Mad king.
The world perished under the rising sun.
He laughed.
Glory! Glory!
He had been reborn; he was whole. He had drank and was now invincible.
(Ah. Is that so?)
The king, the mad king, he laughed upon his own execution stand, amongst his enemies and allies, above a cross severed in half. The sapor of blood was fresh on his tongue, at once pungent and fragrant and rusted and lustful. And yet, his hunger was not sated. He dragged his trembling hands (Oh? What reason do you have left to tremble? Shouldn't you be proud?) down his face to confine the neck which frothed with thirst, only to have them falter. He tore away.
His palms were streaked with blood.
They shook. His laughter continued, more boisterous than before, but why was it then that his knees crumbled beneath him? Head bowed and hands outstretched, like so many portraits of worship, toward the God who would never forgive him?
(Mad king, you should be proud.)
Nothing again would taint him, because he had already tainted himself. Nothing would make him weep, because he had already exhausted his tears. No God, no mortal would be able to bend him to their wills, because he would destroy them first. Yet he kept his hands in the air and wept scarlet until the sun flaked off his skin, for an absolution ever lost.
God,
I pray not for mercy.
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14.
fine art
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Be careful when loving a monster.
It does not end with you loving the monstrous thing.
Rather, monstrous things start happening to you.
Integra, whose death had become a monstrous thing indeed, felt the truth of this as she watched the redness she had shed dry on her monster's palm.
"What," Alucard began, but a minute headshake had him twisting his lips over his bared teeth.
Typical. Just typical.
Here, now. Just as she thought she could breathe.
Really, at this point, crying bloody tears was bloody inconsequential.
She had not wanted to wear her glasses when she woke up. In the muted light, it was her and the suffocating walls of her room, closing in on her; the distant echoes of a clock, the absence of a coat. A scene so routine, except for a single detail.
It had been almost as an afterthought, that she raised a hand and covered her left eye.
The loss of it had never been very profound. A trifle, compared to when all the while she was struggling to breathe with just tattered remains of a heart, the rest scattered in the breeze. Thirty years she had functioned, half-blind, and she had forgotten.
The burden of clarity.
"Integra." Alucard was shaking her. "Are you seeing—"
"Yes," she said abruptly. "I am. Quite obviously, I'm not meant to wear white. I can't seem to keep from sullying it."
Alucard did not take her flippancy kindly, if the way he shoved his face into hers was any indication, and he was not even making the most of it. "This is deviltry," he hissed. "Witchcraft."
"You think so? That would simplify matters."
His mouth, which did as it pleased, opened once more to utter something foolish, so she reached out and snapped it shut. His jaw ticked upon her touch, as captive as his hand still in hers, blotted. She studied it again, then blinked. Her eye no longer ached nor bled.
"Are you afraid?" Integra asked.
Her vampire. So paradoxical, how envious he was of humanity—to the point of being fearful of its desertion from another.
"Would it be a horror to you, if I were to prove less than the pinnacle of humanity?"
"In a desperate human way," Alucard recited softly. "But desperation is what makes a monster."
"Desperate? Was I?"
Was desperation what made her into this? The same desperation that long ago had led her to a monster in the basement?
"Were you?"
Integra stared at him, yet beyond him, into the face of the one who had left her. Yes, she had been watching from behind the screens of a mangled zeppelin but she had been there she had been there, in the wind that tore his form apart even as she stood in the dead air of that mangled zeppelin she had been there and—
—and perhaps, if she had been there, to grab him, he would have stayed.
The fine art of desperation is denial.
"I was." Integra breathed the admission out, dragging herself back to the reality where such denial had no quarter.
Of course. I've become you.
He was looking at her so ardently, and it burned in her throat how unfair it was for both of them, this tug-of-war over closure. She released his jaw and instead drew his blotted hand up. "Let's see now. Do you think, by this admission, I've irrevocably changed?"
Those unnaturally shed drops of hers glistened on his skin, and Alucard's nostrils flared.
"Lick it," she ordered.
She let go of his hand entirely and crossed her arms.
"See if it tastes different."
Knelt at her feet, yet dwarfing her, he was absolutely still. He spoke not a word. But he held her gaze with the gravitational pull of those faraway supernovae, eyes hooded and lips solemn, when his bare hand reached said lips. They parted—Yes, Integra thought, I am certainly not meant to wear white—and his tongue slid out.
Love need not be expressed so starkly. A touch there, a kiss here, would suffice. Or sometimes it made itself stark, such as these entreaties he uttered with only his gaze and his languid strokes against his own appendage. Look at me, my Master. Look at your depraved beast lapping up your blood on my flesh, the bittersweet trace of your desperation. Look at me. Your own desperate monster.
It was fortunate that she had not worn her glasses, or it would have been no doubt fogged up by the sheer heat emanating between them. The contraction of his throat, as he swallowed her taste, sounded loud in the lull.
Her arms had dropped to her sides a while ago, and her dress was crumpled in her grip. "How does it taste?" she asked.
"Sweet," he answered, "bitter," before closing in, taking her face into his hands and kissing her.
Not on the lips, but below her troubled eye. Now, this was a ploy on his part; her tear had fallen cleanly, with no residue on her cheek. Yet he insisted with his greedy mouth on seeking her bittersweet, and she let him.
Though his focal point was his kiss he was everywhere around her. Dampness, where the dissipation on his palm became imprinted on her skin; darkness, where the silk of his black suit shrouded her in a rendition of death and the maiden; deliriousness, where she lost herself. It was only Alucard, Alucard, Alucard, whom she beheld.
Then his kiss left her. He retracted, his visage saturated with the same deliriousness.
"Even sweeter."
There were voices coming from upstairs. Voices of the mundane, blissfully ignorant of what coiled in the sitting room.
"Don't tell Walter," Integra said. "About the blood." She leaned into his ungloved hand, engulfing it in her exquisite heat, her hair tickling his wrist. (Ah, my Master, how gracious is your torture.)
"A sensitive topic in whichever context, I am sure," Alucard quipped, and she clucked her tongue at him.
After a moment, however, she gave a lopsided smile.
"You're not wrong. Whichever way, he won't understand."
It was another thing he had observed. She chose not to confide in the butler. She chose, instead, him.
The precarious balance that had existed before. This Integra upended it. Ruthlessly.
"Yet again, my Master, I am a hoarder of your secrets. Yet again. Should I be flattered? Or should I be burdened?"
Her eyes, unimpeded by glass and bluer and clearer and more ruthless than he could recall, pierced him. "Is anything a burden to you? Whether the imminent destruction of the world or your own evanescence?"
What an oddly specific string of words. "I am a monster without consequence, but I am your beast of burden."
Integra laughed shallowly. "My beast of burden..."
Yes, hers. Only hers.
"You called me Countess, here."
She remained at ease in his grasp, the eggshell-delicate curve of her skull susurrating against his flesh with her breaths, a sensation almost decadent. As though all that she spoke were has-beens, and bore no consequence to him. So delicate yet so dangerous. So close yet so distant. So still in his grasp yet so fleeting, Integra, why do you sound like a farewell?
"You called me Countess, and I didn't shoot you. I laughed, because it was true, wasn't it? You were mine, and I was yours, in a way. I'd decided down in the cell that we'd be corpses side by side; I thought that was what Father meant, when he said I would find salvation. Salvation in the arms of God, with you as my companion.
"I was a silly romantic of a girl and I think you knew that. You knew I needed a knight. You became one and I accepted your services. But when I became my own knight, it wasn't enough for us. I had outgrown you, and so you had to change as well.
You were my Count, because I wanted you to be."
Voices, coming from the outside, closer this time, blissfully ignorant of the lady in the sitting room and her white dress stained with monstrosity. "What will you have me be now," Alucard whispered, the nadir of his being expanding from within, "if by your way of speaking all of that has passed? All your dreams, Integra, how can I compete?"
The murmurs, the rattling of teacups grew ever closer. His teeth cracked under the pressure of denying himself. The world in daylight and its routines, however, had never been kind to Alucard. His hand slipped from her face, drawing out and savoring each sweep and sigh, another goodbye.
She caught it. Him.
"You're—"
Integra said it as she sat upright. The world in daylight realigned with her as its axis.
"You're someone I've been waiting for a long time."
And he saw.
A someone.
A future.
She stood there. She stood in the forest of corpses, with hair that danced in the sordid breeze as moonlight and with eyes that pinned him to the ground as bluest steel. Tall and radiant, his queen of queens and master of everything, Integral Hellsing! In the sharpness of her gaze there was a softness, and it greeted him—Welcome back, Count—
Then it stopped.
The corpses crumbled, the fragrance of war faded. Her image went static. She was lost to him, a split-second glimpse into a future that would gratify him beyond measure if only it were true. But why—but why—
In the present, or as present as it could be for her, Integra stood, picking up his glove. The world continued its melancholy course. She tossed the glove onto his coat where he would find it, when he woke himself up from his reverie; to that sigil which had failed her for thirty years.
"Alucard."
She called and he did not answer.
xx
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Do you dream?
Yes, my Master.
What do you dream of?
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Walter was waiting for her.
When she reached the end of the corridor, he held out her glasses. She glanced at them and then her butler, who wore the expression of someone who was holding his tongue for propriety's sake and not much else.
Integra took the glasses, slid them on and noted, with a chill in her heart, there was little difference.
"My eyesight has always been very bad, hasn't it?" she said to him. "But just now, I could see you. Quite clearly."
Walter had nothing to say. Integra walked out to the foyer, where its many windows cast her image kaleidoscopic. Scandalous, Miss Hellsing! Look at you, spotted red! Unabashed, she brushed her thumb against the scab on her lip, and that was when he chose to speak.
"My lady. Integra." Walter put emphasis on every word. "Alucard is a monster."
Walter was ever quick to remind her of that.
"Yes. I know. I have known since I first met him." Integra smiled coolly. "Didn't we have this conversation a few days ago?"
"May I be blunt?"
"By all means."
"My lady." Walter squared his shoulders. "Alucard cannot—"
Just what, exactly, was it that Alucard could not was drowned out by Miriam's bustle. "There you are! My heavens, are you making a habit of disappearing in the morn? I had to put Sir Islands on hold! Twice!"
"Sir Islands?" Walter asked. "Was it urgent?"
"Something of import, supposedly, he mentioned he would be stopping by for tea this afternoon…"
Integra thought of a grave.
An empty grave. Like so many others.
"We have ourselves to blame," the knight had said as they stood over the slab of stone and the few choice words that immortalized Sir Shelby Penwood, England's Protector. His spine as straight and unyielding as his cane, Islands had poured a glass and placed it on the grave.
"Forgive us, Integra."
The spirit in the glass was bright red and terribly familiar.
"Walter was a product of our folly."
"Oh dear, have you hurt yourself again?" Miriam gestured to the scab on her lip in dismay.
"Bit myself," Integra replied, far too promptly. "Have Sir Islands' brand of tea ready when he arrives. If you don't mind, I'll take breakfast upstairs."
Walter followed her, even on her detour through the hall of portraits. There again she stopped before her father; her look colder, her resentment reaching to the depths of heaven and hell. You, old man, and your folly of pride.
Like father, like daughter.
"Remember," Integra started, "remember the day you returned home?" She pivoted, the array of dead faces circling with her to stare at their erstwhile retainer. "You and Alucard were fighting here. I never asked: what was that about?"
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Time pivots, and eats its tail.
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"Aren't you glad to see him again?"
Glad? No.
He did not even know where to start.
The vampire was not even looking at him. He had opened his eyes, causing bile to rouse up in Walter's guts, but their monstrous gaze bypassed him entirely. It followed Integra around the room as though pulled toward its gravitational center, a new, bright, brilliant sun—a look Walter recognized, recognized so well. He shouldn't be looking at her like that.
He shouldn't—look like that.
He looked the same. It was that same sameness that crawled under, made your own greying skin feel as unnatural. The sameness that stirred his heart in all the wrong ways, ways that made Walter such a good hunter. The same lineless pallor and splendor. A monument of a face. Everything about Alucard was a monstrous perfection that Walter had been groomed to destroy. And yes, he would gladly, gleefully redeem the faulty heartstrings with his wires, yet—
The Hellsings always denied him.
"Alucard," Integra said, returning with a glass of water from the mantel. Her tone was impatient, chiding and far too familiar. "Get up. You've been a sloth in that chair since dawn."
"A cardinal sin. Though I wonder why desertion is not." And there the monstrous gaze locked on him, mad and eerily lucid.
"What are you suggesting?" Walter countered.
Was it not just as well, that these were the first things they said to each other? One incites and the other is left to fend, just like old times.
Alucard curled a corner of his mouth. "Coyness doesn't suit you, Angel."
"Alucard. Behave." Integra handed Walter the glass of water. He took it. "Don't mind him. I've explained already, how you were away on my father's orders, how you couldn't have known—"
Walter would have preferred her giving him holy water to throw at Alucard. He would have preferred her not giving it to him at all. His lady's kind gesture, the clear water.
"I suppose I can't blame you, for not telling me about Alucard. You and Father certainly were devious in your efforts to keep him secret, though. Even Unc—the traitor—didn't know," her words escaped quickly, "and look. It's as if nothing has happened, isn't it?"
"My Master is too kind," Alucard said.
My? My?
"I wasn't complimenting you! Oh, and I have held off Sir Islands. He called yesterday, quite worried, can you imagine? Almost as though he was aware…"
The weight of the clear water became unbearable. But Walter would never let that show. "And you, my lady?" He set the glass down, to kneel and grasp her hands. Alucard watched him with interest. "Are you well? Are you unhurt?"
Integra, with her eyes so clear, somehow clearer than the water, took a second to reply.
"Yes."
And Walter did not see the triumph in Alucard's.
"I need to prepare. Now that you're here we'll need to inform the Council about Alucard...among other things," Integra said, and Walter's heart stirred anew with both pride and discomfort, to have her take to her duties like so much clockwork. "Walter, you'll need rest. Don't protest. You can resume your duties after today. We've only ourselves in this house; it can stand being unattended for a night more."
Walter again did not see, this time, the triumph in Alucard's eyes being replaced by resentment, and targeting him poisonously.
She left, and Walter did not stay long either. He ignored the vampire and made for his room. Not that he had high hopes. In the hall of portraits, where the late Sir Hellsing had joined his brethren, the woefully unforgettable sensation of shifting dimensions slowed him to a halt. He produced a webbing of wires between his fingers.
"Why the rush?" The disembodied voice tutted. "For shame, Angel. Didn't you hear our Master? You should be glad to see me."
"As much as you are to see me."
"Really? Because it was I who secured Miss Hellsing, so that she may still live and breathe, and her blood flow sweet..." The gloat in the voice was addressed to everyone in the hall, both the painted and the damned. "As the pound of flesh that called itself her kin took a potshot at her."
And Richard had not missed. The proof was awake and speaking. Walter swallowed. Integra had not told.
"She has chosen not to fault you, so I can't kill you," the voice went on conversationally. "I could. For what you did to me. To my coffin. Depriving a man of his final resting place for twenty years! But I don't blame you."
The last line came from behind.
"For having had her all to yourself."
Walter swiveled around.
Alucard smiled. "Did Arthur die painfully?"
"What game are you playing?" Walter asked coldly.
For before him was a young girl.
"Well, you seemed standoffish with my other form. I thought, why not relive the glory days?" She spun on the spot, her black hair falling in waves; a mockery of beauty, a beauty that must die.
Walter himself smiled in mockery. "I don't remember anything but us bickering."
"At least your memory isn't faulty. Don't worry. This will be the last time you see this." The girl in white put her gloved hand to her lips in a way that had nothing to do with demureness.
"Because I daresay she'd prefer the other one."
He flung his wires, yet missed the head; it ensnared instead the arm that Alucard had outstretched to seize his throat. Walter was slammed into the wall. "Now this is just like old times!" Alucard giggled. "Did I make you angry?"
"Fuck—off—"
Alucard searched his face. "You aged well. Is that what is due when you bask in the singular adoration of such a delightful child? Integral. What a perfect name. Did Arthur name her that to spite me?"
"Fuck off to hell and ask him yourself!" Walter carved his wires deeper into the arm. Blood spluttered out and soaked the sleeve in red, not that Alucard paid any heed.
"Lady Integrity may be forgiving, but a hound knows no forgiveness. You failed her."
"And you're so loyal a hound now?" Walter rasped. "You've only known her for two days. I knew she would withstand whatever should occur if Richard was asinine enough!"
"And thus it is his remains that are compost in these grounds, not hers. In that case." The girl's white mask morphed into one of pity. Alucard had always been especially cruel in this form.
"Why return, when clearly she has no need of you?"
The wires snapped, and brought the arm down with them. Walter landed shakily, nursing his throat. The severed arm fell into a puddle of its own making, which had dripped down the hall, to Integra's feet.
No one said anything.
Integra approached the puddle. She picked the severed arm up.
The girlish facade let out a laugh, and as Integra came closer it rippled, changing into that of the gentleman, sans an arm. He knelt, but Integra sidestepped him. She dropped the appendage back into its puddle where it dissolved into shadows, reattaching themselves almost petulantly to the stump at Alucard's shoulder.
She passed by her father's portrait. She did not give it, nor them, a glance.
"I don't need you two to be fighting at a time like this."
Her tone was so different from what it had been in the sitting room that Walter could only bow.
"I don't care to waste my morning hearing why this happened. I shall pretend none of this happened. I expect both of you to treat each other civilly, befitting your past partnership or," her breath hitched, "is that yet another lie I've been told?"
"No, my lady," Walter whispered.
Alucard did not rise from his kneel until she had gone. He stood in front of Arthur's portrait, mirth still in place. Then his eyes followed the hall to its end where Integra had disappeared.
"Play nice, she says."
They are dogs, to do as their master bids, so they obey, and play nice. The Butler defers to the Count, the Count considers the Butler an asset; when they contest, it is just like old times, when their rivalry was part youth and part indulgence—before youth curdled into tar.
They are good at pretending.
Once Walter reached his room and closed the door, he laughed.
Alucard knew fucking nothing.
Bask in her singular adoration.
If Walter knew one truth, it was this: he was never first.
He was second. Always second.
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"Sir Islands."
The man in the top hat nodded. He usually did not remove it. He detested idleness, and took his tea in the exact minutes it took him to state his business. Integra remembered this because his grandson, Jeremy Islands, had inherited much of his demeanor. "All you need is the hat," she had teased.
"I have been receiving odd news of late, Integral. Something to do with your tutors being fired?"
"For the betterment of my education, Sir," said Integra blithely.
"And something to do with a girl you have under wing?" Islands peered above his glasses toward the main stairs. Seras was not there, having been told to stay in her room, but he assessed the vicinity anyway, as if he was considering the last time a Hellsing had brought in an orphan.
"Seras Victoria, my ward. She is not up for discussion."
Islands raised a brow, yet relegated. "Very well. I am not here for that matter. You will make certain, however, to conceal the finer details of your household."
Belated words, Sir Hugh. Outwardly, Integra answered, "Of course. Would you have tea in the office?"
"The parlor will do."
Walter served tea, and behind its steam Islands began. "There has been a disappearance, of a young male hiker in the forests of Devon." He pulled out a newspaper, folded, the top half blazoned with the incident. It was dated tomorrow. "I've managed to stop its publication. The next step must be taken by Hellsing."
"You mean it is vampiric?" Integra held the paper. Her hands were clammy.
She had no memory of such incident in 1992.
"Currently we have no evidence as to whether."
"I don't understand. Then why would a simple disappearance merit a headline?"
But. There was a but. Sir Hugh Islands would not have come a-calling without it. He tipped the back of the paper, so that she would flip it over to the bottom half.
Her left eye smarted.
—authorities have reported a sudden lack of wildlife in the forests—
"It is not simple, Integral. The entire fauna has disappeared."
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NOTES
This chapter was published on March 31, 2019.
It has been updated for grammar, punctuation, formatting, and word choice on January 29, 2021.
The original end note for this chapter can be found in the link in my profile.