What was this boy-man doing? He'd provided blood, three full bottles, poked and pried and prodded...carried Alucard up to the main levels of the house, where he was normally barred from. And now the vampire found himself lying on the comfortable cool of a tile floor in an overly-bright room, with the loud splashing and echoing of water nearby. Unwilling to show a mere human, not even his Master's son, just how much pain he was in, Alucard clenched his teeth and fought to control the trembling of his limbs.
He burned; multiple spots on his torso, his legs, the biceps of an arm, all of them on fire. Would the boy just leave him alone, he'd be able to begin removing the causes of the pain, begin to heal, but the jostling and moving about and hauling around prevented that. He'd have to wait, to bear it a little bit longer.
-v-v-
"Water's warm. Let's get you in there and cleaned up." Arthur wasn't certain why he was talking to the vampire, or even if the beast understood him, but it just seemed terribly impolite to pretend that the creature wasn't intelligent or to treat it like an object. Alucard didn't respond, eyes still clenched shut, the tight jaw still indicating some sort of pain. Shrugging to himself, Arthur quickly stripped the tattered rags from the vampire, frowning as he saw the holes scattered about through the cloth.
Granted, Father wouldn't waste good clothes on a possession, but still, he wouldn't have given Alucard rags! An unpleasant conclusion began to form, and Arthur ignored it for the moment. With a quick heave, the vampire splashed down into the warm water. A brush and a bar of soap, and the cleaning began.
The dried blood dissolved in the water, running off the vampire's body in pink streaks with each pass of the brush. It was only a perfunctory sort of cleaning, just enough to try and find the damage under the blackened filth. A soapy cloth wiped over the face, was wrung out under the fall of water, and then wiped back over the skin to pick up the soap. The drain was pulled, the grey water vanished down the pipe, and clean water and more soap was used again and again. No matter how he cleaned, the blood kept draining, great black spots remaining on the otherwise alabaster skin...and Arthur stopped.
He'd cleaned that skin already.
Leaning over the tub, he pulled up an arm, looking closely at what he'd assumed to be a great black chunk of dirt and blood. Scratching at it with a nail, he was shocked and startled to instead pull out a great black plug of dried blood, with fresh thin blood streaming out behind it. Alucard's silence broke, a faint gasp and whimper indicating that it had probably been as painful an experience as it looked. More blood flowed out, blackened and clotted bits mixed with the red. With a gulp and a white face, Arthur prodded at the arm...and saw an odd glint. There was something in that hole.
A squeeze, and like a great pustulent boil, the wound...erupted. Black liquified flesh, clots of blood...and a metal chunk. The stench was unspeakable, but the water quickly washed away the tissues and odor and left the dull gleam of a warped bullet in the bottom of the bathtub.
A silver bullet. Arthur picked it up, turning it about in his hands, reaching a very unpleasant conclusion as to how this had ended up in Father's vampire. And from the other blackened areas, this would not be the only one. A rough distracted pat on Alucard's head, and he trotted from the bath down to the surgery. Father had forceps and scalpels and bandages and more available and Alucard would likely need them all.
-v-v-
The pain in his arm was fading, but the other injuries still screamed. What was that boy doing? The child had removed a single bullet, then left. Had the stench been too much? What a weak thing Arthur was, then, unsuited to be a Hellsing if a bit of decay could turn him away so effectively. Scowling, eyes barely cracked open in the bright room, Alucard realized he'd have to fix the other injuries himself. He'd been too weakened, too starved, to do so before.
He was digging out the one embedded in his thigh when Arthur returned, medical kit dangling from one hand, bottle of blood held tight in the other. Even squinting in the brightness of the light, Alucard could see the look of determination and the jut of the jaw in this child. Perhaps the boy wasn't so weak after all.
-v-v-
Alucard had, thank God, been cooperative during the extractions. He'd hissed, snapped a few times, growled, but none of it had been directed at Arthur. It had simply been a response to the pain. Any human would have been screaming as the probe dug about in their guts, but Alucard did no more than dent the side of the tub in his grip, teeth clenched and silent. A final bucket of water rinsed the blood from the vampire, and Arthur lifted him, twisting him about, looking for any remaining signs of injury. The vampire was covered with pink dimples and divots, marking the healing holes, but no more black patches of necrotizing tissue remained.
"Did I miss any?" A red eye glared up at him from the wet grey bangs falling across the vampire's face, and then a grudging nod. Damn. "Where?" Alucard didn't speak, simply laying his head against the side of the tub, tilting to show his throat...then a slender white hand lifted the hair at the back of the neck to reveal one final blackened expanse.
At the top of the spine...where it joined the head. Head and heart were the most delicate, the only delicate, parts of a vampire. Had that bullet severed the top of the spine, he'd have found dust in that cell instead of an impotent glaring fury. Even now, taking it out was risky. But it had to be done. Left there, it might slowly kill the vampire anyways. The red eye, still half-shut in the light, rolled to follow him and the body visibly tensed as he leaned over with the probe and forceps.
Right under the skin. It was right there, half-buried in the now-porous bone, the bullet unexpectedly easy to grasp and remove. Flinching slightly, he gripped it with the forceps and pulled. Chunks of bone came out with it, and he said a brief prayer that it would not cause the neck to detach. Not much of the spinal column could be left at that point! But the vampire stayed intact, no dusting, and even gave the slightest sigh of relief. Blackened pus bubbled out, then red blood...and then the skin stretched over the hole.
Done, he was done, the vampire now limp and relieved and clearly exhausted. Feeding the beast the bottle of blood, Arthur pondered what to do next.
Putting Alucard back in the basement meant leaving the vampire unguarded. Those bullets hadn't gotten there magically; someone had deliberately shot and come close to destroying the vampire. A normal vampire would have died. Alucard was far more resistant, and the bullets had missed vital areas, but it was still far too close for comfort. No, he would not be putting the vampire back down in the cell alone, nor would he be spending a cold and chilly day down there guarding the beast.
Not long after, the vampire was being toted down the hallway to his own bedroom, wrapped snugly in Father's bathrobe. While the vampire blinked stupidly on the bed, dulled with relief, exhaustion, and confusion, Arthur was bullying a pair of men into carrying the coffin out of storage and up into the bedroom.
Alucard clearly could sleep out of it, but Arthur was well-taught. To recover, a vampire needed access to its coffin. It provided strength and healing as well as protecting the vampire from daylight.
The men slid it onto the carpet, on the opposite side of the bed from the window. They watched the vampire nervously, but Alucard simply drowsed, oblivious to their presence. Dismissing them, Arthur turned to his temporary ward. The creature was clearly exhausted, but seemed oddly content. Shrugging, Arthur snagged a pencil and writing tablet from his desk, then seated himself by the vampire.
He'd have to write down what he found and his impressions. Father had long since made it clear that he expected written records and observations whenever Arthur and Alucard interacted. It allowed Father to have another viewpoint of the vampire's behavior and to monitor Arthur's perception of the beast. In this case, it also meant that he wouldn't forget any important facts. Speaking of which, those cold wet bullets couldn't stay in a mass in his pocket forever.
They rattled into the nightstand drawer, and the Arthur began to compose his journal entry as Alucard slept on beside him.