quick content warning:
it only goes downhill from here guys. War is on the horizon, and this shit's about to get messy. Violence, death, destruction-if you've seen Hellsing (and I should hope you have) the OVA's/manga, not the original anime, well. You saw what happened to London, and everyone in it. Hell is roaring toward Amestris, and only Alucard knows what to expect.

"this" is telepathic communication

Roy's POV

Chapter 14: a fine line (between useful advice and nightmare fodder)

The gunshot tore through the quiet of the tiny room, the scent of gunpowder mingling with the scent of decay and blood. The body of his former comrade collapsed back against the bed, leaving a wide open view of the spattering on the wall where his face had been moments ago. The gun lowered once more to his side, slowly, the knuckles hidden beneath his gloves more than likely as white as the fabric covering them.

"The King has lost his first pawn in the game, how titillating." The velvety voice, all darkness and carnage wove its way into his mind. "Shot point blank by the man meant to guide him to safety. I was half convinced you'd let him turn first."

"Enough."

"I prefer a more…artistic approach when sacrificing minions to my cause, but at least you had the spine to kill him 'face to face'. Bravo." Slow, sardonic clapping echoed about the room, putting a look of disgust on the faces of the gathered.

"I said enough." He spun to face the grinning monster lounging about like royalty on holiday.

Hands stilled, the final crack echoed sharp and final. The gaze never shifted, the grin never faltered. "Do you know what would happen, should you allow one of them to live? Should you save your friend a bullet to the face because you know his name?" Alucard cocked his head, gaze dimming and grin smoothing into a line of bored contempt. "I don't think you do, not really. You've seen war, seen it in the mindless slaughter and infinite bloodshed that haunts your dreams, smelt it in the stench of burnt ozone that even still clings to you-"

He moved without thinking, gun leveling against a porcelain forehead. "Keep talking and another pawn gets sacrificed." A slight narrowing of the eyes was all the response his threat received.

"-but you've never truly lived it." Alucard continued as if uninterrupted. "Never willingly sacrificed those around you for your cause, never stood above it all and watched as your pawns fell because they had to. The fear of invasion, of loss far greater than yourself only a breath away, no contingency plan just luck and brutality to keep you breathing. All you've lived before incomparable to the monster waiting for you now, in the shadows of every man woman and child in your country. Hand crafted genocide and long-winded plans with gaping loopholes-do not expect such any longer. That you've managed so far in the tumult of this place with so few casualties close to home is astonishing, but do not expect that anomaly to continue."

"You're suggesting my men may die?"

Alucard brushed the muzzle of the pistol to the side with a slender forefinger. "I have played both sides of this game long before you, and will continue to do so long after your bones are dust. Your men will die; perhaps many in this very room will fall before you see the end. All you can do is throw the bones and pray to your God that you're choices will stymie the death toll and leave you victorious."

Crimson eyes once again flared, Mustang close enough now for the first time to truly see the endless, swirling abyss that lay behind them. It was ancient and knowing, that gaze, the truth of his words reflected in the centuries old stain of the irises. It chilled him, the echoes of warfare and bloodshed he couldn't quite explain away even as they faded from his mind.

"Save your friend a bullet and he will take more from you than the anguish garnered by the act." Point made, Alucard returned to the eerie grin.

Roy held the gun out, knowing Hawkeye would reclaim it without comment. The bastard may have been an insensitive prick, and a loon to boot, but there was wisdom in his words, behind their harshness, their taunting condescension. He called himself a king, a warlord, and Mustang knew that despite his distrust and utter abhorrence for the thing sitting before him wearing the guise of a man, you didn't dismiss knowledgeable words simply because you disliked the mouth they came from.

"Hawkeye, get the furor on a secure line. Havoc, see to it that Falmon's body is dealt with properly, without raising suspicion. Fullmetal, join Fuery. Fill him in on the situation and assist in the detection of infected individuals. Alphonse, come with me."

The room had emptied as he spoke, Alphonse rising wearily to follow Roy into the hallway. A glance to the side, to further burn the scene into his mind, then Mustang made to leave the now-oppressive room. "And you-"He paused in the doorway, narrowing his gaze at the still-lounging not-God over Al's head. "Either do something useful or make yourself scarce."

Alucard didn't deign to respond, his silence as hard to read as the manic grin.

And as much as he hated the idea of leaving Falmon's body in the same room as the man, he didn't really have a choice. There was a hell of a lot to do when attempting to prevent a nationwide panic, especially when the threat was a disease no one could cure save the pulling of a trigger.

The door clicked behind them, the fresh air of the hallway doing little to ease the churning in his gut. Alphonse leant wearily against the wall opposite, looking every bit the kid he tried so hard not to be, just like his brother. "Come on then." The younger Elric followed him without complaint, silent as a specter through the remains of the hospital.

"How much of what he says can we trust?"

Al sighed, rubbing a hand over his gritty face. "Colonel, with all due respect why are you asking me? Ed-"

"Is far too hot-headed for his own good. You've spent enough time with him to give me a reasonable answer, Elric, and that's all I want. After everything you've seen, can we trust him?"

The blonde sunk onto the bed of the small room, commandeered by Mustang from a non-to-pleased nurse. "Alucard's-he's-he reminds me of Greed."

Hearing the two compared did little to ease his suspicions. "I can't see how that could possibly be a good thing."

"Probably not. But Greed came through for us in the end. Believe in him, and maybe he'll believe in you."

"Perhaps I should have asked your brother."

Alphonse shrugged. "Probably. But brother believed in Greed enough to trust him with his life. And Greed returned the favor, me sitting here now is proof of that."

A niggling at the back of his mind made him wonder if the kid was referring to before, or after, the battle with the Dwarf in the Flask Homunculus was won. "Any other worrying observations you'd like to share?"

"None that I can't offer without feeling like an idiot sir. I have plenty of suspicions, but nothing I can prove."

"Clearly you're not trying hard enough." Alucard's voice echoed merrily through their minds, his presence little more than a flicker in the corner of the eye and the feeling of bugs scuttling across the skin. "Men who wait to act on their suspicions until they have tantamount proof are the ones that end up with a knife to their throat and all they swore to protect burnt and bleeding at their feet."

"As much as I enjoy your little games, I've had enough of them for one night. Dispense with the theatrics, or I'll have a go at testing how fire proof you really are."

The creature's chuckle danced around the confined space, half in half out of their heads. Mustang waited in silence, half hoping the nosferatu would attempt to call his bluff so he could have an excuse for the slip of hand that would burn the monster's eyes from their sockets. The laughter faded, the room as devoid of the creature's signature red as it had been from the beginning.

Roy sighed in that melodramatically dejected way he often used with Ed. "Oh well, maybe next time." He turned to Alphonse, who was slumped against the wall. It was clear the boy was exhausted, asked to do far too much far too soon. "Get some rest, Alphonse. And if our dear crimson crusader should come to bother you," He flashed the boy the cheeriest grin he could muster. "Do feel free to transfuse him into the wall. Whatever interior decorator they hired was sorely mistaken on how much the elderly enjoy beige; a splash of color would do wonders to this room." And then he was out of the door and down the hall, watching the shadows out of the corner of his eye and waiting for the newest bane of his existence to reappear.

To the left, to the right, clinging to the wreckage and the shadows, spiders dogging his footsteps with an order and purpose that was nothing if not unnatural. Orchestrated, even. Roy smirked despite himself. Alucard's antics didn't frighten him, now that the creature had been confined to the constraints of their reality. Away from that initial battlefield, when the haze of shock and astonishment had cleared from his sudden arrival, the nosferatu appeared little more than a child. A child with incredible powers and a thirst for violence to quell the greatest of warlords, but a child none the less. Pranks and taunting, using their inability to comprehend as a means to string them along like a little boy making marionettes from insects.

"Poking dead things with sticks, and burning ants with a magnifying glass. Have I summed up your existence adequately, No Life King?" The hall he stood in was dim, the glass of the window before him facing away from the slowly rising dawn. It was one of the few still intact on this side of the building, decimated and deserted in favor of the less perilous parts seeping in sunshine to chase away the horrors of the night. He could practically feel the shadows behind him moving, seeming to dance in the pane's reflection.

"Perfectly…" The shadows constricted and boiled, changing the view beyond the window into a foreign land smothered by night and serenaded with screaming in a foreign tongue. The horizon rushed forward, specs in the distance growing rapidly until they were discernible. Rows upon rows of towering spikes, each adorned with a corpse impaled straight through from groin to sternum. Blood seeped from wounds both old and new, a few chests rose and fell in the pained wails of a slow death but most sat vacant and rotting, eyes pecked out and uniforms torn and defiled. The once green grass was tainted red, flooded by more gore than the soil could ever hope to absorb, and in the distance the sky burned red, though with fire or sunrise it was impossible to tell.

"Good gods…" The reek of war burned his nose, the coppery tang of blood whispering across his tongue.

"Poking the dead with sticks…" Flames roared upward, consuming the battlefield until it was lost from view. "Burning the ants in my kingdom…." Orange tongues gave way to a new view, as horrible as the first. A village burning, flailing specs meant to be people screaming and fleeing; here one trying to stymie the blaze, there four trapped inside, choking on smoke as they lent from windows and watched in vane as their home was devoured. Men, women, and children locked inside to perish with everything they owned while soldiers looked on. Sobbing, screaming, begging in a foreign tongue to the tune of flesh boiling, cracking, congealing and slipping to warped floorboards to be consumed.

"Stop it…"

"Building a throne of the dead to carry me to Heaven. Spilling the blood of kingdoms to protect my ideals, opposing the heathen filth in such a dance as to catch the eye of God himself so that he would climb down from on high and join in the battle to wipe those who worked against His name from the very face of the land they dared to sully…." Figures cloaked in cream and violet whipped past on horses, hollering rallying cries to the legions suddenly on the forefront of the horizon. Men fell to their swords before they in turn fell, joining the mess of dead, becoming one in the same now that they were so much litter upon the landscape. War raged furious and unforgiving, the cacophony deafening the scent of unwashed bodies, of death and shit and steel overpowering.

"I said stop it!" The tinkling of broken glass was loud in the sudden quite, the pain in his hand throbbing with the nerve endings rubbed raw in every other inch of his body. Cool air ruffled his hair; sweet scent of morning and that odd smell distinctly Central brushing away the stench that had bile rising in his throat. Roy lowered his hand, flexing his fingers as he attempted to slow his breathing and regain his composure. From the shards of glass clinging still to the window he could once more see behind him, see the place on the wall that was too dark, hapless roiling mass concentrating into something vaguely humanoid. He refused to turn, even as the head covered in that unnatural mop of black hair shifted through the plaster, tilting until a singular crimson speck was visible, vibrant and staring straight through him.

"You ask questions, yet refuse to acknowledge the answers? Now who is the child?" A smug grin creased the pale face, upper body appearing through the wall so he was more than just a mounted head.

"I did not ask for that-"

"You asked if you had summed up my existence…And you did, rather well for it being a poorly placed barb." A hint of annoyance had leaked into his voice, a sudden frown falling over the Nosferatu's face. It lingered for mere seconds before his expression smoothed and became soft, blank if a bit distracted.

"So…this is the true face of the creature summoned in the hopes of consuming God."

Alucard pulled himself forward fully, the rumble in his chest half laughter half some indiscernible noise of unknowable emotion. "That is but a glimpse, a mortal lifetime long passed."

Roy turned to face him, all contrasting colors and edges that moved against, even despite, the breeze. "You were human." The creature before him looked the stuff of bad dreams and fey tales, not of flesh and blood and mortal constraints.

"Once, long ago, I was a mortal man like you. I fought to protect what was mine; my beliefs, my land, my soul. And when I had destroyed everything for my cause, when my armies, my kingdom, my people lay spattered beneath my boots just as surely as that which I sought to eradicate, I turned my back to it all. I continued moving forward, even when all was lost and any man in his right mind would accept defeat and welcome the embrace of darkness brought on by the finality of the headsman's axe connecting with the block."

"Why tell me this? Why show me those things?"

"Why implicate myself? Mark myself as a target, a threat, a monster?" A nasty grin slid slowly, lopsidedly onto his face. "Because I am. And because this thing you now face, this unfathomable threat casting a shadow over your kingdom is far greater than you seem to be able to grasp. If you are not prepared to watch your kingdom burn and your people bleed, you will fall to the wayside like so much wasted trash."

"So I should do that? Should let that happen?" Mustang gestured angrily at the remnants of the window.

"You should accept it as a possibility, no, an eventuality. If you are strong where I was weak, you will stand victorious as dawn breaks. I have played war many times, will continue to do so long after you are dirt and faded memories; I was pulled here from the field of battle, thrown into conflict and now stand waiting for dawn to rise and the armies to once again march to center. Is my insight not, then, useful to you? Heed my advice or do not, I do not care. How many times tonight have I given it freely? How many more shall I bother? As many as you need, or none at all…."

Roy scrubbed a hand over his face, the sudden weight of the long night catching up to him helping at least to curb the foul emotions and push back the dire situation from consuming the forefront of his mind. He sighed. "Didn't I tell you to make yourself scarce if doing something useful was beyond you?"

"I was under the impression I was doing something useful."

"The line between being useful and giving people nightmares is clearly something you need to look into."

Alucard's response was laughter. "Is it now?!"