Alucard joined them, lounging on the closed lid of the coffin.
Walter smiled briefly at Alucard as he sat down, but the story wasn't easy to tell. He'd tried to avoid the matter altogether, but, as Alucard had pointed out, it was his story.
"My memory of the battle is incomplete at best." He tugged absently on his ponytail and grimaced slightly. "I was captured soon after Sir Penwood's death."
The former vampire hunter, now a vampire himself, looked around the room where they sat, thinking about the man whose home they occupied. Shelby Penwood had seemed ineffectual; even he had thought of himself as being ineffectual, but he had always delivered when either Arthur or Integral needed something important, and he had been brave right up to his last moment.
Walter chided himself for trying to delay the inevitable and turned his thoughts back to the tale he had to tell. "I faced an enemy from my past whom I'd been unable to defeat when I was that arrogant young man you saw a few minutes ago." His expression was introspective as he related the story of what had happened.
"They took me to a room that was their idea of a surgery. It was…" he shook his head. "It doesn't matter. It's not important." Walter's voice was tense, clipped. "There, they did two things to me. First, they opened up my skull and implanted a chip in my brain. Then," he ran his tongue over one fang, "I was turned."
Walter pulled on his ponytail again, uncomfortable with the memories. "The Doctor liked to talk while he worked." His voice changed and took on a mocking, exaggerated German accent, "'Ve must implant ze chip first zo your body vill heal around it ven ve make you a wampire. Zen you vill nefer be able to remoof it.'" He grimaced as though the words had left a foul taste in his mouth, then shook his head as though clearing the memories.
"I don't need to tell you that as a vampire, I recovered from invasive brain surgery in minutes." His smile was chilly. "Recovered and was put into service immediately, protecting the Major from soldiers in Vatican helicopters."
Walter shook his head again and his smile thawed a little, "Apparently it's so hard to find a good butler that it's worth waiting fifty-five years for the right one.
"The chip governed my behavior quite strictly, but was hastily programmed. Every brain and mind are different, after all. And in that haste lay the seeds of my redemption. I followed the orders that the implant in my brain made me follow. Outside I was perfect, or so I heard them comment repeatedly." Inside he'd been anything but perfect as he fought with everything he had in himself to break loose.
"When the Major sent me to capture Integra, I swore to myself that I would find a way to be killed before I would harm my true master."
Dropping out of the zeppelin was a feat hardly worth noticing to Millennium's vampires. Part of Walter remembered being a mere boy and jumping out of an airplane with Alucard's precious Last Domain and falling, giddy, out of the sky and into Millennium's lap. That had been the first time Hans Günsche had shown Walter that the Angel of Death wasn't the most dangerous thing around.
Once in the middle of the melee, Walter had fought his way through the masses of Alucard's undead and the Vatican's human fodder toward the silent center of the destruction – the growing forest of the impaled.
He was aware of Seras when she flew close, but kept his focus on the creatures on the ground. She wasn't in his orders and she wasn't close enough to be an immediate threat. He was able to influence his actions enough to keep from attacking her.
His goal was to attract Alucard's attention before Walter could reach Integra. He did it by killing as many of Alucard's slaves as he could. He knew that Alucard would not miss the deaths, and that Alucard would not permit anyone, not even Walter, to harm Integra.
His relief when the vampire appeared amidst the dead was almost unspeakable. Here was the implement of his destruction and salvation.
He felt Alucard taking his measure and could have wept with relief when he heard the voice in his mind, Quite a mess you've gotten yourself into, Angel.
Alucard would keep him from being Hellsing's Judas.
Seras had relaxed slightly to hear that Walter had not willingly betrayed Hellsing, but his story raised more questions. "Did he take the chip out of your brain?" She looked at Alucard. Brain surgery wasn't something she'd expect of her master, but maybe he'd just ghosted his hand into Walter's head and pulled the chip out.
"I could not do that," Alucard admitted. "The chip had extended tendrils into every part of his brain. Removing the chip would have left Walter useless."
"Then what did you do? Why should I trust Walter now if he still has Millennium's chip in his head?" Seras was now anything but reassured.
Alucard slid off of the coffin and took a place standing next to Walter with his hand in the man's hair again. "Tell her the rest."
"I intended to. That was hardly a complete explanation." Walter gave Alucard a more genuine smile than had touched his face since he began his narrative. "The rest is not so bad. The worst was the Doctor's surgery."
Alucard looked Hellsing's fallen angel over. After the initial surprise of seeing Walter as a vampire, he was angry for his old companion. Walter had long denied the gift of immortality and Alucard had grudgingly respected his choice. That Millennium had usurped his prerogative with the man was a violation of Alucard's territory as much as their invasion of London had been.
Walter's orders forced him forward. Alucard stood between him and Integra and he had to continue to obey the commands of the chip that had hijacked his control.
The two had fought. It wasn't as one-sided as anyone who had watched Alucard defeat Alexander Anderson would have thought. Walter had been one of the world's top killers when he was human; the enhancements to speed and strength that came with vampirism would have made Walter the top killer if Alucard had not already occupied that spot.
Much of what passed between them was as blur of action to observers, flashes of red, white, and black, highlighted by the constant glint of silver. If merely cutting Alucard to pieces had been enough, Walter would have won, but little details like anatomy didn't matter to the vampire who had been Dracula.
The battle ended with Walter inescapably bound in shadows. Tsk. Angel. I thought you knew better than to let strange Nazis play in your head.
Walter had continued struggling because the implant required it, but he had turned his mind away from struggling with the parasite in his brain and silently responded to Alucard's mental whisper, Now is not the time for jokes. You have to kill me.
Kill you? You're finally a vampire and you want me to kill you? Alucard's tone was mocking and Walter's response was angry.
Unless you can get this piece of silicon out of my head, I will be forced to keep trying to capture Integra to bring to the Fat Man. Kill me.
Alucard had always thought that biting Walter would be a triumphant moment. As he drained the blood from the vampire who had been a companion for decades, Alucard found another way to glean a moment of triumph from the man's second death in less than a day's time.
Above them, Big Ben's bells rang out, the familiar tones coming with a disharmonious clangor, instead of the world-famous melodic chimes. Walter's last thought was that it was a fitting funeral dirge - for himself or for England, he wasn't certain.
"You're telling me that you're dead?"
"Twice over." He rested against Alucard's hip and smiled tiredly, "Remarkable, isn't it?"
Seras leaned forward and asked what seemed like the obvious question to her, "Then why are you here looking like a perfectly healthy vampire?"
Walter passed that one on. "That's more your question to answer, Alucard."
"I couldn't get the chip out of his head, so I decided to give him a new head." Alucard answered. He let that hang long enough to be annoying before elaborating. "Walter's body is part of my own. His soul inhabits this portion and his will gives him form, but he exists as an individual because I allow it."
Seras stared at the two in horror. Walter was one of Alucard's soul slaves?
No, he is not a slave. I have enough of those. I wanted a companion. His smile was sphinx-like. Immortality gets dull without interesting companions. He must feed. He must rest. He is as real a person as you are.
"Are you sure he didn't do anything to change you?" The girl looked suspiciously at Alucard. "You act different." She frowned when they both laughed. "What?"
Walter answered her question with a question, "When did you ever see me with someone I was close to?"
"Sir Integra–"
"You never saw me act close with her. I stayed very professional with her from the time she was a teenager. She had to learn to stand on her own." Walter shook his head, "I did what I had to do. Integra was the daughter I never had, but I kept my distance for her own good.
"You've never seen me in a private situation with someone I was intimate with. I was close with Alucard when I was young, clearly, with what I've just described to you, you can see how we'd be intimate now."
"Are we going to be intimate now, Angel?" Alucard murmured to Walter and tangled his fingers in the other man's ponytail.
Walter exhaled a laugh and leaned his head back against Alucard's hand. "Not right this moment, no. I think Seras has more questions for us."
"I know she has more questions for us."
Seras nodded, "Yes, I do." Like what do you mean by private situation? I'm right here. You two aren't in private, stop hanging on each other already. She kept that to herself and instead asked, "Where was I when this was going on?"
Walter passed that question on to Alucard, looking up at him and raising a questioning eyebrow.
"You were chasing the kitty up a tree, as I recall."
