Disclaimer: I do not own Firefly any of its characters or the wonderful universe it is set in. Joss Whedon has that privilege. Nor do I own Hellsing any of its characters or what remains of its universe inside of this story (I think I've covered this before but ah well). I do own a few people, an Atlas of the Verse and many, many, MANY hours of research that was put into this story. (Kinda pathetic I know)

Dedication: To those wonderful and kind reviewers who continued to read and not give up on my little project here. Specifically: Viper5delta, Daimyo, Azure Lightning Emerald Cloud, kinigget and others. Every time I read one of your reviews, it reminded me of my duty to finish this and the promise to make sure it happened. It meant the world to me every time. I hope what follows was worth the wait.

Author's Note: Extended note below. However, in brief, the idea is to get this entire story done by the end of Lent. Yep, it's one of those projects.

Madness

oooo

I, I can't get these memories out of my mind

And some kind of madness has started to evolve

I, I tried so hard to let you go

But some kind of madness is swallowing me whole

oooo

Wash wondered where he and Jayne really stood in the chain of command. Who was lowest down? Did Simon get a say, newly part of the crew and all or was he more like Inara; there for the ride and free with opinions that may or may not be ignored depending on how The Captain felt that day.

River certainly didn't have any authority (or any clothes that fit between his Amazonian wife and the far curvier mechanic and Companion). Maybe he could convince Mal to pitch in for some as Wash had already needed to rescue her once from a stray wire attempting to "pull her into the abyss of heartstrings and bloodiness". All the same, a few late night games of "Name the Button" had convinced him that she knew more about the ship and how it worked than anyone aside of himself and Kaylee.

Still, something needed to be figured out. Jayne should never be in charge.

Unless, maybe, it was in charge of cleaning the port engine of body bits. He could probably do that just fine.

00oo

Book wondered, sometimes, if she was still watching. He doubted it, really. She surely had more important things to do than watch the goings on of a tired old Shepard, no matter how many shadows and skeletons his past held. Still, he wondered, what if she did?

What would she think of the almost volatile mix of people he found himself with?

Book had a strong felt that the ever-young mastermind and the bitter sergeant turned pirate captain had met. He was the type of man that she would undoubtedly have taken interest in. Perhaps he had been different during the war, but something told him that Mal Reynolds would have caught her attention anyway.

The man seemed to be as at war with himself as Book had once been. He growled and threatened in order to protect his own, yet couldn't seem to turn his back on two lost souls in need despite their very real danger to him and his won. He belittled God, morality, and often is own crew – or at least one of them – yet took time to curtsy and bow with a girl who spoke in nonsense phrases and could have reasonably been ignored.

"Malcolm Reynolds gets the job done and has a rule against asking questions."

The Captain gave him a disparaging look as Zoe marched the remains of Nishka's group away.

"Got something you feel the need to say, Shepard?"

The older man grasped his hands behind his back as he watched the group disappear into the night.

"Just curious if that rule is to prevent things like this."

"Pardon," Mal asked, looking like he did know whether or not to be annoyed by the subject. "I'd think you would figure the opposite. Asking questions would help us steer clear of earning the death wish of warm and fuzzy people like Crow, dontcha think?"

Finally, Book looked over at the younger man, still wondering if she had seen her share of this minor melodrama and not-quite heroism.

"No. The way I figure, its easier to live with stealing what you don't know. After all, at the end of the day, you still need to put your crew first."

He glanced out at the dim lights from the city that was surely celebrating by now.

"Well, almost first."

oooo

Seras chuckled as she watched the view screens idly. While A.I. Aidan was running some calculations (or whatever the computer did to collate the data she needed with such an expanse of Freaks, communications, and publications in the Verse), she had turned to the screen she very rarely turned off. She still wondered at the strange turn of events that led to the characters on screen. It seemed that God had a sense of humor, piling together so many of the people she had significant dealings within the past few decades.

Of course, with as much as she had been traveling and interfering with people during that time, perhaps it wasn't so strange.

Regardless, watching the group struggle to take a rather large, muscular man through the ship was definitely entertaining. She only wished she had sound (and less of a Feed delay). They seemed ready to roll him head first down the stairs when the console chimed to indicate an incoming wave.

oooo

"I'm assuming that since I can see you that you haven't gone off-world yet."

"Not yet," the blonde woman responded glancing away from the screen to something Shiara couldn't see before looking back with a small smile. "Still waiting for a destination."

"How goes the research?"

"You know," Seras began, her voice tinged by something the redhead couldn't identify. "I've come across some weird and disturbing things in my life. Hell, as a vampire, I've done my fair share of acts that would make a grown man quake in fear and cringe to see. But this?" She broke off a moment. "This is something else entirely."

"I've heard that the pictures can be…hard to look at," Shiara commented quietly.

"The accounts about what happened are, unbelievably, worse," Seras replied with a clear look of distaste. "I just…."

"Just…?" her daughter prompted.

"I just wonder how someone who is still human could do this. How could an apparently substantial number of people?"

"I don't know," the redhead replied, hating to see the blonde woman on the other end looking so…. Shaking her head, she forcibly redirected the conversation. "Speaking of things I don't know…."

Seras smiled at the very abrupt and obvious shift in conversation but went along with it. "Yes?"

"So, I found out that a series of studies on the compound's effect on people have already been done. Problem is that the studies and the results are buried under so much blackout and red tape that it is currently impossible to read them."

"Someone does not want them seen."
"Indeed," Shiara agreed with a wry smile. "I would begin the hunt, but I actually need to go. One of the moons that was just cleared for settlers has had an outbreak. They need me to come and help assess whether or not it is a terraforming side effect."

"Border moon?"

"Rim," the scientist responded grimly. She silently agreed with her mother-in-law's heavy sigh. "Right now Chael is off doing something with your hus- with his father. Not sure what. When he gets done, I'll set him to hacking his way through the security."

"I appreciate it. I know this started out as your little side project, but I really have a bad feeling about this." Seras paused for a moment, reading something on another screen. "I'm not sure where I am off to just yet, but if you need to get ahold of me, wave the ship and Aidan will make sure I get it."

"Da's good like that. Be careful chasing down those Reavers," Shiara added seriously. "No one has ever really had a chance to see how they fight."

"And lived," Seras responded dryly.

"Precisely."

The two smiled and signed off. Shiara sighed, worried in spite of her confidence in her adopted mother. For all anyone knew, these…things might not be human at all. The idea was more than distracting. An idea meandered around her head back and forth before she keyed in a wave destination and waited for an answer.

"Hello? Shiara?"

"Michael! Guess who has gone off to chase the Reavers?"

oooo

Kaylee poked her head into the dining room where most of the crew sat finishing up a conspiratorial meeting that turned into lunch. She shifted a little farther into the doorway, catching Zoe's eyes. The First Mate looked the mechanic over and noticed the suspicious lack of the mechanics nearly ubiquitous overalls.

"Why do you look like someone on the hunt for mischief?" Zoe asked, turning the rest of the room's occupants attention to the girl in the doorway.

"I'm just wonderin'."

"Wonderin' what?" Jayne responded, quickly taking the bait.

"Wonderin' whose pigu I'm going to beat this time," she replied, pulling a large silvery-grey ball she'd managed to conceal behind her back and toss it at Jayne.

"Well," Mal responded, daintily wiping his mouth with a napkin. "I do believe that is a challenge."

oooo

It was different here.

In some ways, it was the same. Metal walls surrounded everything and kept the Black at bay. Days that were nights and time that meant nothing but a number on a screen. Normal human cycles simulated by an arbitrary schedule. And a room. Full of needles and liquids that stole the sleep or gave it back and generally just lurked, a bully waiting in the wings.

Wings

She had been set free.

She didn't fly on her own, that was the same, but nor did she fly alone. The voices stayed with her, not in her, but beside and around. Sometimes in and sometimes out, but not sharp like needles, stabling into the faulty part of her thoughts. No.

And the metal. It didn't hold in and capture, suffocating, trapping. Grew together, took shape. Became the Lady who loved and sheltered them, kept the dark out and let them fly. Warm and hardy, strong with a steady heart.

At times, she melted into the metal and lived inside her, became one with that Lady as she flew through the stars. Not here, not allowed to call her that. Haven. A place to be. Not be…not yet. To remember how?

Memory brought to her by the voices sometimes. Watched them. Saw them play, heard them fight, laugh, tease, be. Ever-changing and alive.

Not like her.

Smiled and laughed like them.

Until she couldn't.

The echoes came back and she goes away again. Grasps and being fall away.

Only the shell, the puppet. Following whispers, drawn unwillingly to where the nightmares lived again.

oooo

He knew the moment he saw her. The back of his mind grumbled that she shouldn't be there. It also wondered, briefly, how she had known or did she just happen across it in her undisciplined wanderings through the derelict. But the rest of him reacted as if he had been punched with the truth as he looked at her, not even startled by her sudden appearance as she stood, looking at the horror with a mix of fear and sick understanding on her face.

Reavers.

Mal couldn't rightly remember when had first heard of Reavers or if he had even truly doubted their existence. Their grotesque and soul bleeding brand of destruction had cut an ugly line through Mal's memories since the end of the War. Instance after instance had taught him new things to have nightmares about.

What truly made him sick, though, was how well he knew them. How well he could predict and grasp what they would do and had done. How he knew, just looking at the man they pulled out of the hole he had crawled into, that he was beyond help and known, in an instant, how far that madness had gone when supplied the slightest clue.

As much as he hated them, Mal knew that in this instance the Alliance man had been the righteous man, a reminder of the often amoral nature of their own deeds – grave robbers and vultures profiting off those who had suffered horribly for no other reason than simply being in that small speck of space at that particular moment. He could not pretend to be the White Knight blessed by God any more than he could pretend to believe. But to understand monsters like that?

How black had he become?

"Everyone has a light and a dark side, with varying proportions and often a touch of grey. It doesn't matter how often you slip back and forth between them in your mind. it's your choices and actions that make the difference.

"I've thought many times about killing my husband – which could be argued to be a Good act by many who know him – but I choose not to. That is the difference."

A smile flicked over his lips, Miss Vicky's voice sounding in his mind as he watched the Alliance ship destroy the derelict – trap and graveyard all the same. He wondered, as he sometimes did, whatever happened to her and what she would think of him now. Remembering the half-serious, half-wry look that she had when she had said that all those years ago, Mal wondered if she would have known too.

Regardless, for this night at least, she had taken his nightmares away.

oooo

Fire burned and metal screamed into a silence that swallowed it whole. The echoes fought the fire, but less. Darkness swallowed them whole.

No new nightmares.

Tonight.

oooo

At times, through the years, Seras wondered what it would be like to be human again. She had long since stopped desiring it, truly. Still, what if? What would it be like to walk into a scene of carnage, smell the blood, and not be hit by a rush of hunger or, often, desire? During the war and in her years touring the Rim since, she had felt at her darkest when she felt that shock after catching even the smallest whiff, twisting her mournful or respectful moment into something twisted and black.

There was no point landing outside the town and walking up. There was little town left. Dust whipped around in the afternoon winds blew in through the widening crack of the opening bay doors. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the change in light, but once they did, she wished they hadn't.

The carnage was absolute. Bodies lay strewn everywhere, even a cursory glance telling her that many of them were missing limbs, organs, and parts of their flesh. The attack had been relatively recent, only the night before, and she could smelt the distinct odor of spent sex coming from all directions. Combined with the smell of ruptured intestines and bodies beginning to cook and decay in the sun, the stench struck her like a slap in the face.

She felt nauseous.

There was no complex mixture of emotions here. Only disgust and sorrow. After taking a moment to compose herself, she set out to do what she had come to do.

The one side benefit she had found to her undesired glimpses of the future and other so-called "psychic" annoyances was that she had finally begun to gain a measure of control. She wasn't able to banish them completely – or even lessen them, sadly – but, with a lot of practice, she had learned to have them when she wanted them. By carefully clearing her mind and going into a sleeplike state, she could almost use psychometry: gaining information from touching something.

It didn't always work. Really it failed far more than it succeeded, but she was never one to stop trying and, really, anything would help. Very few survived Reaver attacks and those that did were often not stable enough to give good information – if there was even any they could give. She needed someone who could tell her information that she could only gain from a victim.

Carefully, Seras picked through the town. No matter how surprised and caught off guard these people of the town may have been, someone would have fought back. Somebody must have shifted the odds. Finally, under some debris of a wrecked room, she found one in the doorway of a room in a house on the outskirts of town. A cursory glance revealed that the room, now an abandoned remnant, had most likely belonged to a young girl. Lack of blood in the house could make her pretend that they managed to get out of town and survive.

Loathe to touch him, she nevertheless pulled him out of the house to examine. The twilight quality of the light sometimes played tricks with her eyes and she wanted to examine him regardless of whether or not her voodoo powers worked. After getting him into the light, she almost wished she hadn't.

The man's face was disfigured through lacerations, punctures, patches of missing flesh and what almost looked like another person's flesh sewn on. She didn't want to know. The gruesome handling of his body extended throughout with additional finds of crude piercings into his hands and arms and a discoloration of the fingernails and eyes that she felt safe ascribing to radiation poisoning. He was a mess and, from the lack of tearing along the lacerations, it was probably a self-inflicted mess.

Still, despite any hopes to the contrary, he was completely human.

Looking down at him and then to the carnage surrounding them, she hesitated attempting to read her silent witness. She was fairly sure that she didn't want to see anything he might show her. Still, her duty came first. It was time to take one for the team, even if she wasn't on their team anymore.

Carefully, Seras stripped off one of her gloves and crouched beside the dead Reaver. Resting only the barest of weight from her fingers, the vampire emptied her mind and slowly sank into a trance-ish state. Consciousness slipped away bit by bit until all she could sense was the torn flesh under her fingertips.

Rage crashed down over her, sweeping her away in a tsunami of images and brutality that overwhelmed her completely. Helpless, she was swallowed whole and tumbled endlessly into the dark, sinking hopelessly further and further…

A gunshot rang out.

Seras could feel the wind split in the space next to her head, the push of thunder along the tips of her hair.

Just like that, she shot to the surface of her consciousness. Lost yet in the waves of rage, now more turbulent as more sources joined into the hurricane, instinct flooded her at last and pulled her into the fight.

One was on the ground, dead, before she realized that she was not alone in this fight. The glint of an impossibly built gun brought her more clearly to her senses, surprise edging off the madness.

"A trap," she gasped, unable to make more sense.

It didn't matter. The rest of them were upon her. The fight had begun.

It was a raiding party, maybe twelve or fifteen total. Even with one down already, the fight was not as easy as it should have been for two master vampires with centuries of experience. The way they fought went contrary to all fighting tactics, charging forth aggressively without seeming to understand or care for defensive strategies.

Yet they were not mindless ghouls. They fought with coordination and reflexes that seemed to be fueled by veins that pumped adrenaline rather than blood. Even knowing that they were human, Seras couldn't help but wonder what hell had spat these monsters back up again.

With both sides hindered by buildings and wreckage blocking their paths and lines of sight, the Reavers took full advantage and worked chaotically through the town laughingly evading the shots of both vampires by luck more than skill. Only two more had gone down when Seras' gun clicked impotently, completely spent of all cartridges. She ignored the belittling scoff from her companion as he pulled out his secondary weapon. Instead, she focused on freeing her trusty short sword from her leg strap, straining to hold it together as the mental onslaught of her sanity continued.

In closer proximity, the attack shifted. A few more shots fired off and four of the Reavers went down, their already mutilated bodies practically exploding from the impact of rounds designed to take care of otherworldly foes. The laugh that normally accompanied the Midian's firepower was oddly mute, hinting that maybe even the Master of Monsters was disgusted rather than delighted by the violence.

Whether following typical tactics or driven by what appeared to be insatiable lust, those left surged on Seras. Hands grasped at her arms and legs, clearly looking for submission. No match for her vampiric strength, she pulled free from most easily, bleeding from where their nails and hand claws refused to let go. Before she was completely free, one of them had lost his head and another had been stabbed through the chest, his heart's blood dripping from the tip of her blade as it protruded from the other side.

Something happened then, though. The sight of fresh blood marking her pale skin seemed to push them into a frenzy and the surge of aggression crashed into Seras, making her falter. The two left standing grasped at her more tightly, actually lifting her from the ground as they worked in concert to both subdue her and rip the clothes from her body.

As the surge passed and she came back into some semblance of focus, Seras had the faint impression of movement before the Reaver holding her at the legs was suddenly lacking a head. Not bothering to try and comprehend, she used the moment of her legs falling suddenly to the ground to throw the other one pinning her arms behind her back over her head and into a building some twenty yards away. In a flash, her short sword followed him, imbedding itself into the wall by way of his heart.

The fight done, Seras finally turned her full attention to her companion in arms.

"Alucard."

His name was almost a whisper, falling from her lips like a sigh before her body turned to liquid and she collapsed, the world gone black.

When she came to, he was carrying her onto her ship. With the ease of familiarity, he navigated to her quarters and laid her down in her bed.

"I don't believe I have ever seen such a lavish bed in a ship like this," Alucard observed dryly, sitting casually in her chair, which was well appointed and equally out of place in the surroundings.

"I'm a hedonist," she smirked tiredly.

"Clearly. Tell me, did you steal it from a Companion?"

"Better. A politician."

"Ah, the truest hedonists in any age."

They fell into silence, surveying each other after so long apart. Briefly, Seras contemplated trying to sit up but decided against it. Instead, she sought to answer the curiosity that had finally settled on her now that the animalistic screams had died from her mind and she could think clearly once again.

"Why are you here, Alucard?"

"I don't suppose you would accept that I was passing by?" When she just stared at him unblinkingly, he leaned back with a sigh. "Our son was worried. He asked me to help when he heard I was closer to you that he was. Said he had, I quote, 'a bad feeling'."

"And you just stopped everything to come?"

Her voice was latently incredulous, but he ignored it and the question.

"What happened out there?"

For a moment, she just looked him over. All signs of joking were gone and Seras knew well that he would not relent until she answer his queries after finding her in such a foolish position. Finally, with a long sigh, she dropped her head into the pillow and closed her eyes.

"They were projecting into my mind. Such rage and violence. So basic in their desires that they don't even form thoughts." She paused, forcing the sensation that was swelling upon her again to subside. "They came upon me in the middle of a…oh, what to call it…a reading? Fed into it, made it infinitely worse."

"You can do…readings now?" Alucard asked slowly, his voice giving no hint of opinion.

"I guess," she laughed dryly. "Might as well see if I can put the nightmares to use, right?"

When he didn't respond, she opened her eyes to look at him. Stone-faced, he merely peered at her as if trying to decode a message. A long minute passed as they simply stared at each other, ever emotion felt by either of them in their long history fluttering through Seras as they did. Still, as the seconds ticked by, she could feel the repression of much he wanted to say and knew there was no way of getting him to speak without his doing so first.

"Look, Alucard, I need to rest," she sighed, breaking the silence as she pulled herself carefully to sit upright. "If you want to talk, okay. You really did help me out. Thank you for it, really. At the very least, I owe you a conversation if you want it, but if you are just going to sit and stare at me, I…I can't do that right now. I'm sure you have better things to be doing, things you need to do, that you stopped to come rescue me."

In the face of his unnerving stare, her somewhat senseless rambling stumbled to a halt. She truly was tired. They continued to stare at each other for another minute before he rose to his feet in one silk movement. As she looked up at him, he placed a hand on her head in affectionate resemblance of the time he had done so once before, centuries ago.

"Rest, Seras."

She smiled at him exhaustedly, watching as he made his way out of her room and into the corridor, out of sight once again.

Author's note:

So…please don't hate me. There are a lot of reasons for this, really. Part of it was that I just did not like what I was coming up with. I hated it and found it frustrating. Then, eventually, I got over myself.

So, about 4 years ago, I sat down and wrote chapters 10-14. I had a nice little temp job that basically gave me time to do anything I wanted and get paid. So I wrote. A lot. But, suddenly, that job was gone and I had a nice full time job as a teacher. Which led to spending the entire following summer getting professional development and certification stuff done.

Then…like a jerk…I lost everything I wrote.

For two years.

I really didn't want to start all over and was super depressed until I eventually found it all again. Time was still an issue though and I didn't want to start updating what I had and just leave it hanging for a long while again. So I did nothing with it.

But, I really am just tired of it sitting there unfinished. I feel horrible, too. I have had so much support from so many people for this story (more than I could ever have imagined) and I felt all the time like I was letting people down. And I mean…like daily. I have insomnia so writing in my head helps me sleep…but not when you have this big burden of expectation.

So, this year, I decided to get it done. I set myself a goal for Lent. I have a lot more of my school work preplanned this year and a big empty spring break. So I am going to do everything I can to get this story completely finished by April 21st.

And, if I don't make that deadline, I will get it finished as quickly after that as I can.

Again, thank you to everyone who has been kind through the years. I hope this was worth the wait.

Til next time.