Disclaimer: Integra, Seras, Alucard, Walter and Sir Irons, and any other character I forgot to mention that appears in here, belong to Kouta Hirano and to whoever had the rights from the OVAs. I don't get any economical profit out from it.
(Re) Building an Empire
First night
*This is farewell, my Master Integra.*
*No! Don't disappear!*
She woke up feeling unsteady, her body was covered in sweat. Where was she? Soft blankets around her, two pillows, she could recognize the fabric, it was her bed. It was pitch dark, no sound disturbing the emptiness. Neither electricity, as her bedside lamp couldn't turn on.
What was she supposed to do now? Her legs felt numb, a chill rising from her thighs to the rest of her body. There was something cold lying on there. Her mind wondered if the attack had been nothing but a bad dream, and actually she was a little feverish kid, and Alucard was lying on her lap for lowering her temperature.
Her face was sore, she reached to her left eye. A bandage? She remembered, the battle, she had been shot. And Alucard...what had happened to him? Was he dead? That bastard, refusing to follow her orders. She still ached Walter's death; she had felt it back then, like a part of her soul was pulled away by that brief moment. Alone. Once again she felt alone, like when her father had died and she wept for days before his uncle's arrival. Alone again. Not sanctuary to run away to, no protector waiting in the basement. It hurt.
It appeared the cloudy sky hadn't let the moonshine to enter in the room, and as soon the wind pushed aside any stray cloud, Integra could see. The young Draculina was sitting next to her bed, chest resting on her lap. Her little weight could easily be mistaken for one of a child. Her face showed a dead peace. She knew to never annoy a wild vampire while sleeping, but it was usually the best moment for striking to the heart. Alucard would have never allowed her to see him sleeping for that same reason. Somehow Seras was so innocent she didn't mind; or maybe it was the trust she held to Integra what allowed her to be near in such a vulnerable position.
The vampire was so exhausted that not even the calling night could wake her up. No left arm, both had lost physically something, but Integra would miss her eye more than the vampire would miss the arm. How had she forgotten Seras? The young vampire had saved her from the blowing zeppelin; the Major was dead thanks to her. She wasn't alone, Seras was with her. Integra had to look for that newly born vampire and for England's future. Walter was dead, but Alucard would come back any moment.
Integra brushed the vampire's hair, it was silky soft. She noticed something shining on the girl's right hand. A gun. A big, inhuman sized gun. Casull. When had she retrieved it from the battlefield? Darkness again. She sighed.
"She was up all day, I guess she messed up her sleeping habits." A male voice. Someone was next to her. In bed.
Five seconds. Casull pointing at the dark shape on the other side of the bed.
Click.
Darng, no bullets! That wasteful vampire!
"Don't shot! Please don't!" that voice, she had heard it somewhere before "Sir Integra, it's me Emmanuel." The moon shined through the windows again. The man was lying with her on bed, but there was no option, a lump under the blankets was the clearest hint that something in his body went missing.
"Wild Geese doctor, if I recall." Integra regained her composure. Yet she continued stroking Seras's hair. Only three survivors of her men. She wondered if the Draculina could feel any remorse now that she had turned a complete undead. Would she feel responsible of their deaths?
He nodded.
"Feeling better?"
"How much damage?" Integra paused to touch the bandage around her head.
"Total loss, Sir. It's a miracle it didn't hit your brains." Emmanuel puffed from his cigarette. Integra cursed she hadn't ask Walter to buy her another box of cigars before his treason. She was starting to feel abstinence side effects. The doctor offered her his cigarette, excusing it was the last one. She wasn't an addict, she could manage without it.
As soon as the doctor checked her injury was in the good path to recovery, Integra strolled through the mansion, leaving Seras lying on the bed. It was a broken piece of wreck. Seras had managed to keep it in one piece with planks and nails, but this was probably beyond repair. It would be better to buy another house. Her tour finished in the office, cut by half, like a sandwich. The room where her father used to talk with her about monsters among other lessons, while working. The room that Walter had helped to redecorate after her father's death. The room where Alucard nosily used to pick at her cigars and paperwork whenever she was absent. She made her mind. She would need to spend a lot for fixing the house, but she had lived her whole life in there. Her office had been her predecessors' office; it was THE Hellsing Manor, no any minor nobleman mansion. Removing debris from her desk she picked the phone. It still had line.
It was time to dial Sir Irons. At least she wanted to know how many members of the Round Table were still alive.
The phone rang five or six times before someone the other side of the line could answer.
"Hello?"
Surprisingly it was the voice of a little girl, five or six years; in the back sound there were people shouting directions, sobbing, fast footsteps. Integra wondered if she had misdialed.
"Am I calling to the household of Sir Irons?"
She talked as doing it with an adult; since she never was a kid herself, she didn't know other form of speech.
The other side of the line seemed the kid had left the receiver on the table. Integra sharpened her ear, the muffled sounds of screeching wheels, people talking about someone else's condition, more sobbing, some man yelling the other for more bandages...? For about two minutes Integra considered to hang up and dial again, whatever was happening in there was not her business. However, she had crossed feelings. Listening to the suffering of her countrymen made her feel guilty, yet she thought she deserved this, to abide for her inability to predict this war's aftermath. If only she had noticed that the German ship heading towards London was only a decoy for taking Alucard out of the picture, she had better left the vampire on ground. That people was enduring from the Nazi assault, all this because she had overlooked what their enemies had planned. She deserved the blame.
"Someone left the phone unhooked." That voice was from Sir Irons "Hello?"
"Sir Irons!?" She snapped back to reality, those mistakes belonged to the past. She had to continue living; she had done her best to protect England. She had a household to take care of, and a vampire left to fight with. It had no use crying over spilt milk.
"Integra? I'm glad you are alive. I heard about the assault to your house. How are your numbers?"
"Same to you, Sir." Integra considered not telling him, but Sir Irons deserved to know. She bit her lower lip in frustration, she managed to keep calm while saying "Walter betrayed us, and Alucard was defeated." She didn't have a better way to explain it, Seras had said before leaving the zeppelin that the vampire was still somewhere, but none of them knew where. Probably not near, not soon.
"Walter?" he muttered in his own thoughts. "Not surprisingly. Walsh and I had already figured it out. About Alucard, I guess he'll be fine. We still have a lot to do for rebuilding this empire to think about a stray vampire."
"How many survived from the Round Table?"
"Apart from you and I... only Walsh."
"...I see."
"Integra," there was a pause where more hurried sounds of people running by the halls could be heard "your father and I had a very good relationship and... I know you don't like to look helpless, but I'll dare to ask, where are you staying?"
She knew the man was no fool, anyway that question was about to come out in any part of the conversation.
"In my mansion, though I don't think it's in a respectable state for hosting the Round Table anytime soon." She joked, half smiling, while looking through the massive hole in her office's wall.
"Great," his phrases were as emotionless as hers "then it's settled. I'm about to leave the country with her Majesty and I need someone reliable to take care of the mansion. I consider you fit perfectly, Integra, this way we both benefit from it."
Integra was agape. She was expecting some proposal but this was different than what she had in mind. It seemed there were some troublesome issues Her Majesty the Queen had to arrange in Germany. And since the Prime Minister was deceased, along with most part of the cabinet, she asked for the Round Table to go with her. Sir Irons was the only available at the time, so he accepted.
After hanging up Integra had a new house, though she wasn't sure if she could be able to call it home. She headed back to her room; the Draculina was still sleeping peacefully.
Grabbing Seras was easier than expected, she weighed less than Alucard, and Integra didn't like to remember how she knew how much Alucard weighted.
She called the remnant members of the Wild Geese, only three. Morris fixed one jeep they used for field missions, they had proposed its reparation due to lack of time. The little green car was useful indeed, simply because it had been out of range during the attack; it was the only car working in the mansion. Aiden helped to carry and tie up the coffin of Seras on the back part; Jules drove the little car to Irons' mansion.
An ambulance passed beside the jeep at full speed. Integra tried to muffle the sounds of the sirens thinking in the way to pay Sir Irons for his kindness. He was right in something, she hated feeling helpless. However she didn't have a choice, and proud as she might be, not taking the first opportunity to have a roof would be plain silly. Perhaps she would give her elder Round Table partner with some soldiers for whatever mission he might need in the future, or do him some special favor, persuading some members of the cabinet to bend at his claims. She didn't like either of them, but she knew the old man would never accept money as payment.
As they turned around the corner another ambulance overtook them. This one was heading directly to the old man's mansion. Integra's heart sank when she could focus her eye in the still-far entrance, the ambulance parked there and the paramedics got off in a rush. For the moment they arrived, two paramedics were coming out of the mansion pushing a stretcher, where an old man was fastened by belts, his face covered by an oxygen mask. Integra got of pelting from the jeep for catching that person before they could take him in the ambulance.
"Hey, stop!" She reached just in time to grab his hand and stare with blank eyes at that someone. "Sir Irons?" She thought loud voice, sure that the answer was no. That old man on the stretcher had very different facial features than her long last friend. The paramedics looked at her with pity, and then gave her some comforting words. Certainly they thought she was one of those affected by the bombing in London, probably looking for an old lost relative with the hopes he would still be alive. There wasn't much a difference of how she was feeling, setting aside the embarrassment, the deaths of all victims in the city were falling on her shoulders. Her face was the perfect mirror of someone who had realized that was alone in the world, and culprit of a massive murdering, all at the same time.
The ambulance closed its doors and headed somewhere carrying a new victim of her recklessness. Immediately after, another siren took her out of her musings. It parked outside the mansion, this one packed with not so severely injured children.
"What's going on in here?" Morris went down of the jeep to look how the paramedics took the kids inside the house. Minutes later they came out helping a woman on a wheelchair. Jules and Morris joined them in the front door.
"Integra, just in time." Sir Irons appeared in the front door, carrying a baby, no less. The little boy was long asleep and the old man had a kind of grandparental air all around him. That was a face of Sir Irons that the young vampire hunter had never seen before. "Come in."
Integra nodded and followed. Her subordinates followed her at a protective pace. Inside, saying the place was a madhouse was an understatement. The place expressed in images everything what she had heard by the phone some hours ago. The hall had turned a hospital wing, with injured people crammed on makeshift beds or over blankets on the floor. People, presumably nurses, passing to and fro. Helping from one eyed man to one armed man, from an old woman to a little kid. Speaking of kids. The ones that had just gone down the ambulance weren't badly injured, but they required medical attention in some gashes and burns. Integra heard some asking for their parents, relatives, anyone who could claim for them. When the nurses gulped and told them that someone would soon pick them up, she well recognized the lie. Orphans of her mistake, of her ideals of protecting the honor of the crown before protecting the people. She closed her eye tight. Maybe losing the eye wasn't enough payment, after all she wasn't the only one who was missing a body part.
"Sir, it's not your fault." Like he had read her mind, Jules placed his heavy hand on her shoulder.
"I know." There wasn't a point in blaming herself, she knew it. Even so, it could be helped. "What is happening here, Sir Irons?"
"What it looks like, Integra. As I told you, I won't be in the country for some time, and thinking that you weren't available anymore, I lend the St. Tomas Hospital this mansion for attending the overrunning number of victims." He walked back to face her Round Table partner, Integra had to raise her head to look directly at him "We have to start cleaning this mess somewhere."
Two maids arrived to each side of the old man carrying his luggage. They left the heavy suitcases on the floor. One of them got hold of the baby.
"Mary and Ann will help you in the management of the house. They all know everything that it is needed to know." The girls bowed slightly before resuming their task with the bags, the one with the baby disappeared behind a near door. The ginger girl left passed by Integra and her men towards the exit carrying the heavy briefcases by herself. Integra looked back to see how they put them in the limo.
"You seem in quite a rush," she could stop saying. "Of what are you running away, Sir Irons?"
"I'm not running Integra, I want to fix our country the fastest we can." The man cleaned his glasses with pensive expression "what about you?"
The girl clenched her fist. She knew what he meant. She had moved from her headquarters, abandoned them without hesitation. Indeed they were in wreckage but, in spite of its state, Seras had at least tried fixing them before even thinking to abandon them! Integra had to admit she felt lost at what to do next. Walter had been so efficient with her agenda and doing trifling chores that the moment someone lend her the hand she took it without pride. Talking about helplessness! And she was sure that had been the right choice, and yet, she thought she was missing something important. Alucard's coffin was back in the Hellsing mansion. In some way, she was running away of her own memories.
"I'm not... running away. I want this country to get back to normal as much as you want. And I've already given an eye for it!" and it wasn't enough "do you think I would leave it after this all!?"
Sir Irons nodded, proud of her answer. Then he headed outside while his maids put him the hat and the coat. Giving her the back he said.
"Take care of my mansion. And of our country."
The front door closed behind him.
Author's Note: Thanks everybody for the follows, the faves and the reviews, everytime I got a notification in my inbox I wrote a new chapter. This is meant to follow different patterns in the lives of Integra and Seras, maybe the first episodes will be close in time, but as the story advances the time gap turns bigger. If you have any idea for their interaction (it doesn't matter if it has sexual tension, if you like that train of though xD ) just let me know and I'll write a chapter about it.