This is the end. Enjoy.

"…Remember my words, I may again return,
I love you, I depart from materials,
I am as one disembodied, triumphant, dead."

--Walt Whitman, Leaves Of Grass, "So Long!", Book XXXIII, Songs of Parting

Her breathing was labored as Walter kicked up gravel with the rush of driving the car from Hellsing Manor. Arthur took his wife's hand and squeezed it gently. Reassuring and friendly. She looked at him, hand on her stomach and a pain in her face.

"This kid is going to kill me," she joked and smiled at Arthur. He smiled back and kissed her forehead. She smelled of oranges and sandalwood today. How strange it was that her smell changed as often as the seasons. Arthur didn't mind, he only buried her face into the side of her neck where he could inhale more of her. He kissed her exposed flesh carefully. Integral leaned her head against his and took her breaths, trying to keep from hyperventilating.

Walter's driving was mildly erratic and Arthur shouted at him playfully. "Let off a little, my boy!" he laughed and looked at Integral who only smiled, but she wanted to laugh and that much was obvious.

"Yes, sir," Walter said and slowed only slightly. Integral seemed to relax that much.

"Since we didn't sex it are you regretting that now, Arthur?" Integral suddenly asked her husband. He rose his eyebrows at her. Why would he regret it? He would have just known sooner, nothing would have changed.

"No, why do you ask?"

"I just was trying to make conversation…" she mumbled and gave a halfhearted chuckle.

"Ah, well you're being quite crap with it, darling." Arthur smiled and kissed her cheek.

Walter continued his mad-man driving until they arrived at the hospital, at which point Arthur felt a bump in the car. He climbed out and helped Integra out of the car. He then realized what the bump had been. Walter had parked halfway on the sidewalk curb. He looked at the youth and rose his eyebrow at him, Walter shrugged and ran over to help his master with Integral. Integral noticed the parking faux pas, only a bit louder than Arthur had.

"You've parked on all of the sidewalk!" she said to Walter and pointed at it. "You'd better move that or we'll get a citation."

"Just like you, Miss Hellsing," Walter said, "Always looking out for others."

Arthur chuckled and they led the woman into the hospital where she was put in a wheelchair and wheeled to the maternity ward. Arthur and Walter followed until they were shut out of the room where she would be giving birth. Walter looked at Arthur, who in turn looked at him.

"It's not proper anyway," Arthur concluded and went down the hall a little ways to the waiting room asking Walter to stay by the room and bring him news.

The waiting room was empty except one other chap who left before Arthur had even really started waiting. His wife had been a small mousy woman with a baby wrapped in a blue blanket. Arthur smiled as he pulled his jacket off and threw it over the back of the chair. He rolled his sleeves up and sat down to wait.

Time ticked by and Arthur soon fell into a gentle sleep, only to be awakened what seemed like five minutes later. The clock on the wall betrayed the time. It had been five hours. Walter stood before him.

"They had to take her into surgery," he said simply and Arthur woke up immediately.

"What? Why?"

"She was loosing too much blood. The baby is alright. A girl," Walter said and as he turned he saw a surgeon coming down the hall. Arthur stood and went to him.

"My wife," he began and the surgeon looked at him.

"She lost a lot of blood during the birth…there was nothing we could do…"

Arthur felt dizzy with the news. Words became muted. The doctor was talking but he couldn't hear a word of it. Nothing they could do? They were doctors for Christ's sake! Arthur took hold of the surgeon's shirt and shook him.

"What the fuck do you mean there was nothing you could do? She was fine! She was fine only hours ago and now…now…" Arthur looked past the doctor and let him go, running to the room. Arthur stopped at the door and poised his hand to push it open. Something stopped him and he exhaled a deep breath that rattled in his chest. He felt sick. The door opened and he watched as they rolled the bed from the room, a body covered by a sheet.

Arthur stared.

XxxxX

They held a procession that rivaled that of the last Queen of England. The guns were fired and words spoken by the preacher were soft. The rain had come, of course, the rain had come. Arthur stood quietly with the baby girl in his arms. Walter held an umbrella over the two. The baby looked just like her mother, with Arthur's hair and eyes. It was strange how genes worked. She cried when the guns were fired by the Royal British Army and Arthur could not find it within himself to coo her into silence again. So he let her cry.

There was no reception because Arthur once again could not bring himself to it. Instead he went to the manor, leaving the baby with Walter. He moved through the house, to that mirror, where he saw only his ghostly reflection before descending that staircase. The Sub-basement was colder than he remembered, but he remembered where the room was. He entered it and saw him, disgusting and dark. He who he sealed away for such a time.

Arthur approached him and removed his glove. From his pocket he retrived a letter opener and gently he cut his finger with it. The blood dripped onto the face of the vampire. He waited for it to sink in and for the vampire to look at him with hungry red eyes.

"Master," he purred and Arthur frowned.

"My wife has been stolen from me. Could you bring her back, No life King?"

"I…can do many a thing, but the heart of a maiden is surely lost now. Her naturally caused death is beyond my realm, Sir Hellsing," he told Arthur with his smirk. "I would never ask God for such a favor."

"Then you are useless to me, Dracula." Arthur said and left the vampire to be sealed away again. "You are so very useless."

He went back to his study where he sat and tore her books apart, quietly.

"Arthur," Walter said from the doorway. He held the baby carefully in his arms.

"Yes, Walter?" he said and the final page of Dracula came screaming from it's binding.

Walter didn't say anything more. He only went to his Master and, after carefully adjusting the baby in his arms, hit him across the face. Arthur stared dumbstruck at the floor.

"Take your daughter in your arms, Arthur," he ordered the older man before him. Arthur took her gently from Walter and looked at her as he cradled her in his lap. She stared up from him and made baby noises. Walter had left him alone with her.

"You haven't a name yet, have you…" he whispered. The baby made a face when drops of water landed on her cheek. "There are many things I could call you."

The baby cooed.

"She would not like this, but I don't suppose that matters now, does it, Integral?" he smiled at the baby. Arthur held her to his chest, taking her in, and she, for lack of anything else, took him back.

To the garden the world anew ascending,
Potent mates, daughters, sons, preluding,
The love, the life of their bodies, meaning and being,
Curious here behold my resurrection after slumber,
The revolving cycles in their wide sweep having brought me again,
Amorous, mature, all beautiful to me, all wondrous,
My limbs and the quivering fire that ever plays through them, for
reasons, most wondrous,
Existing I peer and penetrate still,
Content with the present, content with the past,
By my side or back of me Eve following,
Or in front, and I following her just the same.

--Walt Whitman, Leaves Of Grass, "To the garden the world anew ascending", Book V, Calamus