Author's Notes: Yes, well, I'm rather unsure about this chapter. May contain copious amounts of thinly-veiled fluff. I'm almost proud of this chapter.

"Transient Beings": A VAMPIRE HUNTER D / HELLSING CROSSOVER

TAKE 5 : Hellsing's Hitman

D hardly needed to be seen to as a patient. Upon arrival, he was thrust into a cell with double thick steel walls with a cot, a bucket, and a sink, and one pillow. It seemed that his assistance in the matter of vampires was ill-appreciated. He was fully healed in a matter of hours. His guards were perplexed, beyond the point of understanding why their prisoner, after calmly washing the blood from himself at the sink, could so calmly lay himself down, the brim of his hat bent down over his eyes, appearing for all the world to be taking a cat nap.

Alucard was at the door, manipulating a bullet between his knuckles, narrowing his eyes through the little window at his prisoner. The Hellsing guards stank with fear; the only reason they put up with him standing there was the fat paycheck at the end of every week. They knew well that the only thing keeping Alucard from entering the room was Integra Hellsing; she alone had the power to command this monster of war, who towered over most men in every aspect of existence. It was not the guards themselves keeping him at bay, nor their guns, their physical strength.

It made Alucard something more than just a vampire whose existence was contemptible as it was intolerable. He was deified as a god of the night, proprietor of darkness, incarcerated by loyalty and respect.

"And if that is the case," he said aloud, surprising his reluctant company, "what does that make her?" He spirited up the image of Integra in his mind. Tall, beautiful, fearless Integra Hellsing with eyes like blue fire. Her short temper counterbalanced her swift and calculating mind; if she could not have perfection, she would do her damned best to come very near.

A crackling voice broke through the ear-pieces of D's guards. They shifted their feet, looked at Alucard, and one of them finally attempted the English language. "S-Sir Integra w-wants to see you in her room."

"Bravo," Alucard congratulated dryly, "you actually spoke a full-sentence and only stuttered twice." He turned away, capturing the eye-contact of his captive through the mesh-enforced little one-by-one-foot window. Those chilling, penetrating eyes gave him a little chill, and he could say from experience it was not a pleasant stare.

He purposefully advanced through a void of darkness. It was only dark for a moment, gripped by cold, before he saw Integra's home-away-from-home materialize around him, shapes forming from the black.

Smell of perfume. The heat was nonexistent. It was freezing in here because she hadn't thought to turn it on even though it was snowing bountifully beyond her window. Maybe because she had come in here in a hurry, in a tantrum, and simply tossed her clothes into a corner to scald her frustrations away with a hot shower.

Her favorite color was blue. Her curtains were robin's egg blue and borderline masculine in design; her walls were not blue, but paneled in a highly Grecian-style, corners and edging spiralled dramatically. Of course she had a desk, but in comparison to the one in her main office it was small and had a few miscellaneous objects; Alucard spied the bottle of perfume, which was almost empty (he amused himself by planning to acquire for her another bottle) whose scent filled the air, coating the walls and the blankets and pillows of her dark navy blue poster bed against the wall with her particular scent. An end table, a Victorian lamp, relics of the past adorning the walls, not to mention her prized little cigars, whose scent also permeated this room. A wardrobe full of suits; a dresser full of nightgowns. Pink was absolutely not in her vocabulary. Chiffon? She would sooner swallow a knife than even think of wearing it.

She had two swords crossed on the wall against the Hellsing coat of arms; he prided himself on the knowledge that they were not just for decoration. Those were the swords she used for battle, the very ones she fought with alongside Seras and himself against the vampire nazi invasion.

He walked to her desk, opening a tiny music box, letting the delicate notes play out their sweet melody. His red Victorian trenchcoat made him look as if he he was a bloodstain in a lagoon of blue, moving about quietly as if he frequented the sanctuary of the most powerful woman in his life.

Integra Hellsing entered through another door, flanked by a cloud of vapor. She looked vulnerable without her glasses; did it help that she clutched a knee-length bathrobe around herself, a chaste virgin with an unexpected guest? Her hair was almost half-dry, as if she had thought about putting it in a towel all by itself but decided to hand-dry it instead, perhaps to make herself look less ridiculous for reprimanding Alucard. Even at her age, she was beautiful - as if the years wanted nothing more than to make her more or less... non-poignant.

"Alucard," she acknowledged roughly. "Please put that perfume down and quiet that racket." Her legs were smooth, shaven, and the scent of chamomile followed her as she went to her wardrobe, holding her bathrobe closed with one hand and rummaging within for her nightwear. Her left shoulder was bare, and her neck was likewise. He saw the scar; it was that scar that made him almost wantonly lust after her in his quiet hours, his dreams filled with all that forbidden skin.

The Midian obeyed with a demure smile, delicately placing the tiny bottle back on the desk and gently closing the music box. The notes perished under Integra's deep but feminine voice.

"I've had a stroke of inspiration. I also wasn't expecting you to come so soon. I have something you need to hear, but I'd rather not make me wait in case I suddenly cease to give a damn. Face the wall!" she ordered, curt, her voice darkening for the command.

The vampire, amusing himself with inappropriate thoughts, turned and stared at the wall.

"You've been in this family for decades," her voice began. It was an interesting effect, listening to her monologue as it traveled from one end of the room to the other, followed by the muffled staccato of bare feet on the floor. "You are reliable, efficient, ruthless, and costly." A deep, gusting sigh that floated by his left ear: "And I haven't forgotten that you saved my life that day, so many years ago. I've been thinking for a long, long time about it. About what I would have to do to repay you. This is... complicated for me to say this."

"This is not a matter of... guilt, is it?" Alucard interrupted. "Because, I assure you, my purpose in life--"

"--is as droll and tiresome and hopeless as... well. I'm not a poet like you." Integra's voice strengthened as she drew near. "But what are you really on about? What am I not doing for you that can somehow make you... hmm...happier?" For lack of a better word, she chose that one. It was simple, and covered a broad spectrum of meanings to make sure she was not mistaken.

Alucard struggled to prepare a response, and it was hard when he couldn't look at her. Suddenly his mind drew a total and complete blank. What? Happy? When has she or anyone concerned themselves with my happiness? This isn't like her. This is not right.

"Alucard?" A hint of impatience.

"It's not my place," he murmured, bailing quickly from the responsibility. "I know you have asked, and that I must answer, but to preserve your image, I cannot answer. It is beyond the realm of human understanding and... I'm sorry to say that that includes you, master."

"Are you calling me stupid?"

"No, I'm calling you dense." His eyes sparked with mischief. "However, you are much less dense than most humans. But not to worry. If you're worried about my happiness, I can see to my own needs."

"That is what worries me!" Integra shouted. "Turn around." She was in the process of tying her hair back, infuriation making her skin flushed. "Don't you see? First it was Seras. Now this. I don't want to put you away like my father did! You're too invaluable for me to just lock you in the basement, pretend you never existed. But you're becoming unpredictable!"

"You want to know if it's something you're doing... or not doing?"

"YES! What should the organization do? What can we provide? What--"

"It's not." Alucard's breath hissed softly from his nose, a sigh, and he meditatively took off his hat, letting it hang from the back of her chair. He was touched by her generosity, the worry; he could not, not by any means, allow her to feel responsible for his own madness. "I'm never going to die. I am a product of fate, science, and hatred. Hatred for all life. It's in my nature; I crave the purification of my own race. Circumcise the posers from the real deal."

Integra grew silent, her shoulders drooping slightly before she crossed her arms over her chest.

"Whatever qualms I have with my life, they carry no weight. They're inconsquential. No matter what, I will always do what you say. Not because you're my master. Not because you are strong, cunning, fascinating, and... beautiful." He diverted his eyes to the window, the snow falling, galaxies exploding, contorting, dancing...

He lifted the lid of the musix box, and the snowflakes ascended in a gust of wind. "Someday... after the last falls, who else will remain but I?"

"Alu...Alucard," she began, to reassure, to lie.

"It's the truth. I told you once I was too honest. Don't sell yourself short of the truth!" His words were as sharp as the fangs that poked into his lower lip, though his meaning was meant to save her from being the sort of self-sacrificing dishonesty that got people killed.

Integra's smoldering eyes lidded. Her eyelashes fluttered once, before she watched his white-gloved hands close the music box again.

"I wanted to tell you," she spoke again as he replaced his hat onto his head. "Your guest. You can do battle with him. I haven't yet decided where, but I wanted you to know."

For a rare moment, his smile was not cruel but handsome. He let loose a tension that he hadn't noticed building up at the base of his spine. He relaxed, sweeping himself forward into a respectful bow. "Master. Thank you."

Integra smiled back; they traded a long stare, before she wisely removed her eyes from his intoxicating gaze and prepared for a final smoke before bed. She gestured for him to get out; he obliged. After the door clicked shut, it clicked a second time, shutting him out completely from her world of perfume and cigars.

A piercing cry shot through his moment of reflection. Master! Walter just went to see him and says he's gone!

"Another game? Delightful." He smiled, the devil in its impurest form, all wickedness and nothing of peace - it just would not be him to be quiet for too long. He forgot the conversation completely in the heart-pounding minutes that followed. "DE-LIGHT-FUL!"

-----------

"We can all help corner him. He's got nowhere to go. This place is too large for him to escape. Even if he did, he couldn't walk down a single avenue without getting harassed by police, what with the sword he's got!"

"That went missing, too?" Alucard stuck a bullet between his lips, grinning around it like a craven lunatic. "Maybe he's too ready to die!"

"The victims were all stabbed. A group of twelve's got him pinned down in corridor C2." Walter and his strings of death, prepped for battle, stood ready with Seras, who didn't dare discharge Harkonnen in Integra's home, wielded a medium-caliber rifle.

Alucard turned away, marching through a wall. Seras. Ask him how many were killed.

Her voice sounded justly perplexed. Actually, he says nobody's been killed. The severest injury was a broken arm. Everyone else just got slashed and cut. Nobody dead, master.

"What lovely manners, not killing the master's servants in her own house," Alucard purred, emerging in C2 behind the struggling foot-soldiers. He guardedly informed Seras to watch C4 with Walter as he drove the dhampir back to them. If he couldn't, then he would neutralize him somehow here.

D had barricaded himself behind tables. The suppressive fire laid down by the foot-soldiers were nothing more than a nuisance to the vampire, who proved he could even withstand his blessed bullets. "Retreat now," he ordered; when he was in battle, he acted as a commanding officer ranking below only Integra herself.

Smoke and dust from the guns settled. The figure ensorceled by darkness became clearer to see. "You really are too polite. You managed to get this far without killing a single soul before you were outnumbered." He licked the barrel of "Joshua", the white 13mm destroyer, pinning one eye on the motionless swordsman, the other eye under the brim of his hat. "But you know you can't get through me. Why don't you go back to your room like a nice little boy and I'll put you to bed with a glass of warm blood?"

"I'm sorry, but I can't do that." D stepped forward, moving around the table. His gaze was a cold and as thick as the ice of the north. He seemed to have been carved out of the darkness and crafted by a master artisan, into this creature of timeless beauty and terrible death.

"Very well!" Alucard howled, peering down the sight at his enemy. Bloodthirsty murder seemed to clash with uncaring coolness. "The Hellsing Organization appreciates your kindness in sparing our men, but I have orders to destroy you... now... Die!"

The only witnesses to the following moments could only remark that it was a spectacular display of speed, precision, and rapid manuevers. As Alucard rained bullets on his enemy, who dodged and darted out of the deadly path of nearly every one, D's body flung into action. This corridor was much wider and higher than the corridor from before. Movement was still restricted, but who said the battle had to be fought on the floor?

When Alucard needed time for a reload, it was then D made his effort to strike. However, Alucard did not make his fight as a stationary turret. He flung himself bodily out of the path of the sword, his eyes wide and crimson as he felt a small bit of his hat slice off in the after affects. He nailed a blow with his foot to the hunter's body, the bodily thud filling the lull. He lunged away, rolling toward the tables where D had been hiding before, and fired from under his arm at the retreating figure in black. However, rather than retreating like a coward once again, D's left hand jerked out as if he meant to snatch the bullet out of the air, and it hit without a spatter of blood.

Alucard froze. Was that a ... a face in the palm of his hand?

But D did not comment. Instead he lowered his left hand until it disappeared against the rest of the shadows of his body. He readied for another attack, resetting flawlessly into his pose. The dance continued, filling the walls with bullets, Alucard firing, drawing close, lunging to grab for anything - a throat, a limb, the sword itself - but always the dhampir would dance just beyond his reach. Alucard drew back, his aquine nose flaring with indignation. One thing for sure was that D was not to be budged, even though the fight had moved a considerable distance. But not C4.

"Interesting," Alucard muttered, and the thrilling mystery of that strange occurence just now made his muscles quiver and bow like so many tense fibers. "But I've seen better tricks, bastard. There's no way I'm letting you leave this corridor. In a few moments, my master will arrive, and you wouldn't slay any human being to escape, would you?"

"I've had to kill them before. I'll do it again if I must."

"I bet they were so tasty. Ah, but you don't embrace your thirst, do you?" Alucard straightened. He felt wetness on his cheek that could only be blood. He narrowed his eyes. So the dhampir hadn't just cut his hat. He smelled the dhampir's blood from flak, and his senses reeled for a moment. "Where will you go?" the Midian challenged at last. "There are a million cities in this wretched world, all of them as anti-freak in mindset as the next. There's no place in this world for your kind. Oh! I know you'll try, try so hard to be someone you can't be, but in the end... you're a hunter, and when you go to sleep during the day, you are still a vampire!" He slowly lifted the Jackal - whose rounds exploded upon contact. What sort of devestation did he hope to wreak upon his body?

But that voice, as smooth as virgin satin as emotionless as the wind - it might have been the wind talking through him - interrupted again. "Why do you call her 'master'?"

"That's for me to know and you to ponder, child of night and day. Now, enough questions!" He sighted him down the barrel, gave a polite smile and prepared to fire.

"Is it because you love her?"

Alucard's blood suddenly exploded into a boil. His teeth were bared in a defensive snarl of outrage. "How dare you! My loyalty toward my master is out of respect! I was defeated, as was fair, by a single human Van Hellsing. Since then, I have endured such pain and horrors beyond imagining, and I have obeyed those that carry that name or Hellsing blood in their veins."

"I didn't ask you if you respected her. I asked you if you loved her."

Alucard chewed the inside of his cheek, sneering. "Of course I don't. A woman like Sir Hellsing has no heart for a vampire's fancy, and I'm incapable of such petty attachments."

"Is that so?"

The dhampir's expression was as unchanging as the face of the moon. It was so quiet that Alucard could hear, beneath the throbbing of machinery through the walls, the dust particles falling to the floor. Then there was the sweet music of the sword being replaced in its sheath. Alucard scoffed in disbelief, hardly entertaining the idea that the hunter was quitting. He never lowered his weapons until D spoke again.

"You said you wanted to fight me. If you want to stay in your master's good graces, we'd better not fight here." With that, he turned and faced the on-coming group of people. There was Seras, with her rifle, stopping on a dime to take aim; Walter, who was armed with apparently no weapons at all; and Integra who was armed. She saw that the fight was over already and relaxed.

"Why did you try to get away?" she demanded, turning her crystalline eyes on the phantom in the corridor.

"I wanted to ask him a few questions."

Alucard laughed, his weapons slowly being replaced. "It's true. We did fight for a little while... but it seems you keeping us apart has made him frustrated. He just wants someone to talk to!"

The master of the house surveyed the pair in barely disguised animosity. She had just recieved the information and prepared herself for battle, when the pair had flawlessly ended it for her already. "Do you know how much this--?" She glared at the damage, before looking at the hunter. He was already reaching into his money pouch - it was the very one he had carried on his person when he was uncovered. He must have recovered it with his sword.

"Will this cover it? It's the last I have." Three shiny circular coins made of gold caught the glint in the flickering lights and fell into her palm after a precise toss. She stared at them in mute fascination.

"Are you daft?" Seras gasped, poking her head over Integra's shoulder to see.

"It's not enough?"

Integra shook her head dazedly, before snapping back to attention. "It's... it's more than-- Walter!"

"Yes, Integra, sir?"

"Take these... once you're sure it's real, immediately go to our banker and arrange that they be converted to money. And I'd like to get Susan on the line to get the repair personnel here."

Walter smiled broadly, as he had not done in years. "Of course. Are you to be letting Alucard and D to converse now?"

"May as well. Can't afford to keep repairing every damn thing that goes wrong here. But you must promise not to destroy my house again! I won't go through the trouble of moving you somewhere else."

D did not seem to care what happened to him no matter what was decided, and simply stood off to the side. Alucard did not forget about him. "What about you?"

"What about me?"

"Well. Since you were only locked away so I couldn't talk to you, you have the run of the house. I trust you are house-trained, little one, or do I have to explain what a john is?" Alucard snarled maliciously, but it was not out of hatred. He softened his words but only slightly as he continued, nonplussed by his compatriot's silence. "There are rooms every floor of the wing. Some of them are guest rooms for my master's far-and-between friends. Given your circumstance, I'm sure you'd appreciate a nice soft bed instead of a cot." Ah, he couldn't resist. "Or maybe you'd like a coffin? I have a few!"

D said nothing at all again, but the slight tightening of his lips revealed his growing contempt. Alucard counted that as a strike for the home team.

"Seras!" the vampire snapped, and quite literally snapped his fingers. The girl jerked out of her boredom and rushed over. "I'm sure our master won't mind if he takes a room?"

Integra shrugged, waved them away. "I don't care as long as he doesn't break anything or kill anyone."

Seras gave a tiny little hiccup, pointing her finger toward the ceiling to object. But there was no argument. She shouldered her rifle and groused her way toward the stairs. She snapped a glance at D, who followed, and said, "How come every time something happens around here I'm the last bloody git to know about it? You two are driving me crazy!"