The black surrounding his mind and clouded his vision faded and his pupils dilated, coming back to normal. He jerked for a second as he was brought back, blinking his eyes twice.
He felt a hand on his arm, thankful for it's miniscule comfort. As he followed the arm with his eyes, he saw that the person attached was the one who had helped unknowingly helped him, in some sort of way...
"Seras." The sound of his own voice was barely recognized by himself.
She was watching him so closely that when he opened his eyes and moved a little, she jerked back, her hand leaving his arm, and herself causing a chain reaction and falling backwards on her butt with her legs out in front of her. She blinked when she stabled herself.
"Master...?"
Alucard couldn't help but look at her with amusement, with bright eyes, as if it had never happened, besides for a slight hint of sorrow underlining his facial lines. He was mostly happy to just sit there; he said her name again, his eyes held her gaze.
"Seras..."
She sat back up on her knees slowly, staring at him with wide eyes.
"Master is...okay?"
Alucard wrapped his arm around her back and hugged her, stretching out his legs in front of him before he did so. He looked at her wide eyes, which always brought that little half-smile to his face.
"Master is okay, Seras. You even helped master, for one second I saw you, and it was enough to stop him."
Seras sat up on her knees, kneeling on the floor now as he merely hugged her in thanks. She did the same, grateful that nothing extreme happened this time, and out of relief she put her arms around his neck to hug him too.
"Even if I did help get rid of it, I also helped start it, too. I'm sorry, master."
He closed his eyes for a moment and then opened them with a sigh, looking at her with his deep red eyes.
"It is alright. It was as much my fault as it was yours; the thing is, now that I have beaten him down, for once, he will try harder the next time...he is still a part of me.
The only thing I remember different about this time, is that when I saw you, something insane clicked in my head and it managed to defeat him."
She looked thoughtful for a moment. "You're welcome, too, master...?" She said like it was a question, asking like if it was a good or a bad thing to see her and turn insane.
"I know what you're thinking." His gaze held hers as he noticed the brightness and slight sorrow ...and something more, caring perhaps, of her eyes.
"My going insane is different from going black; insane I can control myself and it is when I am stronger because of that...but black, I have no control over...and yet I am just as strong. And I defeated darkness with my insanity." He sounded a little amused at his last statement. Seras grinned.
"Seems most logical, then...and it must have worked, too, hm?" She started to draw back from him, not wanting to cause any more...trouble for him.
Alucard seemed a bit disheartened that she would leave his arms so quickly, but he understood her intentions and her reasoning.
"I guess it did, but he never truly leaves. There is no winning or losing in this battle, it is simply a state of being. And every time, it he is just this much closer," He loosened his grip on her as she backed away, taking his right hand and gestured how much closer he was with his thumb and forefinger. "To not coming back."
Seras nodded, sitting on her knees again next to him; she had to be more careful, it wasn't only the dangers of black Alucard. There was Integra, constantly reprimanding them of their deeds.
Unbeknownst to her, she clenched her fists that were resting on her legs.
Alucard leaned back against the wall, with his legs lazily stretched out in front of him comfortably.
"Hmmm..." He stared down at his stomach strangely. "Are you as thirsty as I am?"
She unclenched her fist and put it on her stomach, looking down as well. It would have made an interesting picture, seeing them the way they were. As if on cue, a tiny noise was heard and she facefaulted, sweatdropping.
"Actually..."
"Thought so." Like before, he simply outstretched his hand and a bottle of blood came to him, two glasses accompanying it. He saw Seras' eyes wander over to the glasses questioningly.
"It is just normal blood this time, I don't want any repeats at the moment...unless you enjoyed that?" He asked, his head tilted slightly as he looked at her. With neither hat nor glasses adorned, there were still dark shadows under his eyes and on his face.
Seras' eyes 'deflated' upon realizing it was normal blood.
"Maybe some other time." She chuckled for the first time in a little while, eyeing the bottle. He looked at her in question again, still amused that she had, at some points, a hard time drinking.
"Seras, how long have you been a vampire? Clinging to humanity still, you need to drink or you will weaken, and then what will happen if I go black again?" He opened the bottle. "I was able to stop it once, but out of the other couple times, it is too risky."
She closed her eyes and nodded, reaching out to hold her empty cup.
"I understand, master."
He half grinned with that; even though she did not want it at times, they both knew that her body craved for it. He poured her a glass from his old wine bottle full of blood, and some into his own.
"AB blood, the sweetest type." He looked back at Seras with a roll of his eyes, as if daring her to see what happened. She had AB blood as well.
She looked down at her full cup and had doubts, but she had drank before...but that was when she was kind of desperate and not with it, really. She tipped it to her lips and drank a mouthful, turning her head to her master. He smirked; he was reminded of a kid who looked up to their elder to see if they had done something correctly.
This thought reminded him of Integra when she was a child. He mused to himself about having lived way too long for his own good, as he took a swig of his own blood, still looking sideways at Seras.
His thoughts wandered off, onto subjects such as all of the recent events: his master acting overly strange, he and his servant going a little farther than Integra would have liked to call a master and servant relationship...and him even feeling things was a scary thought.
"Seras...Have you ever wondered how all of this has come to be? I do not know, but something stirring inside me says that this is not just a phase. I still believe that death and life are the only things truly fated, but there is just something odd about all of this..."
She looked back down into her cup before taking another gulp for herself, swallowing it down and speaking again, more thoughtful this time; a low voice, as if speaking to the blood inside of her now half-filled cup.
"I have been wondering about that for a little while myself, actually." She licked the blood off of her lips, looking up at him; asking a question she had had in the back of her head for quite a long time.
"Why did you give me the choice in the chapel those years back? You had the incentive to kill me, you could have easily done it."
Alucard looked at her thoughtfully; he already knew that answer, but he wanted to put it delicately.
"I was wondering when you would ask me that, Seras." He grinned slightly and put his cup down, his dark red eyes looking directly at her.
"Well, if you remember, I walked in and saw you being held up by that pathetic excuse for a vampire. Something about your eyes...they reminded me of when my master was young, but even more unknowing. I found this amusing, all of your friends and workers dead; I debated whether to just leave you there...
Then I figured that if he was going to turn you into a vampire, if I did not do something, I might as well have given you a choice between the ways of going. You could have said no, and I would have had to find another way of handing that fake. But this was much easier."
Seras listened with her eyes closed, tipping the cup back up and taking another sip. She brought it down, holding it with her hands in her lap; her eyes still closed.
"Do I still remind you of your master?"
Alucard looked down at the floor, finding his glass and taking another swig out of it; he had never admitted that answer to anyone, barely to himself.
Replacing his glass on the floor, he looked at Seras under his bangs, which shaded the right half of his face, his eyes almost glowing from the darkness that covered most of his face. He looked solemn, and yet serious at the same time.
"In some ways. My master is a bold woman; she once said to me that she would never give up, even if it meant death...she even pointed a gun at me when she felt threatened. She also has this little fire that she harbors, her anger, which she can use...this is what amused me about her.
From you, I can sense the same rage sometimes...the same fire, you may not be as bold as she, but your courage, and pride... are definitely the same."
She took a real big sip from her glass, some of it specked on the top of her lip, and dripping slowly from the corner of her mouth. She swallowed it, taking everything he was saying in.
"—But I hopelessly cling to what's left of my humanity like a child. I realize I need to grow up and forget about it, but it still stays with me in the back of my mind." The blood dripped and a drop slid down the side of her face, stopping by her chin and then fell to her arm. She looked down at it, and raised that arm closer to her face and licked it off meaningfully.
Alucard looked at her, watching the blood drip from the side of her mouth. He leaned over and licked it from her, and then backed away when he realized what he was doing, his face only staying about a couple millimeters away.
He caught her gaze; his eyes were unreadable besides for that concern and warmth look to them.
"That is why you are still so strangely appealing to me; your humanity is touching, it reminds me of the frailty of humans...how little time they have. As a vampire, you do not need them, but you have already established that some things never change. You amuse me still because you haven't lost it...you haven't lost yourself."
"...Yet, master. Yet."
Seras grinned from the side of her mouth; she decided to finish his sentence for him. He backed away a little, still holding her gaze with a half-grin.
"Don't you fear it, Seras...The ability to just not feel anymore, having everything the same for centuries?" He leaned back against the wall and half-glanced at her from the side. "I cannot remember what I was like, being this way is all that I know."
Looking away, straight ahead, she drowned the rest of her glass, setting it on the floor.
"...Actually, master...yes. To be truthful, I do..."
Alucard took his own cup and instead of drinking it, he just swirled it around a little in the glass, watching it swish back and forth in his cup. His food, the substance he has been drinking ever since he could remember...
"So I offered you my blood, you would not take?" He looked up from his glass at her, his eyes red in wonder and amusement.
"It would get you through, you would be a Nosferatu; an unfeeling creature of the night. If you don't eventually take from me, you will feel your humanity dying in you...everything you ever knew would be gone. You will barely even remember me, or anybody here..." At this, he looked slightly saddened, but stern at the same time. He knew that she would have to take sometime, but was this the right time?
Her humanity was wearing thin, he knew because it was starting to rub off on him. His heart was open to her now, something that he had never experienced...and all because of his deterioration.
Seras looked down and scrunched up her fists again, nodding, but otherwise, she was silent.