Warning: I write some fairly dark stuff, but this one likely takes the cake. There will be massive amounts of canon character death in this fic. I do not guarantee a happy ending or an ending you'll even like. All I guarantee is that it will end after chapter six.
Standard disclaimer applies. I make no claim of ownership to the characters. They belong to Kohta Hirano and whatever corporate entity owns the Hellsing portion of his soul. Should the real owners ever have the masochistic urge to read and use my writing, I will be flattered rather than litigious.
London was burning. Again.
They would rebuild. Again.
But things would never be the same.
Sir Integra Hellsing stood in a ruined London street and looked at one of the many examples of what had been lost and would never be regained. She stared into the glaring red eyes of a man she had always thought of as more than a servant. There was no longer anything in those eyes that she recognized.
Despite the pain in her heart at the defilement of a once fine man, the leader of the Hellsing Organization kept her feelings off of her face. She looked past the resurrected Angel of Death she had always known as Walter Dornez to the creatures responsible for his condition.
The soldiers that surrounded them were nothing – pawns. They would do as they were ordered. The real players in this game were in front of her – the towering Captain her files named Hans Günsche, the freakishly attired man in the bloodstained trench coat known only as Doc, the adolescent cat boy she had seen as Krieg's envoy, and the Letzes Bataillons' Stürmbannführer himself - the rotund little man with the seemingly benevolent smile. "What do you hope to achieve with this show of corruption, Krieg?" she asked him.
The man she had referred to as Krieg stepped forward, despite the cautioning hand Captain Günsche placed on his shoulder. He smiled at Walter as he spoke to Integra, "This has nothing to do with shows, Miss Hellsing. This man has been a thorn in my side for more than sixty years. When I had the opportunity to allow him to pay me back for all he has cost me, how could I refuse?"
Integra watched Krieg as he moved toward her. She was alone among enemy vampires. She had been relatively safe with Seras on a rooftop, she had thought, until Krieg's soldiers had swarmed their position. She didn't know what Seras' condition or situation was like, or if she even still existed. The last Integra had seen the petite vampire, she was being buried under the onslaught of Krieg's forces. Seras had been through a lot that night; Integra hoped the girl would survive to learn from it.
"What's next, Major?" Integra watched for her opening. She either had to hold out for something to change, or hope that she could force them to kill her swiftly.
"I believe, Miss Hellsing, that we will talk for a while. When we are done with our chat, we will escort you to Doc's laboratory and we will demonstrate for you exactly how we enlisted your Walter in our cause." He licked his lips, "You will make a superb soldier."
Alucard! Seras! Integra cast about with her mind, searching for the familiar feel of Alucard, hoping to find Seras if he would not answer. She didn't hold out much hope for Alucard. His seals had been fully opened and he would only respond if he felt like it. She did not have the strength of the seals to draw him out of the blood lust he was indulging. There was a good chance that even if he were disposed to help her, he would not hear her until it was too late.
"We're going to talk? I suggest we talk about what you have done to my retainer. Walter was no virgin and he was loyal to the Hellsing Organization and family. How did you pervert him into a vampire in your service?" Give me the keys, you pig. Show me how to defeat you.
"You don't want to talk about my goals in your capitol city? Perhaps my plans for your Alucard and his unlikely child?" The Major smiled mockingly.
"You have already made it eminently clear that your goals in war are nothing more than that there be war. I see no purpose in attempting to have a rational discussion with an irrational person." She sneered as she continued, "You cannot harm Alucard no matter what delusions you harbor; there is nothing I need to know about Seras that you can tell me; what you have done to Walter is of more immediate concern in my opinion." Integra clenched her fists to keep from showing any weakness with the movements of her hands. She could feel her body wanting to shake with the stress and rage and fear that had built up and she would have none of that. Of the betrayals of the past days, her body would not be one of the traitors.
"We have not spent a human generation studying and experimenting for nothing. It may not be as simple to effect the transformation as a vampire bite, but as you can see, it doesn't take us long to complete the task."
From the corner of her eye, Integra thought she saw Walter make a slight movement, but when she looked at him, he was as impassive as he'd been since she'd been deposited here by her captors. Apparently she wasn't the only one to have noticed, though, because Doc moved forward to examine Walter more closely. She watched as he took Walter's wrist, almost as though he was taking a nonexistent pulse. When he flipped through his lenses before examining Walter's wrist, she realized the Nazi was examining a braided rope that wrapped around her former butler's wrist like a manacle. He mumbled something over the fetter before leaning down to murmur in Krieg's ear.
Seras! Alucard! If you two don't want a chained vampire as a Master, I suggest you get your arses here soon! Integra sent out her call again and surveyed the soldiers surrounding her, trying to determine how she might best obtain a weapon or force one of them to kill her before it was too late.
She refused to admit to herself how relieved she was when she heard Seras respond, I'm on my way.
Integra quickly relayed details of her location and situation to Seras with a warning about Walter's condition. She needed to stall before they took her to a more defensible location. "Walter, are you in there?"
Walter's attention sharpened on her, but his expression didn't change. "Walter, I ordered you to come back. If you can break out of what they've done, you can still fulfill your order. Remember who and what you are!" She saw him shift again and realized this time that the movement was his fettered wrist twitching, almost a tic.
Integra took that as a sign to press on. "Walter, you know who you are. You're Hellsing's Angel of Death and you do not serve Millennium!" The twitch seemed slightly more pronounced.
Doc spoke for the first time, advancing until he towered over her, "You will stop speaking now or I will be forced to take your ability to speak. Your larynx will regenerate after the change, after all."
Integra tried to keep her expression neutral, but she felt a surge of triumph. They were afraid of Walter getting loose!
"You're thinking that you can free him from our control and use him to kill us and escape, but you don't understand." Doc's voice made her hackles rise and her fists clench. "Your butler's seals keep him from running loose. He is what you'd call a sociopath now; it's part of the accelerated process. Releasing him would be signing your death warrant."
His attention wandered for a moment before he casually spoke over his shoulder to Krieg, "Imagine if we could set her against him in a challenge after she is changed. What a spectacle it would be."
Krieg laughed and was in the middle of his response when he was bowled off his feet by a small figure that had come rocketing out of the sky. Integra recognized the bloodstained form of Seras Victoria as the Hellsing leader took advantage of Doc's distraction to call out to Walter, "Kill them, Walter! Kill them and take back your soul!"
Seras attacked the Major with all the fury she'd turned on Jolene earlier. This was the man who was responsible for everything. Every death, every horror - all the work of this creature she was rending with her teeth, claws and the slicing edges of her new shadowy arm.
She lashed out at the hands that brutally tore her away from her prey. Her jaw shattered when the hulking Captain punched her in the face. Seras thought she could hear Integra shouting something while someone else tried to shout her down, but she didn't have time to give her attention to that when she had to fend off the vampire's attack. She could sense all the other vampires around them, but they hadn't opened fire on the bit of chaos that had erupted in front of them.
A small voice reminded her to concentrate on the vampire trying to tear her head off before worrying about anything else. Seras focused on dodging and penetrating the Captain's defenses. He was too big for her to get near, but the part of herself that she recognized as Captain Bernadette guided her to landing some blows against him without taking too much damage of her own.
Schrödinger ducked in and pulled the Major away from the fighting vampires. Krieg laughed even as his adjutant helped him to stand. This was everything he'd been working for. He ignored the grievous injuries Seras had inflicted in favor of watching his Captain at work.
Integra had been shouting at Walter and was gratified to see him turn to watch Captain Günsche instead of remaining impassive. She exhorted him to help Seras and punish Millennium for what they had done.
"Be silent!" Doc clamped a hand over Integra's mouth. He growled when she bit down on his hand and shoved an elbow into his bare midriff, but retaliated by brutally jerking her back and wrapping an arm around her throat. She was unable to make any more sound than a strangled gasp while she clawed at his arm.
Walter's eyes flicked between the ongoing fight between Seras and the Captain, and Integra where she dangled from Doc's grasp. When Integra went completely limp, Millennium's new toy began to play on his own.
Doc had no time to react when Walter tore the rope off of his wrist and flicked it at the man holding Integra. Moments before it hit the startled scientist, Walter's wires swept out and cut the symbol of his slavery into small pieces that pelted the Millennium vampire. A delicate web of death settled over Doc and cut a ninety-degree arc through the circle of soldiers assembled behind him. Walter shifted his hands in his deadly game of cat's cradle, drawing the strings through his teeth. He watched with grim pleasure as Doc and the rank of soldiers were decapitated before returning to dust.
As soon as his wires were free of the disintegrated vampires, he swept them through another third of the circling soldiers before being interrupted by the figures of the Captain and Seras as they continued to fight.
Integra opened her eyes in time to see the first strong emotion Walter had shown since she'd been brought to the Major and his minions. His snarl was pure vampire, showing more teeth than a human would have in a mouth larger than any human's. Her faithful servant was utterly alien and Integra knew then that there would be no return to the old days. She scrambled to retrieve one of the fallen soldiers' machine guns while Walter leapt onto the back of the Captain, garroting him with his wires.
Captain Günsche put one hand up in time to keep Walter's razorwire from decapitating him. Blood wept out around the cuts in his hands, but it failed to sever bone the way it should. The Captain's attention was divided between the weight on his back and the berserk vampire in front of him.
The remaining soldiers had drawn around the Major. They seemed unsure about firing at the battling trio of vampires, but a pair of the soldiers skirted the melee, apparently to retrieve Integra before she got away.
Integra drew deep breaths as she fumbled for the stock of the weapon. She was still trying to clear the black spots that occluded her vision when she turned and shot the two vampires who were coming for her.
Seras looked at Walter where his face showed over the Captain's shoulder. They had the huge man pinned between them, with Walter's wires helping to keep the Captain from using his full strength or speed to defend himself. An unspoken agreement passed between them; first Walter, then Seras, lunged to bury their faces on either side of the big man's neck.
Integra took in the scene at a glance. She fired into the clump of soldiers circling the Major to buy time for Walter and Seras to finish off the vampire they had pinned between them. She quickly scrambled for cover behind a post box; it was pitiful shelter, but it was better than being in the open in the middle of the street.
Both Walter and Seras took wounds from the soldiers, who began firing wildly, not caring if they hit the Captain any longer as long as they could hit their Hellsing enemies. The potent blood they were drinking healed each injury almost as fast as it was sustained. When they had drained the Captain to the point of desiccation, Walter pulled his wires away, and Seras threw the corpse at the remaining Millennium members.
Walter stripped the Major of his remaining guards with an ease that Seras envied. The wires dropped like silk threads out of the air and tore each of them to pieces, leaving the Major and his little envoy standing alone.
Integra stood and joined her two vampires. The Major was unarmed as was Schrödinger, but the catboy did not share his commander's comfortable grin. Krieg put his hand on his subordinate's shoulder and said, "You are dismissed, Warrant Officer."
Schrödinger didn't wait, but turned and ran. Walter aimed for him with his wires, but Krieg intercepted them, allowing them to wrap around his body, and allowing the smaller vampire to get away. Integra spat, "Get him!" and Seras was off in a flash of bloodied uniform and orange hair.
The Major was smiling at Integra. "Do you think you've won?" He looked from her to Walter. "Do you think your butler is your knight in shining armor?" He began to laugh. "Tell her butler, are you going to save her from the monsters?" The harder he laughed, the more the wires cut into him. He was encircled in thin, deep cuts around the entirety of his body and every motion pulled the wires deeper into his flesh.
"I suppose, Stürmbannführer, that depends on which monsters you mean." Walter replied calmly. Integra turned to see a smile on Walter's face she did not recognize. The vampire who had once been Hellsing's most trusted servant tightened his wires around Major Krieg slow centimeter by centimeter, relishing every moment while he slowly cut his old enemy into bite-sized bits.
Integra was spattered by a fine spray of blood when Walter shook his wires off before retracting them into the rings that housed them.
"Walter, I know that what they did to you was horrible, but there's no reason to forget decorum. Stop looking at the blood on my face like a mid-morning snack."
Walter delicately licked the spatters off of his own hands before responding, "Ah. So sorry. This will take some getting used to."
"Indeed." Integra watched Walter's display without letting her feelings show on her face. "I am relieved you broke loose, Walter. How did you do it?"
"Doc warned the Major that he hadn't finished with me, but the little tyrant didn't want to listen; he wanted to play with his new toy. Seeing you, hearing you, that helped. Seras' arrival helped as well. What gave me the strength to break loose was seeing the Captain. Seeing him do to Seras what he did to me when I was fourteen made my hatred break through their incomplete seals. My hatred boiled off everything they did to control me. Leaving me empty."
"Hopefully, you will have time to heal that, Walter. We need to find Seras." She looked around for clips for the machine gun. While she picked a few up, she said, "I'm just glad you're free, Walter. I thought I had lost you."
She turned at the ice in his voice, "But I'm not free yet, Integra."
•••
Seras followed Schrödinger's scent through the wreckage of London. She had to stop when she encountered a trio of Krieg's soldiers along the way, but she doggedly kept to his trail. She was about ten minutes away from where she had left Integra with Walter when a pain so monumental hit her that she was thrown to the ground.
The pain sounded like screams, hundreds, maybe thousands of them, all with her Master's voice, all in unison. She curled on the ground wrapped around her agony. Tears streamed from her good eye, but she couldn't hear her whimpers for the anguished cries that were coming from Alucard.
She didn't know how long she lay there, washed in an awful grief, before a buffer wrapped around her. The buffer smelled like Pip, and after a time, the sound of soft singing in French began to dull the sounds of the screams.
She was insensible to the slight figure of Millennium's surviving Werewolf as he watched the one-armed, one-eyed vampire while she cried on the ground. Once, he directed approaching soldiers to go a different direction that none would see her in her weakness.
•••
Walter licked fresh blood from his lips and looked down at what remained of the Hellsing bloodline. "I haven't been free since I lost my family and took up arms for the Hellsing family and for England."
He turned and walked away from Integra's body. "Now I'm free."
