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 the clear blue sky and the Rodeo cook off. It was fun.
Note: Little more than a drabble but it continues to ask that same old question...with another avoidance answer.
'she developed an attachment to my little draculina from the very first'
"I asked you once, many long years ago, why you turned her. I don't think you ever gave me a satisfactory answer."
Alucard grinned down at his aging master, amused at her tenacity. Her single blue eye stared up at him in irritated calm and he mourned the fact that she had, at last, grown old enough to not rise to his bait. All good things, and all.
"I still cannot precisely say, my master."
She harrumphed, turning her gaze once more to where Seras was teaching her very awkward son how to dance for the ball they would soon be attending.
"So you are telling me that you turned her, protected her and enticed her into the realities of your warped world…and you have no idea why?"
He tipped his head back into a hearty laugh, sobering a minute later to look down at her.
"You always did have a way with words. But tell me, my Countess, why do you care?"
"I'm not sure you would quite understand," Integra replied softly, a tinge of other thoughts in her words. "She was always special though, wasn't she?"
Her voice trailed off at the end as she watched the smiling vampire joke around with her son. Long ago, she had accepted the eternal youth of the only woman she had ever come to trust completely. She had never allowed herself to dwell on comparing the slow appearance of wrinkles and age on her face while Seras' had remained pure and smooth, eternally at the cusp of adulthood.
Now, she relished it. A living memory of her youth and everything she had accomplished in her long life, she continued to shine with a light that was foreign and strange in the dark depths of an Institute filled with death. It was purity and innocence and everything that someone of her age and experience shouldn't have.
Sometimes, she wondered if Seras had the strongest will of them all.
"Are you growing maudlin in your old age?"
Reminded of her annoying company, she looked up at him with a frown.
"You still haven't answered."
His smile slipped as he, too, gazed on the odd pair of dancers.
"When I first saw her, she was running, scared, from an army of ghouls and a vampire out to do the same to her. She had witnessed her own people turned to the rotting undead and had realized the futility in her own situation and tried to flee. Even when he caught her and threatened her with rape and death, she still held on, desperate to survive in a situation without hope."
"I think we established that she has determination and bravery in the face of the impossible, Alucard," Integra interrupted wryly.
"You were raised to it, Integra, so you may not understand, but to find something like that in an individual brought up so far from this life…it is something remarkable. The sign of a warrior and, in truth, a leader."
"So, you recognized in her a potential queen?"
He grinned down at her before walking away, to reclaim her hand in the dance.
An: I wrote this yesterday at work but then I got invited out to one of the fancy smancy Rodeo Cookoff corporate tents and it was all downhill from there. (Jello shots are subtle poison to be avoided at all costs) So, today I post. It's little more than nothing and really, just a bonus chapter.
Proper chapter tomorrow. It may be a little later in the day since it is going to be a very busy couple of days at work (and that's when I get a huge chunk of my writing done).
Til next time!
