Disclaimer: I do not own Hellsing nor do I own Alucard, Seras Victoria or the Hellsing Institute. I do own Aidan and Winter and all their friends so please, no poaching okay?

Dedication: To Metropolis Kid, who hounded, and made me want to post it earlier than I should.

Note: It's past midnight right? That counts as Monday, right? Yeah, this is unbeta'd so I apologize for any typos etc. Feel free to send me a note telling me what is wrong. This went in a really different...not direction...I guess mood is the best way of putting it. And I got really excited about it so...here it is!

Proof once more that people are just complicated.

Prompt: radio-cassette player

'I'm being extra annoying apurpose'

Most people didn't know he was a genius. It was easier that way. Growing up, his mother had put him in regular schools. Life was always too chaotic for the advanced classes and college credits they continued to offer him through the years. And, honestly, he preferred it that way. In an ordinary school, he could choose the role he played: the class clown, the ringleader, the outcast, the smart kid. With his analytical abilities and intuitive understanding of how people thought, he only needed to play the part.

It was all just a puzzle. You just had to know how to put the pieces together right to get the image to shift.

And he did.

~x~

"I know your secret."

Aidan looked up from where he sat under one of the school yard's trees, drawing specs on his latest project. Standing before him in twin braids and a plaid skirt was an eight-year-old girl, same as he, with shining red hair and sparkling green eyes that seemed to see straight through him.

"You got me, Maureen. I'm actually Superman."

She rolled those marvelous eyes before taking a step closer and kicking him in the shin.

"Ow! What was that for?"

"You suck too much to be Superman."

He grinned up at her before climbing to his feet. "We'll see about that now won't we?"

She just watched as he brushed past her and walked away whistling a merry tune of unconcern. He was almost out of earshot when he caught her soft muttering.

"Superman doesn't lie all the time."

~x~

Girls never concerned him much. He had other things he needed to do.

~x~

For most of his youth, his parents preferred to live on his father's estate just outside of Dublin, but his mother's promise to his late aunt kept him travelling. Nearly every weekend, he found himself hustled to the Hellsing Institute so his cousin could receive some motherly love.

He couldn't say how old he was when he first began to understand the importance of the Hellsing Institute. They had been making regular visits since his Aunt Bridget first married his Uncle Jamie. In fact, most of his first memories were of the old Hellsing Manor. It had all just been part of his normal experience so he couldn't pinpoint a moment when he knew that greater things went on inside of those generations old stone walls.

He did remember the precise moment when he understood his part in all of it.

It was when he walked into the crumbling remains of that grand manor home at seven years of age and found Winter and Elliot clinging to each other as if the world would end if they let go. It was then that he understood his real role in life.

It was to protect them.

Ignoring the shouts of the men and the sobs of his mother, he walked up to the two toddlers and knelt on the ground beside them. They looked up at him in the motion and two pairs of blue eyes began to once more fill with tears in the seconds before the two launched themselves at him. Grunting slightly, he caught them in his small arms and held them close.

"Don't worry. I'm here."

~x~

"You know, if you aren't going to date anyone you really should stop flirting with all the girls like that."

He didn't even need to look up from his reconstruction project to know who had spoken. Wondering once more how she always managed to find his hiding spots, he smirked and screwed one of the delicate metal pieces down.

"Are you jealous, Maureen, that more boys don't flirt with you like that? Or perhaps that I don't flirt with you like I do with them?"

He heard her sigh and knew she was probably rolling her eyes as she slowly crossed the dim room lit only by the dusk filtering through the window. He eyed her briefly through the corner of his eye and was slightly started at how the orange light managed to caress her pale flesh and make her look like one of those faerie stories his Mam had told him in warning.

"Hardly. Though I think there are a few people who are curious about why you don't flirt with me when you do with everyone else."

He grinned as he carefully placed another screw. "That would be rather pointless since you'd know I wasn't serious. Where is the fun of charming someone who is likely to hit me if I flattered them?"

She chuckled softly but didn't comment. Instead, she stood next to the table in silence looking down at him as he worked. A quarter hour passed like that before he finally looked up at her.

"Are you expecting me to do something amazing, Lady Chastiser, or are you waiting for me to respond to your earlier comment with some sort of apology and abject embarrassment?"

She sighed in exasperation. "One day, you are going to break one of their hearts."

"Doubt it," he muttered, going back to work.

Another sigh and a moment of hesitant silence before she asked, cautiously, "Don't you ever feel like dating anyone, Aidan?"

"When I've got annoying friends like you?"

A loud thump resounded through the room and he almost dropped his screwdriver.

"Do you have to hit me that hard?"

"Do you have to be a jackass?"

He looked up at her, gaze tired and exasperated. "Maureen, would you prefer I lie to you? I'm not entirely sure why you find it so much fun to haunt my weekday hours or why you think I'm worth hanging around, but I figure that is your own prerogative. I've given you the courtesy of something resembling friendship and my honesty. Stop punishing me for it."

She dropped his gaze for a moment before looking up to meet it again.

"Then, as a friend, can I say I'm worried about you?"

"Good Lord, why?"

"Aidan, you are fifteen years old. I've known you since we were six and never once have I seen you try to be real friends to anyone or pay attention to anyone romantically, of either gender. That's not normal. I'm concerned. It's what friends do, you loser."

He looked at her for a long moment. As he stared, all the bits and pieces about himself that he knew he wasn't being honest about (even with himself) tried to push their way to the surface. He opened his mouth to say something before his rationality caught up with him again and he closed it.

Carefully placing the screwdriver on the table, he stood up and chucked her lightly on the chin before walking past her.

"I don't have time for friends and romance. I have more important things to do."

~x~

"Aidan, you kinda suck you know."

"Why thank you, my lady cousin, for that objective assessment. I'm so glad that you could come stay with us for a week."

She grinned before taking his hand and dragging him to his feet to follow her to the lunch room.

"If you didn't want me to play visitor at your school, you could have said no."

He shrugged. "I thought it would be a good experience for you. Being homeschooled takes away a lot of the learning social interaction gives you."

"Aidan, you are seventeen, not fifty. Stop talking like that. It's creepy."

He grinned as he snagged both of them lunch and aimed their walking to one of the cafeteria tables.

"You are so flattering. You are twelve. Act like it. Be respectful of your elders. Especially elders that let you run around a secondary school with them."

"You are still my favorite cousin."

"I'm your only cousin."

"Which is why you are my favorite. Most of the time you are a prat."

He rolled his eyes as he sat down and took a bite of the tolerable food. "So full of love. Now, explain yourself, Deviltry. Why do I kinda suck?"

"You have no friends. No girlfriend. And the only thing you spend your time on is tutoring your twelve-year-old cousin and her friend and learning weapons training from my dad. I love you dearly, but you kinda suck."

Startled, he stared at her for a moment before smirking sadly.

"Don't worry about me, Deviltry. I'm just fine."

~x~

"Aren't you just gorgeous?"

The two cousins blinked at the newest person in the room. They had been sitting in companionable silence as Aidan worked on his project and Winter did the homework problems he set her when the pretty redhead entered with a grin.

"Not something I can say I've ever been called before."

"That's a shame," she said, entering the room unhurriedly. "You really are quite lovely. How old are you again?"

"Why thank you. I'm twelve. Who might you be?"

"I'm Maureen. I've been going to school with your idiot cousin for eleven years."

Winter grinned. "I'm sorry."

"So am I. So what are you studying? Do you need any help?"

As she spoke, she leaned over to look down at the work Winter had already done. Upon seeing them, she appeared startled and looked up at Winter again before glancing over at Aidan.

"Wow. These are pretty advanced. You are really something aren't you?"

The younger girl shrugged. "It's what Aidan makes me study."

"Aidan?"

"He's my tutor. Only on weekends, really, but we learn…other things on weekdays."

At her hesitant phrase, he chuckled softly, drawing the attention of the two girls to him momentarily. When Winter looked back at Maureen, she was startled to see an upset look on her face. Before she could ask, though, Aidan cut in.

"And as we are getting a bit of extra study time in, Madam Nosy, you think you could scurry along so she can get back to her work?"

Maureen sighed but nodded.

"Hit him if he gets mean," she threw over her shoulder as she walked out, giving a parting wink to Winter.

The silence returned for a few minutes before Winter stood up and leaned over Aidan's project, forcibly getting his attention.

"What?"

"You are pushing her away on purpose aren't you?"

He frowned, blue eyes clouding. "Don't worry about it, Wynne."

She sighed and straightened, for once looking down at him, her expression pained.

"You shouldn't do that, Aidan."

"Because it's mean?"

"Because one day, she might leave."

He stared at her, shocked, as the straightened and turned away, a sad smile on her face.

"Sometimes the people you love do that."

~x~

He didn't actually like killing. It was merely something he did well. Sometimes, he thought Elliot might be the same way and that gave him a little comfort. If a thirteen-year-old could accept his role as the future leader of an institute that spent its days elbow deep in gore, he could accept being an efficient murderer. He learned to live with it the same way he'd learned to live with being smarter than the kids in his class. Just another thing that made him special.

Some days, though, he hated it.

On days like those, he wondered if he were just a walking piece of flesh that moved at the will of fate, an automaton wound up to serve a specific purpose. Every aspect of his being, from his cunning to a natural athleticism, seemed to have been designed in order to make him a mastermind of death. A smart killer.

On days like those, he questioned if he had a soul.

~x~

"You have blood on your shirt, Aidan."

"I know."

He heard her shuffle further into the room but couldn't bring himself to break his gaze away from his little project, so near to completion.

"Should I assume it isn't yours then?"

"Yep."

She sighed, the soft sound echoing in the quiet room. The sound pressed in on him and he wondered, idly, at how halogen bulbs seemed to magnify sound when they were the only other emitting thing in the room. Something about the soft buzz in an otherwise empty room. It made everything feel cheap and senseless.

He went back to placing the tiny screw in place.

"Are you going to share with me the source?"

"It's more fun to leave you guessing, really. You get so feisty when I hold information back from you. Though, feisty usually turns to violent. Perhaps I should share. My body is aching too much for any more killing blows."

A soft snort sounded by his ear before she moved, dragging a stool away from the table and perching on it casually. The soft buzz of the light reached his ears again as he strained his hearing, waiting for the next bit of commentary in their usual banter.

It didn't come.

Finally, he looked up at her. Her legs were crossed negligently as she leaned on one elbow and looked down at the almost completed device on the table. Her eyes, while focused, seemed distant and her smile was sad. He frowned.

"So no violence?"

She shook her head, dislodging a few stray hairs from behind her ear.

"I've just about given up on you, Aidan. After so many years, I've had no effect. I think I'm about done trying."

"So does that mean you are going to stop randomly showing up in my work space and issuing me moral rectitude lectures?"

Her smile briefly curled further at one side before fading again into bittersweetness.

"Probably."

The softly spoken word was almost like a physical blow. He looked away from her, back to his work, but couldn't calm himself. For years, all he'd wanted was for her to go away. To find someone else to bother. But she'd never given up on him, no matter how harsh or sarcastic he was to her.

With a short, uneven breath, he picked up a plastic casing and fit it to the finished interior of the device he'd been working on for years. He tried not to think about how he'd come to look forward to her brief almost daily visits or the sarcastic bantering they participated in during school. As he placed each tiny screw, he tried to ignore the realization that if she gave up on him, he would have no one left to talk to in his life that wasn't surrounded by death.

"I still don't know what this is, you know."

Her curious statement startled him slightly and he dropped his screwdriver. Throwing her an irritated look, he picked it up and went back to work.

"It is a radio-cassette player."

"What's that?"

"Well, a radio is a device they used to receive signals for music and news and other audio broadcasts."

"Yes, thank you, Aidan. I know what a radio is."

He grinned at her unabashedly. "You asked."

"I meant the cassette part, smartass."

"Cassettes were a type of storage device used only for audio recording. It was the first time a person could record audio with just the touch of a button. It was also the only device for several decades, even after the invention of things to replace it, that allowed people to go back and record over instantly."

"You say that like its special," she commented curiously.

He felt his smile fall into something more wistful.

"It was so easy for them to just push a button and rewind to the beginning. Push another button and they could record something new. A new beginning. They could start over just like that."

As his words fell into silence, he felt her eyes stare at him. He knew that if he looked up, he would find her staring at him in the same way he stared at every problem put to him. He was afraid of that look. Afraid that she might begin to see him for what he was.

"Why did you just spend several years creating an obsolete piece of technology from nothing?"

He placed the final screw and secured the final button before sitting up and looking her in the eye.

"Because, some days, I need to create something instead of destroying it."

An: First and foremost, don't kill me. Please? It was a really suck place to end the chapter but...yeah. I promise there will be more of this. From Maureen's point of view actually. Just hold with me and it'll finish.

Next one should be about Sakura. Poor girl, she kinda got shoved to the side through most of the story didn't she? Well, its her turn. She's got more background than you'd think.

Thanks for the reviews so far. Glad to know that people find these interesting.