Hellsing is owned by Kouta Hiraino. Warning, sort of spoilers for Volume seven of the manga, even if this is an AU

Title: One More Foot
Author: TazoRating: PG-13 for graphic violence.
Summary: One foot away. So close to safety. In the end she was right. He wasn't able to get her there. He wasn't able to save her. AU PxS

Every step hurt. Step after painful step, Pip Bernadette walked down the hallways of the Hellsing manor. With every step, the weight of Seras Victoria bore down on his back a little harder, and with every step more blood flowed from his wounds, and with every step, it hurt even more.

But Pip didn't care, he just kept lurching down the hallway, desperately running with Seras on his back, lurching towards some semblance of safety.

Step after painful step. Only ten more meters to go.

"Leave me. It's too much for you. You won't make it with me on your back."

Pip grunted and moved his cigarette around to the other side of his mouth. "Shut up. I can handle it. I've handled worse." He shifted Seras' weight slightly so that her head wasn't buried in his armpit. The act of doing so sent a jab of pain through his stomach wound. Pip flinched and kept walking.

Three more meters. Step after painful step.

A Nazi thought dead suddenly raised his rifle and fired at Pip's legs. Pip stumbled forward as the bullets ripped through his legs. His men turned their sights on the Nazi and reduced him to dust. With all the energy he had, Pip caught himself in the middle of his fall and kept walking.

"Leave me Captain! I won't make it anyway!"

"I said shut up Sergeant! You're going to survive! That's an order!" Pip tried to remind himself that Seras not breathing was normal. She was fine. She was going to survive, just like he said she was.

Barely two more meters, step after painful step.

Seras turned her head slightly and cocked it to the side, as if trying to hear some far away sound.

One meter.

Suddenly, Seras twisted her body, throwing Pip to the ground. Joleen's scythe whirled out of the blackness and impaled Seras to the floor. She didn't have time to scream before death finally came to collect on what she owed him from long ago. The scythe quivered in the ground next to a pile of dust.

Pip opened his eye.

One more foot. One more foot from a semblance of safety. A sham of sanctuary. A place where they could have at least pretended that they would both have survived.

He pushed himself to his knees and turned around. He picked up some of Seras' dust and let it run through his gloved fingers.

Just one more foot. One more foot and she would have made it. She would have survived. Pip's one eye blinked several times rapidly. He reached into one of the pockets on his vest.

Click. Click. Click. He could hear the sound of Joleen's boots as she approached.

"How tragic. You make a heroic stand, only to lose her one foot away. How very, very tragic. And how like you. After all, your people couldn't save anything they cared for the last time we came to your doorstep, could they?"

Pip chuckled mercilessly. He pulled the pin out of the grenade he was holding in his vest pocket. "I guess we can't. I can't save anything I care about. I can't protect anything worth protecting, can I?"

Joleen smiled as she picked her scythe and approached Pip. "Don't despair, little mercenary. You'll be with her soon."

Pip smiled and tackled Joleen, firmly holding the grenade between the two of them.

"I know."

BOOM