Sorry for the wait guys. I've had one graduation ceremony/party to attend every week of last month and that took up my free time for the past few weeks. But, now everyone I know is done and graduated so I should be partied out for now (I'm so not a party person xD). Also in case any of my readers just finished college or high school or anything else of that nature, big congratulations! :)

Present

Seras POV:

Back at hellsing, everything seemed to be in an uproar. The two children they found still alive were doing well, although they had been kept in an induced coma since being brought to the estate. This was mostly to avoid traumatizing them, the doctors hoping to wake them up after they no longer needed to be fed with a feeding tube or have IVs in their arms for fluids. Once their health was stable and they were unhooked from everything, they would make an attempt at waking them up in a more comforting environment than all the machines and tubes they were surrounded by now. The way things were progressing, Seras had been told they would likely be ready to wake up in about a week.

Their other newcomer was Miriam, a decisively odd individual to say the least. She was not human, but she was also neither a vampire nor a werewolf. Although the scientists had performed tests on her, she had not been altered in any way. Whatever she was, she was as she had been since she was born. She was both a beautiful creature as well as an unsettling one, looking at her was almost like being drawn like a moth to a flame. There was a gentle, sweetness to her, but it was also obvious that she wasn't telling them everything.

She refused to change her clothing, instead keeping her dark cloak pulled closely around her with the hood drawn down low to shade her face from view. The soft grey dress underneath hung loosely on her fragile frame, the tattered hemline just barely dusting across the floor. When she moved it was more like she floated about rather than walked and her snow white hair gave the illusion of thick fog flowing about her shoulders with every movement. Since coming to Hellsing, Miriam had shown no interest in food nor water. And after several days, it appeared she actually didn't need either to survive. She also preferred to be outside rather than in the estate and proved to be a bit of a wild card when it came to keeping track of her. Even with a single guard assigned to her, she could slip away from him without his noticing easily enough. Even Seras and Hans had a difficult time keeping tabs on her, but no matter how many times she sneaked off to explore outside she would always return to Hellsing when she was done.

Eventually they had given up on assigning guards to watch Miriam, she was good at slipping away from them and never stayed gone for too long. It became the norm for her to be outside most of the time, even late at night. Seras had to admit also that Miriam seemed far more at home outside anyway. The soft spoken woman seemed almost like a spirit the way she was there one moment and gone the next, it almost reminded her of the way her master, Alucard, would appear and disappear constantly.

Frank had retreated into his shell since they had found the children, eyebrows constantly furrowed in deep thought. Whatever was bothering him, it must have had him at odds with himself internally. Seras had been worried about him since she had first noticed this, but had been unable to get anything out of him. Their last conversation still played through her mind, the unfathomable manipulation and abuse Frank had dealt with at the hands of scientists. He had actually given up a potential savior to them, killing her for them even. Admitting that story to Seras had obviously not been easy for Frank and she could tell he felt some fashion of deep seeded guilt over it. But, she wasn't sure if it was remorse for killing a person or if he questioned whether the action had been right or wrong. He had told her that he wasn't sure if she had really been what she said she was or if she had just been another test to see who would try to escape. But, Frank had also seemed firm in his belief that it wouldn't have mattered either way. It was a difficult gray area at the very least, one she hoped wouldn't present itself again in the future, especially against their favor. Frank was hardly mentally stable, she wasn't so sure that if forced to make a choice that he wouldn't betray Hellsing if he felt that he had too. She could tell he was thankful to them, perhaps even liked them, but his heart and mind had been broken in more ways than one. It was as if he didn't know how to function outside of a cage inside a laboratory.

Present

Frank POV

He had thought that making himself useful on the mission would ease the anxiety that kept ebbing at the back of his mind. He certainly had done his job, not only bringing back plenty of evidence to look over along with some samples, but he had also managed to save two living subjects. So why did he still feel as if he had done nothing and might be tossed away? Logically, he had been useful and that should have been enough. But, that uneasy feeling in the pit of his gut just wouldn't go away. It kept him on edge and he tried to avoid everyone so as not to make a bad impression. The last thing he needed was to give them a reason to get rid of him.

The nightmares had begun to come back, making him lose sleep while what he did get was hardly restful. At least for the past few days no one had woke him up and he had been allowed to come out of the nightmare slowly, leaving it behind rather than dragging it along into reality as he awoke. They were the same dreams and yet worse as well. If the dreams weren't about experiments then they were about people he couldn't remember but knew he should.

The thoughts swirling around in his head were starting to hurt, like a jackhammer inside his temple. They were driving him mad. Before he knew it, he was pacing around the room he had confined himself to since returning back to the estate. The movement seemed to ease the thoughts at first, until he no longer needed to think about where he was walking. Needing to focus elsewhere, he moved outside the door and back into the hall. Nothing in his room was going to get his mind off things, so there wasn't any reason to stay there any longer. He would just have to find something else to distract himself with.

The hallways of the Hellsing Estate were fairly empty during the day, Hans and Seras seemed to sleep through the day time and all of the soldiers would be outside doing various exercises. Frank took time to actually look at the artwork on the walls, some were landscapes and others were portraits of beautiful people. He avoided the mirrors placed here and there, he never liked what he saw in those.

Finally he found himself in a room he hadn't yet explored, a smaller room not far from the front door. All that was in it were some antique sofas and wing backed chairs with potted plants and a few busts of important looking people. On the far wall, behind a sofa, was a large painting that caught his attention. It was almost difficult to make out what exactly was in the painting, everything was a soft yellow in hue. Frank had to really stare at it and study over it to understand it. In the painting there was a girl holding a basket standing in the middle of the street, behind her was a shadowy park and two carriages pulled by horses. The painting was obviously very old and the style made it almost blurry, but there was something about it that made him find it beautiful. It wasn't that extraordinary at a glance, the only object in it that was plainly visible and easy to point out was the girl. But the way the style of the painting tricked the eye somewhat appealed to him. Was she looking back at the carriages and the park or down at her feet? The way her upper portion was drawn with her hair and hat made it hard to tell what was what. Was that shadow there her face or just from the bill of her hat shading the back of her hair? Was that actually a park? And if it was, why was it so dark and gloomy compared to the rest of the painting? Or was he mistaken and it was actually buildings, a town overshadowing the sunny street the woman stood on?

"You like art?"

The whispering voice behind him made him jump as he turned around to find Miriam staring over his shoulder. She wore her hood as always, but he could see her face plainly as she looked up at the painting. She was beautiful to look at with striking features and red lips. Her eyes were black as night, as if she had two holes that went into oblivion instead of iris and pupils. Her skin was pallid, almost as white as her hair that fell in soft curls out from under her cloak.

"This is the first time I've really looked at the paintings." He admitted, feeling as if he should be up front with her for some reason. Almost like he had to be.

"But you like this one specifically, no?" Her voice was soft, as if she were whispering and yet the murmurs seemed to come from every angle around him at once.

"I guess so," He answered, taken slightly off guard by her sudden interest.

"That one is called Girl in the Street by Vincent Van Gogh. His art speaks to a more somber feeling, but its still beautiful."

"I see..." He answered, unsure of what else to say. He had never seen any kind of art or paintings before coming to Hellsing, much less knew the artists.

"Is it the beauty or that somberness that strikes you?" Her whispering voice caught him off guard again, as if she were asking something more pointed beneath the question she had posed. He looked at her for a moment, but looking into her eyes was like staring into a bottomless pit. Staring into those eyes was unnerving, frightening, and fascinating all at once. He felt as if his entire being could be swallowed up in the darkest depths of those ink black eyes of hers.

"I don't really know. Beauty doesn't really mean much to me, but it is a pretty painting, I guess." He answered with a shrug, feeling a bit embarrassed now that he really thought about how this must look. They were talking about the beauty of a painting and here he was admitting he didn't care for beauty, all while she was staring at him with a knowing expression. Did she think he was fascinated with beautiful paintings just because he himself wasn't beautiful? It was true he didn't like the way he looked and even avoided mirrors, but he hadn't really thought about how others might perceive him before. Now he suddenly felt very uncomfortable underneath her steady gaze, wishing he had somewhere to hide from her view.

"There are a lot of different kinds of beauty, you know. Not all beautiful things are that way in the generic sense." She spoke in that soft murmur of hers that almost sounded like a whispered song, as if she had read his thoughts.

"Like what?" He asked mechanically, knowing she would answer no matter if he had asked or not.

"All lovely things will have an ending,
All lovely things will fade and die,
And youth, that's now so bravely spending,
Will beg a penny by and by.

Fine ladies soon are all forgotten,
And goldenrod is dust when dead,
The sweetest flesh and flowers are rotten
And cobwebs tent the brightest head."

Her voice was other worldly as she spoke the words, half whispering and half singing them like a lullaby. Her impossibly dark eyes batted a few times as she looked up at him, long white eyelashes contrasting with the black of her iris. The more he stared into those eyes the more he felt like he was staring up at the night sky, if the sky was cloudless and void of starlight and the moon at least. It made him feel small, as if there was an unfathomable deep in those eyes of hers. Like a black hole that could suck him into an endless void.

"Don't look so shocked. It's a poem, called All Lovely Things by Conrad Aiken. There is more to it, but I felt that portion was appropriate." The sound of her voice was like a hum, musical and yet spoken plainly. He couldn't quite put his finger on how to describe the sound, it was ethereal.

"A...poem?" He felt at a loss at the unfamiliar term, he knew plenty of things he didn't understand for some reason and yet this one was alien to him. It hadn't been a song, but it was worded like one.

"Mhmm, I have a... interest in poets and artists, they have beautiful souls, brilliant minds. And they usually have such tragic stories, they are fascinating to me." He could feel her breath on the back of his neck as she moved behind him, making his skin prickle lightly.

Frank was silent, uncertain with how to continue the conversation. He had never had the chance to experience art of any form besides what was hung on the walls of the Hellsing Estate. It was an unknown factor to him and this conversation seemed to only hold Miriam's interest for as long as art was the subject. Her presence was unnerving, despite the alluring sound of her murmuring voice. Frank jumped slightly when he felt her fingers slide over the scars of his right arm, lingering over the hand that wasn't his.

"I can sense death around you. But it isn't your own death that lingers, but that of others. It makes it hard for me to tell if I want to sing about your death or the death of all those who were sacrificed to provide you with spare parts." The words were hissed into his ear, as if she were sharing some dark secret with him. If he hadn't closed off his heart to the guilt of what she had said long ago, he might have panicked at her knowing such things. But, Frank had buried his emotions long ago. He could go quite awhile and deal with a lot of shit before anything got a reaction from him.

"If you're trying to get a reaction out of me or to piss me off, you're going to have to try harder than that." His voice was dead and level, blue and brown eye glaring into her own pointedly.

"Well that's too bad. I was hoping for something interesting to happen after all this dreary time spent with nothing to do." Her breath was hot against his ear and his skin prickled beneath her touch as she leaned up, her face only a small distance from brushing the skin between his ear and jawline.

"Is there a particular reason you're fucking with me? Or do you really get off on that kind of shit?" Frank turned abruptly around as he hissed out the words, causing her to take a few steps back and remove her hands from his shoulders and neck.

"I'm just curious, that's all. I'm sorry if my teasing offended you," Miriam replied, her voice sounding sincere while her face contorted into a guilty expression. But, those inky black eyes of hers didn't match the voice and facial expression. Instead they narrowed slightly, almost like a glare.

"Curious my ass. Just... fuck off already." He waved her off, unsure of how else to handle her.

However, instead of doing as he suggested, Miriam's lips curled up into a playful smile and she once again closed in, invading his personal space. Before he could say anything else, her bony fingers clamped down over his mouth with surprising force. Those long fingers of hers easily spanned from one side of his jaw to the other, the sharp talon like nails on the ends pricking the skin around his ear. Her face came in close to his, nearly brushing the tips of their noses together. There wasn't any violence to her movements, though the assertive nature of them did not go unnoticed. Those bottomless pits for eyes she had seemed to grow wider, no longer angry like they had been before, this time they simply moved about as if studying the scares on his face.

Slowly, she slid her hand from his mouth and trailed the back of her finger along the angry, raised scar that framed his blue eye. Her touch was feathery soft, neither a caress nor a prod. In the back of his head, Frank could hear a little voice telling him that this should make him angry. This was too close and intimate. The way Miriam's intentions seemed to constantly change directions on a whim kept him on his toes, uncertain of why she said and did things. It made it hard for him to know if he was angry or not, or if the emotion was even justified.

"I really didn't mean to come across as cruel, Frank. You're not the only one who had to learn ways to keep the scientists at bay. They may have done different things to us, but in the end we were both victims of the same madman." She let her head tilt forward and rest on his shoulder as she spoke, her voice slightly muffled as her lips pressed into the fabric of his shirt. He wasn't sure how to handle her touch, instead feeling his muscles tense when he knew he should have felt relaxed, maybe comforted.

"Can't we just give each other a little comfort instead of this... irritable banter?" Her voice was soft and melodic, almost fragile in tone as her arms moved to wrap up and around the back of his neck in a warm embrace.

Frank wasn't sure what to do. Everything in his was screaming to get her away from him, to escape her touch. But, the logic in him said to stay and do as she asked. Eventually, instinct won over logic and he pushed her away a little rougher than he had intended. The expression of hurt on her face made his stomach flip as if he would be sick. But, he simply stepped around her and headed back in the direction of his room muttering a pathetic,"I can't give you that, I'm sorry," as he brushed past her. He didn't dare look back at her as he denied her the bit of comfort only another of the Doktor's test subjects could have given.

Present

Hans POV:

The small room with the two hospital styled beds reminded him of the one he had been kept in when he had first come to Hellsing. There were machines that let out quiet, rhythmic beeps along with the children's heartbeats and the soft whoosh of air from the oxygen masks over their small mouths. They smelled more natural since they had been cleaned up from the strange fluid they had been suspended in for an unknown amount of time. The scent of cleaning chemicals and medicine was still overpowering to his nose, but it no longer came from them personally.

There was a strange tug of war going on inside Hans' head that had him constantly rubbing his temples. Part of him wanted to belief that these children could still be saved and the other part kept remembering Cisa and how quickly and easily she had been brought under the control of her tormentor. These were not the mindless things grown in vats that he remembered from his time in Millennium. Those creatures had grown extremely fast, fully matured with adult bodies after only a week of being created. These children had already been with them for that amount of time and had not grown or changed at all. They were growing naturally.

When the door opened, he didn't even spare a glance back as his gray eyes continued to study the face of the smallest of the two children, a little boy. When they had brought him in, the doctors had shaved his head of the never before cut hair on his head. They had done something similar to the girl, although they had left her chin length hair rather than shaving it close to her scalp.

A small, cool hand on his shoulder made him turn to find Seras smiling gently at him. She moved around around where he sat and eased herself down at the foot of the little female's bed. Her big blue eyes looked down with gentleness on her face as she watched the little girl sleeping next to her. After a moment of silence, she finally looked up at him and spoke, "They aren't human and they aren't vampires... Its hard to believe they could be dangerous looking at them now. I hope they will stay innocent like this when they wake up, I'd like to see them grow up happy and normal."

Hans could only nod in agreement, unsure of how to respond. Seras obviously shared his concerns and hopes, but it did little to ease the anxiety he felt over it. Instinct had always pushed him to want to look out for small children like these two, but past experience had taught him a few tough lessons on the matter. Children were all cute when they were small and seemed innocent, but eventually they would grow up. That was the part that kept him on edge.

"Do you think they're werewolves? Like Cisa?" Seras asked, reaching out to smooth the little girl's hair and tuck it behind her ear.

That was a question Hans had hoped to avoid answering for at least awhile longer. He knew it was the one question itching in the back of all of their minds, especially his. If they were genetically like him, then that would make them his responsibility, just like Cisa was. Considering how he had done as a parental figure the last time around, he wasn't exactly excited about the prospect of doing it all over again. But, on the other hand, this was a male and female. If they were to be wolves like him and able to grow up away from the tampering hands of the Doktor, perhaps they could grow into functioning adults, maybe even bring the species back from extinction. Blood tests had already shown that they were not siblings, their DNA suggested that they shared no ancestors whatsoever. It was possible that the Doktor had planned to have them be the baseline for his own purebred wolves, a concept Hans could only pray would be thwarted now that these two were safe with Hellsing.

"Hans?"

Seras' concerned voice brought him back from his thoughts and he glanced at her with tired eyes. This was all a good deal to much to handle, although he wasn't sure if was the uncertainty or the possibilities that had him so tense. He blinked as Seras stood and moved towards him, her slender hands cupping his cheeks as she leaned in to press her soft lips against his own. She pulled back, breaking the kiss, and gently ran her fingers through his silver hair as she eased herself down into his lap, letting her head rest in the crook of his neck, "It'll be alright, Hans, don't worry. They won't be like Cisa... The Doktor will never get his hands on them again, they're safe. Even if they aren't like you, they will have a chance to choose their own path for the future. I don't think Cisa or you had the chance to make any real choices back then. Now you're free and Cisa has made her choice clear. And you're not alone, I'm not going anywhere."

He felt his muscles relax as he listened to her words. Seras always seemed to know what he was thinking and just how to make the stress melt away. She was right of course, as always. His circumstances were vastly different now than they had been when he had been handed Cisa to raise. If they were pups of his own kind, maybe this was his chance to make things right. That thought made him feel at peace with the possibility. He didn't know what would happen if they were some other species entirely, but maybe that wouldn't make things any different. If they stuck around hellsing, the only ones who would have any interest in being the least bit nurturing would probably be himself and Seras. Everyone else was either part of the staff or a soldier of some sort, and as much as he respected Integra she hardly gave him the impression of the motherly sort. Seras on the other hand, already hovered over the two children like they were her own. And if that was what Seras wanted, he would go along with it no matter if they were his own kind or not. He took a deep breath and pulled Seras close against him, letting his chin rest in her golden hair as he glanced between the two sleeping forms next to them.

Ok I originally wanted to do more with this chapter, but since its been so long since I posted I'm going to go ahead and put it up and take the other half and start on the next chapter with it. Again, sorry for the long wait guys. And I promise some explanations on the children and Miriam in the next chapter.

Reviews are always loved!