Author's Notes: This is a gift-fic for Master of the Boot, for his undying love and support over the years. Rock on, dude! !,,!, -.- ,!,,!

Disclaimer: Like everyone else on , I do not own or make money off of any of these fics. Thi is just a work of creativity.

When the sun set the following evening, Seras woke suddenly in her coffin. Filled with memories of ghouls, blood, bullets, grave robbers and graveyards, she shot up frantically - only to hit her head on the coffin lid.

"OW!"

Seras rubbed her head painfully as the automated coffin lid slowly rose, until it resembled a four-poster bed more than a coffin. She felt strangely lethargic, like she had done some strenuous activity and felt drained from it. And she was haunted by visions of the graveyard, the scent of the dead, the words of the mysterious grave robber, the sound of the microphone, helicopters and ghoul police. The stress was simply terrifying, and yet… Here she was. She felt so terribly confused; it felt so real, what had happened?

At that moment, the door opened and her butler entered the room, holding a tray of bottled blood and medication. He was cold, detached and professional, dressed in a familiar pin-striped grey shirt with black slacks and vest, with his own black hair tied in the back of his head.

"Walter. . . !" Seras cried.

"Ah, I see you're awake," he said calmly.

"Walter!" she cried again, this time in distress.

"Shh. . . What is it?"

"Walter, what happened?"

"The sun rose, and you fell unconscious."

"I mean, before that - Was I outside?"

"What?" he scoffed. "Of course not, you must have dreamed it up."

He then began tidying her room, picking up empty medical blood bags and open books left out from night before.

"But it felt so real, Walt," she said, "I was in a graveyard, and there were these bodies-"

"A vivid dream, I'm sure," he said dismissively, "In the future, might I suggest some lighter reading before going to sleep?"

He held up a book about World War II war crimes, which had been left open on her night stand, and straightened it out with the rest.

"But it was real Walter-"

"I am the butler," he said sternly, "And I know better-"

"I didn't imagine this," Seras said stubbornly.

"Please Seras, drop it."

"I couldn't have fathomed this!"

"Please Seras, stop it."

"Walter, I could smell the dead!"

"Seras, you're a vampire living near a graveyard."

"But there were ghouls that started shooting at me!"

"A horrible dream, I'm sure."

"Walter, it wasn't a dream!"

"Yes it was," he said coldly.

"Walter, I could feel the bullets!"

"Damn it Seras, you could have died-! You!"

Seras' eyes widened in shock.

"You scare me to death!" he yelled.

Hurt by his tone, Seras cast her eyes down sadly. Walter had never raised his voice to her; and his firm rejection of her instincts struck her like a cold stab. He had always been distant, cold and taciturn, but he never lied or kept secrets from her. He was all she had in the world, and she couldn't trust him, she didn't know what she would do.

Seeing that he had wounded Seras, Walter got up and walked to the foot of her bed. He was never, what one might call, an affectionate man, but he explained his reasons calmly enough.

"Seras, you know why you cannot go outside," he said, and turned to gaze at a portrait of Alucard. "The blood disease that took your dear master from us passed from him into your veins."

Seras knew this story; Walter told it to her almost every night since the night she had awoke nearly seventeen years go. Her master ate a demon and was dragged to Hell, and because Seras shared a blood bond with him, she was in danger of being dragged along with him. Only Walter's medicine, which suppressed the blood of her master the way anti-virals suppressed the viruses (temporarily, never permanently) gave her the strength to stay on this side of existence every night.

"With Millennium on the prowl, do you think they would allow you to live?"

Seras cast her eyes down, and shook her head solemnly.

"I'd be lost if I were to lose you." He confessed, his voiced strained.

Seras widened her eyes, agian, in shock. She had never heard Walter confess feelings so . . . tender.

Yet, his face was covered in shadows, so she could see only the glare off his monocle.

"I will stop at nothing to keep you safe!" he said fiercely.

After a pause, Seras rose from her coffin and walked over to him timidly.

"I'll take my meds, Walter," she said gently, "Don't you worry."

"Just until I find a cure," he answered, turning to face her.

Seras froze, for she had never seen Walter act that way, but allowed him to place one hand on her shoulder and hold hers with the other, their fingers entwined softly. She could feel his cheek rest against her hair (an innocent yet intimate gesture that made her blush) and then he turned to gaze at the portrait.

"Your master, rest his soul, would be proud of you. For you have succeeded where he failed. . ."

He crossed the room, picked up the bottle of medication and tapped one of the pills into her glass of blood. It bubbled and fizzled as it dissolved into the live-sustaining fluid, and he handed the fizzling cup to Seras.

"Once I find a cure, you'll be free. Until that time, I will always be here for you in your time of need," he placed a finger under her chin and tilted her face so she was looking into his eyes. "Seras, you're the world to me."

Though he had stated this very matter-of-factly, Seras was startled by the confession. It seemed so out-of-character for him, and she froze as he bent down to kiss her on the forehead. His touch felt so cool and faint. She watched blankly as he walked out of her room, shut the door behind him, and locked it with an ominous click.

Seras stared for a moment, then looked at her palm. It was becoming see-through.

"Seras," she heard Walter say sternly from outside the door, "take your medicine."

Seras sighed. No amount of kindness on his part ever lasted very long.

She raised the cup to her lips and tried not to grimace as she drank. It tasted very bitter, bubbly and burned all the way down her throat, sending unpleasant shivers through her body. She could feel it burn and fizzle through her veins; solidified her flesh painfully. She had to take that awful concoction every few hours of every night, and triple doses before dawn so it could sustain her while she slept. She was far too weak to stay awake during daylight hours.

When she was finished, she placed it on the shelf atop her fireplace with a shuddering sigh. "I'm infected..." she said out loud.

She turned to look at the portrait of the cocky man in Victorian garb. "I'm infected," she repeated angrily. "By your decisions!"

She approached the skeleton Walter brought to teach her about the human anatomy (she needed to get her education somewhere), pointed to it and said in a stern, pompous voice, "'Seras, I'm the doctor!'"

She turned to her stuffed animals sitting in the corner, still pompous. "'Seras, I'm your butler!'"

She turned to her white satin coffin and pretended to fawn over someone laying in it. "'Oh Seras, that was close!'"

She then frowned, stood up straighter and pointed to it sternly. "'Take your medicine!'"

She sighed, turned on her heel and collapsed into her coffin so that she landed on her back.

"I'm infected," she said again to the portrait. "By your decisions! That's right; I'm infected by your decisions! And I don't think that I can be fixed. No, I don't think I can be fixed! Tell me Master why, oh why are my genetics such a bitch?"

The more she thought about it, the angrier she felt. She was restless and bored and couldn't do anything about it. She had never been outside except for the crypt she'd woken up in seven years before (which, technically, was just under this house), and it didn't look like she was going anywhere any time soon. Walter must have known it too, because her room was filled with nick-nacks and what-nots Walter filled to help her pass the time. A TV, a radio, a piano, a collection of stuffed animals and books on various subjects, but it all paled in comparison to what she really wanted: to go outside. But she just couldn't do that, and it drove her crazy.

"It's this blood condition," she said, throwing her book down. "DAMN THIS BLOOD CONDITION!"

She then rounded on the portrait. "Master, can you hear me? THANKS FOR THE DISEASE!"

"Now I am sequestered," she said to her bug book, "Part of the collection. After all, that's what is expected when you are infected."

She tried to forget her boredom. She did the things she did every night. Read the books, watched the TV, wrote in the journals (though there was never much to report), played the piano (though never as beautifully as Walter), played with the dolls, collected the insects, studied the anatomy, reviewed the history, looked out the telescope, charted the stars, painted the constellations, over and over until it all seemed like one big blurr. She wanted to go out into the world and help Walter fight Millennium. She wanted to run until she felt the horizon under her feet and spread her arms until she felt the dawn under her wings. As it was, she was boxed in on all sides and couldn't even take five big steps in any direction before hitting the wall.

She clutched her hair in frustration. She thought again of the story Walter told of her master eating a demon and being dragged down to Hell, and Seras being dragged too, because of the bond in her blood.

"Oh, why am I infected by his decisions?" Seras cried, "How much of it's genetics? How much of it is fate? How much of it depends on the choices that we make? He says I have Master's eyes, did I also inherit his shame . . ? Is heredity the culprit? Can I stop it? Or am I a slave?"

She wanted to collapse and cry. She wanted to go out there and help Walter with Millennium. She wanted to infiltrate their structure and help to find a weakness to their forces. She couldn't stand sitting around in her room, drinking the medical blood that he brought her all day, while Walter went out there night after night to risk his life for the good of the common citizen. Just thinking about it made her so restless that she couldn't stand it, and she unconsciously pulled her hair impatiently.

"Why won't he let me go out?" she said out loud, "But how can I be any use to him when I can't even open that door? What hope has a girl who is sick? My dream of a life outside of this fence will never make a difference because I don't think that I'll ever be fixed. No, I don't think I'll ever be fixed. Thanks a lot Master, but do you really want to know something? It's why, oh why your genetics are such a bitch!"

She turned one last time to the portrait, tearfully and angrily. "Thanks to your gluttony and tyranny, I'm forever a slave!"

When the worst of her anger, frustration and restlessness had passed, she felt only lethargy, regret and longing. She drew back the curtains and opened her window.

"Oh, I want to go outside . . ." she said longingly, and stepped onto the windowsill, where a waist-high wrot-iron fence was set up. "Oh, I want to go outside. . ."

How often had she looked out her window, into the world? How often had she dreamed of flying toward the dawn, without regard even for the sunlight, like an arrow from a fully drawn bow? To fly toward the dead city? A dawn dispatch?

The more she thought of it, the more restless she felt, until—

"I can't take it anymore!" she screamed, spreading her arms wide, "PETER PAN! TINKER BELL! WHEREVER YOU ARE, PLEASE TAKE ME AWAY TO NEVERLAND!"

Walter poked his head in through her bedroom door. "Seras!"

"What?"

"What have I told you about going near the window?"

". . . Don't do it?"

"That's a good girl."

Seras scoffed and stepped sulkily off the windowsill.

Walter sighed after he closed the door. Seras was getting too bold as of late; she was taking more chances, pushing more boundaries; and last night, she wandered outside and almost got herself killed. If he hadn't been there to intervene, she would have . . . !

Walter didn't know what he was going to do with Seras. He couldn't very well keep her locked in the basement (he tried it right after she woke up, but she got so restless after seven years that he was forced to give her a room with a window, provided she wore a black wig at all times as a disguise), but with the way she was acting, he felt she wasn't giving him much of a choice. Walter had sacrificed so much to keep Seras alive, and if she were to be killed now. . .

This wasn't the way Walter had imagined life would turn out over a century ago, when he was a young and fulfilled with all the arrogance of a child prodigy.

Until about fifty years ago, Walter had served as a butler to the Hellsing family. He fought alongside Alucard against Millennium in World War II. He served tea and penicillin shots to Arthur Hellsing every day after the war. He exterminated vampires with his razor wires every night after the war until his retirement. He helped raise Integra Hellsing after his retirement. He helped guide Integra into a strong leader of Hellsing. Though initially skeptical, he also helped to train Seras into a tolerable (if not formidable) soldier of Hellsing. He was loved and trusted by all.

But he betrayed Hellsing. His well-concealed hatred of Alucard was far stronger than his love for Integra or Seras, and so he willingly revealed the Hellsing Organization's most valued secrets in exchange for power. After years of sneaking information under the table, he finally snuck away with the Captain into the night and was made into a vampire when Millennium finally declared war on London. He confronted the Hellsing and Iscariot soldiers shortly before dawn, and endured their shock, hatred and denial with cold nonchalance and taciturn dismissal. He was rejected by Integra and received what he had wanted for over fifty years: the chance to fight Alucard one on one. With his army of familiars burned away, Walter finally had the chance to fight and kill Alucard in a fair fight, and for a moment, it seemed that he would succeed.

But he was too late. Never one to play fair, Alucard drank the blood of the slaughtered citizens of London - millions and millions of lives that Walter simply could not kill fast enough even if he tried. And, among those lives, was the embodiment of Schrodinger's Cat. A creature locked in a box called Life, he was both dead and alive, real and unreal, everywhere and nowhere as long as he acknowledged his own existence. Mixed with the millions and millions of lives inside of Alucard, he could no longer acknowledge his own existence, and Alucard began to fade away. In one split second, years and years of preparation and betrayal had all gone to naught and Walter's life was turned into a complete waste. The fire of arrogance was finally extinguished, and Walter felt more than content to die. The only consolation he had, if any, was that his lady and her servant would defeat Millennium and bring this miserable farce to an end.

But he was wrong on that level too. Unbeknownst to Walter, Seras had drunk Alucard's blood. She was connected with him in a bond more profound than anything in this universe, and when he began to fade away, she began to fade too.

Walter would never forget the voice he had heard echoing from the zeppelin loud-speakers; never forget Integra's stern but terrified voice demanding to know what was wrong.

"ALUCARD, DON'T CLOSE YOUR EYES!"

"No, I'm sorry Master . . . but this is good bye."

He would never forget the cry of rage from Integra; nor, a few seconds later, the scream of terror echoing from Seras.

"SERAS! WHAT'S WRONG?"

"I'M DISAPPEARING!"

Walter's heart had frozen upon hearing this.

"WHAT?" Integra cried, "SERAS, DON'T!"

"I CAN'T HELP IT!" she had sobbed.

"SERAS, THAT'S AN ORDER!"

A terror had gripped Walter's heart like one he had never felt before. Suddenly full of renewed vigor, he raced to the zeppeline as fas as his legs could carry him, his wires clenched between his teeth.

He knew that as long as Seras had Alucard's blood, she could never exist on this side of the universe.

With time running out, and Alucard's blood on his hands, Walter knew that he could save only one.

How he must have looked after dawn broke, sitting alone in a dark corner with Seras' dried up corpse sprawled out on his lap, he could never know.

Presently Walter rose from his arm chair and tried to forget that night. He couldn't help it, since Seras' near death experience the other night reminded him of her near-death experience over fifty years ago.

"Where did Seras go?" he said out loud, thinking of tonight. "It's me she would escape. . . She would flee if she knew . . . My burdens I can't erase . . . The master I might have saved. . ."

It was because of him that Millennium had risen to power. It was because of him that Alucard had been defeated. It was because of him that Seras had nearly disappeared along with her master. It was because of him that, without Seras' fighting prowess, the insanely powerful Captain remained undefeated and killed Integra before dawn. It was because of him that, without anyone to stop them, Millennium pushed forward and moved on to every major city across the globe. It was because of him that the world was the way it was, and he knew that Integra hated him with an intensity that rivalled Hell itself, and cursed his name with every fibre of her being.

"Traitor!"

"Butcher!"

"Sell-out!"

"Murderer!"

"Monster!"

If Walter could turn back the clock, he would do so in an instant. If he could undo all of the atrocities he had committed, he would do so in a heartbeat. If he had known back then what he knew today, he would never have gotten involved with Millennium at all (probably), and he certainly never would have fed the two women he loved and respected above all others to the wolves (literally). What happened to Seras was unfortunate, what happened to Integra was nothing short of tragic. If only her servants had not been defeated, if only . . .

"Alucard, we need you now," he said suddenly, looking up at the portrait. "Look at what we've become . . . the nightmare that she should fear is the traitor you left alone. . ."

He tried not to thinking about it. He placed his hand over his face, almost in an attempt not to see the evil. Seras' corpse was to be destroyed. The only reason it wasn't was because—

"Traitor!"

"Sell-out!"

"Monster!"

He had a moment of clarity.

"Years roll by without you Alucard," he said, "Fifty five have come and gone. . ."

The years under Millennium's rule were miserable. The only moment of joy, oddly enough, was the night that Seras was resurrected by a wayward grave robber. He had found her wrinkled like an old woman, screaming and writhing in her own blood like a newborn babe. She would not stop screaming, but when he offered his arm, she had latched onto it and guzzled his blood down greedily. The Doktor had concocted a special remedy that would keep her on this side of existence; but it came with a price, of course.

"I raised Seras with the best intentions. . ."

Why had he taken her in? He had never been particularly fond of Seras. She was weak, simpering, spineless, and none too bright. A far cry from the formidable Iron Lady he was accustomed to serving, and yet . . .

"There is something I can't tell her. . ." he said out loud, "I am lost without her here . . . I am only living out a lie!"

Seras had no memories of her life before she was awakened, and Walter had taken shameless advantage this by keeping her hidden from the world and telling her half-truths about Millennium and her past. She was as innocent as a new-born child, and relied on him for everything. When she first awoke, she knew how to do basic things like walk and talk, but ultimately she counted on him to teach her to read, write, dress, and be knowledgeable about the world she woke up in. So why had he grown . . . fond of her? Perhaps it was Lima Syndrome - developing feelings of sympathy and affection for one's captive. Perhaps she was the first person to smile at him in so many years.

"Seras can never leave," he said with conviction, "She is my everything. Nothing can bring you back; Seras is all I have."

Nobody wanted anything to do with Walter after his disgrace. "Love the betrayal, hate the traitor," as the saying goes, so he was never fully welcomed within Millennium's ranks. They kept him on a tight leash and mocked him at every opportunity they could, but they would never fully allowed him to be one of them. And the ones he had betrayed, well . . . needless to say, they would never want anything to do with him again, even if they were still alive. For many years he told himself that it was fine, that he was getting what a traitor deserved, and that he could want nothing better. And yet, the more he took care of Seras, the more she smiled at him, talked to him, reminded him what it meant to be loved . . . Seras was the only one who was ever happy to see him. The way her eyes lit up when she saw him, the way she ran over to greet him every night when he walked through the door . . .

"But there is something I can't tell her," he said out loud, "I am lost without her here. If she were to learn, she would never want to be near me again. I'm only living out a lie!"

For the sake of one girl's smile, he would betray the world again to keep her secret. For the sake of one girl's smile, he would keep the past hidden and enjoy what few stolen moments of happiness he could extract from her.

He dreamed of kissing her at night. He wanted to kiss her soft white skin, run his hands over her voluptuous body, to make love with her in her coffin like two paramours in the Kublah Khan. Her body would be paradise, and he knew Seras would allow him if he coaxed gently enough, but he was already taking advantage of her company by depriving her of her memories and identities.

"I'm the monster!" he said out loud.

To drive the thoughts from his mind, he pushed the fire place open (a secret passage) and walked briskly into the surgery room.

"I'm the villain," he said, this time more calmly.

Already, he could feel his mood shifting. This was a working environment that called for a clear mind and calm emotions; conditions which he carried out with superb results.

"What perfection. . ." said out loud, pulling his wire gloves over his hands and releasing them with a loud SNAP! "What precision . . ."

A defaulter he had caught trying to escape the night before was tied to a wheel chair (since sitting caused less stress to the body for the time-being). His hands, feet, waist, neck and mouth were bound more securely than a fly in a spider's web so that he could not budge an inch, yet he was still alive and conscious. Perfect.

"Keen incisions, I deliver unscathed organs, I deliver repossessions; I deliver."

The more he talked the calmer, cooler, more methodical and analytical he felt. His mind was now filled with the human anatomy and the most impeccable way to obtain the desired organ with the least amount of effort or damage exerted. All other thoughts and emotions fled, leaving him with a very thrilling sense of duty.

He turned casually to the quaking man tied to the table, and said, "I am the Angel of Death; legal assassin."