No, I haven't forgotten this story. I just haven't had time to do much to it! Look for another update around Christmas when I have a break.

z zo xo ox z

"I always knew you were a bastard. I just didn't realize how very right I was." The soft, silky, taunting voice drifted down from the rooftops, freezing the Paladin in his tracks. "So tell me, did your dearest mother ever tell you who your father was? Or did she even know?" Rich with amusement, the voice fell from a new roof, the monster itself invisible against the background of stars.

Anderson idly realized that he'd never been able to see the stars like this before the city had been wiped out. There was still a bit of pollution to remove, which he'd do as soon as the damned bloodsucker gave him a decent shot.

"Did she get a name before she spread her legs for him?" Musing, the voice migrated again, now resting somewhere on the cupolas of a decorative office building. "Was she even willing? Did you start your life in sin as a child of rape? Or was she merely a slut?"

"STAND STILL, YE BASTARD!" Spinning, Anderson searched the rooftops vainly, before vanishing in a flurry of papers to reappear next to a likely-looking chimney, where a red-clad vampire should be lounging in the shadows.
And the voice now drifted up, from the alleys below.
"Did she hop in bed as willingly as you hop about the city chasing me? I do apologize, but I won't be gracing your bed. Unlike your mother's, it will remain empty."

He had very few memories of his mother, but those he had were deeply cherished. For the few years he'd had her, he'd known how very much he was loved. She'd wanted a child, had told him plainly that she'd loved his father, but they'd been unable to marry. And he yelled as much back to the monster.

"Aye, she knew my father, ye bastard!" (and how had the vampire come by that information, that he'd been born out of wedlock, with a father who had seen him only a handful of times? That he'd been far too young to remember, still in diapers and with a bottle the last the man had come to see them?) "Knew him an' loved him. I'm no unwanted beast, groveling to the Hellsings, biting a young woman to try and make a family of me own. You're an undead bastard, you'll never know love."

He almost felt a touch of guilt at that. Vampires were desperately lonely monsters in their own way. They'd create a child to relieve that, then the child would leave them almost immediately. Dracula himself, were the tales to be believed, had trapped his three Brides with him to keep them around! Ridiculing the vampire would be rubbing salt in a wound the beasts rarely acknowledged, but he was good and mad and righteous fury would leave the vampire wounded.

Except the beast ignored his taunt. "Knew him and loved him so much they went to the church together." Cold, cold laughter, now from the dark entrance of another building. "Gave her a ring, said their vows before God and all." A snicker, now. "A bastard. A right, true bastard in all senses of the word. And you really have no idea who he was." A touch of wonder at that.

"A nobleman, rich, I know that much. Unable to wed the woman he loved due to his station. But he provided for us." Peering down, Anderson sought that flash of red. Talking to the beast might just distract it long enough for him to find it, plant a bayonet or fifty in its grinning face. He had no shame of his parentage. He'd been an innocent babe, none of it his choice or decision. What he'd had power to control, he'd done well at. So he'd let the beast think it had hit a nerve.

"Provided for you, did he?" The voice was calm, even, but with an undertone of bitter amusement. "Sent her a bit of cash, his own private kept woman, his little personal whore. Or was it hush money, to keep her from blackmailing a fine, upstanding man with the truth about his dalliances?"

"You may be a depraved irresponsible monster, but my father took care of our needs. I got an education, food, all I needed." Until his mother had died... and his voice caught a bit at the memory. The vampire noticed.

"And yet, our little orphan Paladin's mother wasn't there anymore. Did she kick you out when the money stopped coming? Were you in the way, when she brought in other men to entertain?" The vampire actually sounded CURIOUS. It also sounded like it was still in the same place as the previous question.

"She died. I went to an orphanage. He continued to send money there until I was twelve." Listen... listen... had the vampire moved?

"Twelve, eh? And when was this?" YES. Still in the same place! Well, perhaps his age would shut the monster up. Time to make sure he had several bayonets ready to throw, and Anderson felt about inconspicuously to double-check his preparations.

"Just past the turn of the century."

"Ah, I see." The damn vampire was nearly laughing now, and from a new alley, too! Scowling, Anderson used the pages to step down to street level at the mouth of the alley. No good, the voice now echoed from precisely the same roof he himself had just been on.

"He'd married and had his legitimate son. You were no good to him then. A little bastard he was happy to sweep aside at the first opportunity." Smug, the beast was SMUG. And not wanting to engage in any hand-to-hand or bayonet-to-lying-undead-mouth combat, or the bullets would have been flying already.

"And you know this, how?" The beast didn't know, but it was old, intelligent, evil, and a good guesser. If he had a brother, it was news to him. He'd just figured his father had died or something else had happened. There had been a few vicious strains of flu in those years, and that and whooping cough had taken a few of his orphanage companions. To him, it had seemed obvious that his father had also succumbed, or died from a heart attack, or similar. He'd never considered that he'd been... ABANDONED... after a dozen years of regular support and his yearly birthday card. No, his father had perished somehow.

"I know this because I was in England then. And I was a nobleman, and the Hellsings had been ennobled. I "rubbed elbows" with your darling father and met his womanizing son too. You ARE your father's son and there is no mistaking it; you carry the family looks. No wonder he kept you hidden away and left you in the orphanage. Anyone who saw you would have known immediately that he'd been sleeping with whores. You were discarded when a real son came along, one to carry on his family title. He got you on your mother, who knows how many others he fathered, only to discard you when he finally took a fertile spouse and made legitimate children."

Cackling, the vampire was caught unawares when the infuriated Paladin suddenly appeared beside him in a flurry of pages. Surprised or not, there was nothing wrong with his reflexes...and Anderson was left with two blades embedded in the crumbling brick wall and a vampire that had vanished well away. Fast, the monster was fast...and he'd kill him. He'd find the beast's coffin, dig it up, impale Alucard, take the blade out, and repeat again a few million times.

Brilliantly red, thoroughly smug eyes glowed in the halls under Hellsing as Alucard looked back on the encounter with great fondness.

Abraham's bastard had the same pride as his father and the same blindness to that weakness. And he'd had no idea that he was a Hellsing, either. Abraham wouldn't have abandoned his son, most likely the money had been stolen away before it reached the orphanage or even afterwards. But the timing was delicious. A precise year would have been nice to have known, but Arthur's birth was close enough to fit the timeframe he'd been told...and a perfect way to taunt his old foe.

No, he might not be able to tangle with him in blood and pain like he longed to...but Integra had said nothing about VERBAL sparring and he was definitely counting this as a win.