Snow White Chapter 21: Epilogue, a hellsing fanfic

Epilogue

The death of flowers is a messy affair, with colors, scents, and shapes that have lost all meaning, mere confetti on the ground after a night of revelry to be trampled and reduced to dust. Yet there was none of that in the aftermath of the night many men and many beasts had met their fates dancing the macabre orchestrated by the monster king.

He was loyal only to his queen, and when she told him to clean up he did. He cleaned up the thorns, the blood, the corpses. They vanished without a trace. The snow was once again a deceptive tabula rasa, the roseal blood that had inked it fused to his subsistence. He was sated, for now. The itch would never be truly assuaged but for now he was full. As a parting gift he asked to leave a body staked in the front gardens. She said no. "They won't appreciate it like I do."

He could not argue with that.

The body of the witch was therefore thrown into, not an oven, but the belly of a hellhound, and it was deemed close enough.

And so the king and queen's reign started and ended in one night.

They went home.

Two days later, Dillon, the hapless valet, found himself heading toward the gates of Hellsing Manor. This time, however, he was approaching it from within. He was not really a valet anymore. In fact, he was part of Sir Hellsing's retinue. Duties included fetching the mail, dusting the shelves, and brewing the tea in lieu of Mr. Dornez, who was still under the influence of the drug but would wake sometime this afternoon, according to the doctor. Though Dillon was a tad slow due to his leg, his masters did not mind. Sir Hellsing was busy dealing with the political fallout and His Highness was, well, dead (he was struggling to get used to the idea) and no longer required his usual services.

He was proud of his job. What did it matter that the prince was dead, that he kept a terrifying six-eyed dog as a pet, or that Sir Hellsing was one leaf away from setting fire to her desk? They were happy. The prince and the knight. At least, when the knight was not at her desk. Yesterday Dillon had witnessed them out on the grounds, the prince having convinced her to take a breather. They had walked, very slowly, under an umbrella.

"They're so lovely together," Ms. Victoria had gushed.

Ms. Victoria and Mr. Bernadotte were settling in. Ms. Victoria was fascinated with the manor, had declared the place "stern but sincerer than the castle" which had earned her a crooked smile from Sir Hellsing, and Mr. Bernadotte was quickly making friends at the barracks. They were inherently sunny people. They made the manor seem almost cheerful.

Dillon reached the gates and greeted the keepers. "Good morning."

"Good morning," the men replied in unison. They had also been recruited by Sir Hellsing. Their names were Robert and Neil, but she called them Tweedle-dum and Tweedle-dee. Interchangeably. No one knew why.

"There's a letter from court," Robert said, handing Dillon an envelope with the royal seal. "It looks very important."

"It must be the invitation for the coronation ball," Dillon said.

It was the fruit of Sir Hellsing and the Round Table's grueling efforts during the last forty-eight hours, and it had been feasible at such a short notice only because, as it turned out, Sir Islands had covertly prepared a fail-safe should the prince's ascension prove disastrous. This revelation had resulted in a shouting match between the two knights, with Sir Hellsing accusing the Convention of never having considered the prince in the first place and Sir Islands faulting her naiveté. After that had blown over, circumstances being circumstances, Sir Hellsing had grudgingly helped finalize the enthronement of a cousin of the late king.

Dillon read the addressee. His face fell. "It doesn't mention the prince."

Robert and Neil exchanged glances. "Well," Neil began, scratching his beard, "I suppose it would be kind of weird, if a dead man was invited."

"She won't like this," Dillon pointed out.

The three winced.

"And today was supposed to be peaceful, too," Robert said sullenly.

Finally, peace.

He was chaos by nature, yet he could appreciate peace, especially if it was delivered in this form. And if it was he did not sleep. He could not sleep. Not when he was like this, tangled in sheets, pressed to an expanse of beautiful dark skin so warm it prickled his fingers.

How their contrasts had fascinated him from the very beginning! He had stared and stared at this girl who had been unlike any other, and he had known, implicitly, that she would be his everything.

He had felt every part of her that was different from him—kissed every softness, caressed every hardness, tasted every sweetness and bitterness—these past couple of nights, fulfilling the less innocent fancies that had tortured him whenever he watched her sleep. Just to be worshipping the minutiae of her being with the tenderest busses was ecstasy enough, but he was more monster than man, and sometimes he could not be sated with such gentle nothings. Sometimes he wanted to devour her whole.

So he devoured her. Her essence. Her sighs and moans and screams. And she, never to be outdone, rendered him a slave of her touch—as if he was not already—and together they made a mockery of heaven as surely as they had made a mockery of hell, for they had recreated it here on earth in her bed.

Mine, mine, mine, the shadows cooed. Integra, Integra, Integra.

He had her all to himself this morning. The political shite was settled. They could sleep in, and what a delightful range of options that provided. He smiled lazily, perfectly content at the present to let his fingers serenade her to an unknowable tune on her stomach. His hair, however, was not so well-behaved, crimping on her flesh in jealous swirls that betrayed the glutton inside that ever craved her. He let his fingers glide a bit lower.

She caught his hand as it attempted to sneak past her navel.

"Alucard," she said, drowsily, warningly.

"None shall sleep! None shall sleep!" Alucard enunciated, his sibilant voice traveling down her spine and making her shiver against his bare chest. "Not even you, oh Princess, in your cold bedroom, watching the stars that tremble with love and with hope!"

"My room is not cold," Integra mumbled, eyes half-lidded in the dim early morning light. "And I'm not a princess." The left side of her face, which sported a little scar under the eye, was pillowed on his arm. Alucard had insisted on giving her another sample of his blood to heal the scar but she had refused. She did not want to exploit his vampiric powers any more than she already had, and besides, it would fade away in time and made her look, to quote Seras, "rather dashing."

The hand she held captive wriggled free, only for its fingers to slip between hers and clamp down. "No," he agreed. His mouth was very close to her ear. "You are my knight, my eternal queen, and I can't fathom any place that could possibly be warmer than here, where your heart," he tugged their hands up to where said organ beat for the two of them, "is its furnace."

"Someday I'll have to rinse your mouth of saccharine nonsense," she muttered.

"You adore my saccharine nonsense, my Integra," Alucard purred. "I'm the only one with the audacity to say them to your face, and mean them completely."

"And how audacious of you to say so." She turned in his arms with a smirk, taking their joined hands with her and trapping them between their flushed bodies. She could both see and feel his desire, the way his irises darkened into discs of barely contained lust when they beheld her in all her mussed glory. She imagined she was looking at him the same.

"You bring out the worst in me." He meant to say it teasingly, but it came out as a harsh whisper.

His hair was a riot. The inky black curls elongated and crawled over her shoulder, her back, her waist, determined to spool her in. She stretched her neck, her lips brushing the outline of his jaw.

"Then perhaps I should take responsibility and cleanse you right this moment?"

"Please," he groaned, inclining his head so she could meet his lips chastely, then ardently, filling his senses with her heat, her breath, her palpitation. They had had countless kisses since that starry midnight when he had crept into this very room uninvited, when she had challenged the gods of the underworld for their thrones. Yet his blood would surge as if each kiss were his first. He drowned in waves upon waves of her mellow tresses.

He rolled her onto her back, and removing his lips, he gazed down at her. "You've been so tense these days, and as much as I enjoyed coaxing your nerves one by one until you were a beautiful, moaning mess beneath me—"

She swatted at him. He chuckled.

"—I was very tempted to put those old busybodies out of their misery. Wouldn't that have been easier, my Integra?"

"Now that would have gone well."

"You need only ask, and I will do it," Alucard said.

Integra lifted her chin.

She need not even ask. He gave her that kiss.

"Not until after I set fire to my desk."

Much later, when the sun was up, they took a bath together and much, much later they emerged, arm in arm, human and monster making their mundane way to breakfast. The insane grin of satisfaction Alucard wore sent the few servants Hellsing employed fleeing from their path, to twitter amongst themselves, most likely. Integra let it slide. They knew better than to question her and the presence of a prince who had been officially proclaimed dead two days ago.

They passed the main corridor of the second floor. A portrait caught Alucard's eye, and like before, he stopped. "I remember this picture. It's your ancestor. The one with the bad hair."

Integra looked back and forth from him to the portrait. "Hark who's talking."

"I'll have you know that my hair is a deeply personal statement." On cue, it coiled in the air, seeking her out. She flapped it away.

"If you're going to stand here and criticize the coiffure of a long dead man again, I'll eat breakfast alone," she deadpanned. "We've already wasted nearly the entire morning."

"And you loved every second of it," he said lasciviously. But he did resume walking.

There had been something about the portrait of Abraham Van Helsing that had piqued him as a child, and now he could pinpoint the source of that pique. "It was your ancestor who vanquished the last vampire."

Integra hummed. She had told him the tale herself.

"Isn't it uncanny?" Alucard mused. There was no doubt or perturbation in his words, merely curiosity. "You, his descendant, and I, the first. What an amusing hand fate has dealt us."

"Are you waxing philosophical now?" she quipped. "You're being quite introspective today."

"I had the strangest dream, my Integra, the night we danced here." They had come out to the main staircase, where Integra peered down at the patch of polished marble he was referring to. It was scintillating in the light from the tall windows. She felt a restlessness beneath his clothed arm and knew he was instinctively disagreeing with the weather.

"There was a faceless man, clad entirely in red, towering over the world. He would consume it." They went down the stairs. "He was unstoppable."

Between the blocks of sun cast on the floor they stood, their arms linked, until he turned to arrest her with eyes that were, for her and only for her, a delicate red, like the daintiest petals of his roses. Roses, she reminded herself, which were no more. The flowers had exhausted themselves in her wake, the thickets hacked into burnt pieces by Alexander Anderson. The priest had left a bayonet plunged into the earth where the garden had once been, and at its significance Alucard had laughed. "He'll come back," he said, crushing the silver underfoot.

"Yet there was another figure," he was murmuring with those delicate shades of red. "A smaller one. A woman. And this unstoppable creature, he knelt before her."

Integra narrowed her eyes. "Don't."

Alucard smiled. "Don't what?"

"You know precisely what, my overdramatic, showy prince."

"I like it when you put it in those terms," he preened. "But no, I'm not going to kneel, if that is what has you worried. I'm simply going to—"

And suddenly he had his arms around her waist and was lifting her off the floor, and Integra let out a tiny shriek. She clung to his neck before beating a fist on his shoulder. "Alucard!"

His chaotic laughter reverberated across her rib cage.

"Put me down!"

"Never," he said. "Never, never, never."

"Insufferable git!"

"I'm your insufferable git," he countered.

Integra huffed. She could not argue with that. She could, however, prove him right. She pressed herself closer and deliberately ran her fingers through his mane, massaging his scalp, and he responded immediately, his lashes fluttering at her touch. "Is that it, then?" she prompted. "Your dream?"

"The woman welcomed him. She called him, 'Count.'"

"Count," she echoed. "There's no such title in this realm."

"Maybe there was in the past, or will be in the future," Alucard said cryptically. He was fast losing interest in the topic and desired nothing more than to carry her back upstairs to her bedroom and stay there for millennia.

A corner of her lips curled. Ah, he wanted to kiss it. "Are you saying it was me and you in your dream?"

"That would make sense, wouldn't it?" he replied. "Here I am, wearing the mask of a sated man, but you know the blood running in my veins is no longer merely my own, and it hungers for the lives of each and every person in this household." His gaze flicked briefly to her jugular. "No amount of soap will erase the taint on my soul, as it has for your floor. I am a monster and I relish the world engulfed in fire and ashes. And always, always, I will possess the potential to be its instigator."

She thumbed his lips as he spoke. He opened his mouth, displaying his rows of sharp, sharp teeth. Boldly, she prodded a fang and he managed, just barely, not to bite.

"But always, always, you will answer to me," she said for him. "When I ask you to save the world, or ruin it, you'll do it. Because you're mine and you love me."

His stare was harrowing. "Yes."

"As surely as I am yours," Integra whispered, "and I love you."

He looked at her, his eyes mad with love and lust and worship, and with an astonishing lack of prudence she thought she honestly would not mind if he carried her back upstairs to her bedroom and stayed there for millennia.

"Oh!" a voice squeaked.

They swiveled their heads around to see Seras and Pip peeping from behind a doorway.

Seras reddened. "I didn't—" She fumbled and accidentally elbowed her husband in the gut as she straightened ("Ouch!"). "We didn't mean—we were going to—"

"Très nauséabonde," Pip said loudly, and this time Seras elbowed him on purpose.

"Good morning," Alucard said, baring his teeth at them.

"Yeah, yeah," Pip rolled his eye. "You two weren't coming down for breakfast so we were going to get you. Not that we didn't know you were faire la bête à deux dos—"

"Pip!"

"So, you eating or not?"

"I have my meal right here," Alucard remarked.

Integra almost kicked him. "Put me down," she ordered.

Alucard made toward the dining room instead.

"Alucard." Integra smacked his arms. "Alucard!"

"Merde." Pip shook his head and Seras attempted to muffle her giggles as they followed. "You guys are worse than us and we're newlyweds."

Dillon nervously handed her the invitation at the end of breakfast, after Alucard miraculously had the tact to dodge her glare behind his goblet of donor blood and announce he would be in the library, and as Seras and Pip were having a hushed conversation over a large bowl of blueberries and cream. He also set a cup of Darjeeling on the table, which Integra let grow cold.

She retreated to her office and tossed the letter onto her desk, the letter that did not have Alucard's name on it, not even "His Highness, the Prince." It was as if they could not wait to get rid of him, to erase his existence, and she hated it.

She lit a cigar.

The nameless prince was proclaimed dead. Those who knew he persisted as Alucard, the Vampire, were members of Hellsing and the Round Table. And though her people trusted her to keep him at bay, those old busybodies were all but outright demanding more concrete measures. Too dangerous, they said. A risk to humanity, they said. Can't be trusted, they said. So quick to judge, so quick to condemn—perhaps she could not blame them, yet that did not stop her from resenting them, in some ways more than the Queen or Sir Bradbury. But one shouting match a day was enough, and it was with a sore throat and a fixed smile that Integra had said, "Trust me."

She was rather fond of her desk.

Perfection was a myth. There could never be a perfectly happy ending. Integra was aware that the Round Table would continually question her and Alucard, their relationship, their motives, their actions. She and Alucard would probably never be pronounced wife and husband in front of a holy man. She would probably be condemned as the Babylonian whore who consorted with the Devil for the rest of her life. She would be lying if she said she cared.

She held up her cigar and the invitation a centimeter apart.

There was a knock on the door.

Integra sighed. "Enter."

Seras shuffled in, looking anxious.

"Seras? What brings you here?"

"Sir Integra, I—" She paused. "I'm sorry, am I interrupting?"

Integra lowered her hands. "Not at all. Have a seat."

Seras sat and took a deep breath. "I just wanted to thank you—"

"Again?"

"—again for letting us stay—" Seras blinked, then blushed. "Um..."

"Spit it out," Integra said, not unkindly. "Don't pretend you're here to thank me for the sixth time in two days."

"I'm here to tell you!" Seras blurted. "I talked with Pip and he told me I should, and I'm ready to tell you, Integra. My story. If...it's okay with you?"

Integra gently snuffed out her cigar.

"Of course."

It was a true story, and true stories are rarely happy.

Once upon a time, there was a little girl named after a Roman goddess, who lived with her parents in the outskirts of a town on the borders of a godforsaken kingdom. Her father was a constable, her mother had been a nurse and a governess, and together they taught her a bit of self-defense, a bit of medicine, a bit of French. They loved her and she loved them. They were happy. They could have led a picture-perfect life; ah, if only her father had not angered those highwaymen!

"They followed my father back home. They killed him, they killed my mother, they—" Seras froze. Her eyes were faraway. And Integra, who knew grief, extended a hand which she grasped unconsciously.

"My mother hid me in a cupboard. I couldn't—I didn't—"

"You were nine."

"I—" Seras shuddered. Then she seemed to rouse herself from the dregs of space and time, using Integra's hand as anchor. She blinked down at it as though she had just realized. "I thought I was holding Pip's hand. He held me like this, when I told him." She smiled. "You see? The middle might not be happy, even the beginning might not be happy, but the ending, the ending will always be."

"But you said you were indebted to my family, Seras. How did that happen?"

"It was Sir Hellsing. I know it was Sir Hellsing because I heard someone call him."

Arthur Hellsing was out chasing beasts.

One was drawn by the smell of blood emanating from the house at the edge of the woods.

It led him there. He stopped.

"Sir Hellsing!" his subordinate called. "Why are we stopping?"

"Look. The door's open."

"When he saw what happened, he ordered the man with him to get help. He covered my parents with a sheet, and then ran outside, to look for the murderers. There were gunshots." Her smile took on a strange quality. "I was so grateful. They could have come back inside and discovered me. Your father saved me."

Integra was reeling. "I know that day. We were on our way back from our travels. We were staying at an inn. Father had gone out to get some air, but when he didn't return after an hour we started to worry because he'd been ill even then. Walter was furious. And when he did return, he mentioned coming across a murder scene, yet he never mentioned a girl! Seras, you—!"

Seras stared at their hands. "I think he might have known I was there. He kept calling out if anyone was there. But I couldn't. I couldn't go with him."

"Why?" Integra knocked her chair back and rounded the desk to shake the girl by the shoulders. "Seras, why?"

"Because." Her expression was haunted. "I wanted to find the rest of them and kill them."

A shout came from the upstairs library.

"Oh." Seras snapped out of her trance. "Oh no. I'm sorry, I don't know what's gotten into me!" She tried to bolt, but Integra was having none of that. She grabbed her and embraced her.

She held her tight. "How hard it must have been for you."

Tears welled in cornflower blue eyes.

"How curious, Seras," Integra murmured. "If things had turned out differently perhaps you and I could have been friends, even sisters."

Seras snuggled into her. Integra smelled like tea and tobacco. Also roses, faintly. Her warmth reminded her of her mother. "I don't regret the way things turned out. In the end I met Pip and I love him more than anyone and anything else in the world. And though it took a long time I finally met you."

"And?" Integra asked. "Did you have your revenge?"

Seras simply smiled.

There was another shout from the library.

"That sounds like Pip. What is he doing?" Seras frowned.

Integra allowed her to sidestep the question. It was a story for another time, and they had all the time in the world. "Let's go see what mischief our men have gotten themselves into while they missed us."

Seras giggled.

Together they went upstairs as kindred spirits, closer and truer than before. An amusing hand of fate, indeed. Integra listened to Seras humming happily beside her. Had she managed to tilt the world on its axis? They flocked to her, these people, these men and this woman who all had bruises and scars of their own. They were hers. She would defend them with her life, however lengthy a life hers may be. If it would even remain a life.

But that, too, was for another time.

Upon reaching the library they were greeted with an odd sight. Books were scattered haphazardly, cushions were displaced, and Pip was crouched behind an armchair, shielding his head with a tome. He groaned in a mix of embarrassment and relief when he saw them. "Ah, fuck."

Integra belatedly thought she should have brought her cigar. "What is going on here?"

"Your insane amoureux, is what. He bloody has it in for me!" At an indiscernible noise that sounded from somewhere in the manor the ex-mercenary jumped. "For fuck's sake! If this is payback for that punch I gave you, I'm not regretting a thing. You deserved it, connard!"

She was about to ask where Alucard was when his voice echoed from the walls.

"How petty do you think I am, Bernadotte? I'm doing this simply because it's entertaining."

"Fuck you and your definition of entertaining. Alright, I've had enough." Pip leapt up and chucked the tome away. "Come out and face me like a man!"

"You forget, I'm not a man."

Silence. Then—

Bats.

Bats. A cloud of bats. A colony of bats. In the library.

Pip and Seras both shrieked and ducked, Pip behind the armchair and Seras behind Integra, who stood stock-still, arms crossed, as the shadowy bats screeched and circumvented her.

"Bats," she said. "Figures."

One hovered about her ear. "I had to entertain myself somehow while you kept me waiting."

Integra glanced at the bat—which to her looked more like a pipistrelle than a vampire, not that she had any intention of saying so, knowing he would be an absolute child about it—and turned her back to the ominous swarm of flying mammals scuttering to and fro amidst her ancestral legacy. She needed a drink. "Good for you, because you're cleaning this up."

"My Integra, you seem to take perverse pleasure in making me perform maintenance duties."

"Fuck maintenance, you just fuck shit up!"

"Would you like me to fuck your shit up?"

A stiff drink. Integra waved over her shoulder. "You two have fun trying to kill each other."

"Eek! Sir Integra, you don't mean that!" Seras flailed her arms.

Integra dragged her along with her. "You're coming with me, Seras. Let's go have a drink."

"What? But it's ten in the morning!" Seras squawked. "And I don't drink!"

"You do now."

"I do? Sir Integra? Integra!"

Pip grabbed a dictionary and threw it into the cloud. The bats dispersed and regrouped to charge at his head. There were yells and a string of French curses.

It was a peaceful day.

Half past three in the afternoon, true to Dr. Trevelyan's word, Walter woke up. He felt like shite. Those slumbering princesses in the fairy tales he used to read to Integra as a child must have had mints for tongues because he was certain that something had died in his mouth. He sat up in bed, his joints creaking as he did, and fumbled for a pitcher of water on the nightstand.

He stilled. There was a hellhound on the floor.

His reflex was to dispose of it, yet he was without his wires, and on second thought he was too old for this anyway. He eyed the dog, though, as he gulped down the water. It opened three scarlet orbs which peered back at him with a degree of intelligence superior to that usually found in its kind, and stretched.

"Did Sir Hellsing let you in?"

The dog lolled its tongue and wagged its tail. It bounded to the door and pawed at the knob until it turned.

As soon as it opened there was a scream.

"ALUCARD, IF YOU TURN INTO BATS INSIDE THE HOUSE ONE MORE TIME, I SWEAR I WILL—"

The dog whined and promptly shut the door.

Walter blinked. Then he chuckled. "I guess she brought him home, after all."

The hellhound seemed to laugh with him.

It was after she put Alucard in a headlock, after she proceeded to punch him in the stomach when he asked if this was foreplay, after she rushed to Walter's side and hugged him, after he was introduced to Seras and Pip and Baskerville, after they had dinner, after they said their goodnights, that Integra lay in bed alone. Alucard was out walking Baskerville, which he insisted on doing every night in a bizarre show of domesticity. She fingered an unlit cigar in one hand and the royal invitation in the other.

She and Walter had talked before dinner. "I am very glad to see you well, my lady," the butler had said.

"Just so you know, Walter, I am going to tease you about it," she had said.

Walter had laughed. "I would expect nothing less."

The old man regarded her affectionately, the valorous knight whom he served proudly, whom he loved as his own daughter. "Mere days and our little family has grown. Ms. Victoria and Mr. Bernadotte seem to be of an honest sort, and Baskerville is a fine if unorthodox hound." He sobered slightly. "Are you happy, my lady?"

Integra smiled softly. "I am."

"And is he happy?"

"He is," she said. "I know he is."

"The road ahead will be difficult, I imagine," Walter said gravely. "As if it had not been difficult enough already—but if there is anyone in this world who can weather it, it is you." He paused. "Have you thought about...the after?"

The waning gibbous moon was climbing up the horizon. It would be dark soon. Astounding how fast time flies. "That is a story for another time."

"Very well. But if I may be bold, my lady, there is something else that ails you."

Integra showed him the invitation. He understood.

"If you do not attend, failing to swear fealty to your new sovereign in the process, it will undermine your standing as knight of this realm. Yet if you do attend, it will be affirming Alucard's nonexistence. Crossroads, my lady. Either path is a betrayal to yourself." His monocle, however, had twinkled. "Luckily, it is a matter that can be simplified. Do you want to go?"

"Certainly not," Integra said out loud.

"Certainly not what?"

Alucard and his bloody timing.

He strode into her room in the same way, she suspected, he had years ago when he entered uninvited at the dead of night to watch the stars. As though it was their room. As though he was hoping to share this bed with her hour by hour, night by night, hoarding her greedily in his icy embrace.

She made no move to hide the letter, instead handing it to him wordlessly.

He read it. His mouth twisted. "Ah." He gave it back to her. "Well."

She studied him shrewdly. His old bitterness had not yet completely ebbed; there was a shadow, almost imperceptible, that crept across his visage. But he kept his voice light. "Certainly you should go, my Integra. You are a knight, and I won't have your reputation diminished simply because they neglected to include a dead prince."

"I'm your knight," she said.

His red eyes wavered. Only slightly. "I don't plan to set foot there, anyway. I have closed those doors for good. Just promise me you will wear a beautiful dress, or even better, a fitting pair of breeches, and let me kiss you in it." They curved. "And more."

Integra emitted a noise of contemplation. "I would be dreadfully bored there by myself. And all those eyes staring at me. However will I fare?"

Alucard's tone became strained. "I'm sure you're more than capable of poking them out with a fork."

"Hmm." She held up her cigar. "Light."

He produced a match and lit it, momentarily admiring her face beyond its glow, banishing the contents, rather non-contents, of the letter from his regard. The smell of tobacco filled the air.

The cigar dipped down.

She crushed it into the paper.

A hole grew in its middle. They were suspended for several seconds, watching the ring of smoky black distort the steward's elegant script.

And then, it was when the ashes had barely landed on the bedding that he struck. He pinned her to the mattress. She met his crazed expression with a self-satisfied smirk.

"Dear, dear, it appears I have damaged the invitation. Surely I can't go without it." Her gaze never left his wild crimson eyes. "Whatever shall I do?"

"Stay with me," Alucard said—no, panted. "With me, here, forever and ever and ever." He kissed her clavicle, her throat, her chin, her lips. "Integra, Integra, Integra!"

"That sounds acceptable," she said, and that was the last coherent thing to come out of her mouth, except his name.

"Countess," he suddenly said, hours later, as they lay breathless.

"What?"

"Countess," he repeated. "It was what the man in my dream called the woman."

The story comes full circle.

She was roused by laughter. His laughter, but a kind she had not heard from him in a while. It was a boyish laughter, exhilarant and carefree, and it was drifting in from...outside? Her eyes fluttered, and sleepily she retrieved her glasses and pushed them on. An ungodly hour, the clock read. It was drafty in her room. She realized a window was open, and his side was empty.

"Alucard?"

"Integra," he called from out the window.

"Not again," she muttered. "We're too big for that now." She wrapped herself in a robe and padded barefooted past the billowing curtains.

He was standing on the ledge, waiting for her.

"Well, at least you've put trousers on," she said dryly. "What are you doing? If you want to see the stars we can't do it here, we won't fit."

"I'm aware," Alucard said. "And I have the most magnificent alternative."

"Which is?" she asked. He said nothing, giving her the chance to figure it out on her own, and she took in his excited grin and his precarious proximity to the precipice and put two and two together. Of all the abilities to manifest... "Huh. What can you not do?"

"It's magnificent, Integra." He extended a hand. "Come join me."

Integra took it, but she was finding it hard to step out onto the ledge.

"Trust me."

She placed one foot down, then the other, and was standing in the winter breeze beside him. It was cold. She shivered. "This had better be good."

"Oh, it is. It's the best, my Integra. The absolute best." Alucard's grip on her hand was tautening. He was leaning away from the wall. His red, red eyes arrested hers. "Trust me. Do you trust me?"

Integra did not let go.

"Yes."

He was snow white and ebony black and blood red.

He fell, and she fell after him.

Finis.

FINAL NOTES

"Nessun dorma" from Giacomo Puccini's opera Turandot.

Très nauséabonde - Very nauseating

Faire la bête à deux dos - Making the beast with two backs

Amoureux - Lover

Thank you. Thank you all. You were the most wonderful readers ever and I cannot stress how happy I was that you enjoyed this story.

This was meant, in part, to be a homage to the Hellsing we all know and love, so if you recognize some of the plot devices or dialogues, they were intentional.

Happy endings, everyone. We need them. This world needs happy endings. Perhaps you might feel this is an open ending, and you might not be wrong, but most importantly, it's a happy ending and that's what matters. So this is it. This is the end. Complete. After this, there will be several bonus chapters including but not limited to: Alucard's birthday, Pip and Seras' romance, and, uh, those are the only concrete ideas right now, but I'm sure I'll whip some up. But they'll be slow in coming, because I have Satis to update and oh boy, that one will be a monster.

So say goodbye for now to Prince Alucard and Sir Hellsing and their unabashed romance. I had so much fun writing these two, I'll miss them, and in a weird way I hope you'll miss them too, because it'll mean that you loved them as much as I did. So goodbye, and may we meet again soon.

Bonus content are hereafter given their respective chapters! Please enjoy!