—ther!
Was she dreaming?
Mother!
Dark. It was dark and cold and there was something wet on her hands.
Blood, she thought.
There was someone crying, sounding so broken. She wanted to go to her and hold her, but could not move. She could not see anything, could not feel anything, except her hands stained with blood. She imagined them outstretched before her.
Don't leave me!
Had she not spoken those words, once upon a time?
Don't leave me!
Yes, she had.
And yet, he had disappeared.
And yet, he had left her.
Things precious to her seemed to fall through the spaces between her fingers like sand, yet like blood they left stains. They. The few precious people. They told her they would never leave her and she believed them, trusted them, even in her life where misplaced trust was a paved road to ruin. She carved their names into her heart and carved them deep. If prodded, they would bleed.
Turns out, she did misplace her trust.
Turns out, they did more than just bleed. They trampled.
But she put aside those things. She put aside her mangled heart and stood tall because that was what she did. That was what she was. Integrity. One who stood stalwart and true no matter what. No matter what. The Iron Maiden, sweeping aside fragments with her impenetrable iron hands, dusting them dispassionately, and moving on. And so she spent three decades of her life cleaning up stain after stain that would never truly fade and brushing aside shards after shards that would ever sting under the skin.
"All in the course of duty," she would say, her lips curved but not smiling.
As she did, dust gathered inside the house she had once been so proud of. She lived in a glorified mausoleum haunted by long dead men. She traversed from room to room as their keeper, not quite allowing herself to wonder about the could-have-beens yet not quite barring herself from it either. When she passed by a certain door, she would think, Is this what you felt when you were alone in your castle, Count? Or did you not feel at all?
The image that came to her mind, black and white and grey and dull red, had no answer.
Farewell, he said instead.
Gluttonous wretch. How dare you. How dare you leave me.
And yet, she was no better. She had said goodbye, too.
Seras, Seras, don't cry. I'm free at last. Be happy for me. Won't you be happy for me?
Contrary to her words, her heart grew heavier. In the abyss she drew her bloodstained hands to her cheeks and the tears running there washed them pink, though she could not see.
Seras, Seras. My darling girl. I loved you most. I loved you best.
She was never one to wallow in regret. But here, in this cold, dark space, her mind and body growing numb, she saw her life kaleidoscopic. She saw the missed chances, the things she never said, the questions she never asked. It was human nature to regret, and the Iron Maiden had only ever been human. The steel walls around her rusted with each of her tears and crumbled with each of Seras' cries.
Mother, mother!
Seras, Seras, what can I do? It's too late now.
"Just like Alucard," she whispered. "Late, always late. Too late."
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Is it?
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SATIS
"Its other name was Satis; which is Greek, or Latin, or Hebrew, or all three
—or all one to me—
for enough."
- Estella, Great Expectations
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01.
auld lang syne
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Every day for half a century, Integral Fairbrook Wingates Hellsing had risen with the sun. The light that flooded her bedroom assured her of at least twelve hours of meandering until the start of her actual duties, and in its glow she would sit up in bed, stretch her limbs, and stare down at her covered knees as she went over the day's agenda. Tea at two with Penwood...finalization of the plans for atomized silver by five... The faint echo of a dream would briskly be banished. It had no place in her reality.
Yet she was finding it difficult to banish this particular dream.
So...dark. So cold. Were dreams supposed to be so...real? And she could still...hear...
Integra sat up, her hands pressed to her face. Slowly she lowered them, half-expecting to see them red, for certainly they were wet, and clammy. Yet against the white of the bedding, her palms were pristine but for the glistening tracks she had made with her tears.
Oh, how funny. She had cried in her sleep. She must have been truly stressed out yesterday. No wonder. She had talked to Seras about her death. It was a subject that always managed to get Seras upset, which in turn would always manage to get her upset. Pip was right; she had been too harsh on the girl. She would have to apologize.
But...why did the thought of Seras make her hands tremble?
Her hands. Integra found herself studying them closely. Oh, now this was even funnier. Were her tears blurring her vision, or were they oddly...smooth? Seras had presented her a set of expensive creams for her fiftieth birthday, swearing they were, quote, "A safe alternative to vampire blood guaranteed to smooth away all your wrinkle worries!" She had pinched both cheeks for that.
Still, she had applied them every night. Well. Evidently her efforts had paid off. Seras was going to be so pleased when she saw they actually worked. Integra almost smiled.
Almost.
It was strange.
She could not smile.
There was a knock on the door. Seras, of course. The girl waltzed into her room every morning with a customary and obnoxiously cheery greeting, humming a tune off-key, though she had scolded her multiple times she had no need of such infernal racket. Truthfully, after so long, Integra felt like her day did not begin until she heard that hum. Just as well. She would ask Seras if she seemed off today.
The door opened.
"Good morning, Miss Hellsing."
A middle-aged, portly woman walked in.
"Promptly up as usual, my dear!" the woman said, setting the morning paper down on a table and crossing to the windows, missing the way Integra froze. "If only my son was as early a bird as you. Why, last weekend I had to smack his rear to wake him up, and he's twenty-four! I swear, that boy'll be the death of me—"
"Miriam?" Integra breathed.
The woman named Miriam opened a window. She turned to her. "Yes?"
A breeze entered the room, an early summer's wind that swept strands of her hair into her face. Some of them got caught in the salty traces of her tears, and it was right at that moment that Integra realized.
Both of her cheeks were wet.
Both of her eyes were wet.
And one of them had not produced tears for three decades.
"Why, you look as if you've seen a ghost! And my goodness, have you been crying, my dear? What on earth is the matter?"
Integra did not reply. Her left hand reached up, to the eye that should be covered, should not be whole, should not be seeing—
"What is this?" she whispered. "What is going on? Where's Seras?"
"I haven't a clue who you're talking about. Integra, are you alright?"
No. She was not alright. "What have you—" Integra started to demand loudly, only to slap a hand to her throat. Her voice. Why was it—why was it so high?
Miriam looked alarmed. "Integra, you're giving me a fright. You seem to be dreadfully out of sorts this morning! Mr. Dornez is supposed to bring tea in a half, but I'll hurry him up, you understand? I'll be right back. Oh, I do hope you're not coming down with something!"
One word registered in her mind.
"Dornez?" she croaked.
The woman was gone.
Integra dropped her hands to her lap and stared at them anew.
Her hands, her unblemished hands.
Her soft hands. Her smooth hands. Not calloused, not wrinkled. And they were shaking in front of her—
Eyes.
Wavering in their sockets and inarguably whole.
A word was uttered, helplessly. "How?"
The syllable, which faded into the air, became a flood in her brain. How? How? How? It reiterated itself over and over and over again until it transformed into a buzz, a white noise that played in crescendo as she moved on autopilot. She did not remember throwing off her sheet, she certainly did not remember landing on her feet, but she was in front of the vanity, gripping the detachable mirror in her too-clean, too-soft, too-smooth hands so tight her knuckles seemed to burst. When she beheld the face gazing back at her from inside the silver circle, the buzz transformed into a scream.
Years of restraint prevented that scream from escaping. She could not, however, prevent her muscles from slackening, the mirror from dropping. It met the floor, shattering into many haphazard pieces.
The haze around her mind followed suit. The events of what she had thought was yesterday seized her senses like the claws of death. They scraped her raw, enraged that she had slipped from their clutches, and she remembered. She remembered waking up. She remembered wandering. She remembered collapsing and waking up yet again and Seras was there, begging her not to—
The pieces reflected different parts of herself, but in each and every one she glimpsed a pair of wide and disbelieving blue eyes.
"I died," she said.
The truth rang hollowly in this time and space.
And her left eye, it throbbed.
Integra bent down and picked up a shard. She held it in her palm, and deliberately, she closed her fingers. She squeezed. She watched, unflinching, as the edges sliced her skin. Blood oozed, pain streaked up her arm and it was then she let the shard fall, reddened. The sting passed through her body, by her beating heart, by her inflating lungs. And it was telling her, they were all telling her this was—
"Not a dream."
Droplets of crimson dribbled down her nightgown as she repeated the words silently.
Not a dream.
Not a dream.
Then what was this?
Integra made her way to the table where the morning paper sat innocently. She did not need her glasses to read the four-digit number printed in the corner in black ink.
1992.
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There had been a Mrs. Miriam A. Bolger in Hellsing from the eighties to the early nineties. She had been employed by Sir Arthur Hellsing as a nanny to his daughter and, not counting the brief period of retirement forced upon her by his brother, she had served for sixteen consecutive years. After taking care to witness her charge blossom into a beautiful, valorous knight, she had chosen to retire for good to Scotland, where she died at the age of seventy-three.
Integra had sent flowers to her funeral.
"How fleeting life is," she had remarked, as she personally placed the order for two dozen lilies.
And now this one particular Mrs. Bolger, who should have been dead for fourteen years, was moving through the manor in search of one particular Mr. Dornez, who should have been dead for thirty. She found him in the kitchen, waiting the approximate eight minutes it took to perfect his lady's tea. He raised a brow when he saw her rush in.
"Is there a problem?"
"It's Integra," Miriam exclaimed, and the man set down his watch. "There's something terribly wrong with her. I went to give her the paper and she was crying. Crying! And she was dreadfully pale and asking odd questions and she looked at me as if I was a ghost! You must go up and check on her!"
The butler was already moving. He climbed the flight of stairs leading to Integra's bedroom, and when he arrived the door was ajar. She was not there. The curtains floated in the wind, guiding his gaze to the opposite side of the room where there was a mess of broken glass and blood.
Miriam caught up to him and gasped. "What happened?"
He rounded on her. "You said she was crying? Was it a nightmare?"
"Why, I'm not sure. But she was asking about a name I'd never heard before. I'm afraid I don't recall what it was other than that it was a rather strange name. Oh dear, I should have been more thorough." Miriam wrung her hands. "Now that I think of it, she looked...devastated. Absolutely devastated."
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1992.
That was thirty-eight years ago. She had been fifteen years old.
She had been a slight thing then, still growing. A little knight-in-training who still wore dresses, who was filling the shoes of director at a painstaking pace. Though by then she had spilled more blood than the average person did in their wildest fantasies, and innocence had become a sweet far utopia, she had still harbored hope, that one day she would do her father proud.
She had been a fool.
Integra, who should have been dead for a night, found herself outside. It was a beautiful day. Blue. Cloudless. Like yesterday—she referred to it as yesterday because the alternative was too ridiculous. She slumped against the grand double doors of the manor, eyes shut and her injured hand splayed across her pounding heart. When the sun filtered through her lids red, she let out a brittle laugh at the sheer evidence of life and utter, blasphemous change it posited as.
"What a cruel, cruel joke."
Why was she even surprised? After all the shit she had experienced, this was merely icing on the fetid cake. Nothing in life had ever gone the way she had anticipated, why should death be any different?
The young girl—the old woman—whatever she was—walked along the outside wall of the manor, her fingers trailing on its heated bricks. Despite their warmth, this house, this bloody miserable godforsaken house, had never felt more like a tomb to her than it did now. There was nothing here. Nothing except dead people. People she had long since bade goodbye, people she had buried with her own two hands. She could almost hear them.
"Integra!" they called.
She paused. That had not been her imagination. Someone was actually calling her.
"Integra!"
Integra opened her eyes a sliver and sucked in a breath. She remembered that tone. It was Miriam. She must be looking for her. That meant—
"Integra!" another voice called, male and elderly.
Her chest heaved. She squeezed her eyes back shut.
Walter. I buried you. I buried you with my own two hands.
She covered her ears. This was too much. It was why she had fled from her room. Details had leapt out at her with each passing second: the vase she had removed twenty years ago, the canopy she had dismantled when she was eighteen, the picture that was not there that she had received on her forty-fifth Christmas! God, she had died! She had died just yesterday! And she was bloody tired and bloody done with this shit. Whatever she was, whatever this was, dead or alive, heaven or hell, thirty-eight years in the past or thirty-eight years in the future, she wanted to get away from it all.
Sir Integral Hellsing did not run, but there had been no Sir Integral Hellsing thirty-eight years ago in the year 1992. There had only been a young Miss Hellsing.
"Integra!"
"Shut the fuck up," she muttered. "Why can't this world go on without me for one bloody day?"
A voice piped up inside her head. It sounded like Seras.
You have to face them sooner or later.
She turned the east corner to the back of the manor, and there she slid down the wall to the grass.
"Seras," she said.
The shadows did not answer.
"Pip."
The walls did not answer.
She shuddered. Of course. Thirty-eight years ago there had been no Pip Bernadotte who swore in French who smoked cheap cigarettes who gave her unwelcome love advice who kept vigil over her domain and would never ignore...thirty-eight years ago there had been no Seras Victoria who hummed who teased who adored Wicked (and thirty-eight years ago there had been no such musical) who stayed up at day without complaint. Who had mended her mangled heart to the best of her ability, who had been the last person Integra had allowed herself to love.
Always, always, things precious to her fell through the spaces between her fingers like sand. They told her they would never leave her yet they did.
But this time she could not blame them because this time, it was she who had left.
And now, there was nothing. Nothing, except...
A butler...
(A traitor.)
And...
"Why here?" Her nails scratched the fabric of her dress. "What am I supposed to do here? What's left for me here?"
You know what is.
Integra tilted her head toward the sun. Its glare momentarily blinded her.
"That can't be," she said.
Don't deny it. Especially not this time.
"This time..."
Is your second chance.
Are you ready?
It had been so long, she almost did not recognize the sensation for what it was.
But only one entity could produce this kind of pressure, this prickly feeling, this fleeting sensation of being submerged neck-deep in a pool of ink. Had she been looking, she would have seen the shadows under the trees in front of her twist, and emerge as a very tall, massive figure. Presently, however, she thought she would rather enjoy the sun. Her lashes rested on her tan cheeks and she mused, belatedly, that regardless of everything, she was glad to have her left eye back.
It was quiet for a brief, golden while.
Then—
"You've caused quite a commotion."
Footsteps.
She counted them. One, two, three. A shadow was cast over her.
"Master."
She breathed, or she tried. Her lashes fluttered, and she noticed that the afterimage of the sun had faded.
Finally, she lowered her gaze.
Red.
Such a violent color. Yet beautiful. It was—it should be—vibrant. Even when her life had been drenched in it. The color that wetted her palm, peppered her dress, the color that stood before her.
Integra said nothing. She simply stared. She could believe that she had died and somehow missed heaven and hell altogether and ended up thirty-eight years in the past, and she could believe that this was somehow a second chance wrapped as a big fuck you from the universe. But this, she could not quite believe.
Thus she continued to stare and did so thirstily.
Her vampire had always been very beautiful.
So that's how it is.
He smiled. "Did you have a nightmare, my Master?"
If you can't come to me...
I'll come to you.
She smiled, too.
"Haven't you heard, Count? There is no nightmare from which you do not wake."
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NOTES
This chapter was published on June 24, 2016.
It has been updated for formatting on January 28, 2021.
The original end note for this chapter can be found in the link in my profile.