A/N: Part 2 of my bday gift to you all! :D

The Dream Catcher.

The evil count stood at the top of his castle, the moonlight barely illuminating him as he stared dispassionately down at the world. The dirt and filth of the days he had lived through had not washed away with the passing time, but had instead been swept into the corner, along with all the grime of the ages passed. The world had not changed and he viewed it with contempt. Around him the living swarmed like ants, scurrying all over in unchanging patterns, scavenging for scraps of hope in an otherwise hopeless existence. Their faces were always the same.

A winged ant crossed his path now and he considered crushing it mercilessly, simply because it was different. Curiosity bade him pause, however, and as he watched, the ant began to fly, changing with each beat of its wings into a moth, and then slowly a butterfly. He watched it closely as it fluttered around him, wondering if it was his influence which made it change. It circled him endlessly and as it flew, the wings beating gracefully open and shut, balancing it in the air… He found himself thinking it rather pretty… Beautiful even.

How an ant parade had managed to produce such a fantastic creature, he would never fully remember. It was a knowledge bourn from memory, a memory he had lost centuries ago and he realised it may have disappeared at around the same time he learnt to recognise the ant parade for what it was.

He caught the butterfly gently in his hands, taking great care not to injure or bend the wings, lest he damage her. She sat quite happily in his hands, her pretty little wings drifting open and shut, and he held her for a long time, eager to pet her, but anxious to break her. Eventually, bored with the perch, the lack of comfort or the lack of adventure, the butterfly escaped his hands and flew away. It caught immediately in a spider web and the graceful – but weak – wings beat futilely against the web, seeming to beg him for help.

He realised his mistake immediately; collecting the thing because it was pretty. He offered the stuck creature nothing save a black laugh. It was beautiful because it was weak and needed his help. He would make sure never to pick up something simply because it was pretty. Next time he would pick up an ant.

The grinding was so loud that he was sure the whole street could probably hear it (and all of the inhabitants were dead). It was bouncing off the brick walls and ricocheting off the floor, worming its way down his ears and setting all the hairs on the back of his neck to standing on end. It was that built in warning signal that came to any male when presented with an angry and volatile situation. Mainly those involving a female.

The source of the grinding noise was Seras' jaw. She had been stand-offish and sour all week. He'd been driven into avoiding her for the most part – him! The Great Vampire Alucard! Driven to avoiding a small, blonde female – and was only within reach of her now because they were tailing a coven of vampires and their orders had been to keep one another in sight. At all times. He was clearly irritating her although he had absolutely no idea what it was he was supposed to have done and he felt rather irritable about the situation himself.

The standard Hellsing infantry could also tell that something was up with their resident pet vampires and had unanimously designated to stay behind and 'guard the van'. It was just common sense to leave two cranky and potentially dangerous vampires alone when at all possible.

Together, the vampire and his fledgling advanced further into the scene. It was a quiet sub-urban London street, with wheelie bins all laid out neatly for collection, and blood all over the tarmac. Normally the Hellsing special ops would be called in by the police because they didn't know what to make of the murder scene, or there would be a string of mysterious disappearances which appeared to make no sense. This time the police couldn't even get near the murder scene and the whole street seemed to have disappeared. They were dealing more and more frequently with covens these days, but this one was so close to the normal lives of the living… It was too dangerous even for the police to handle.

The vampire coven had probably started as just one vampire, turning his neighbours and then his friends, and then the whole street… But however it started, the ghouls and vampires were now taking passers-by and the bodies were never seen again. Lost reports were flooding into the police stations all over London and the majority of the cases culminated in this road being the last point that the missing persons were seen.

Seras stepped brazenly into the road and marched up to the first house. It was night time of course and unsurprisingly none of the houses had their lights on. Things moved in the shadows behind the net curtains, but Seras simply kicked the door in and let off like a rocket, cannon fire blasting holes through walls, taking out most of the living room with one exploding artillery round and moving onto the kitchen.

Alucard stood in the open doorway, watching and wondering if there was any real need for him to be there at all. To anyone of the people watching from the end of the road, it would look like he was just training his fledgling still, allowing her her fill of the kills before he went to work and tore the place apart, predictably. He looked surly and taciturn and not very different from how he usually looked. He was only thankful his dread and slight incredulity didn't show in his face.

She was powering through the bodies now! The air was thick with their dust and it swirled around them both as she ran around in it, black tendrils ripping heads from bodies and squirting congealed black blood in amongst the mire of other foul substances. The Jackal was hanging limply from his hand and he hadn't even bothered going to get the other one from its halter. There really didn't seem to be a point what with the way things were going.

The street was cleared in just over an hour and by the time it was all over, Alucard had gotten a grand total of three shots off, while Seras had emptied her supply of artillery and had resorted to using her hands to dispatch her foes. It all left the master vampire feeling rather inadequate and he actually cowered away from his fledgling on reflex when she approached.

"Who the hell was the butterfly?!" She rounded on him, flicking gore from her fingers as she approached.

He had the good fortitude not to reply. After all, he didn't know what she was talking about. Butterfly? What butterfly?

"The thing with the ants and the castle and the spider's web and the butterfly you liked?!" She fisted a hand in his cravat and pulled him down so they were eye to eye. "Who was the butterfly?"

"You're dreaming." He said levelly as it was the only explanation.

A nerve began ticking in her eye and she clenched her other fist in apparent frustration at his apparent stupidity. He could tell already that he was in hot water with her – for some strange and unknown reason – and whatever he was doing now was apparently making it worse for himself. What was that old saying? 'Hell hath no fury like a woman's wrath'.

"No," She ground out, "You're dreaming. You had a dream about a bunch of ants and a butterfly. You thought she was beautiful." Ohhhhh… So that was why she was angry. But how was he supposed to know that? "Who was she?"

"Why are you looking into my dreams?"

"Answer the damned question!"

"My fledgling."

Her heart broke in her eyes at the quickly spoken words. But something else broke as well; her trust for him, and he had a feeling that if he wasn't careful, something of his was about to break as well.

"You had… A fledgling." It wasn't a question, it was a statement and the cold edge had returned to her voice.

"I might have been talking about you."

"But you weren't." Another statement. If his predicament was dangerous before, then it was bloody lethal now. "This is another woman. Another fledgling. There's no way you would dream about me."

Well that stung. "It doesn't matter."

"Of course it matters!" She snapped, the murderous glint that he saw in her dungeon when they lay upon the table returning to her eye. "You have another fledgling!"

Outside, guarding the van, the infantrymen shuddered. The shouting was getting louder and now the words were barely discernible. Life at the Hellsing Estate was going to be very rough for a while and they were dreading it. Another fledgling? How could he? It was practically two timing!

"Don't accuse me of things, Police Girl," He countered, a warning in his voice, "I allowed you your fun with the Frenchman, don't forget!"

"We weren't sworn to each other then!" She stabbed a finger at his chest, her hair shaking like a great golden mane as she shook her head, "You were nothing but a master to me then!"

"You were sworn to me from the second you agreed to become my fledgling." He spat back, his irritation immediately spiking from the prod in the chest. "And yet you still insisted on gallivanting around with that pig-headed philanderer! Don't you dare try to tell me you're not guilty of anything, Seras Victoria!"

She looked affronted at his accusations and he tried not to feel guilty about the look she gave him. "I did not 'gallivant'," she took a step closer to him and tugged harder on his cravat. A growl of warning slipped past his lips. "He was my friend!"

"Nothing more?" Cold and collected.

"Nothing!"

"Then why did you take him with you?" Designed to hurt.

She was stumped. Speechless. Was he jealous? Why was he asking these questions? What did it matter to him about Pip, or her for that matter? He had another woman waiting for him somewhere and Pip was gone, long dead and long gone.

"I had thought you better than to rub things in." She said, letting go of his cravat and allowing him to stand up straight, smoothing the material down at his front and putting his apparel back to rights. Her tone now was curiously calm, quiet, as though he wasn't worth the effort of a raised voice. But her eyes still held the rage that had previously accompanied her words. This wasn't over yet.

He attempted a laugh but it sounded too fake for his ears and the way in which her left eyebrow rose said she thought much the same as him. Fake. Silence reigned over the street now and not a word was spoken for several minutes, not even a breath was taken as the two monsters stared each other down. Eventually Seras spoke, stepping around her master and heading for the door that would lead her to the street:

"You can keep your other fledgling, but I'll have nothing more to do with you."

Sir Integra's eyebrow was quivering. What was she going to do with the pair of them? They were dusty, blood splattered and glowering – both of them. For the last week it had only been Seras who had been in an awful grump, Alucard had been reasonable for a change, but it would appear that the fledgling's bad mood had now affected her master and the Hellsing Organisation was going to have to deal with things without its pet vampires for a little while, or at least until they had sorted their differences.

She leant back in her chair and surveyed them both. "I suppose, by the sorry states I find you in, that you have something to report."

"She's a bitch." Alucard spat, sending a glare in the direction of the small female, who simply stuck her nose in the air and said calmly:

"He started it."

"The mission." Sir Integra reminded them. Patience was obviously going to be the key here. "I don't care about your little couple spats."

"We're not a couple." Seras replied, still calm. Alucard on the other hand had adopted a less-than-healthy looking aura of red and black tendrils. They were beginning to drip onto the floor and Sir Integra mused that if he clenched his jaw any more his teeth would shatter. Then then that would be all over her floor as well…

"Oh? I thought you were getting along just fine."

"We were until he revealed he was two-timing me."

"We weren't dating, Police Girl."

"Two timing you? With who?"

"I wasn't-"

"Another fledgling."

"We weren't dating…" Alucard muttered before a heavy silence fell over the room.

She had hoped that she would not have to explain this so soon. In fact, she had hoped she would never have to explain this at all, but it would seem that luck or fortune were not on Sir Integra's side and she would either have to explain everything to Seras herself, or order Alucard to do it. While the latter was the easiest option, she didn't think her bank account would pay for the collateral that would undoubtedly go with it, so she opted for the safer option and sat up in her chair.

"Seras, pull up a chair. Alucard, contain yourself and I don't want to hear you saying anything until I am done talking." She aimed a 'look' at him over the top of her glasses and saw him pull an aggravated expression. "Is that clear?"

A nod from the master and the scrape of a chair being pulled across marble by the fledgling. When everyone was seated/stood where they should be, Sir Integra could begin setting things straight.

"As you know, Seras, Alucard is over 700 years old and had no fledglings for the majority of that time." Seras cast her master another 'look'. "That is, until 1897 when Alucard met his first fledgling in Budapest. Her name was Mina Murray – later Mina Harker - and she was a mistress of seduction."

"So a whore, basically."

"Not. Quite." Sir Integra grit her teeth, unused to being interrupted in the middle of such important waves of speech, and especially not with such a vulgar – and not to mention, incorrect – comment. "She was manipulative, not a whore, otherwise Alucard would not have been able to turn her into his fledgling. She had to be a virgin for that. Alucard was in Budapest pursuing her fiancé, his prey. After finding out about his nature he was going to kill her, but she persuaded him to spare her soul and make her a vampire instead. I gather-" She shot Alucard a glance and he blushed, looking sheepish, "-That it didn't take much convincing."

Seras snorted in disgust and gave her master a derisive look. It clearly said that this was the sort of behaviour she was talking about when she said he was two-timing her. Sir Integra carried on, regardless.

"There was a short battle in which Alucard was captured by the Hellsing family. What happened to Mina Harker after that was very difficult to trace, but in around 1941 she disappeared entirely and no clues about her could be found. Until 1999 and the Battle for London." At this, even Alucard looked surprised and the black forest of swirling tendrils slid back into his body. He looked now as though he were listening intently and Sir Integra realised that he didn't actually know what had happened at the Battle of London because by the time they had found Mina Harker's remains he was already three years gone.

"Mina Harker was the source subject for the chipped Vampires." Sir Integra told him. "We don't know – still don't know – how they did it, but somehow they used her to help them turn humans into vampires with the use of the chips. She was quite dead by the time of the Battle of London, but was the only genuine specimen found in the possession of Millennium and it was Alucard's DNA they took from her to build their new vampires.

"Seras," She returned her gaze to the younger vampire, "Alucard and Mina had not seen each other in over a hundred years. They had no contact either so your claims that he was two-timing you were unfounded."

"But they were sworn to each other, from the second she became his fledgling." Seras said stubbornly. To say that her claims were unfounded was simply unfair, she would not have made the claims at all if they were unfounded!

"She told me before I was killed that she was marrying Jonathan Harker." Alucard said, as though Seras really ought to know that and by pretending she didn't she was only being stupid. "The bond would be broken upon my death or upon her marriage. Would it also interest you to know that she had a son with that human?"

"Vampires can have children?" The question was voiced by both females in the room, both displaying expressions of equal horror and slight disbelief. "But they're dead!"

"We're not dead!" He snapped, "We're the living dead! And yes we can have children if one half of the coupling is living flesh!"

"So two vampires can't have children but a vampire and a human can."

With a growl, Alucard chucked his hands in the air in a show of frustration. He was fast losing patience with what he considered to be a pointless conversation. Whether or not Vampires could have children depending on who was dead and who wasn't had nothing to do with his past mistake and nothing to do with what was fast proving itself to be the present one. He stalked off, slamming the door hard.

The two women sat quietly for a little while, both digesting what had just transpired until Sir Integra cleared her throat and flicked a wrist towards the centre of the room, indicating Seras should go and stand there. Once the vampire was in position, Sir Integra steepled her fingers on the table in front of her and said levelly, "Report."

"Target's destroyed, Sir." The usual chirp wasn't quite genuine, but the effort was made and it was there.

"Any casualties?"

"Only the whole street, Sir. None from our side. All artillery fired, three of Alucard's blessed bullets fired and none of the standard rounds, Sir."

"What, none of them?" Sir Integra didn't sound as though she quite believed that. "And only three of Alucard's?"

"The general infantry stayed back to guard the van, Sir. Alucard wasn't doing anything tonight. I did the work."

"So that's why you're so filthy." Sir Integra mused. "Well, you are dismissed. Go and make it up to your master, Seras. He's not the sort to two-time anyone. He has a higher code of morals than that, believe me."

He was waiting in his dungeon for her to come and find him. He knew she would. She was predictable when she was angry about something and there were only so many things she would do. One of them was to hide in her chamber and avoid him at all costs, the other was the complete opposite, she would come and find him and they would fight about it.

He was waiting now on his throne, wine glass in hand, gently swilling the contents in mock patience. In reality he was rattling around inside his own skull like a frog in a bucket, wondering this that and the other about what she thought of him now, what she thought of Mina, what she thought about his history with her and – most of all – what she thought about her future with him, if any of that now remained at all. He was torn between his stock reaction of 'I just don't care anymore' and the niggling feeling of 'I'm old enough to know better than to throw away a good thing'.

Seras and Mina were very very different and if he were to compare them to each other he would be doing them both an injustice… A disservice even. Where Mina was beautiful, Seras was merely pretty, but where Seras was strong, Mina was incredibly weak. Her beauty and flirtatious nature were her main assets, while Seras' strength and intuition made her into quite the little bird…

He liked neither one of them more than the other and viewed them both as his fledglings. Mina had never passed out of that stage, so brief was their involvement that he never had the chance to train her well enough. Seras, however…

The door of his chambers bounced off the wall as his little bird made her entrance. He did not lift his eyes from his drink. She advanced across the room and had slammed both hands down on the arms of his throne before he'd even considered just how dangerous she might be about to be. He had just been singing her praises after all for being so strong… The force with which she smacked his chair rattled it on the floor, and he did well not to flinch.

They stayed still for a long time, neither apparently knowing quite what to do now. It was obvious that Seras came in here to say something, but whatever it was, she apparently now felt disinclined to mention.

"Did you want something?" Alucard finally prompted, aware of the possibilities of the question only increasing her wrath, but unable to sit in silence for much longer when she was barely a foot from the end of his nose.

He heard her swallow and rightly guessed that she was working up to something the answer to which she wasn't going to enjoy.

"Did you love her?"

"I do not love."

"Ever?"

"Not now. I'm dead and the dead feel no happiness, or love."

"I don't believe you."

He gave the blood in the glass one last dignified swill, before taking a dainty sip. Type O negative. "You don't have a choice in what you believe or not, Police Girl."

She bristled. "Did you ever love?"

"When I was alive."

Silence again and then, quietly, "Did you ever marry?"

"…"

"Or have children?"

He cracked a small smile and brought his eyes up to her now. And was surprised to find there was blood on her lips. That was odd, why hadn't he smelt it? She was close enough to the end of his nose that he could smell the Ariel washing powder used to wash her uniforms, he ought to have been able to smell it…

She did not flinch, or move a single muscle as his tongue extended from his mouth, long and slimy and streaked with the blood of his last mouthful. It touched her lips and smoothed away the droplets of blood that resided there. Although she was repulsed by the action, she was curious as to its purpose and allowed him to take the liberty of cleaning her lips.

O negative, he thought with a smile, that was why he couldn't smell it, it came from the exact same person as the blood in his glass. She had been back to her room for a snack, to bolster her energy. Ready to fight him.

"I thought you'd read Bram Stoker's 'Dracula'," He said, taking another sip from his glass, peering at her over the rim, "Shouldn't you know all this?"

"I only like the first bit." She said grimly, her dull eyes flickering between both of his. "I never read the rest."

He laughed, for once not at all bitter, and put the glass down on the table. But to do this he had to lean forward, lean past her, into her until his nose was brushing her throat. He could almost feel the blood that drifted sluggishly through the veins there and licked his lips, wondering if she would let him…

The sharp prick of his fangs in her neck was something of a comfort to her, no matter how much she wanted to beat him off, the bond they still shared as master and fledgling made it so that when his fangs pierced her skin, she was slave to his wishes. And right now his wishes were that she stand very still and allow him to finish his dinner. Without questions.

The drawing feeling of her blood being sucked out through her neck was beginning to make the muscles ache. As if it wasn't bad enough that they'd just been stuck with two razor sharp needles, now they were having a lot of liquid drawn through them at a hell of a pace. She started shaking with the effort of keeping so still and when Alucard saw fit to release her neck, she nearly fell on him, not realising how much he was supporting her weight. She balanced herself though and managed not to touch him.

His eyes, she noticed, which were usually a fiery red burning like a thousand suns in the sky – she had often mused as she lay alone in the dungeons waiting for his late return – were now glowing above a small, soft smile. It was the same look he had given her as Count Vladimir Tepes in the Battle of London, all those years ago.

The smouldering eyes passed over her face and he said gently, far too gently for her to be angry with:

"Not yet."

A/N: Sorry, sorry! It was horrible, I know... But I just didn't know what to do with it! I wanted to inject a bit of humour into the mixture and this is what we got... But I've tried to fix it and frankly this is the best I could do... The characterisations were terrible in the middle and although I could probably get away with it by saying that Alucard's past being revealed left him a little flustered... I wouldn't be able to convince myself, so the only answer I have now is to take my own life in atonement for my sin .

Please drop a review because after all, they are the currency of the soul ;)

Happy hunting,

-Lapin