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Hellsing isn't mine.

This completes my rebuttal to those sappy "and they all lived happily ever after" Integra and Alucard pairings. They're mix-and-match Armageddon, for crying out loud!

Chapter 4. Writing is fun.

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I snapped out of it shortly afterwards. I was cold, chilled to the bone. Icy sweat covered my skin. We'd travelled, I knew, probably through the undead creature's portal. The smell of smoke and burning told me where we were.

"Have you ever wished you weren't a regenerator?" Alucard asked.

I turned. "Where's Walter?"

"Integra's with him at the car. She's trying to calm him before he suffers a heart attack."

I was unrestrained and I still had three swords left under my trenchcoat.

I had never felt so helpless.

Hellsing still burned around me. The firemen hadn't been able to get to this part of the blaze, I supposed. We were surrounded by white ash and heat. I saw no flames, but the walls around us glowed. I welcomed it after my frigid teleportation. I glanced at the hallway. Air was sucked through the window behind me into the hall, which explained why I wasn't poisoned by smoke and gases.

"Answer me."

What had he asked me? Ah. "No."

"You've never been at the risk of being beaten down over and over to dispel someone's boredom? Never had to fear that your blood would go to satisfy the thirst of two vampires, and you'd still be alive at the end of it?"

Hmm. . . good questions. I thought for about two seconds. "No."

"You've never fully realized how hard it will be for you to take your own life, that option finally preferable to the latest abuse you're asked to live through?"

"No."

"So this is the first time you've been beaten this badly? With your prayers failing you and your weapons doing no good?"

"Just shut up!" We should have gone after Integra first. I ignored the voice in the back of my head that explained I just would have gone down faster.

Alucard moved, grabbing my shoulder and throwing me against the whitened walls. I heard the skin on the back of my neck smoulder. My hair went up in flame. I twisted off the shelf, smothering the fire with my coat.

"Judas priest, what do you do when you're not killing vampires?" His voice held something in it, but I couldn't tell what. Pain? No. Confusion? Possibly.

"Take care of orphans." I started to get up. Alucard's weight crashed down on me, pinning me down while he removed my weapons and threw them into the fire. He got up again, dragging me to my feet. There was something odd about him.

Desperation?

Maybe. Just maybe. But why?

"I'm free," he said, tightening his grip on my coat. There was insanity somewhere deep in his eyes. I went still. "There is nothing blocking me from my power. Nothing. The only challenge that presents itself right now is how badly I can make you wish you were dead." I hit the coals again, although this time I managed to get my sleeve between my head and the worst of the heat. His boot came down hard on my neck; I heard things crack. A few minutes later, when I was in shape to comprehend his words, he was saying, "I have my power, I have my master, and every enemy I have found has died. It's done. It's all done. There's nothing left for me to do." I saw his feet move away.

There was devoting his unlife to good deeds, I thought, and then I got a grip.

"There's rebuilding to do," Integra's voice broke in. As always, she brought a welcome touch of sanity with her. I picked out her outline now that I knew she was there. She was watching me. "There's you and me. And Walter, if I can convince him. And Victoria, wherever she went."

"She'll be back. She's giving you privacy to grow into your new place." Alucard seemed to have forgotten me.

"There's finding out if we love each other," Integra continued, "because you never admitted one way or another, and neither did I." A cool little smirk, one I was so familiar with, appeared on her features as Alucard formed a protest. "There's a Judas of the Round Table to discover." That word brought their attention back to me. "And him." Integra smiled at me. "And I want Maxwell dead."

"Him?" Alucard looked at her inquiringly. It was hard to believe he was the same creature that had been speaking so emptily a moment before.

"He's Maxwell's champion, the dog of the Iscariots. I'd like to take him from them."

Alucard reached down and gripped my skull in one hand. "Say it."

"No. I mean," she gently removed his fingers from my skull, hauled me to my feet, and shoved me towards the door. "I'd like you to bring him with us, eventually."

"Why him?" Alucard asked, in tones of deep disgust.

"Because it's impossible," Integra said, as I started a strategic retreat, "and I'd like to see you do the impossible for a very long time yet."

Neither of them followed me as I escaped what Hellsing used to be. I thought that the smoke and ash were getting to me, and then realized I was crying.

First, for the soul of Integra.

And because I am only human, I cried because I'd failed, and with that failure I'd loosed the worst monster I could imagine.

I heard movement behind me and spun, grief forgotten, hands coming up in a futile defense. It was only Walter. I slowed to let him come closer, suppressing my grief. He looked haggard, exhausted.

"Your car's in the drive," he said. "Integra was so kind as to leave the keys with me."

"I'm so sorry, Walter."

Walter looked past me at the house. "I have seen Hellsing to its end. I have done my duty."

Great. The last thing I needed was him giving up the ghost on me. "You're still needed."

"I know that." He let me shepherd him back to the car (there's nothing like the threat of vampires to keep a mortal moving.) "I know how she thinks. I know how he'll react."

"You'll like Rome," I said thoughtfully.

"The good thing about this," he said as I began driving, "the really good thing is, they're content with each other. They won't be sowing armies of vampires trying to find a decent one to talk to."

"I'll resist if you do," I promised.

"I will," he said simply. "I've been all my life at Hellsing."

My thoughts turned back to our battle. Did Alucard get his head out of the sacred container? What weapons seemed to have hurt him the worst? How could we stack the odds against him? We'd have to revisit the scene of the fight. I hoped we could be there and gone before he decided to attack us.

I felt very weak, and very ineffective and mortal, after that battle.

And there was more to come.