Author's Notes: Dorian Grey is inspired by the character of the same name from the novel, "The Picture of Dorian Grey" by Oscar Wilde. Go out now and read it; I don't own Dorian Grey at all, just... so you all know. This is also a disclaimer for me not being responsible if someone whines that Dorian Grey is not mine. This chapter got way out of control toward the end. You can tell I was starting to unravel. I think it's time to end it soon. (Dun dun dunnnnnn!!!)

Transient Beings": A VAMPIRE HUNTER D / HELLSING CROSSOVER

TAKE 8 : We All Go to Hell

------

It was well that Alucard was past the point of apathy. He gave the girlish manchild a long, steady look. The snow was falling through the cracks in the ceiling. It was beautiful, this panorama of drudged up dreams and battered benevolence. The young boy before them gave a small, tired smile and moved his hands to go over Alucard, tracing the circular runes on his gloves.

"I'm not asking for your pity," Dorian Grey said in an undertone. His voice grew heavy with anger as he saw Alucard's smile turn to mocking. "Don't believe that story about my picture! It was a ruse to fool those romantic idiots wanting a good story. It may be my life's story, but it was a vampire that seduced me. I've had enough now, I want peace!"

"Do you know what will happen to your pathetic soul? There is no peace where monsters go; we only hope that there will be so that we might not go mad with despair! You, tired? Ridiculous!" The temperature dropped terrifically, so cold that D almost trembled. He, being wet, moved his arm slightly and ice crackled along his sleeve. "What happened to you?" he whispered as his accusatory tone dropped to sadness. "You were elusive and clever and annoying. We know it was you who killed, but you did in such a way that never once raised suspicion that you were a vampire. Only that you were immortal and a killer that baffled inspectors. The only one in your time to drop a veil of terror across the land. How I longed to face you at last!

"Yet... Here you stand, quivering and pathetic and... disgusting. Yes, yes... you disgust me. So this is how a monster falls - head bowed, eyes closed, waiting for the guillotine's blade to fall!" His words reverberated, his voice mutating into something monstrous when it traveled back. The dozens of eyes rolled back in response, and that which was called the Baskerville hound trembled before lunging forward, sinking its teeth into his Dorian's shoulder. When it fell back again, his arm was totally gone. There was an empty, bloody hole in his body, having taken part of his upper body as well.

Dorian fell to his knees. "You would go down fighting," he grinned slowly. His body changed, unable to maintain its illusion as he became a full-grown man of remarkable beauty, long, lustrous hazel brown hair and a black suit, no arm, with eyes that were Cola can blue. "You'd fight and rage away at the dying of that which you love..."

"Shut up!" The Midian turned away. "I will not honor your death as your executioner. Find mercy elsewhere, you weak-willed piece of trash!"

D brought his hand to his sword slowly. Dorian Grey was trembling while his vital fluid poured from the gaping injury he sustained. Disbelief drained the color from his reddened lips. When he turned his pleas to D, he was surprised to find himself met with a gaze of glowing compassion. Dorian's own eyes lit up with peerless joy, dumbstruck the dhampir's face filled his field of vision, disrupted by a pure white light... then nothing.

A single piece of wood - possibly blessed - shot forth, nailing him through the heart. Dorian Grey's spirit fled the remains, and his body, once beautiful and the object of desire for decades, crumbled in on itself until it amounted to nothing more than ashes and bleached white bare bones.

"Idiot," Alucard commented. "Unrepentant fool."

"What else could you possibly have wanted of him?" D asked dispassionately, staring at Alucard.

"To be brave!" Alucard snarled, turning his anger on D. "He deserved a coward's death! What a pathetic, pampered little puppy he was, crying to be inside once he couldn't stand the thought of getting wet in the rain! I have no respect for fools!"

The quiet that followed made them both aware of just how cold and miserable it was, surrounded by the cadavers of undead, their spirits lingering on even when their ephemeral bodies ceased to care. D watched as Alucard unravelled the darkness from his body, his vermillion coat opening like a pair of wings as he holstered his weapons and gave the scene a long last look of distaste before turning away.

He was stopped fast by that alluring voice, that damned voice that filled him with terror and wonder. "You won't be alone. You can't hate life and cherish it at the same time, but you do try anyway."

"Because if I don't?" Alucard questioned, smiling at the snow, tipping back his head. "Ashes.. to ashes... We all go to Hell."

From somewhere far away, an old music box was chiming "Scarborough Fair", and nothing stirred in this newly-made tomb.

----------

"The girl didn't make it then?" Walter asked, but the two monsters ignored him. Alucard shook his head at him, climbing into the truck.

"Walter," he said after a thought. "Would you see and tell us if that check, with all that money, was real or fake?"

The butler gave a slow up-and-down nod. After a phone call, he smiled. "It's true. We've acquired a good two-hundred thousand pounds in the balance."

Alucard's lips twisted slightly in dissatisfied hatred. Then he lowered his hat and stared at the floor for the homebound journey.

The same time-slipping effect occured; Walter was suddenly very still, and nothing moved. There wasn't a sound. Every minute motion ceased to be, even the subtle shaking of the air freshener hanging from the rear view. The black van felt more like a hearse with the coffin between them. Immune to the effects, Alucard lifted his head and gazed across at D, who looked back.

"Again?"

"It seems to be happen often when we're traveling." The dhampir seated across from him looked around slowly. His voice sounded muffled, as if the shroud of time had wrapped itself around him.

Stopping time was no small feat. Even he could not tell what exactly was causing it. Suddenly, in the fabric of existence, there was a horrible tearing and rending. The van rattled so horribly that it felt like their teeth would crack from the strain. Alucard grabbed hold of his coffin, lurched from his place across from it. D's hardened gaze went wide with some alarm, snatching hold of Walter, who seemed to hardly mind being grabbed onto in his condition.

"It's some kind of assault!" Alucard snarled. "What the hell is this!?"

"I'm a stone thrown in the river of time. Perhaps more like a boulder. Being in this same space with you seems to cause it."

The once-count's gaze swerved to the immortalized youth, his crystalline gaze filled with fleeting fascination. "Who was your father?" he demanded. He slid over the coffin that had its words scrawled on it. He grabbed D, slamming him against the interior of the van. "Who was he?! Tell me his name!" The stink of blood was thick on his breath.

D grasped at his sleeves to throw him off, but for some other reason he did not. "His name... was..." A look of discomfort touched his eyes. "...Dracula..."

Time sluggishly picked up again. Walter looked at the pair suddenly, as if trying to understand how Alucard suddenly appeared with D. Even more incomprehensible was the look that gripped his face; unimaginable sorrow, joy, and emotions he could not even begin to pick apart.

Father Anderson's voice spilled into the empty recesses of the present from the past. "How much longer," he had asked him, "will you continue this miserable existence?"

Until this past of mine... is vanquished by my future.

"Oh," Alucard said, and that was all. He sat back with a dull thump onto his coffin, smiling to himself, as if amused by a private joke shared between himself and cruel, wicked fate. "Ohhh."

"If you two are quite finished," Walter put in a second later, annoyed and a bit concerned. Heaving a sigh, the elderly butler glared at the two as if they were more or less like quarreling brothers. "We're nearly there."

---------

Meanwhile, Seras Victoria bumped into Integra in the corridors. She swallowed heavily as she looked at her, beginning to see dark circles under her eyes, a halo of smoke around her head as she struggled through what was very clearly a hangover.

"Sir," she wondered, noticing how Integra turned her head to avoid her eyes. "You look awful..."

"You should watch what you say," Integra Hellsing muttered under her breath. She smiled crookedly at the Draculina with a small laugh.

"What happened? You were fine before bed," Seras said, choosing to ignore the sting of shame as Integra's words bit into her sensitivities.

"I think maybe I'm just fighting a losing battle," the older woman replied, giving Seras a rare insight to what her master's Master was thinking. Integra leaned against the wall and touched her mouth as if trying to remember a kiss that lingered at the vestiges of memory.

"Don't worry," Seras said, grinning ear to ear. She saluted. "Alucard - er, master - and I will make sure nothing ever happens to you or anyone else! London will be rebuilt! There'll be ice cream trucks again!"

That was a little random, Integra thought to herself, grinning. "Seras..."

"H-Huh!?"

"Don't ever lose that shine of yours. If it weren't for you, always confident and happy, I... I think this place should become very drab and unhappy." Her touch floated toward Seras's cheek, and left it there, comforting and warm and very human. For a moment, Seras could understand why Alucard liked her. It was a weird feeling, being touched so like this. All in all, she felt honored that Integra could confide in her when the boys were away.

"None of us like seeing you so unhappy," she gushed, blushing in her cheeks as she hunched up her shoulders. "I personally think you should take it easy. I know you keep telling us that Hellsing doesn't barter vacation time but... isn't it time for us to have a little time off? Even ass-kicking vampire hunters need a break once in awhile!"

"Indeed." Integra continued to grin a little longer. But in her heart, there was no doubt that a vacation would be betraying what was left of the population of England. How could she ever explain to the Queen that the Hellsing organization "needed a break" and would be back after such-and-such number of days?

Bloody hell. She was a slave just as Alucard was. "It's a nice thought," Integra murmured, exhaling a cloud of bitter smoke. "But I don't think it's a reasonable adjustment to our mental well-being. Better that we go mad doing our duty than going mad with guilt for turning our backs. We serve the people, remember? The people, the Queen and God."

Seras nodded solemnly. With some effort, she changed the subject, walking with her as Integra traveled to her bedroom door. "Ma'am, Alucard has been acting strange lately, I know."

"He has always been 'acting strange'."

"But stranger than usual. Like that man who says he's from the future... they do look an awful bit alike. I don't understand anything anymore. Maybe he's in love with him." The thought sent a bead of sweat rolling down her temple. "Wow, that would be... eh, heh..."

"No. He does not love him."

"How can you--"

Integra looked at her door, remembering the sensation of arms around her, of a mouth as hard and cold as ice melting against hers. She touched her mouth again. Seras blushed, looking away and whistling harmlessly.

"I just know it," the woman replied, and shared a private glance with Seras. They silently agreed never to speak it out loud, lest the words shatter the hope that it was true.

---------

Alucard flung his hat into the corner of the large, barely-furnished room. "Master. The girl was a vampire named Dorian Grey."

"Him?" Her eyes widened, her spoon half-risen to her mouth. "Was he eliminated?"

"God rest his soul," Alucard muttered, sinking into a chair across from her. The clock against the wall called the hour. Integra ate her soup; it was well past bed, but she never slept at this hour anyway. "Our quiet guest is bathing now. He fell into the Thames and came out soaking wet."

"Did he catch cold?" she smirked, pushing her empty bowl away once she had sipped the last droplets of her chicken noodle. She wiped her mouth with a cloth napkin, coughed once, before gazing beseechingly at her vampire. "About... last night."

Bloodshot eyes twisted in their sockets to gaze at her from black-rimmed, lidded eyes. "You don't ever have to apologize to me. You're expected to act the fool under pressure. It doesn't lessen my opinion of you one iota."

"That's right," Integra agreed softly. "I suppose I was not really in my right mind at all. How careless of me."

A shadow fell on her without a sound. She looked up at Alucard's silhouette in the lights. A single fingertip brushed over her forehead and remained there for some time, as if reading a temperature. "Little warm." He swept her up from her chair to the sound of her broken gasping. An irritated wrinkle formed on her brow, mouth slightly gaping.

"Alucard, you let go of me- A-Aah..." His lips felt wonderfully cool on her cheek. Her eyes steadily drooped before closing, her body relaxing against his broad, muscled chest. He felt exquisite to rest against. It conjured memories of last night and, unbidden, nights before when she had kept her nightmares to herself with Alucard's ear to listen. Soft, practiced fingertips worked their way beneath her jacket, to the soft white, freshly-pressed shirt underneath. Even through that fabric and his gloves, she could feel the delicious cold that was a balm to her feverish skin. Her anger disintegrated in seconds, though she was loathe to admit that she had already given herself up to his uncharacteristic show of kindness.

"I understand why he's here now." Alucard's lips twisted into that all-familiar smile that cracked his face nearly in half. "I understand it all fully. But you don't have to be afraid for me, beloved master. Nothing will keep me from you." He remembered Dorian, how the inhuman trash had begged for death and complained of the kind of world-weariness that Alucard had long gotten accustomed to. He was ever more determined to fight and perhaps die proudly for his master.

"Command me," he begged her softly. "Command me to destroy him. Point me to the battlefield where we will duel."

"I... Alucard. I can't." She raised her sleepy eyes to his feverish ones. It seemed a demon had crawled into his skin and possessed him.

"Let me hear your commands!" he shouted, pushing her at arms length. He dropped to one knee and seized her hands, squeezing them so hard that her knuckles popped.

"Alucard!" Integra's eyes widened, trembling with terror and elation. "Destroy him, but don't you hold back on him! Let loose everything you have to offer on that bastard dhampir and send his soul to purgatory!"