A/N: This ol' cookie again... I've already posted it once - mistakenly, out of order - but we are now 'in order' and this is where it shall stay. Part three of my gift to you lot.

The Regression.

It was late morning at the Hellsing Residence and Seras ought to be asleep by now, but thoughts were keeping her awake. She was sat at her table, on her little throne in her night top and shorts, a thin silk robe draped over her to keep the chill from her dead flesh. She had one knee pulled up to her chest, a lit cigarette dangling from the fingers of her right hand and a half-filled glass of amber liquid in the other, sat on the table beside a crystal ash-tray, an ice-cube tinkling gently against its edge.

She swilled the liquid gently. It was whiskey, of the most expensive and enjoyable type; Lagavulin. Finest. Smoked. Strictly speaking she ought not to drink it because it just went straight to her blood stream, made her all giddy and… To put it bluntly, she was a light-weight. Or at least she was when she was alive. Now she was dead, however, her tolerance had apparently risen and she would have to go through most of the bottle before any effects whatsoever began to show. In fact, the empty bottle was on the floor at her feet, on its side, resting against the table leg. The bit in the glass was the last of it and it was bloody hard to come by these days, especially if the only time you were allowed out was after dark when all the shops had shut. Oh, woe was she.

She took a small drag from her cigarette and then allowed her arm to dangle again. The cigarette wasn't so hard to come by. Although she had promised her master she would give it up because she was faithful to him and not to Pip – who had been the original reason for her taking up the habit in the first place – it was now undeniably a habit and not one she could break easily. There were always going to be a few packets lying around in her room and she was entitled to smoke them in daylight hours if she should so wish. Besides… It wasn't as if she was smoking this one for Pip, so her promise wasn't broken.

This one was for her. As was the last one. And the one before that. As was every single cigarette butt that sat around the overloaded ashtray. She'd been thinking about herself all day; her life in the police force; her death in the Hellsing Mansion; her attraction to a few of her co-workers; her inability to lay anyone; how it saved her life; how her death was now boring as hell; and how bloody ironic all of this was. She was constantly reminded – by the packets of fags left lying about, no less – of the prison sentence she had given herself. It wasn't so much the fact that she was now destined to walk the earth until the end of days, it was the fact that nothing would ever change in that time.

She took another drag and chased it down with a gulp from her glass. The ice cube bumped against her lips and then then fell back to the bottom of the glass as she returned it to the table. All of her childhood she had been indoctrinated with the idea that somewhere out there a handsome prince was waiting to come and take her away. Every little girl was a princess in her own way and Prince Charming was never far away. As she had grown up Prince Charming had transformed into Mr Right, and when Mr Right failed to reveal himself he had been replaced by Mr Anybody-There? It seemed as though all small girls were educated to think that love came at some point. Her parents had certainly supported that idea, that someone was out there just for her, that she only had to wait a little while and someone would come running along on a bold white steed, scoop her up and spirit her away into the sunset.

However, a good 53 years – because that is how old she really was at this point – had taught her that all of that was a lie. Love, true love, existed between friends because they supported each other with many many things and it didn't really matter what you looked like or what your particular tastes were, you were friends because you just were. That suspiciously common attraction between people that was generally thought of as 'love' was in fact nothing more than sexual attraction. Lust. If it wasn't then the two people were mere friends. 'Love' in the idyllic sense didn't really exist.

But – she tapped the end of her cigarette in an attempt to distract herself and allowed the ash to fall to the stone floor – that didn't stop her from wanting it. And it didn't mean – her fingers tightened imperceptibly on the glass – that she wouldn't keep hoping. The bond she felt with Alucard, the one that had compelled her to agree with him when he promised that they be together forever, even though he was promised to another, was nothing more than a Fledgling's bond to her Master. That was the reality of it.

A quiet grinding began to emanate from the glass before her fingers burst through it with a loud bang! and shards of glass showered her front and scattered across the table top. The remaining whiskey had also escaped at velocity and was splattered across the table, thin rivulets of it dribbling off the table's edge and onto the floor, hitting the empty whiskey bottle with a steady tok tok tok. The ice cube had fallen in her lap. She picked it up with bloody, glass-encrusted fingers and chucked it onto the table to join the rest of the mess there.

Her anger wasn't really directable anymore. At a time she had been able to direct it towards her foes, tearing apart the Nazi dogs who took Pip away from her – he was perhaps the closest she had ever come to finding Mr Right and even then he wasn't that close – or blowing the shit out of the Major for taking away her Master – a pain she still felt keenly. But these days there was no one to beat up, no brains to blow out. Going and finding her master would mean very little because none of this was really his fault, it had been working its way along for as long as she could remember. Ever since she was a little child, she'd been unlovable. The feelings she harboured were always breaking out of their bonds and – she stuck a finger in her mouth, cleaning any glass from the wound as she sucked – there was next to nothing that she could do about it.

Her only cure was to either find the elusive 'love' that was so clearly depicted in fairy tales and other make-believe, or to give up on it completely. But whatever the case she couldn't remain at this half-way house, where the only person to love her was herself.

As if spurred on by the thought, the glass-pricked fingers that she took from her mouth now disappeared below the lip of her sleep shorts, finding and making herself weak. The tiny circles she made on herself seemed oh so reminiscent of the circles she'd been running in for the last 53 years, only these felt so much better to the touch…

She took the cigarette to her lips and took a long pull. Her whiskey might be wasted on the thoughts of her master and her wasted life, but the cigarette wasn't. She examined it through the plume of smoke she blew forth. The end was glowing faintly from the new influx of oxygen, reminding her of Alucard's eyes. With an expression of disgust she turned it around in her fingers and put it out on her own neck. It didn't burn her as much as she'd hoped although the smell of cooking meat was a little better; acrid and vile, it filled her nose and she slipped a little lower in her throne, slinging her leg over the arm and letting her head rest against the back.

Yes… She only needed herself…

A/N:So there you have it, the last gift of the day :) And a recurrence of DarkSeras. It was about time too if you ask me, I feel like she's been getting a bit soft over the last few installments...

Anyway, please tell me if you disliked the end events and I'll make sure I include warnings in the next one so the more sensitive among you can avert your eyes :P

You know the drill by now; leave a review to tell me what you thought; make any suggestions; give me any critique; yadda; yadda; yadda.

Other than that, I'll see you next time!

-Lapin