By Moonlight
Written for SerasKelia as a holiday ficlet.
Hellsing and all characters within copyright Kohta Hirano.
(And yes, I do suck at titles. Hopefully the fic's better.)
Of all the places to find Sir Integra, Seras had not expected to come across her in the garden. She knew why she liked the garden: it was beautiful, even in moonlight, and her Master rarely came here. After the hell the two Valentine brothers had visited on Hellsing manor, she'd found very little of beauty or peace. But as for why Integra, Integra the Ice Queen, Integra the calculating, often callous commander, would seek out the garden – particularly in the middle of the night – Seras couldn't guess.
She'd been so shocked to find the knight sitting there reading that she stopped where she stood, eyes wide. Integra ignored her, and Seras had just started to think that maybe she hadn't even noticed the fledgling's presence when the woman looked up. As always, her gaze seemed to freeze Seras, her eyes so pale a blue that they looked almost translucent in the moonlight.
"Police Girl," came her greeting. She nodded her head in Seras's direction, marking her place in the book she'd been reading with a gloved finger. It occurred to Seras, quite inappropriately, that she'd never seen Sir Integra out of a suit. She pushed the thought away.
"I… uhm… walking… gardens… M'sorry. Didn't mean to disturb you. I'll go now," she finally managed to stammer.
She half turned, but Integra's voice called her back before she could run.
"Please, there's no need to flee. I'm not going to bite you." If she didn't know better, Seras would have thought her commander sounded almost…wistful.
She returned to the bench Integra sat at, settling down at the opposite end with her hands clasped nervously in her lap. Uncertainly, she smiled at Sir Integra, and was startled when the woman smiled back. The moonlight reflected off of her glasses, rendering her gaze inscrutable. Seras looked down quickly, shoulders hunched.
Integra broke the silence when it had stretched on long enough to make Seras squirm with discomfort.
"So tell me, Police Girl, how are you enjoying your new unlife?"
The question hit Seras like a slap to the face, or a dash of cold water. Not that she could feel true cold anymore; becoming a vampire had changed her entire range of her perceptions.
"…not at all," she whispered, when she realized that Integra was still waiting for an answer.
"Really? What about the strength? The powers? Your master tells me that you're progressing quite well, even if you won't drink blood."
Seras started at the last. Alucard had never said, or even hinted, as much to her. She'd thought he regarded her with absolute disdain for her refusal to drink.
She risked another glance at Integra, and found that the woman's glasses had slipped further down her nose, leaving her eyes visible. Integra's pupils were dilated, her irises little more than a pale line. Part of it must be the darkness, Seras knew, but emotion lurked there too, behind the darkness. Something very like avarice, or perhaps fear.
Anger, sudden and unexpected, rose in her.
"Is that what you think it's like?" she snapped. She shook her head, that wasn't what she meant. "Is that what you think we're all like? Like him? Reveling in death and blood?"
She didn't have to elaborate on who he was.
"Do you think I like it that I'm trapped in this… this superhuman corpse?!" She found herself standing without remembering getting to her feet. Integra's face remained near expressionless, her left hand still held her place in the book, but her right had had disappeared under her coat.
She has a gun under her coat, Seras thought, not questioning the knowledge. The thought calmed her, and made her flush with shame. Losing control like that… if I can't even control my temper, then I really am the monster she thinks.
She stepped back, lowering her arms to her sides and forcing her hands to unclench from the fists they'd curled into. Integra's hand remained where it was. She continued watching Seras, her expression unchanging, until the vampire had to look away again.
"If you're so interested in what it feels like, then why not just find out for yourself?" Seras spat. It was out of her mouth before she could bite it back.
Integra shot to her feet at stalked forward until she stood nearly nose to nose with Seras, her mouth thinned into an uncompromising line. The book tumbled to her feet, forgotten. If Seras had meant to wipe the emotionless look off of Integra's face, she'd succeeded magnificently. The knight was now livid.
Not an improvement.
Seras stepped backwards to get some distance between them, anger twisting and coiling with fear in the back of her mind, like a bundle of live wires. Her breath – unnecessary now, her master had told her, but too deeply ingrained habit to quit – came faster. She doubted Alucard could manage a more threatening glare than the one Integra was directing at her, and the human was close, far too close. She could hear the blood rushing through Integra's veins, and the quick beating of her heart. She is, without a doubt, the most vampiric human I've ever met, Seras thought bitterly, dropping her eyes again and hating herself for it. It's probably all that time she spends around master.
"I beg your pardon?" Integra's voice sounded even more clipped and cultured when she was angry.
Seras's resentment drained out of her without warning, leaving her feeling cold and very frightened under Integra's icy eyes.
"I…" she started, and stopped herself, unsure of what to say. "Why can't you see that I don't want this? I'm not human, but I'm not inhuman."
She stepped forward, not sure what she was going to do, only that she had to show Sir Integra somehow, and that she didn't have the words to do so. She reach out, just meaning to put her hands on Integra's arm, but somehow they wrapped around the human's waist. She certainly didn't mean to move her head forward, she was sure of that.
And then, quite suddenly, without knowing how she'd gotten into such a position, she was kissing Integra.
She tasted like cigars and tea, and when she opened her mouth under Seras's, the vampire could catch a hint of blood from some small cut on the inside of her lip. Seras heard the unmistakable click of a gun's safety going off, and squeezed her eyes even more tightly shut, waiting for the blast and the pain.
Instead, Integra shoved her away. Seras reeled back, pinwheeling her arms for balance, her thoughts spinning as out of control as she was. She fell, and let herself fall, not trying to get up from where she'd landed. Integra's panting sounded like thunder to her ears, the loudest sound in the night. She doesn't want to get the blood on her, she thought half coherently. I hope she gets the heart right away, I don't want it to hurt too much…
But when no gunshot came, she opened one eye a sliver and dared to look at Integra.
The small snub-nosed pistol Integra held wavered towards her, then away, and towards again. The discharge deafened Seras, with her enhanced hearing, and she winced in the expectation of pain before she realized that the bullet had plowed into the ground next to her head. She lay limp, shuddering, and barely able to understand that she was still alive. Or at least undead.
"Leave." That one word hurt worse than any bullet, and told her that she'd failed. Integra was sparing a useful weapon, not a person.
Integra turned away without another word and stood with her back to Seras, leaving the vampire to scramble awkwardly to her feet.
"I—" she began, but Integra cut her off with an upraised hand.
"Leave."
She turned and ran, not bothering to brush the grass and dirt off of her uniform. Her eyes stung fiercely, and she swiped at them futilely, ignoring the smears of blood her tears left. Walter stared at her as she ran passed him into the manor, her boots making her skid along the smooth marble floor.
Stupid, stupid, stupid, to think that she'd be like other people, to think that she'd feel like other people, she berated herself. Stupid to think that a woman responsible for killing vampires could ever see something besides a monster when she looked at one. She only stopped when she'd reached her room, where she collapsed on top of her coffin and curled into a ball, shaking and sobbing.
She didn't know how long she lay there, trying not to think about what she'd just done, when she sensed another person in the room. It had to be a human; she heard a heartbeat. Cautiously, she lifted her head, expecting Walter with an order from Integra for her immediate death.
Integra herself stood there, leaning against the door with her arms folded. She must have stopped at her office; she had a cigar clamped firmly between her teeth.
"Seras."
She started at the use of her name. Nobody except Walter called her that now.
"I'll have Walter bring your bed back in, if you'd like," Integra said at last.
Seras sat up, mouth open. What in the…?
"But Master won't…" she managed at last, around the shock that had claimed her tongue.
"I'll see to it that he doesn't bother you. So long as you sleep in the soil from your birthplace at least once a week, you should be fine. Hmm?" One platinum eyebrow raised, and if Seras wasn't tricking herself, she could have sworn that one corner of Integra's mouth lifted as well in a half-smile.
"I… uh… thank you," she said. She forced herself to meet Integra's eyes, trying to show the gratitude she felt.
Then again, she had the feeling that maybe Integra already saw.