Seras Victoria thought about the word often. She'd first learned it from Walter, who told her that he had learned it from Alucard.
"He taught me many words," Walter told her with an enigmatic smile.
He had used the term to describe the circumstances of his two relationships with vampires – both with Alucard in his youth, and with Seras so many years later. "Social psychologists refer to the 'propinquity effect,'" he said wryly. "People who have physical and/or psychological nearness are more likely to become friends, no matter how unlikely or inappropriate the friendship may be."
And their unlikely and perhaps inappropriate relationship had flourished for a few years until Walter went the way of all mortals. Seras had tried to be philosophical about it, but it grieved her not just to lose a man she loved, but to know that this loss was her destiny every time she loved a human.
Maybe the propinquity effect began its work the day that Integra and Seras stood together at Walter's grave. The day had been appropriately grey and drizzly, but both women remained at the graveside long after the other mourners had drifted away. Alucard had said his goodbyes to the Angel of Death before Walter died; he said he had no reason to say goodbye to a hole in the ground.
They had spoken then at his open graveside, sharing memories of the man they had known and loved, each in her way. If either cried, the steadily escalating fall of rain covered that for them.
In the days, months, and years that followed, Integral and Seras came to rely upon each other more and more. What Seras had thought was an untouchable relationship between her Master and his Master, evolved into something else – a symbiosis perhaps. Alucard and Integra loved each other as fish loved water or birds the air, but that didn't make them give up their other passions.
-
Seras thought back to that turning point as she sat at Integra's bedside. They had brought each other such comfort that day. Before then, she would never have imagined that she and Hellsing's icy chief could have anything in common.
After that day, though, came a thaw.
First, it was just a nod or raised hand acknowledging the other's presence. After a while, the nod became a hello or good evening.
Seras found reasons to do more work for Integra; Integra volunteered Seras for office duties more often. The two would go through forms, reports, even newspaper clippings, quietly exchanging observations.
Seras gave the woman what she had needed since Walter's death – someone to talk to. She listened without offering platitudes and asked occasional questions that Integra found useful more often than not.
Integra gave her company that didn't look askance at her if she drank blood when they sat down to dinner. She gave Seras the most valuable commodity possible – acceptance.
Seras looked at Integra's hand where it lay on the bed, the skin paper-thin and etched in a way that proclaimed her age with more honesty than her face or figure. The vampire traced one prominent blue vein with her fingertip, trying not to notice the fact that her skin was taut and youthful in mocking contrast to Integra's.
She was only four years younger than Integra. It wasn't fair that she would go on and on while a woman like this passed away.
But it was, again and again, her choice. Alucard had asked, Seras had asked; both had been firmly rebuffed. As Seras valued acceptance from Integra, she was forced to give the woman the same gift, no matter how hard it was.
Now they sat at her deathbed.
It wasn't cancer. Integra's smoking might have killed her that way in an earlier age, but medicine advanced in leaps and bounds during her lifetime; most cancers were nightmares of the past.
It wasn't business-related. The vampires kept Integra safe despite the dangers of her family business.
It was age, pure and simple. The thing that could not touch Alucard or Seras was stealing Integra away from them.
Seras could hear it coming. Death's footsteps sounded exactly like the slowing beat of a human heart. His breathing could be heard in echoes of Integra's own labored breaths.
Seras thought that she heard the hiss of his scythe for a split second before the shrill alarm of the heart monitor covered the subtle sound. Integra Wingates Hellsing's passing was witnessed by the two monsters she had let love her and whom, in her own way, she had loved in return.
-
Seras stared down into the hole that held nothing but a box and some flesh that would inevitably rot. Never again.
She wouldn't let herself get close to another human who might abandon her like this again. One thing social psychologists didn't tell you about the propinquity effect, thought Seras, was that if propinquity was taken away, the feelings didn't go with it.