Chasing the kitty up a tree?
Seras frowned at her sire. She hated when Alucard insisted on being cryptic. It was annoying as hell, actually. She felt she'd been through enough to have earned a few more straight answers. Walter had cleared up his part of the battle, but Seras realized that there were glaring gaps in her own memories of what had happened.
Alucard said, "You remember that Integra is dead." It was a statement, not a question.
Seras nodded, her throat tightening. She did know that Integra was dead, but she didn't know how she knew that or how Integra had died. It had just been there in her mind, an irrefutable fact: Integra was gone.
"What happened to Integra and why don't I remember what happened to her or to me? What happened to Pip? And why don't I remember finding out about Integra's death, but I know she's dead?" Now that Seras was thinking about the gap, it bothered her quite a lot. Why hadn't she questioned it before? What didn't she know?
"There is much you don't know, but Walter and I are willing to answer your questions tonight." Alucard said it as though he were granting her a concession and that there was no guarantee she'd get any answers after the night ended.
"Then start with what happened to Integra, and then tell me why I don't remember anything past seeing you defeat Paladin Anderson." That had been a fight to remember. Seras wasn't precisely glad she hadn't forgotten it, but at the same time, the clash between Section XIII's regenerator and his suicidal compatriots, and Alucard and his undead hordes, had been a piece of history she didn't regret having witnessed.
"Walter wasn't the only vampire the Major sent to retrieve Integra."
Finally, the two lovebirds seemed to have sobered, their moods becoming more what Seras thought they should have been from the beginning. She didn't care how many wars they'd been through, or how inhuman all three of them were, they had all lost something in this war, and it felt wrong to her to ignore that.
Seras thought of the things she had lost, that London had lost. Those things should be remembered with respect.
Alucard's gaze hardened as those thoughts flitted through Seras' mind. "Seras thinks she knows how we feel about the war, isn't that right, Seras?"
Walter sighed and closed his eyes for a moment, "If I may remind you, she is a very young woman and is at an age where she is old enough to have formed many opinions, but not old enough to have the experience to validate them."
Seras opened her mouth to protest and closed it again with a snap. She was sitting in front of two men who, although they looked young, were much older than she. It wouldn't do her any good to argue that somewhat insulting point.
Alucard continued to stare at Seras, but after a moment his hand, which had stilled when he challenged her, began to play through Walter's hair again.
"I will continue. Walter was not the only vampire that the Major sent."
Seras and Integral had been standing together in the small clearing at the center of the impaled when Schrödinger had appeared. Integral was watching Alucard with a small smile of satisfaction that Seras thought was Integral's version of a victory cry.
It had happened so quickly that only by reacting on purest instinct had Seras been able to act at all.
The catboy had appeared behind Integra and wrapped his arms around her waist in an instant. Seras lashed out at him with a speed that was impossible for any human and most vampires and caught a bare grip on his arm at the instant he disappeared with Integra in his arms.
It hadn't been his intent, but Schrödinger found himself delivering two Hellsing females to the Major instead of one.
Integra hung, almost limp in the small vampire's arms; Seras fell to her knees, fighting the urge to retch. They had been somewhere. Just for a moment, but what a wrackingly long moment it had been.
"Warrant Officer, what is this? I told you to bring me one Hellsing woman, not two." Max was sitting in a chair directly in front of them looking at Seras with amused disdain. "I didn't want this one until later. Take her away. Do what you must to keep her away." He waved a hand dismissively and turned his attention to Integra. "Ah, Miss Hellsing, how good of you to join us."
This time Schrödinger grasped Seras' arm and they disappeared again.
"How do you know this?" asked Seras. "You were busy with Walter for part of it. Were you there later?"
"If you didn't interrupt, you would know sooner."
Walter shook his head and stood up. "Please, take the seat, Alucard." He circled around the chairs to stand behind Seras. When she twisted around to see what he was doing, he put his hands on her shoulders and turned her back to face Alucard. "Would we have come this far just to harm you now and in this fashion?" he asked chidingly.
Seras considered his question and with reluctance conceded, "No." She was surprised, though, when his thumbs began to rub circles on her shoulders where he was holding her. She twisted away from his hands to scowl up at him. "What are you doing?"
"I am giving you something that you need. I would sit with you while you hear the rest of the story, but I assume that you would be unwilling to accept that sort of intimacy from me at this time," Walter responded mildly. He knew the rest of the story, and it wasn't going to be easy for Seras to hear.
She had intended to tell Walter that he was delusional if he thought she needed any intimacy from him at any time; then she heard the message behind Walter's words. Her eyes widened and she glanced back at Alucard, who had been watching their exchange with interest. "Is it really that bad?" she asked him.
He shrugged and smiled, slouching down in the chair and crossing his legs. "That depends. To me? No, it's not that bad. I've seen and done worse and laughed while doing it. To you? With your delusions of humanity? It is probably that bad."
Walter had already returned to rubbing his shoulders and he felt her shiver under his fingers. "Just remind yourself that you have already gotten through it," he advised.
Seras glanced up at Walter. She guessed if anyone could say something like that, Walter had a depth of experience that few could rival. She did as he advised, and used it as a mantra when Alucard continued with his narration.
InBetween was a place known to few. Schrödinger was a creature of that place, that plane – not by birth, but it was part of him nonetheless. Few could visit there – a few through history, a few gods, most of them long forgotten; a few wizards, fakirs, or holy men; the occasional creature that fate or intent had given an affinity for that place. To go there without that affinity was to risk one's health, sanity, life, and even soul.
InBetween was everywhere and nowhere, in those spaces between everything else. Most living beings would find themselves being slowly distributed into those in between spaces to help fill them and to return the realm to the perfect vacancy it was meant to be.
Warrant Officer Felix Schrödinger could live InBetween as long as he wanted. He was everywhere and nowhere just as much as that interstitial plane was. He was an anomaly – unique – despite Doc's many attempts to replicate the odd circumstances of Schrödinger's rebirth.
Regardless, he was the ultimate reconnaissance officer. He could go anywhere he knew existed because he was already there.
This time he was going someplace he'd always wanted to see before they burned it down.
Seras opened her eyes and looked around. She couldn't understand what she was seeing. The room was lit by an orange light, which seemed to rise from below the mesh covered openings. Something loomed overhead, but with everything else going on she couldn't make sense of the shapes. She tried to rise up off of the floor and found herself one wrong swallow away from emptying her stomach right then and there. The thought of wasting Pip's blood kept her in control, but barely.
Pip? Where are you? Her thoughts were momentarily frantic until she felt the already familiar touch in her mind.
I'm here. I feel like I just got turned inside out, but I'm here. His thoughts were weaker than she'd experienced since they had killed Zorin Blitz together.
"What happened to me?"
"You're not strong enough to handle InBetween yet. Especially not twice close together." Two small feet appeared in front of her face and Seras looked up and blinked dully at the strange little boy standing in front of her. Where did she remember him from? Her mind was blurry, she could barely think straight; she dropped her head back toward the floor and tried not to heave.
"What's InBetween? Where are we? Where's Integra?"
"The Major wanted to see your boss, I always wanted to see Big Ben, and InBetween is what it is. You ask a lot of questions." Schrödinger crouched down in front of Seras and craned his neck to look her in the face. "Do you want to see London one last time?"
Without waiting for Seras to answer, he bounced upright again and pulled her up off the floor with an unexpectedly strong grip. Seras found that she had a bit less effort keeping her gorge down. "InBetween's hard on people," he said conversationally as he practically dragged her to the mesh–covered openings that looked down on the Thames and on London.
Seras knew where she was now, and when she looked behind her, this time she recognized the shrouded forms above them as the distinctive bells of Big Ben, their openings pointed up, ready to be released to chime the distinctive tones heard not just through London, but broadcast around the world by the BBC every hour on the hour.
Below them, London was hell on earth. More than a third of the city was actively on fire, and more fires spread while she watched. She could see the seething mass that was Alucard's army of captured souls and watch them open around, and then converge on, small pockets of enemies, both human and vampire.
"You know, this clock kept telling correct time during the entirety of the Blitz?" Schrödinger asked her. He looked at Seras with a bright smile and bounced on the balls of his feet. "Not this time. No! We're taking the whole thing down." The last was said in a delighted singsong.
He grabbed Seras' hand and spun her around in a circle and began to sing, "London Bridge is falling down, falling down, falling down. London Bridge is falling down, my fair lady. What shall we do with Hellsing's girl, Hellsing's girl, Hellsing's girl? What shall we do with Hellsing's girl, my fair lady?"
Schrödinger's pace picked up and Seras stumbled as he pulled her faster and sang, "Let her watch her city burn, city burn, city burn. Let her watch her city burn, my fair lady." He let her go on the last word and watched her careen across the belfry to land against the wall.
Seras fell to her hand and knees, retching up blood. She hadn't recovered from InBetween, whatever that was, and the sudden game of crack the whip had been the last straw to leave her feeling as though she'd just made the mistake of trying to eat a large meal of human food. She silently promised that after this night, she'd never do that to herself again.
Seras found herself leaning into Walter's fingers as he continued to rub at knots of tension in her shoulders. She had gone without simple contact for so long, and for all that she was a vampire, she still felt that basic human need for touch. Although, considering the way Walter and Alucard had been hanging on each other, maybe it wasn't so basic or so human.
She was filled with sorrow for what had been lost in the war, confused by the strange changes in both Walter and Alucard, and frightened of what the rest of the story was going to reveal.
Walter leaned down and murmured, "You've already gone through it. You know how the story ends – with us, here."
Seras looked up at Walter gratefully. He was right. No matter how bad Alucard's story was going to get, she did know the ending, didn't she? She reached up and squeezed his hand over the fingerless gloves he wore while he continued to work at her rigid muscles.
"What's this InBetween? I still don't understand it. Is it a place?" She frowned and tried to bring all of her questions together. "What did it do to me and to Integra?"
Alucard sneered slightly. "InBetween is what Schrödinger called it. It's a childish name from a childish creature."
"Then what do you call it?" Seras asked impatiently.
"I
don't call it anything," he answered with a dismissive wave of his
hand. "There are spaces between everything. Human physicists understand
that idea on an intellectual level; a true nosferatu can use those
spaces to pass through solid objects and to travel through space in no
time."
"Schrödinger was a true nosferatu?"
"The little freak was something else. He wasn't even really a vampire. He was a freak lab accident with happy results for Millennium, never duplicated."
"Fine." Seras wanted to be annoyed, but Walter seemed to keep soothing the tension out of her and she didn't really want him to stop. "Just tell me why it made me so sick and what it did to Integra. We were only there for a blink."
"Those spaces between matter cause problems for creatures that aren't properly prepared. When you are 'InBetween,' you are faced with two large and conflicting problems – the universe wants something in those spaces and those spaces want to be empty. When you go through, you leave pieces of yourself behind…" Alucard grimaced in annoyance, "This would be simpler if you would just eat a physicist."
"Alucard…" Walter was smiling slightly and shook his head subtly at the other vampire. "Would you rather I took this question?"
"No. I can finish. Imagine if you lose a few molecules here and there from your body? That doesn't sound too bad, right? But you're losing a few molecules every moment from the instant you go through until you return to the physical plane. That's why your body reacted the way it did, but it's worse for unprepared humans. You, at least, can regenerate. You lose more than just molecules from your body while you are there. You lose particles of your mind, your memory, your soul."
When Walter's fingers moved to the bare flesh of her nape, Seras closed her eyes without thinking. Somehow she'd expected his fingers to feel cold, but the firm press of digits that were skilled in dealing death was warm and soothing. With her eyes closed, she missed the look that Alucard and Walter exchanged.
Walter nodded to Alucard, and the vampire resumed his story – Seras' story. The images his words wove played out on the screen of her closed eyelids.
Seras heard him coming and used the wall to lever herself into a standing position.
"We've been waiting so long for this fun." Schrödinger spun her around and pushed her back against the wall.
Seras waited for the world to stop spinning. "This isn't fun. Are you insane?" She struck out and knocked the catboy away from her and pushed away from the wall to follow him. Her lips skinned away from her teeth and she started to snarl as she pursued him.
She lashed out to hit him again, but he simply wasn't there.
"Sanity is determined by the majority." Small hands grabbed her hair and the shoulder above her shadow wing and Seras was whirled in another dizzying circle before being thrown against the wire mesh that enclosed the openings in the belfry.
He was on her again while she clung to the gaps in the wires. The little bastard was taking advantage of how easily dizzied she still was. He forced her face against the mesh and hissed at her, "Look down there. Look! It's Hell! The sane don't rule in Hell."
His grip was suddenly gone and Seras spun, fighting the nausea the movement inspired and searched the chamber for her tormentor.
He lets you get close when he thinks you're too sick to act.
Seras blinked. Pip had been quiet during most of Schrödinger's games and she'd been too busy to think about him.
I'm here. I've been watching. He's smart, but we can be smarter. She could hear the grin and it made her smile faintly, too.
"Up here."
Seras looked up to see the catboy perched on the upturned lip of one of the four bells. Seras didn't know which one was actually "Big Ben" and didn't care. This little Nazi monster was defiling one of Britain's symbols. One that the Nazis had failed to touch during all of their bombing of London during WWII.
Seras snarled and launched herself off the floor at the grinning vampire. She watched him disappear when she was sure he'd be in her grasp and she ended up clutching the lip of the bell to keep from tumbling into it.
Movement caught her eye and she saw Schrödinger now balanced on the lip of one of the other three bells. "Isn't this wonderful? We'll be the last people to see this place like this."
"Wonderful?" Seras' eyes searched the belfry for anything she could use to her advantage. "You're balmy!" Her eyes lit on the stays in the mouths of each bell. They were all that held the bells upright until they were chimed.
Pip whispered a suggestion and she nodded before stepping off of the bell into the open air in the center of the four bells. Seras hovered there momentarily before spinning in mid-air, her shadow wing spreading out to knock loose the four stays that held the bells in their almost vertical positions. The four bells, released to gravity's hold, dropped with ponderous swings and the belfry was filled with the mind-shattering volume of Big Ben's signature tones ringing together in a manner they had not rung in the tower's more than one hundred year history.
On the field of battle, thousands of eyes – living and undead alike – turned upward. For a fraction of a second, the only sound was the unharmonious clangor from Big Ben, then the clash resumed, with those combatants who were fractionally more alert taking advantage of their opponents' distraction to land killing blows across the field.
As the cacophony of the bells faded away, a new pair of eyes looked up at the clock tower, but Alucard's were focused on the zeppelin that floated above them. "Integral." Shadows enfolded the vampire. When they dissipated, Walter stood alone among the dead still staring up at Big Ben. He shook himself and turned away from the tower to seek out an old acquaintance.
"It's my fault that Big Ben rang wrong, when it rang the proper time even while the Germans bombed London?"
"It was clever," Walter reassured her. He looked at Alucard and frowned slightly.
"Yes, as he says, it was a clever move," Alucard admitted, looking at Walter. Better? Don't expect this coddling to become a habit.
Walter's nod in response went unseen by Seras, although she saw the glance Alucard gave the other man. When she looked up at Walter, he was smiling down at her, not looking at Alucard. She shivered when he stopped rubbing her neck and instead drew a fingernail up the exposed line of her throat. She was reminded of watching Walter and Alucard in a similar pose and almost flinched away remembering how Alucard had cut Walter and casually offered the other man's blood to her to drink.
"Your story isn't over, Seras," he reminded her, pointing a long finger at Alucard before returning to rubbing her neck.
The sound of the bells had not harmed Schrödinger. He teleported out before Seras had even finished her desperate maneuver, and waited on the ground until the sound of the bells faded away. When the catboy teleported back to the belfry, he snickered to see Seras huddled on the floor with her one arm clutched over her head. It must have been hell up there with vampiric hearing.
He was not expecting her arm to shoot out and grab him by the leg when he came to mock her. He was not expecting the girl to lift her blood-streaked face in a snarl while she pulled him off of his feet and scrambled on top of him.
Seras Victoria looked positively animalistic as she bared her teeth in a snarl no natural creature could duplicate. For an instant, Schrödinger thought he might know how Rip Van Winkle had felt in her last moments.
Except Schrödinger had an escape route that Rip had not.
Seras
sank her teeth into Schrödinger's throat in the belfry of the Clock
Tower of Westminster Palace, but when she pulled her face away, sending
an arc of blood flying away from her face and the prone body of her
opponent, she was everywhere and nowhere.
