Author's Note: this chapter kinda ran away with me. But it was needed to end the story. Well, all of it other than the epilogue.
Disclaimer: not mine. I may own the angst, but then again, it may be par for the course. In which case that's not mine either.
I haven't heard her laugh so freely in years. The unnaturalness of it doesn't seem to affect the freaks gathering close to her. It infuriates me to her kneeling at their feet, and she knows it. Her eyes and teeth glint in the darkness as she looks past them to me.
"Someone's bit off more than they can chew," she laughs as she allows her shadows to spin the men around. Then she slams them into the dirty walls of the alley, shattering their bones. The immediate threat to her is neutralized even if her power, which makes the asphalt beneath her smoke, isn't enough to kill. The maggots will keep.
"You're hurting yourself unnecessarily."
"Am I?" She looks down at her hands and knees as she notices the smoke. She doesn't say anything, but I'm in her mind. I hear her sigh at the destruction of her clothes and the wounds that will pain her as soon as she starts to heal. Uneasiness clings to her like mud as she tries to find evidence of other injuries –
A shield slams down around her mind when she notices my presence. God, you need a hobby. Stay out of my head.
I've had children before, long ago, but none ever tested me the way she does.
"Get up."
Crankypants.
None were as disrespectful as her either. She obediently holds out her hands though, waiting for assistance. I cross my arms over my chest and stare her down. "When did you last feed?"
"Last night." She looks affronted.
"And how much?"
"…No more than usual." Her face grows strained as she feels my anger. "I couldn't risk killing a human."
It takes no more than a thought to toss one of the freaks to the ground before her, his body so broken that he resembles a misshapen blood bag. Which he is. All three glutted themselves tonight and they're hardly innocents, so she can eat a full meal.
She doesn't appreciate my thoughtfulness however. "Bringing me meals again I see." Her nose wrinkles in distaste. "He's not very clean, Aru."
She uses the name as some sort of talisman to get her way, but she's not eight anymore and unable to say my name properly.
"Eat."
The word holds a compulsion she's too weak to fight. I watch with satisfaction as she uses shadows to hold her prey still; the parasite's screams as her fangs piece him are beautiful to listen to. The pain she inflicts is not that of a vampire bent on revenge, it's that of a being created to be a vampire's natural enemy. Her nails, her teeth, the hair that shimmers in the faint light… It's the pain of blessed silver that's eating away at her meal.
My little girl who sees better in the dark than she does in the light.
As an infant she always slept through the day and was active during the night.
When she hit puberty she developed strange glands just under her tongue. The Hellsing doctors determined they functioned like venom sacs though they held nothing more dangerous than water.
I've seen the records. Priests blessed every stage of her development; that water is more dangerous than anything that comes out of the tap. My little girl was created for one purpose, and purpose only, and that was to hunt –
Aru?
– me. All other vampires she might destroy were thought of as fringe benefits, but she was created to silence me. However, they made two mistakes. They underestimated the strength of the blood bond they created and they ran into the same problem the great Jehovah did. In seeking to create a creature with a soul they created a being with free-will…one capable of rebellion against her creators. Even if I had never come for her she wouldn't have been able to hurt me.
"Aru? I'm finished."
"Get up."
"My leg feels funny. I need help."
Her words pull me back from the past. She's scared of my anger and her own weakness. The repercussions of running away from home are occurring to her in Technicolor splendor. She's right to be scared; once we get home she'll train so hard she'll wish she died here. We are not going to have a repeat of the last eight months. The next time she decides to strike out on her own she is damn well going to be able to take care of herself.
This time I take her by the wrists when she offers her hands. The pain inflicted from grasping her burnt palms would serve to reinforce the lesson she's had, but I –
I lurch, unprepared for the way her body slumps into mine. I'm equally unprepared for the flood of panic that emanates from her with enough strength to move my hair.
"I can't –"
" – feel your leg." There's no need to look down when I can pluck the information from her mind. I see the silver cuff, relive the pain that seemed to bite into bone itself. She doesn't know who used the weapon, but she's not the only witness here. One of the two worms remaining will tell me what I want to know.
I chose the one whose mind is laughing while blood bubbles in his lungs.
I see the human who gave him the cuff.
I see the ring of needles lining the inside and know of the liquid held within.
I hear the account of the tests that were held, the bitterness of waiting nearly two decades to undo what never should have been done. The men who thought they could create their own savior from vampire-kind are dead, killed to hide their failure.
My little girl's fate was sealed the moment she strayed out from underneath Hellsing's watchful eye, for what use is a slayer who refuses to attack the greatest vampire of them all?
She's numb to the hip. The serum the cuff carried was injected directly into her marrow. In a half an hour – or a little less – the serum will reach her brainstem where it will unravel her nervous system. The agony of it will last twenty minutes…or a little more.
There is no antidote, for who would wish to save a –
"No." Her eyes and voice are dull. Bond aside, she was never adept at traipsing through my mind. Exercising her powers these last months seems to have changed that. "You're wrong."
My shadows leave me as rats, scurrying over to gnaw her leavings to a slow, painful death. I'll personally send them to hell if there's enough of them left...
…after.
Her hands tighten until she holds fistfuls of my clothing. "It's not me."
She doesn't deny her death. Death is too ordinary to scare her. She denies the conversation she eavesdropped on, one that occurred hours before her birth.
"Alucard. We need to talk." If my master is stooping to such niceties, then the subject she wishes to raise is an uncomfortable one for her. "That freak who stole your blood last year? We've learned why he wanted it."
"Discovering why a freak wanted my blood was worth investigating?" Things have been slow, but not that slow.
She gives me a folder.
I read it.
"Needless to say, they must be stopped."
"What were golems created to do, girl-child?"
She can't speak. Her heart is racing too fast, her lungs not drawing enough air. To defend the innocent against persecution.
And?
…and the righteous against evil. "But you're not evil."
Only my little girl would say that when she can feel the urge to slaughter that's running through my veins. But leaving her would mean allowing her to die alone. It would mean hearing her screams of anguish mingle with the screams of my prey until every scream for years to come would remind me of this moment.
We stand in silence. I feel the death of her body as she does; the lack of sensation at the base of her spine, the numbness spreading down her other leg. Her heart still races, but the rhythm is ungainly.
You're not evil. I love you.
I know you do.
She can't support herself any longer. As the ruined screams of her one-time pursuers don't seem to bother her, I sink down onto the ground and pull her into my embrace. I feel her flash of memory, of being young and scared by nightmares. She would race into my underground cell and pound on my coffin lid if I were inside until either it opened or she was pulled through it.
She feels the memory I share with her in return. We were already inside the compound the night she was born. I remember my lungs aching as they took a breath for the first time in years. Her screams of fury, her feelings of abandonment as she became aware of the world around her led me to where they hoped to keep her. Her cries stopped the instant I entered the room, and though newborns can't see she instinctively turned towards me.
I carried her out of the chaos of battle wrapped tightly in my coat. It was the last time I held her until she was old enough to demand it. This is the first time I've held her since she was old enough to stop.
The numbness has reached her back. She doesn't have much time left. Even knowing that I can't tell her what she wants to hear.
I know she loves me despite the fact that I've never said the words back to her. Despite the fact that even now I won't repeat them.
"You can make it not hurt."
Her body is colder than I've ever felt it.
"I don't want pain to be the last thing I remember, Aru."
Never "Dad." Never "Papa." Never "Father."
She's mine but I've never been a father to her.
"Please?"
It's the kills that are memorable, not the faces. The sheer quantity of beings I've killed prevents that. But the blood is a weight. And killing her? I wouldn't be able to spill enough blood to ever forget her face.
And standing by as she died in agony and fear would allow me to forget her?
The tight grip she has on my clothes loosens as her hands lose sensation.
Her skull seems so small as I cup it in my hand. Her breath is warm on my neck as it escapes her in little puffs. The scent of her blood is intoxicating, the perfect bait for the trap she represents.
My shadows travel into her body, choking her vessels and veins. There's no change at first. I don't want to alarm her. Don't want to scare her. My eyes stare sightlessly ahead of me as I listen to her thoughts. They grow confused…foggy…slow…
Aru? The darkness doesn't scare her. She calls out simply to make sure it's alright to travel further into it.
I don't look at her. I don't try to capture a final moment, a final image of her face. I just sit and stare straight ahead as the burden in the arms cools and grows lighter until finally there's nothing left to hold.
Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust.
Damn the priests and their dogma.
Hours pass before I stand. My pets left me more than enough to exact revenge.
Though the screams stop when their vocal chords are worn through, the torment goes on much longer than that.
And then I loosen the noose on my power and truly express myself.
Author's Note: epilogue to follow.