It wasn't the first time, nor likely the last, that Alucard had watched the young man sleep. His mind was so open and malleable – there was no way the vampire could resist the opportunity to pry and mold.
Simple, really.
That first night in Westminster Cathedral, he had seen something rare in the boy. Not everyone had the potential that child had shown. Not everyone had the potential in them to not just kill, to not just love killing, but to love killing with a clear mind and a conscious will. Walter had that potential and it roused Alucard's interest greatly.
Since then he had watched Hellsing's foundling take to the role of Angel of Death as though born to it. He could almost see another hand guiding the boy's development. On the occasional days when Alucard believed in God, he wondered if the sobriquet might be more accurate than he'd thought when he'd playfully bestowed it on the youthful hunter.
In a life as long as Alucard's, most coincidence was suspect.
This night, though, the young man slept peacefully, lips parted slightly, dark lashes standing out in contrast to the pale skin of his cheek. Alucard smiled, sharp teeth gleaming in the almost tangible rays of moonlight. If he didn't know the dreams unfolded behind that peaceful countenance, the vampire might have thought the sleeper innocent.
Behind an angel's face, the mind was bloody and strong. After the first time Walter permitted the vampire into his dreams, there were nights when Alucard lay next to Walter to watch his dreams the way some humans seemed to enjoy watching television.
Alucard watched the dreams this night with interest.
After Walter's first solo hunt, the boy had refused to speak to him about his near miss with the human. Alucard recognized the setting and his more adult form.
In Walter's dream, Alucard watched the boy wait in a shadowed doorway with a tall man in a vivid red greatcoat. He stayed with the reliving of the boy's anticipation and nervousness, his frustration with the vampire's teasing, and his rising tension as the pair followed their targets to the park before splitting up to allow Walter to go it alone.
He smirked slightly at the boy's certainty that his target was the larger and older of the pair. Walter should have remembered the detail that the customers were showing up dead, not the little boy whores.
Walter deserved the shock he got next when the boy attacked him and not the man. However, Alucard couldn't fault his speed of response to the shock. Reliving his memory of that sudden spray of blood was delicious, complete as it was with the sensation of warm skin suddenly chilled with cool vampire blood.
The next moments were intensely interesting to Alucard – Walter's relief and jubilation at being alive was interrupted by the running steps of the human man that Walter had been targeting. The vampire had unwittingly saved that human with the timing of his attack on the boy hunting him.
As quickly as the sudden shift in target, Walter's triumph was replaced with the sick recognition that he had nearly killed a human. With everything he'd done, everything he'd seen, the boy, arrogant and ignorant in his youth, had not understood just what it meant to have death at his fingertips.
Death does not discriminate.
Here was a problem that needed to be dealt with. Allowing this event to color Walter's thoughts with mistaken guilt or compassion was unacceptable.
Alucard expanded his presence in Walter's dreams, not just observing, but directing. The scene cut with the simple fade of dream logic, spinning Walter back to the moment he entered the park following the pair. He felt the young man's psyche resist the shift, bringing a strong feeling of déjà vu to the scene.
Walter drew a deep breath and felt his adrenaline surge, leaving his skin prickling and hot as he dug his toes into the grass under his feet and launched himself at the pair.
He flinched, expecting a blow that didn't come, and crossed enough distance to separate the man's head neatly from his shoulders.
He registered the hot spray of the man's blood and the sharp agony of breaking ribs at the same moment. Staggered from the surprise attack, Walter fell back several steps and recognized the boy he had thought was just plying his wares.
The vampire leapt at him, fangs bared to kill, only to cut himself to pieces on the web of wire that Walter threw up in front of himself. The youth's swift reaction belied the scream of bone rubbing on bone that shook him with every movement as he wielded his wires and twisted away from the vampire's flying remains.
"If it weren't for that human, you wouldn't have been hurt."
Walter spun around and struck out, wincing when his fist struck Alucard in the sternum; the vampire remained unmoved, but the shock of impact through his ribs left Walter feeling nauseated.
"You didn't tell me it was the boy!"
Alucard let the dream fade with a smile. This time Walter's anger had not stemmed from misplaced guilt about nearly harming the human; he had been angry that killing the human had distracted him and gotten him hurt.
That was much more the Angel of Death he wanted to see.
"Good night, sweet prince, and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest." Alucard laid a bare whisper of a kiss on Walter's lips before dissolving into shadows.