Disclaimer: Hellsing is Hirano's, not mine.
Warnings: Crackfic, AU at Ch. 74, Femmeslash, Slash, Het, some sexual themes and harsh language, spoilers for Volume 8/9, some OOC-ness.
A/N: I was trying write one of those "A few Iscariots survive and go to post-war Hellsing" stories as genfic, but my id kept trying to toss in random lesbian subtext. So, I took it all and put it here. Also, while I do pay more fic lip service to Heinkel-as-intersexed than most, she's totally a chick here.
"Still looking for a way to repair the dear butler?" Alucard asked Integral, reading over her shoulder after appearing from what would have seemed like nowhere.
"Yes," she replied, "and don't stand so close."
Alucard sighed as he obeyed, walking in a leisurely pace to stand in front of Integral's desk. Three months had passed since the war had ended, and he had made absolutely no progress in persuading her of anything. Citing practicality, she had declined outright to end his existence, and would not bend even slightly to his ever-so-subtle advances and suggestions that he might be comforted with another kind of release.
"There must be someone, somewhere, on this bloody globe capable of taking the evil out of him," Integral grumbled when not chewing on her cigar in a way that made Alucard even more intensely frustrated.
"I do not believe the problem is one of getting the evil out," Alucard said. "Rather, it is one of putting the good back in, which is rather more difficult." Integral didn't respond except for a slight tightening of her jaw. "May I be so bold as to offer a solution to you, Countess?" he asked, smiling sweetly.
Without looking away from her computer monitor, Integral replied, "And what solution might that be?"
"If you give your consent, I could remove Walter's soul from that tainted body and place it one more acceptable, willing to resume his previous duties. I could even make him look like his physical age, something I believe you would like as much as I."
"And you would accomplish this by eating him."
"Of course."
"Then your answer is no. Just as it was when you offered this 'solution' last night, and the night before last, and the night before that, and so on. It is not acceptable, and that is my final answer."
"As you wish, Countess," the vampire replied, only half-hiding his disappointment Integral would not agree to what he thought was a brilliant plan.
"Was there anything else, Alu--" Integral paused mid-name, brows furrowing slightly as the sound of raised voices carried into the office from elsewhere in the mansion, too distant to properly make out the words. "Alucard, what is that?"
Alucard perked, pleased to be of use. "It's two of the Catholics," he answered, his supernatural hearing perfectly able to make sense of the heated Italian. "There is an argument of some kind."
"Anything I should know about?"
"I don't believe it is anything concerning; it sounds to be of a personal nature," he replied. "Master, I have never understood; why did you employ them?"
"Hellsing required every hand it could acquire for the cleanup effort. The Iscariots are irritating, slow to accept my authority, and have poor senses of judgement. And yet," Integral continued, "they possess some skill, and, most important, they work even more dirt cheap than the Geese. Almost a shame there were only three left."
"It surprised me they did not try to negotiate your first offer."
"I as well," Integral agreed. "But I imagine any sort of wage sounds attractive when coming from vows of poverty. Now, was there anything else, Alucard?"
The vampire frowned at her resumed attempt to shoo him, but decided to take the hint before it became something more insistent. "No, Countess," he said. "In fact, I think I shall visit our old friend."
"Give him my regards," replied Integral, eyes on the rather sizeable pile of papers she had begun going over.
She did not see Alucard's Cheshire smile hang in the air after the rest of his figure had faded as he said, "I most certainly will."
Meanwhile, in another part of Hellsing Manor, a different pair was having a much less amicable exchange.
"Fine. Be that way."
"Okay! And you do the same! In Hell!"
"...You know, Yumie, that one just doesn't work with the already damned," said Heinkel as she rubbed her temples. All the aspirin in Europe couldn't have soothed the throbbing the other woman had induced in her skull.
"There you go again!" Yumie accused her. "You always think you're so much more smarterer than me!"
Without thinking, Heinkel replied, "Now you're just being stupid." Then she winced.
"See!" Yumie was livid. "I'm so sick of it!"
"And I'm sick of your constant attitude," Heinkel said. "Also, your overuse of exclamation points."
"Yeah, well, maybe I'll just take my exclamation points and go elsewhere."
The petulant threat wasn't about to shake Heinkel. "Maybe you should just do that."
"Maybe I should just remove the maybe," said Yumie, seething.
With the calmest face and coolest voice she could muster, Heinkel only replied, "Okay."
"Well..." Yumie seemed taken aback and appeared indecisive for several seconds, fists closing tightly, before finally concluding with, "...well, okay then!" She then gave Heinkel a final glare, turned her heels, and huffed off.
Heinkel stood there a few moments longer, silent, save a series of deep breaths she forced in and out, then promptly headed for Integral Hellsing's office.
There were few places in the world better suited to hold a vampire than the Hellsing dungeon, and few people knew this as well as Walter Dornez. As a man, he had spent the majority of his time trying to devise ways of bettering Hellsing's facilities. As a monster, he now spent the majority of his time trying to devise a way out of those same facilities.
He had nothing else to do, and he was bored out of his mind.
"Brooding over your clipped wings, Angel?" inquired Alucard as he slipped through a wall.
Walter gave him a disinterested glance from his seat on the floor of his cell. "Still trying to get into Integral's knickers? Or was it another request for assisted suicide, this week?"
Alucard's eyes hardened. "It may please you to learn you're off the menu for another night."
"It does please me, yes," replied Walter. "Though I would be rather more pleased if Integral would grant your second wish and end all of our misery."
"Walter, you have my guarantee that I will not leave you with your situation unresolved."
"Joy," Walter said, experiencing none of it. His ears picked up the sound of approaching footsteps. "Speaking of which..."
The door swung open to reveal a spectacled, collared young man carrying an ice bucket with the top of a blood bag sticking out. The Iscariot's eyes went wide as they took in the two vampires. "Am I interrupting something?"
"Nothing at all," Walter told the man, whose name he had either never learned or simply not cared to remember.
The Iscariot approached the cell with obvious discomfort at being in closer proximity to Walter and Alucard. Walter idly fantasized about killing him slowly, then afterwards drowning two litters of kittens (fluffy ones), and leaving the scene whistling a jaunty tune whilst kicking a puppy down the street. The boy followed the instructed procedure, bending down outside of Walter's reach to place the bag on the floor and slide it toward the cell. He sighed on the rise; Walter noted his downcast expression and asked, "Has someone died? Again?"
The Iscariot frowned. "No."
"What were the theatrics upstairs about?"
"I don't really know," admitted the boy. "But I can't believe they broke up."
"The nuns?" asked Alucard.
"Uh-huh," the Iscariot said. "I thought they were soulmates, like Gabrielle and Xena."
"You mean they're --"
"Like Marcie and Peppermint Patty," affirmed the Iscariot, nodding.
Walter snorted, unsurprised. He'd had his suspicions about the women ever since the little show they had put on to spite him some weeks ago.
The delivery of his blood rations was on an alternating schedule, and the nuns had seemed curiously pleased that one of them had the chore that evening as they'd entered the dungeon. After giving him the bag, they'd lingered in the room, ignoring his barbs and engaging each other in a protracted conversation about the paint job on one of the reconstructed sections of the mansion while the cross-dresser went through a flamboyant number of cigarettes. She had smiled at him several times, then exhaled in his direction, bringing the torturously tantalizing scent of tobacco and nicotine even more sharply to his deprived senses. The shorter nun was on lighter duty, flashing him a smirk, then making eyes at her partner every time she lit a new cigarette for her.
Whenever he got free, he would dismember her as he had been inches away from doing before he was so rudely interrupted by Seras Victoria. The other woman would experience the same fate, then he would take the cigarettes off her corpse.
The thought made him smile. The priest looked upset. It made Walter smile more.
"Didn't your lot have vows of chastity?" he asked.
"Well..." said the Iscariot, "you've heard of the Americans' 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' policy, correct?"
"Yes."
"We had something a little like that in Iscariot," the priest explained. "In theory, you were supposed to be celibate, and if someone flaunted a relationship, or allowed it to get in the way of their work, they would be disciplined. But, if you were reasonably discreet, no one really cared. We were all sinners, anyway."
"Hear that, Alucard?" Walter asked. "You might have had a chance with the paladin, after all."
Both the priest's and Alucard's faces became sad. Bringing up Anderson was a surefire way to upset the Iscariots and the No Life King, and it never got old.
"I look forward to devouring you," Alucard grumbled.
The Iscariot blinked.
"So how did you find out about the nun sex?" asked a fourth party.
Walter, Alucard, and the priest turned toward the doorway, where one of the Wild Geese had made himself quite comfortable at some point. "What are you doing here?" the priest asked.
"I heard someone saying we got lez-beans!" beamed the mercenary.
"They're overrated," groused Alucard.
Walter chuckled. "You should know."
"Say what, now?" asked the Goose.
"Have you ever read Dracula?" Walter inquired.
"I did," said the Iscariot. "It was required. Know your enemy, and all that."
"I saw the movie," the mercenary replied. "Keanu rocks!"
"The Coppola film?" Alucard smiled. "I enjoyed that adaptation."
"Of course you did," Walter said. "Overblown romanticization. It had little resemblance to the novel."
"Oh, please," sniffed Alucard. "That was a tawdry, sensationalist piece of libelous garbage."
Walter smirked. "That's not what Arthur told me Abraham said."
"He told you this sometime between the alcohol and underage prostitutes?"
"Yes."
"You go, Arthur!" the Goose shouted.
"He got syphilis."
"That sucks," the mercenary said, before turning his attention back on the Iscariot. "Hey Altar Boy, the Girl Love: if you guys are supposed to be discreet, how'd the word get out?"
The Iscariot shrugged. "It was really common knowledge. We all took each other's confessions, and a couple of people tended to get loose-lipped when they drank--"
"You guys drink?"
"Sometimes."
Alucard gave the humans an amused look, then glanced at Walter. "As fascinating as this question and answer session may be, I believe I will be taking my leave. I'll see you later, old man."
"I'll be counting the minutes," Walter replied with utter insincerity. He watched Alucard exit by seeping into a shadow in the corner, startling the humans.
"Right then," the Iscariot said, moving toward the door, probably trying to flee the Goose's inquiring mind. "Um, enjoy your blood, I guess."
"I'd enjoy yours more," was Walter's dry response. "All over the ground."
The priest frowned and left. The Goose stared at Walter and said, "Hey, that's really antisocial, man." He then quickly followed the Iscariot, his questions echoing down the hallway.
Walter finally reached for the bag and bit into the chill plastic. He was glad to have quiet once more, but any potential source of entertainment was gone. Forcing down the chemically infused liquid, he turned to one of few pastimes he'd been able to think of in the desolate space: counting the cracks in the stones.
"One, two, three..."
To be continued...
Additional Disclaimer: Xena: Warrior Princess belongs to Robert G. Tapert and others. Peanuts belongs to the heirs of Charles Schulz. (I think.)