Kana: Damn, all you people really love a pathetically confused Alucard. I'd be fine with him being my sex puppet.
Disclaimer: Seriously, I don't own it. I would love to have a young Walter following me around and Schrödinger as my pet, but reality's a bitch.
Let the weirdness commence. And by the way, I can't do accents. Nope. Turns out funky.
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Fidelity
Chapter Two: Chocolate
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Alucard rubbed his temples, even though it was impossible for him to get migraines. It was a comforting tactic, one that he held on to and allowed himself to do every so often. The motion caused the IV needle in his hand to move, which was very uncomfortable. He considered ripping it out and gouging out Neil's eyes with it, but it was connected to a fresh blood pouch, so he thought better of it.
In fact. He reached up and unlatched the pouch from the stand and placed it in his lap with a delicious crumple sound. Then he bit off a corner and began to drink, tasting only a weak painkiller in the blood. Neil came into the room to check on him and found Alucard licking a few smears off his fingers.
"That's gross," Neil sputtered, nearly dropping the tray he was holding.
"I thought it tasted fine, save for the chemicals," Alucard shrugged, tearing open the bag and licking the inside. Then he tossed the empty pouch aside, and it landed on the floor with a hollow plop. "May I have another?"
Neil sighed. "I guess I can't deny you that. I'll have someone bring you a fresh bag."
Alucard held up his index and middle finger. "Two bags." He grinned. "And no medicine this time."
"Um…okay?" Neil wasn't used to being ordered around my patients. So he set down the tray he had been balancing and showed its contents to Alucard. "Wouldn't you prefer this?"
Alucard stared in confusion at the tray. "Are you mad? Solid food will make me ill." He crossed his arms in the manner of a child and scowled at the raw meat that sat on a plastic white plate.
"No it won't," Neil said, more than a little hurt. "Vampires can eat just about anything, as long as it's not green. That makes them ill."
"What?" his face was slack. He could eat something solid without the stomach-churning thought of having to cough it up afterwards?
He really liked this new world, even if his double was the pope.
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After nibbling at the meat in slight curiosity, tossing it aside when he deemed it 'too solid' and gulping down a few more blood bags, Alucard scattered the sacks around his bed. When someone tried to clean them up, he snarled and defended his 'territory'. And as the day went by, he soon wouldn't let anyone else near him, aside from Neil and – grudgingly because he kept bringing him new blood packs to drain and scatter - Laurence. The two doctors noticed his hair shorten into a long pixie-cut and his eyes turn a little redder, surely a sign that he was growing healthier.
"Is this some kind of vampire thing that I don't know about?" Laurence asked as dawn neared, and Alucard was settling down into a next of blankets that he had built by stealing them from nearby beds.
"Yes," Alucard said in a wistful voice. "I would be a lot less irritable if I had my coffin."
"You didn't come with a coffin," Laurence growled. "Hell, you didn't even come with a set of instructions or a user's manual."
Alucard's smirk turned into a frown. "How did I get here?"
"Joseph found you," Neil said solemnly. "He said you had collapsed somewhere in Piccadilly, and someone had called in because they thought you had been murdered by some religious group."
"Why did they think that?" Alucard's voice was soft.
Laurence made a wild gesture with his hands. "Because you were restrained with this kinky kind of straightjacket and were bleeding. Vampires don't bleed for very long unless they're seriously injured. Then you came here and began this lovely journey of life." He rolled his eyes as he checked Alucard's vitals – which were just the temperature of his body. It was a perfect eighty-nine degrees.
"But my coffin…" Alucard whispered to himself, looking at his lap. "It's where I was born…where I die…where…where…my gloves!" He looked at the two of them wildly. "Did I have any gloves?! I must have had gloves on! They're the only real clothes I had!" He looked at his bare hands and suddenly realized how blasphemous they looked to him.
"Yes, you came with gloves," Laurence said, sneering. "And if you go to sleep like a good boy, I'll bring them to you when you wake up."
"Or," Alucard growled, his eyes glowing dangerously. "I could bite off each and every one of your fingers until you give them to me now."
"Threats don't work on me," Laurence chuckled, showing him his ring finger, or the stump that was left of it. "I've worked on your kind for five years. Now go to sleep."
Alucard – now over his short spasm – stubbornly refused any attempt to make him comfortable. "I need dirt to sleep."
"You've slept fine these past few months, suck it up," Laurence snapped, but Neil had different ideas.
"It wouldn't be too hard to bring up some dirt from the garden," Neil mumbled, twining his fingers and wringing them.
Alucard grinned. "Good, you'll save your superior some fingers." He relaxed as the sky began to turn pink. "I'll wait for the crate."
"A crate of dirt?" Laurence hissed, taking out a syringe and filling it with Alucard's 'blood'.
"Yes. A crate of dirt. Grave dirt from Romania would be the best, but Britain is also my home." Alucard tried to put the thought that he was about to sleep in dirt from a garden in the back of his head and concentrated on plotting. Because that was what he did best. He plotted about how to kill his enemies and how to survive and in this case, how to bypass bible pages. Laurence took one look at the cat-satisfied look on his face and sighed.
An hour later, the sun was peeking over the horizon and Alucard was settling into a crate filled with loose mulch. He had manifested his usual leather so that he would be more comfortable and burrowed in, very much like a weasel, sighing in happiness when the fresh dirt ruined and stained his clothes.
"I've never seen a vampire sleep in dirt," Neil said in great interest, closing the heavy curtains on the window and sending the room into pitch blackness, save for the candle he balanced on the side of the crate.
"You've never seen a Nosferatu then," Alucard growled joyously.
"That's impossible," Neil murmured. "The only Nosferatu that still comes out is Dracula."
Alucard gave a mighty twitch. He made a mental note to find himself in this world and slap him across the face until he came to his senses. He grabbed another blood pouch and tore at it. "Well then, perhaps you've been misled."
Neil watched him. "I've never seen a vampire eat so many blood bags before. Usually they just take one every few days, not one every hour."
He licked his lips. "A sign that I'm healthy. Will I be able to leave tonight?"
"I doubt it," Neil blew out the candle, so that only Alucard's eyes were shining. He made his way towards the door. "We're going to keep you for a little while longer and do some tests."
"Why?" Neil saw that the two red pinpoints of his eyes peeked over the crate.
"We have no records on you," Neil shrugged. "You probably just have amnesia."
Alucard made a sound to protest, but that was when the sun began to rise, and he was out faster than you could say 'damn.'
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The vampire ward closed when the human ward began, and vice versa. At four AM it shut down and the doctors went home just as the regular medics returned. Vampires were constantly supervised, even if they were all sleeping. The two wards were closed off from each other by silver-plated doors that had bible pages inside them and were guarded by four trained priests from the Vatican with guns loaded with blessed bullets.
But they were not there to keep the vampires in; they were there to keep people out. Religious groups and hostile vampires were always trying to break into the ward and finish the jobs they had started. It was an imperfect world.
And because the vampire ward only opened at six PM, they didn't notice when Alucard slipped out, blending with the shadows and sneaking into the human ward at an early hour (three thirty to be exact).
All he wanted was a bite to drink. The thought made him snicker to himself as he peered into rooms, watching patients being tended to. The blood pouches offered no temptation to him, but the tantalizing smell coming from the children's wing was just too much to bear.
His tongue running over his lips, Alucard slinked forward, following the smell into an eggshell blue room with a small boy sleeping on the down-covered bed. When the door clicked shut behind him, the child woke up, blinking dimly in the small amount of light the afternoon sun made. He stretched a little a made a tiny sound, staring at Alucard.
"Dad?" the boy asked, rubbing his eye with a small fist.
Alucard made his usual blood red clothes appear instead of his leather. He gave the child a smile, and held out his hand. Without speaking, a tiny blue bird appeared on his palm, the same color as the fleece blanket that covered the boy. The bird chirped and hopped around in his palm, making the boy giggle.
And while the child was distracted with the bird, Alucard took a few mouthfuls of blood from his neck, only just curbing his hunger. Over the next half hour, he visited four other children, three other boys and a little girl. Each time he manifested a bird in his hand that had a plumage that was the same color as the room – blue, then sea foam green, blue once more, then pink. He enjoyed himself immensely, eventually sating his hunger and searching for something else to do.
Then he came upon the food court. A few people were lingering around before dinner, and some stared at him as he glided across the floor. Nobody could tell him that he couldn't be there, since it was connected to both wards.
He scanned the food with interest. The small amount of meat he had eaten earlier hadn't come back with a vengeance, and he was curious.
With all eyes on him as he looked at the food, Alucard selected something from a tray that he hadn't eaten in years. He broke a square off the chocolate bar and popped it into his mouth, letting it melt as he smiled. It was even better when he wasn't catching traces of it in the blood of children. And it didn't make him feel ill, so he began to eat it slowly.
"I know you," said an eerily familiar voice, making Alucard instantly grope for his guns, which he knew were no longer with him. So he settled for tensing up and preparing to rip off Anderson's head.
"You do?" That's good, keep him calm. Alucard turned around stiffly, biting his tongue so hard that he severed the tip off. It grew back instantly, of course, but there's just something about swallowing your own tongue that's a little nasty.
"I'm Joseph," the blond man in the white volunteer uniform stuck out a hand to shake, and Alucard took it robotically. His lips were twitching; this Anderson had the same strong accent. "You look a lot better now. Then again, anything is better than when I found you."
"I am grateful, believe me," Alucard sighed, crumpling the plastic chocolate wrapper in his fist. This world was too odd for his tastes. What next? There was a pseudo Walter, Maxwell, himself, and now Anderson. What next? Was the clone of the Police Girl going to be his nurse? Or maybe his master. The thought of Integra in a nurse's outfit nearly gave him a nosebleed. "But I would have preferred it…if you had left me there."
"Now why would anyone like you wish to die?" Joseph asked, plucking an apple from a wicker basket and biting into it. "Is that not why you became a vampire? To continue to live?"
"Yes…but…"
Joseph's eyes suddenly turned grave. "I know who you are, Dracula. So does Laurence."
Alucard fumbled with the apple that he had picked up as well. "I have no idea what you mean."
The Anderson-imposter smiled. "There are many things in this world that you do not understand, am I right?"
"Yes…"
"When someone in one world dies before their time, those memories are given to the parallel person in another world," Joseph explained, leading Alucard out of the court.
"Oh…"
"'Oh' indeed," Joseph tossed him a pear. Alucard had eaten the apple and its core, and was eager to try more. "It leads to very awkward moments. You have no idea what it is like to see someone and realize that someone who is very close to you has done many terrible things in another world." He pinched the bridge of his nose as Alucard chewed the flesh of the pear, the solid crunches sounding very odd to his ears. "Laurence would never launch another crusade. Hell, I doubt the Vatican would take him in."
Alucard thought that this world was very odd indeed. But he bit into his second apple and smiled.
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After much berating, nagging, and hitting, Alucard was put through a series of tests that proved how alert he was (which was very alert, seeing as he nearly sent the doctor who did it into an asylum). He blinked his eyes like the man told him to – though he blinked all of his eyes – and moved his fingers like the man told him to – though he moved his hair as well – and whistled like the man told him to – though he also had what was left of his familiars howl in grief and mourning. In the end though, Neil was happy to let Alucard have a few minutes outside, and curiously watched the vampire stare up at the moon.
"You may leave when you want to," he said, observing him as the vampire dyed his clothes a darker, more brilliant red.
"Why would I want to leave?" Alucard asked, sounding odd. If Joseph was right…
Suddenly, he walked up to Neil and slapped his hand into his forehead, as if he was checking for a fever. But instead of that, he sent him an image of Integra and the Police Girl. "Do you know of anyone who looks like that?"
Neil, staggering from the force of having such a thing done upon him, made only a tiny choked garble. Alucard waited for him to stop relying on his arm to keep himself steady, and then pressed on about it. "Is there someone?" the man in red asked.
"Yes," Neil choked out, making Alucard's stomach flip over. "The tall one is Integral Hellsing."
Her name is the same, Alucard thought with pleasure and fear. But what does that mean?
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Kana G.G Ouch…note to self…hot bath plus sunburn equals PAIN. Seriously kiddies, when your legs and shoulders are burned because you're a pale nerd, take a cold bath. On a lighter note, I have made friends with a very talkative stray cat. Her name is Integra. She likes hot dogs.
Review Responses:
Anemoi: ALRIGHT! (whoops) I am attention grasping! :D Your pleasure means the world to me honey, and I am glad my stories are good. I would think people would be all "RAWR, Alucard is ALL POWERFUL (insert arm gnawing and booming voice of DOOM) He does not belong in a hospital! RAWR". Hell, this is my imagination we're talking about ;) If it were up to me, Alucard would be in a Mexican whorehouse getting plastered with characters from various Holly Black novels. Hazzah for fucked-up crossovers! But Jesus says no on that one. Oh, there will be blood. There will also be angst, caused by the blood. And all of it will be caused by (drum roll and finger pointing) DRACULA! KUKUKUKUU!
ThroughtheShadows: Yes! Alu-chan is the Pope! Though without the disturbing outfit. (shivers) The images! He does rule the world, doesn't he? :D Poor Dracula, he always wanted to rule the world in the book, and the only way for that to happen (horror) Here's your Anderson doppelganger, and soon (pose) The rest. Really weird is ALWAYS really cool! DUH!
bad-karmapolice: (bows) Thank you, thank you, no need for applause. ALL hail the KING – I mean, the POPE. But the KING soon enough!
vaders aprentice darth squi...: Patience is a virtue, but feel free to beat my ass with vulgar PM's if I ever get lazy.
Cannot fathom a PenName: No, no Hun. You're HAY-ZOOS. Walter is Jesus. Right next to God in a Fedora and his two Virgin Marys with Guns. (insert random small text that contains apologies to angry Catholics). Alu-chan's reactions are always pure genius with me. Though they're very simple. He either shoots someone or screams. :D
mint leafs: That means you…reviewed twice in one chapter…(insert Hallelujahs) I LUV YOU! (Huggle) Hmmn (moonwalks away to the tune of Thriller)
KURRYdaJIGGAmonkey: (picturing Alucard with a puppy) Whoa…he would probably EAT it. Or give it to Integra, who would give it to Seras, who would give it to Walter, who would love it with all his heart :D I don't do Alucard-torture fics. That's too OOC even for ME.
Strack: (shoves big toe in face) :D
Relks the Disturbed: NYHAHAHAHAHA! Lets see what happens when sexy man in armor meets sexy man in red! XD Moustache contest!
Master of the Boot: I missed you Booty, don't do that again! Go sit in a corner! (waits three seconds)…(tackles) LUV! I think it has a vibe like an episode of The Twilight Zone. And maybe, when the two Vladi-cards collide, like a hick episode of Doctor Phil. Chairs shall be thrown and there will be blood…okay, I lied about the chairs, but STILL. And nope, no really tall hat. You'll see :3 Silly, Neil is Walter! I just made up random names. Actually, I had two hats, one with names and one with Hellsing people. It was an interesting and amusing Tuesday.
MgalekgoloL DIE! You review more or I will hunt you down and Australia and burn you at the stake! Or maybe I'll just leave you annoying phone calls until you review! And guess what! MY SIX STILL HURTS! You bruised my six! D: Anyway, bitching aside…HAHAHAHAHA. He's DEAD! The fat little insane man is DEAD! BWAHAHAHAHAHA! I make you a sad, sad NERD!
PS: Why can't the Nazi's and vampires just get ALONG? You and I do…
End Responses
Lets celebrate the end of the Nazi's by reviewing!