Chapter Two:Dark Guardian

It seemed natural to dream of what had come after. After she had shot her uncle, after Alucard had told her his name.

She sat there in the darkness, watching her uncle's blood pool in the cell, visible only because of the dim lights in the corridor. Such absurd thoughts running through her mind.

Her uncle's blood really must be foul, because the monster, the vampire, Alucard, wasn't even twitching. He'd drunk her blood and that of the guards readily enough.

Actually, he hadn't moved at all, not even to lower his arm. Not even to straighten from his kneeling position on the floor.

She realized she was bleeding still, and her hands were trembling from the recoil of the gun. Only the recoil, she wanted to believe, not the fact that she'd just made her first kill, and that her first kill had been one of the few living members of her family.

Not the knowledge that she was now the last member of the Hellsing line, barring a few cousins.

Not the knowledge that she was sitting less than a foot away from a vampire who had already drunk her blood and said he liked the taste of it.

Not the absurd fact that this killer, this monster among monsters, had called her Master and asked her to command him.

She preferred to focus on the fact that she had spent the past three days grieving herself into exhaustion over her father and the majority of today crawling around in vent shafts to avoid getting killed. And the fact that she had slept badly for the past few nights and hadn't eaten in at least 12 hours.

Those were safe things to think about. Things she could handle.

Then Alucard spoke, and if she hadn't been so dead tired, the adrenalin draining out of her, she would have jumped a mile and probably tried to shoot him for it. "What are your orders, my master?"

Orders. She couldn't think of orders. The best she could dredge up was what she wanted. "I need to get back upstairs, into the main part of the house. I don't know how to get there from here." She hadn't used a conventional path, after all. She also didn't want to wander around in the dungeons until she found it.

The vampire, Alucard, rose to his feet. "I can show you the way." He watched her through glittering, blood red eyes. "Shall I carry you, Master?"

He was covered in blood and gore, some of it hers. He was a vampire and she was bleeding. Those two thoughts were enough to send her staggering to her feet. "No. I can manage. Just show me the way upstairs."

He nodded. "Shall I come with you?"

Vampire or not, he was the only person today who'd tried to protect her, she didn't know if her uncle had any more flunkies around, and Walter wasn't back yet. "Yes."

He led her past the bodies, out of the room, and through another door to a staircase. Climbing up was painfully difficult, and she felt shaky, but she managed. At her insistence, Alucard went up ahead of her and waited at the top. There was a small smirk on his face but she was beginning to think, in an exhausted sort of way, that the smirk was just his regular expression. It hadn't changed since he'd woken up, after all.

The door they left proved to be the door under the stairs that her father had showed her once or twice, explained in a general way what was behind it, and then ordered her to leave alone. She had, mostly because it was always locked. She supposed her uncle must have taken the key for it, or maybe Walter had opened it for some reason. She didn't care.

Sluggish thoughts entered her mind. She needed food. She needed to bandage her arm and her face. She needed to sleep. She needed to reload the damn gun, hanging limp in her good hand.

Food first, because the kitchens were on the ground floor and nothing else was. She got her feet under her and staggered in that direction, hoping there was something there that was easy to prepare and eat. Alucard came with her, a silent, half-seen shadow that was always just out of the corner of her eye.

It was late afternoon. She half-expected that to send her new servant (if that's what he really was) running for the shadows when they passed the windows. He didn't seem to notice them though. One part of her weary brain filed that fact away to ask about later. Whether she meant to ask Walter or ask the vampire himself, she'd no idea.

Cold sliced meats and biscuits were hardly proper fare for the Master of the Hellsing family, but she didn't care. They were there and they were easy to prepare. Her hands were shaking, and she was too tired to bother with propriety. As far as she was concerned, Walter could scold her when he got back.

She wanted a glass of water. Really she wanted tea, but she was too shaky to prepare it. In fact, she was too shaky to reliably get a glass, put it under the tap and fill it. She broke one trying, and dropped another.

A white-gloved hand caught it in midair, and a dark, shadowed shape framed by white-blond hair stopped beside her, filled the cup, and placed it on the table in a blur of movement. He didn't say anything, as she drank it, but another glass was full by her plate before she finished, though she didn't properly see him move.

She felt better, a little steadier, afterward. Steady enough to wish she knew where a broom was. "The glass..."

She hadn't meant to speak aloud, but a dark clad arm stopped her as she made to rise and clean it up. "You will cut yourself, my Master."

She blinked up at him. "It needs to be cleaned up."

"Do you wish me to do so?" He looked down at her from his far greater height. Despite the sneer, she really couldn't sense any mockery in him.

"Yes." It seemed like the thing to say. He had called her Master, said he was her servant.

"Eat then." he turned away.

Somehow, while she was finishing the last of the biscuits, the glass disappeared. She cleaned the last crumbs off her plate, then realized he was standing beside her, a silent tower of dark strength.

Fed, she wanted a bath and to tend to her wounds. She had medical supplies in her room (Courtesy of Walter, and her father's insistence), and she didn't think she needed stitches. She picked up the gun again and made her way out of the kitchen, glad her legs were steadier.

She stopped outside her room, then looked up at Alucard, who still hadn't left her side. "If I go inside, can you still watch over me from here?"

"Of course." He gave her a shark's grin, full of fangs, that was strangely reassuring. It shouldn't have been, given what she'd seen, but it was.

"Wait here then." She shoved her door open, then slipped inside, relieved to be in safe territory once more.

She took the gun with her into the bathing room, wrapping it in a towel to keep it at least somewhat dry. It took forever to run the bath, and the hot water and soap burned fiercely in the cuts on her arm and face, but the relief she felt was more than worth it.

Afterward she dressed in a loose, sleeveless gown. It was easy to stick a small bandage to her face. Her arm, however, proved to be far more difficult. High on her upper arm, she couldn't get a good angle to hold the bandage so she could wind and tie it.

She was almost ready to wait for Walter, but she didn't want to have to worry about scarring if it was left untreated, nor did she want to have a potentially bleeding wound with Alucard anywhere nearby.

She dropped the bandage roll on the wrong side of her arm. And a white gloved hand pinned the bandage in place before it could slip. She blinked. "I told you to wait outside."

"Yes. But you didn't specify for how long. You also commanded me to watch over you." There was no mistaking the dark amusement in that smile. Then he bowed, folded himself into a kneeling position on the floor of her bathroom, his hand still on her arm. "Permit me to assist you, my Master."

She stared at him. "But the blood...I don't want you to suck my blood." her voice was less firm than she would have liked it.

"I have no need. I have fed well." He flashed her another one of those dark, cruel, half-crazed smiles. "Besides...you are my Master."

It hadn't stopped him before. But then, that was before he'd pledged to her. She wondered how that made any difference.

She was too tired to care. "Fine. Then you may help me with the bandage."

He bowed his head, then focused those red eyes on her arm. She didn't miss the slight flaring of his nostrils. She brought up the gun in warning, even though her hand was still a little shaky, and saw what her tired mind almost believed was approval in the edge of the mocking smile.

Then he bound her arm. It took him less than five minutes, and he was as gentle as Walter or the Hellsing doctor had ever been. The realization that she'd just seen those same hands rip a group of men to shreds not three hours ago was an odd one.

"How do you know how to bind wounds?" An irrelevant, stupid question, but it emerged before she could think about it.

"I've served Hellsing for many, many years." Deep, shadowed laughter in his voice, that sent shivers down her spine. "I know many things." She didn't want to think about the promise in his voice either. A promise of forbidden knowledge, if she dared to ask for it.

She forced her mind to other things. "I want you to leave my room now, and stand outside the door while I change. I'm going to bed now." her voice was fainter than she liked. She almost, almost heaved a sigh of relief when he disappeared in one of those shadowy, not-quite-real moves that she'd seen him use before.

She got dressed in her night clothes without incident, then put herself to bed. The sheets felt good.

A strong, deep voice in her mind. "Shall I return to watch over you, my Master?"

She had the gun under her pillow. "Stay outside. And don't harm Walter."

A laugh, though she had no idea what had inspired that. "As you wish, my master. Shall I help you sleep?"

She didn't want to know how he'd do that. "Just stay outside and watch for any more of my uncle's men."

"As you command." A brush against her mind that she couldn't define and didn't want to, and then she felt herself falling asleep.

The last coherent thought to cross her mind was of the oddity of trusting herself to a vampire body guard while she slept.

***DoM***

Integra surfaced from her dreams to the throb of her neck and a dim flicker of amusement.

All these years, and she still trusted Alucard to watch over her rest. Sometimes even more than she trusted Walter. Strange how some things hadn't changed since she was a child.

She turned her head, but there was no flicker of a red coat. Still, she did not doubt that he was there, outside her door.

Something brushed her mind. "Do you require anything, my Master?"

She laughed, and wondered if he had read her dreams. "No. Just stay outside and watch the door." Someone she couldn't quite focus on adjusted something by her head, and the pain in her neck receded on a sleep-inducing cloud.

If Alucard said anything else, it was lost as she slipped towards dreaming once more.

Author's Note: We never see the aftermath of Integra shooting her uncle. I've always thought that there was more to it than 'on with business'. Alucard's a little out of character, but then, he's adjusting to a new Master, and to freedom after so many years. And she has earned his respect. So, I thought it might not be unreasonable for him to act like this, just this once when there's no one there to catch him at it.