Integra took off her glasses and rubbed her eyes. Balancing schoolwork, physical training, running the Hellsing Organization, and trying to find sleep were catching up to her. There weren't enough hours in the day for the young knight.
She'd had peers before her father had died; girls from other wealthy, sometimes titled, families. Three years later, she no longer had anything in common with any of them. She'd had to shed the carefree privileges of youth. Now, as Alucard sometimes reminded her with a smirk at the double meaning, she was peerless.
Putting her glasses back on and seeing the room resolve itself to clarity, Integra stood up from her desk and sighed. It was her own fault she was so tired. Nobody expected her to carry a full course load, particularly not when the course load was entirely at college level.
Occasionally Sir Islands or Sir Penwood would gently question Integra about the intensity of her studies. Both had tactfully suggested that she would be better off allowing other people – "with more experience" went unsaid – to assist her with the technical aspects of running an organization of Hellsing's size.
At first Integra had tried to be polite with both men, but after a time, she came to realize that they took her polite behavior as an invitation to continue to give her unwanted suggestions. After she stopped being polite and started being direct they stopped bothering her.
Now she looked down at the stack of papers on her desk and smiled wryly at them. The business administration coursework was necessary, the courses in military history and tactics were also necessary; what she was looking at was coursework that was almost pure luxury, at least from her very pragmatic point of view.
"Master, how can you call it a luxury?"
Alucard's sudden entrances no longer took Integra by surprise; three years had taught her to note the slight change in temperature in the room that always heralded the vampire's arrival. She turned toward the sound of his voice and straightened her previously fatigue-slumped posture.
"It doesn't help me run the organization; that makes it a luxury. And the work I do on this," she waved back at the stack of neatly typed pages on her desk, "takes me away from other work I could be doing." She stifled a yawn. "And from sleep."
"If you are incapable of keeping up with the schedule you set yourself, you should change your schedule," Alucard observed. He watched his barb strike true in the stiffening of her shoulders and the slight lift of her chin. It became harder every day to get a rise out of Integra, but he could always count on her pride.
He carefully rationed his strikes at her pride to keep her from becoming desensitized to them. He used them only to accomplish specific goals. In this case, the continuation of Integra's charming project.
Every night, Alucard would meet Integra in her office to work on her schoolwork. They would sit together and she would question him in depth on his experience of London at the turn of the century. At her command, he had produced the souls of various residents of the city from that time period to answer her questions.
Integra was pleased because Alucard and his slaves provided her with first hand accounts that were invaluable. The thesis she was finishing would complete her coursework for a major in British history focused specifically on Victorian London, and her use of primary sources bolstered and fleshed out written accounts of the time. She had been able to assemble a glossary of niche slang that hadn't gotten the attention of writers or historians of the time, as well as personal reactions from London residents to various news and scandals that had been current events to them.
It was fascinating, really. Integra was learning a lot about people from these sessions. She was also learning a lot about Alucard. He was an interesting man whose depth and breadth of knowledge was, while not surprising given his age, was still very impressive. She supposed that she'd imagined, after she'd released him three years ago, that he'd be trapped in an older era – maybe back in the time when he was human, or just in the Victorian era, which is when the last of the public record (if you could call Stoker's novel "public record") of him ended.
Instead she had found a man who had been up to date on current events and affairs when he'd been locked away, and who spent much of his time after his release either by her side watching her every move and decision, or in his room with a book or magazine from the library, catching up on twenty years of missed cultural and technological change.
He did disdain television, which was the only part of her unknowing stereotype to which he adhered. He claimed it, "allowed humans to discard reason in favor of the illusion of thought."
Alucard was pleased because his nightly sessions with Integra gave him the opportunity to mold her in ways she could not begin to imagine. The first time she heard him use one of his particular turns of phrase in conversation was a moment that filled him with a bitter bile of triumph. This one… this one would be the one that he would teach and nurture to be what he wanted.
Walter understood the molding process that Alucard was undertaking; having undergone it himself to different ends so many years before. Alucard had wondered at first if the now-retired Angel of Death would attempt to warn Integra away from him, but Walter had not. One late night soon after his release, he had appeared in Walter's bedroom and sat in the chair next to the man's bed until he had rolled over, put on his monocle, and looked at his uninvited guest neutrally, asking, "You require something?"
Not a warm response from an old companion, but Alucard understood better than any that time changes everyone and everything – except him of course. The discussion had been brief, but satisfactory, and Alucard had left feeling very pleased with himself, indeed. His long ago nurturance of a skinny little boy's more ruthless side had yielded fruit many years down the road in Walter's acceptance that there were things Alucard could teach Integra that she would need to lead Hellsing.
Did the butler suspect what Alucard truly desired? The vampire thought that the answer was yes, in which case, his years of careful work with Walter had been well worth the effort.
Alucard sat in his accustomed chair in front of the fire and waited for Integra to join him. She thought he sat there because it warmed his cold body, and he allowed her to continue thinking that. He no more felt cold than he felt heat or most pain, but the firelight illuminated Integra in what Alucard could not help but consider a more natural and pleasing manner. It limned her tawny skin with a radiance no light bulb ever could ever hope to create.
As she took her seat with her notepad in her lap and pencil ready, Alucard traced the swell of her breasts with eyes that opened unobtrusively in the shadows under his chair. Not once since his first blood-drunk encounter with Integra did Alucard intimate darker interests in her. To all observers, even those close to them, Alucard was never anything but perfectly obedient and perfectly correct in his behavior. His unobserved behavior was another matter. He had been watching Integra's body ripen with the avidity of a starving man at the window of a bakery. For now he would only look, but someday….
Tonight was a night he had been looking forward to for some time. Tonight they would begin their discussion of Victorian sexual mores. Alucard had steered Integra away from those discussions in an obvious manner for quite some time. Finally, to his concealed delight, she had questioned him on his circular attempts to avoid that topic.
He had, with impeccably acted concern for her, explained that he thought she was not old enough for such discussions, and that he had not wished to make her uncomfortable with such subject matter since she was only a young woman. It was entirely as he had planned that she would be insulted and challenged and order him to address this topic in their next session.
Tonight he intended to open with the topic of the female orgasm and how well-intentioned, but ignorant men of the time had had conflicting opinions of its effect on women's thought processes. He was confident that he could guide the discussion sufficiently to inspire Integra to do her own research into the matter after she retired for the night.
It would be another night's work well done.
AN: This is something of a warmup for a fic that I have had brewing for the better part of the past month. This is something of a one shot, but if you like it, keep an eye open for" Pyrrhus," which will have similar elements but which will be much longer.