into his eyes. I need to remind Mom that Jan needs a haircut.
"Dad's home," he replied. That was all he needed to say. At that very moment, something broke in the other room and he could hear his mother's voice rising angrily over the tumult. Their father's slurred speech was louder than her shrill cry and suddenly a slap rang out, audible even behind the closed bedroom door. The five-year-old Jan hid his face in the pillow, rolling over in the bed to face the wall. His brother returned silently to his homework, trying to ignore both the sounds coming from the other side of the house and his brother's tears.
When things quieted down later on that night both boys peeked out from Luke's bedroom door, eyes watchful for the brawny bulk of their father. He was perpetually drunk, and it was best for the scrawny children to avoid confrontation if they could. At least their mother managed to kick him out of the house most times. It would be paradise—if he didn't come crawling back, broke and sober and begging for her to forgive him for the abuse and broken furniture. Every time she caved in, and now Luke was old enough to wonder aloud why she did so.
"He's only going to get our money, go out, and repeat this whole business again," the boy pointed out. He'd always been smart for his years, and at the ripe age of 11 he had as much sense as any teenager. His mother would sigh, shake her head, and go back to patching up clothing or washing dishes or laundering—their only source of income.
"Your father has a problem," she always replied, in her soft-spoken way. "And even if he does, you shouldn't mention it. Boys are supposed to respect their fathers," she admonished, shaking her finger at him as she bent over the washtub. "You need to set a good example for your brother." They both looked out at the dark-skinned child—spitting image of his father—running circles in the sparse backyard.
"Yes, Mother."
Luke was fifteen when he opened the door to see the two policemen standing there. His eyes travelled between them before he sighed, expecting to have a repeat performance of last week, and the week before that, and millions of times since he could remember.
"My father isn't here." He turned to shut the door and go back to watching Jan. The 9-year-old was crafty and picked up more on his father's ways than his older brother. The boy was already ditching school, cursing, and turning himself into a general nuisance despite Luke's many interventions. He was a headache to babysit, but Luke was his brother and brothers watched out for brothers, no matter what. Especially in such turbulent times; the 1960s were supposed to be the turning point for the entire country. But New York City, and Brooklyn by default, appeared to be behind the times. Luke and Jan were still poor as paupers, seeing as their father took all the money for drinks and God-knows-what-else.
"Is this the Valentine household?" one policeman asked, stopping the door with his boot. Luke stared down at the intruding foot for a moment before looking back up at the policemen suspiciously.
"Hey, who the fuck is that?" Jan's voice came out of nowhere and the boy wheedled his head between his older brother's arms. "Fuck, it's the police! Hide the drugs!" he crowed as Luke pushed him back with a warning glare.
"Forgive my brother; he watches too many of those television shows. And yes, this is the Valentine household. What can I do for you?" he asked politely. He always tried to be the good son, and politeness came naturally with the job. The policeman handed him his mother's purse and his eyes widened before he nodded and took the object. "Oh, thank you!" he said appreciatively. "I'll give this to my mother when she gets home."
"She's not coming home," the policeman said gruffly, looking back at his car where the radio was already buzzing in another job. "There was an accident. Your father needs to come to the morgue at the station and identify her, but we're already pretty sure by the license." With that, the two men nodded "good day" and walked off, leaving Luke frozen in the doorway, clutching the purse like it was about to run away from him.
Their father was a living corpse. Ever since that fateful day where he'd lost it at the station morgue and had to be thrown into a cell to calm down, he'd never been the same. He'd moved straight from alcohol to the heavier drugs, and now one too many hospital calls had left him a drooling vegetable. The doctor's claimed that he'd never be normal again. They'd thrown him in a mental home, where he sat among the other drugged-up lunatics.
Luke was the sole provider now. He'd had to give up school, but he didn't mind as much as he thought he would. He was too busy to care about such things, between working the two jobs he could to keep food on the table for his brother, who was a growing boy after all. The fifteen-year-old was as bad as his father, but to his favor he never touched anything worse than beer and cigarettes. He'd seen what harsher things had done to his old man, and he just couldn't bring himself to hurt Luke in that way no matter how much life sucked.
He worked part-time as well, trying to help the load on his brother. Medical bills were expensive, and his pops had racked up a lot of them. But loading boxes at the pier only made so much, and he was too young to really say anything about it.
The year was 1971. Just like Joe Frazier and Muhammad Ali, the stress of Brooklyn living was slowly beating the two young men down.
"Yo, big bro! I got some good news for you!" the 21-year-old man leaned through the bedroom door. "You won't guess what it is!" he continued in his sing-song voice. Luke looked up from the pillow, his green eyes weary.
"What? I'm trying to nap, Jan. I really don't have time to-"
"Never you mind, brother! You might as well quit your jobs right now! It's the wave of the future! Look!" he handed Luke a flyer, who immediately sat it on the nightstand and lay back down.
"I don't want to look at another one of your get-rich-quick schemes! Listen to me: they never work." Jan looked nonplussed for all of two seconds before sitting on the bed; one hand rubbing his exhausted brother's shoulder as he picked up the flyer again and read off the front silently.
"Luke, listen." The blonde picked his head up from the pillow; Jan was using his name. He was completely serious about whatever was on that flyer. "You're what—27? You ain't getting no younger, bro. I ain't neither. This—this is our key to staying young and getting paid for it!" He waved the flimsy paper in the stale air of the bedroom. "Listen to this: All we gotta do is pledge to this Millennium shit and we'll be in the bag! We can do it! We can send our money back to Pop's place and everything! "Free boarding, travel, airfare; the fucking works, Luke!" Luke took the flyer from the excited young man and read it, adjusting his glasses as his lips moved wordlessly. After a moment he paled and smacked Jan on the back of the head.
"Idiot! These are the Nazis! Letze Batallion!" he shouted angrily as he smacked the boy with the flyer. Jan ducked under the blows, alternately cursing and pleading.
"Ow! Fuck it—stop, man! How the hell was I supposed to know what it meant?!" He grabbed Luke's wrist and held it down. "Look, the bitch I talked to—Rip van Winkle or some shit like that—she said that there were ways for us to become..." he looked around the room before leaning in closely. "Vampires." Luke stared for a long moment before his eyes grew dark.
"You're insane. You didn't pay any money for this flyer, did you?" When his brother affirmed the negative, he rolled the flyer up and smacked him on the forehead like a puppy. "You've been drunk for too long. I'm going to stick you up with Dad in a few years if you don't stop talking to weirdoes." He stood up and peeled off his shirt, going to the hallway to pull his uniform out of the dryer. Jan stayed on the bed, looking out the doorway at him.
"Just…please go with me, okay?" he finally asked in a softer voice. "Next week—interested members can go to the seminar. We don't have to join up if you don't want to. At least give it a shot, bro." Luke said nothing as he brushed his hair in the hallway mirror and tied it back out of his face. "What do we have to lose?" He stilled his hands still in the blonde locks as he stared into the mirror before turning and walking out of the house. The lock clicked in the door and Jan listened as his footsteps echoed down the hallway. He flopped back on his brother's bed, looking at the flyer with new disdain. Maybe everyone was right. Maybe he was an idiot.
The year was 1977. The year that Jan and Luke Valentine, known all through the neighborhood collectively as "the Valentine Brothers", died.
"I remember you." Luke turned to see a blue-haired woman greeting his brother. "You are…Jan, right? From the deli. You took my last flyer." She smiled, her unnaturally sharp teeth glinting in the light. "Did you bring a friend?" she asked politely, looking pointedly at Luke. Jan ran over, tugging his older brother into position.
"Yeah, uh—this is Luke Valentine, my big bro. Luke, this bit-nice lady is Rip van Winkle." He elbowed Luke in the ribs, waggling his eyebrows. Luke's mouth almost disappeared as he tightened it and held out a hand.
"Pleased to meet you, Miss Winkle." He shook the woman's hand and she smiled widely, slinging her antique musket over one shoulder. Luke wondered if it were some sort of weird prop for whatever two-bit "group" this was.
"I'm really quite surprised. You're the only two that bothered to show up, even though I gave out all my flyers." She pouted for a moment before grabbing them and dragging them to the back of the center. "However, you are lucky, because Mein Major is going to speak to you personally. I understand you have doubts about this whole thing, ja?" Luke looked to his brother, who shrugged as best he could while being jerked down the dimly lit hallway.
"Oh, First Lieutenant! Is this all?" The cool, amused voice immediately made both men's ears perk as they stared ahead at the man in the seat. The woman bowed, her freckled cheeks graced with a small blush as she shoved the men ahead with a flourish.
"Ja, this is it. Can you believe it?" She shrugged and motioned to the men in front of her. "But I had a feeling about this one. He seemed to be…the right material." She smiled secretively and turned, her heels clicking as she walked away.
"So…Luke and Jan Valentine. You think you have what it takes to join our little army?" the plump man in front of them said in a conversational tone. The brothers looked at each other. Luke coughed slightly and stepped forward.
"I mean no disrespect, sir…"he started hesitantly, eyeing the man's suit and air of authority. "But that flyer didn't explain much, and my brother was the one who spoke to Miss Winkle, so—" The man nodded, his blonde bangs flopping down into his face.
"Yes, yes. I'm well aware of you two. First Lieutenant told me all about your brother. He amused her, so to speak, when he fought for her change at that little deli. Quite a gentlemanly maneuver, my boy." He looked pointedly to Jan, who colored and crossed his arms. "However, to join our Batallion, you must not only be gentlemanly, but also cold and heartless at times. Can you do that?"
"Course we can!" Jan jumped in before Luke had a chance to speak. "We can be anything you want us to be! Just ask our past employers!" The Major smiled, nodding again and pushed his glasses up on his nose.
"Well then, if you promise me this, how can I say no? You are the only ones who showed up, after all. And you have good skills, I can tell just by looking at you." He smiled and snapped his fingers. A man in a bloody lab coat appeared from nowhere and smiled. He looked creepy with his strange glasses; they made him appear almost arachnid-like.
"Mein Major?" he asked respectfully, looking at the two men as if they were dissected experiments instead of living beings.
"Doctor, take these two men down and turn them into vampires. They are our new…members."
"My eyes." Luke stared in the mirror at the yellowish color his irises had turned. He held a hand up to his face, realizing that he could see every pore on his skin. Not only that; if he looked carefully, he could make out the individual spun fibers of his shirt, the grout in the far wall, the ant chomping on a cookie crumb at his feet. And his hearing; was this…was he really a—
"Luke!" His brother's panicked voice brought him back to reality and he ran over, throwing aside the curtain to look at his brother's face. The younger man's eyes had also turned that strange yellowish color, and he was feeling of all his piercings, as if afraid the looney old doctor had taken them out. When he saw his brother, he smiled and Luke reached a finger out to brush the elongated canine. He hissed as the tooth cut his skin and his brother licked the blood up faster than he could blink. After a moment, Jan's nose snarled in disgust as he realized what he'd just done.
"That's fucking gross, man."
"His last thoughts were: At least I didn't end up like my father. At least I tried."
Seras looked up at her master, eyes squinted against the drizzle. He was staring straight ahead, his crimson gaze distant. One hand reached up to stroke her blonde hair absently as the funeral-goers made their way to their cars.
"Why did you tell me that?" she asked in confusion. "Wait, who are you talking about?" Alucard shook his head and turned, walking with her to the Hellsing limousine where Integra waited.
"It needed to be said is all. Don't bother with it, Police Girl. He's not worth bothering over, in the end. None of them are."
Afterword: I really, really, really, really, really wanted to a one-shot about Jan and Luke. They're some of the most memorable characters (well, Jan is anyway) but nothing much is said about them.