In his desiccated state, he had no eyes. He saw—in the loosest sense of the word—the outside in shadows. The humans. Faceless, with their beating hearts, parading above him, innocent yet complicit in the obliteration of the bound beast.
He could forgive Arthur many things except this final act of depriving him of his coffin. This was exile, and as his flesh caved in and clung to his bones he wondered how long this one might last. A decade? A century? If there were no Hellsing heirs in spite of Arthur's whoring, would his fate be this cell and this darkness?
A part of him laughed.
A part of him shuddered.
It was all about compensation, he supposed. His human masters compensated for the fact that their fleeting lifespans were liable for an ancient, powerful being, by stripping him of everything.
Yet it was his nature to take, so he sought compensation for the lack they left him with. For his hunger that simmered underfoot of morsels he could not taste, he would kill more. For his nightmares of the past and of his defeat, he would win more—though they were child's play. As for himself, he lacked meaning on his own. He was stretched thin across an irreducible length of time which could only be defined through human epochs. So he compensated by relinquishing his own self, for purpose however fleeting.
But Arthur Hellsing had never been a man with lofty goals, content to whittle away his life with parties and whores; he had no use for a monster beyond the war.
Thus the Nosferatu, the No-Life King, is deprived of his final resting place, and is left unceremoniously to rot.
"You Hellsings," he rasped. "Once I suffered defeat at your hands I allowed you to take me apart and reassemble me to the design of your purpose, and you cannot grant me even that."
As the cries of his souls grew fainter, he felt his rage subside into a tremor.
Not only have they stripped me of my coffin, they have stripped me of my very existence.
The fate of all discarded things. They will leave me here to gather dust and forget.
Forget—
Forget the man
Forget the monster
Until…until…
When the girl burst into his cell, it was like gravity. Bits and pieces of him faded into the anonymity of time were called to one singular point. There was warmth. There was sound. She was talking to him. She said, "You won't mind me here, will you?"
Here? Mind you here?
Here beside me in this darkness, where even I have forgotten myself.
At this point, he had not recovered his name. He was aware of nothing but her and her wishes. She wished for a knight. He would become one. She wished not to die. He would not let her. Keep your end of the bargain. Nourish me. She did. Her blood. The first to touch his lips. He killed for her and he won.
In one single frame of eternity she gave him back everything. His satiation. His redemption. His purpose.
"Your name?"
"Your ancestors have called me—Alucard."
"Alucard," she said, and she gave him back himself.
He always sought compensation.
And he would never, ever let this go.
Later, when they were alone in the house, one traitor turned into compost, another (though he would not know that until much too later) due to arrive in three days, she asked him, "Why were you in there?"
He could have told her, Your father was more interested in chasing skirts than his duty. Your butler wanted to knock me down a peg.
Instead he told her, "I was waiting."
"For what?" she asked again, but he did not answer, and she chalked it up to another of his eccentricities.
Integra.
Don't you understand?
I have been waiting for you.
xx
xx
18.
a few seconds' difference
xx
xx
Alucard's face was thoughtful as he waited for half of his torso to return from where it was currently a web of black and red. The femme fatale had chewed off quite a chunk. Not before he ripped apart its head, though it would hardly last long.
Sure enough, the head reattached itself with a twirl. It giggled.
Fighting shadow to shadow, while novel, was not nearly as satisfying as crushing bones or spilling blood. They were at a stalemate. He would be able to shred it to irreconcilable pieces, but its brand of darkness was more compact and concentrated, and packed a punch due to sheer mass.
It now circled him. Alucard followed it with lazy eyes.
Curiouser and curiouser. The puppet. The void. The mutated animals. The discrepancy. Integra. She who was not a girl but a knight from a different point in time. Her bittersweet tears of crimson. These were the details that revolved around her, but the real devil was, he suspected, not in them. Integra was integral to this madness, yet she had not wanted it. She would make it hers—of course, nothing less from his glorious Master—yet she had been just as lost as he was.
There was something he was missing here.
The puppet struck again. Alucard caught it and tore it down the spine. One half furled and funneled into his leathered chest, narrowly missing his heart. His shadows swarmed and tackled it flat.
He tutted. "Don't you know better than to interrupt a dead man's thoughts?"
It laughed contemptuously, before dispersing and resurrecting within the skeletal trees.
Integra. She never seemed to question how she had become this way. Even an older Integra would demand answers, if one morning she woke up and the reality she had known had turned into a dream. And if what she had lost was so important—he curled his lips at the reminder—why chase it here instead of undoing her predicament?
Unless she had reason to believe it could not be undone.
Something that cannot be undone.
Something that cannot be undone—
The splintering of wood and the screech of metal preceded Walter who burst in through the fog, his wires haphazard in front of him and thrashing about around what appeared to be a cocoon of black seepage.
Alucard was unimpressed. "Get your own playground."
"Fuck off yourself," Walter spat, straining with the effort to contain what was effectively nothing.
"On a roll tonight, aren't you? The thrill of the hunt loosening your tongue? This does remind me of our raids where you would try to—"
The wires careened into the trees and capsized, knocking Walter off his feet and forcing him to cut them loose. They unraveled.
"—have one up on me," Alucard finished. His eyes narrowed.
The silhouette emerging was that of a young, teenage Walter.
Even curiouser.
"This can't be," Walter croaked, himself catching sight of the girl's silhouette.
The puppet Walter made a show of patting down its imaginary clothes. It laughed in the same cocky way Alucard remembered.
"Amusing. Very amusing. The night intends to make children out of us all." His gaze traveled from the boy to the girl, and to Walter. "Looking a bit too shaken there, Angel. It's not often you get the chance to teach your little punk self a lesson. You're going to waste it lying pathetically on the ground?"
"It's not right," Walter said. He was not listening. "Why? Why that form?"
Alucard paused. He had a point.
Why those forms in particular?
There was only a slim frame of time these two had coexisted. During the war.
Did the enemy know that?
"It's not right," Walter was repeating. "It wasn't supposed to be like—I refuse to believe—"
And he noticed that Walter looked haunted. His eyes were everywhere but the vicinity of his shadow, which now moved in line with the femme fatale and advanced, as two wraiths, polluting the air with vile and virulent laughter.
Then they froze.
Simultaneously, they turned their heads toward the direction of the shack. They gave out plaintive cries.
They began to crumble.
And Alucard felt Integra's blood in his veins burn.
He dissolved and reassembled at the periphery of the clearing, and found the shack in its center on fire. Black and red, phantasmic flames climbed up the outer walls and consumed the structure housing the void. Blood splattered the threshold of the side where he had left her, presently a gaping emptiness, and not far away he saw the pilot boy, who was watching the destruction, petrified.
The soldier barely had a second to gasp before Alucard jammed his talons into his ribcage and lifted him up. "What do we have here?" he purred, belying the promise of death. "A traitor?"
Wires shot out from the woods and encircled his arm. Walter came heaving through, doubled up but lucid. "We—need to interrogate him—"
"Oh, I was about to do just that," Alucard snarled, and sank his teeth into the neck.
Nothing.
He spat him out.
The blood was warm and red yet contained nothing.
Dylan spasmed in the pool of warm and red nothing, and Walter apprehended him. He cut his wires into the flesh, unconcerned with whether the interrogee would even be conscious at this point. "What did you do with her? Where is she?"
"Inside," came the reply, but it was Alucard who spoke.
He was already standing on the threshold. The fire burned around him. He sensed the void itself would not last for much longer. The blood under the moon had dried up, yet the blood within the dark was vibrant and glistening still, dancing afloat, its bergamot beckoning him well into its depths. Of course, there was no need for further invitation.
"Ariadne's thread. Fittingly, for the monster instead of the unfaithful hero." His tongue protruded and lapped it up.
It sang to him, always, her blood. There could be millions of droplets in between, each clamoring for his attention, and he would always find hers. Nothing, apart from death, would sever that.
Something that cannot be undone.
It was just out of reach.
xx
xx
The light had felt like nothing, so it went down her throat like nothing when she consumed it. But it was gone. So was her reflection. It made a noise—a cry, or a sigh—and was erased from existence. Integra did not have the chance to mourn it. The darkness began to fluctuate, a ship without its keel. She brought down her sword and braced herself against it, her breaths uneven, her hair sticking to her face.
She dragged her right hand, crusted with blood, to her chest where her heart was still beating. Nothing had changed, yet everything had changed. She had devoured the singularity of time and space.
I won't be able to ridicule Alucard's appetite again.
Integra thought this, and her world tipped.
Light flooded her vision.
When she could see, she was amidst rubble, under a sky touched by the early rays of the sun. She stared at it. Her lips parted and a shaky laugh tore from her.
Integra pounded on her chest. "Take me back," she muttered. "Take me back now."
The light, if it was indeed there, had no response. It could be in her fucking spleen for all she cared; but wherever it was, or whether it was nowhere and rather some intrinsic part of her she would be damned, she would be fucking damned if she let it make her relive this all over again.
In the distance, loudspeakers rang out a mad man's monologue. In the distance, wires cut through the air in a futile attempt. In the distance, blood flowed as rivers toward a single point.
London, thirty years ago or seven years later.
This is just a memory. It has already happened. What has happened cannot be undone. The singularity had shown her this, twice. Integra could not touch or be seen by those in the past. Yet she could feel herself. She could feel the pain and the grief originating from her heart, her stupid heart, that never mended, that remained red and raw and blistering since this break of dawn where she lost everything.
She could feel her feet move.
She was walking. Then she was running.
This is just a memory. Why was she running?
Alucard.
This is just a memory. He was gone. She was gone. He was late. Always late. Too late.
Alucard.
This is just a memory. She could not go back. She said this herself. She was supposed to know better. This was merely a cruel trick of a power she knew not yet how to harness. Don't hope, don't expect. Let the record run its course.
(But isn't hope the most human thing?)
"Alucard!" Integra shouted.
It was set in stone, what will happen.
And so it goes. A man snaps his fingers. A paradox is consumed. A knight watches the obliteration of her vampire projected larger than life on numerous glass screens; she shouts, she whispers—It's an order, Alucard—if nothing else will work, then this must. Her order has never failed before. It must work. It must.
Everyone will leave, someday. But not you. Never you. You weren't supposed to leave. Not until—
It does not work.
Thirty years ago, Integra could only watch. She had been too far away. This time, again, she is too far away.
Still, she ran.
If it only took a few seconds' difference, could she reach out a few steps or even a hundred and take his hand? Grab him and shake him and scream at him that he wasn't allowed to leave her, she gave him her order, don't disappear don't disappear!
And so it was with human hope that Integra ran against fate, which trudged according to its dirge. Hope that had her see the back of him, torn apart in the wind and closing the last of his eyes.
"Alucard!"
And—
For a moment—for a heartbeat in time, it was as if—
It was such a tiny thing. A miniscule difference. She must have imagined it.
Yet—for a heartbeat in time, as he said her name—Integra—
It was almost as if, his head was turning, to look at her—
She reached out.
Don't.
Leave.
Me.
Ah, but this is just a memory.
Farewell, Integra.
This is just a memory.
And just like then, just like before, just like it has always been, he is gone.
Integra stared at her hand, her outstretched hand. And like so many years ago, tears dropped from her eyes as fleeting as time.
She could not have known, as she collapsed in on herself, wracked with dry sobs that turned into half-mad laughter, she so resembled the man she loved, in the rising sun.
xx
xx
It was familiar, this darkness. Long since, back when his heart still beat, he had gazed upon it. In a sequence of mere seconds—the axe falling, his tongue swiping the blood of the slaughtered, the cross splitting, his head tumbling off the block—it had called to him.
Mad king, you have nothing. No castle, no domain, no subjects. Come. What reason do you have to remain?
His answer had been, Justification.
Alucard inhaled.
Traversing it now, this darkness that tasted and smelled familiar, should have been nostalgic. He had walked parallel with it for centuries, courted it from war to war, slaked both their thirsts. Yet here, it raised his hackles. His tongue snaked out again, his Master's sweet bitterness reeling him deeper in. The further he went, however, the colder her blood grew. As cold as this darkness. As cold as death.
It came over him like a sledgehammer.
He staggered.
The riddle he had entertained himself with earlier.
Something that cannot be undone—
There was a crack, and a beam fell out of nowhere and crashed next to him, smoking. The void was imploding. Alucard glimpsed holes in its fabric that revealed the original interior. Warped floors overrun with weeds, walls with vines, furniture rotten and eaten. A dingy old shack. That was all it was. This pathetic excuse for a stage had made them into fools.
Because that was what he was. A fool, for even thinking it. He should silver himself for humoring this farce. Yes, that was what this was. A farce. What hours before the break of dawn? What loss? As if he would allow himself to lose. To lose her. She was here. The future may have lost her, but he had not. She was his. Only his.
His thoughts made no sense even to himself. But they grounded him.
On its own volition, his hand went up and clawed at the dark leather binds over his heart. The heart she had laid claim to. The heart she had pierced.
He shivered. He followed her thread.
It was silent when he found her.
Her back was to him. She was on one knee, her head bowed against her upright sword. The same arm he remembered injured three years ago was lying freshly wet and fragrant.
She was very still.
In a way, it felt like an insurmountable amount of time had passed since he last saw her, though it could not have been more than an hour. And yet, here she was. As if she was the ancient, not him. As if she had been waiting that insurmountable amount of time, for him.
Alucard wanted to pull her up and shake her. What are you doing here?
You said you would return to me.
What are you doing, kneeling as if in mourning?
Look at me. Why won't you look at me?
She lifted her head.
"Is that you, Count?"
When there was no reply, she sighed.
"Ah." The syllable hung in the darkness alone. "That is fine. I will wait."
He was upon her, grabbing and turning her around and shaking her. Her glasses clattered to the floor.
"I am here," he snarled.
Integra looked at him with wide eyes. Then, she smiled. An old, tempered smile. "Yes, you are."
A red stain marked the left slope of her face. Her eyes were as blue as always, not a hint of red in them. But they frightened him.
She was beautiful. She was terrifying. She was beautiful and terrifying and she tossed aside her sword and seized his hands from where they were clutching her shoulders, to yank them down, so he would fall to his knees. There, Integra pulled him on top of her.
Her possession of his hands was irrefutable, that to avoid crushing her with his weight, Alucard had his shadows envelop them both. The tendrils of black and red wove into her pale hair, encircled her waist, molding her to him, her clothes a soft rustle against his restraints of hard leather, her heat against his cold.
His eyes were wild with lust; he could see them reflected in hers. But he was completely, utterly in thrall. Integra kissed him. She moved her lips on his with the intent to map their carnality. The hand of her injured arm was unable to retain its grip, and let him go, to which he immediately gained purchase on the nape of her neck and pulled her closer. The scent of her blood was making his mouth sloppy. Her tongue conquered his with ease.
She parted to breathe, and Alucard nosed the blood on her cheek and chin, down her throat. He licked and then he sucked, to mark her, so when she saw herself later, she would know that she was here, she was his Countess. She rewarded him with a sharp intake, squeezing his one hand as though she would puncture his glove and leave crescents.
His tongue, obscenely red from gorging on her trail of blood and more so from her kiss, was tracing a wet line beneath her blouse collar when Integra said, "I do wonder why it had to be this way. Must I have died, for you to return to me?"
And finally, he had to acknowledge the answer that was plain before him.
Something that cannot be undone.
Death.
He, almost frantically, pressed his ear to her heart. It beat—quicker than normal, due to their frenzy—yet it beat. She chuckled, and the sound joined the cadence of her life, sent tremors through him that were swallowed up by his own. Integra moved her sodden arm and tangled her hand in his hair, her fingers placating.
"It's not going to keep that up for long if you don't do something about this wound," she taunted.
Alucard growled. He threw his head back, baring his teeth, and plunged, tearing open her blouse and brassiere. Her chuckles turned into moans as he latched onto the wound and sucked, drawing the bullet out little by little until it was a blistering knob in his mouth which he ground to dust. She cradled his head as he did. And though his act was far from gentle, her fingers persisted in stroking his hair as if she heard the cries of his wretched, wretched soul.
Don't leave me don't leave me don't leave me.
He cleaned the wound, closed it, and licked his way up her shoulder and across her clavicle, then down, to her exposed breast. Integra gasped, and it was only his shadows that were keeping her in place as she arched her back.
Far away, a wall collapsed, and the structure heaved against the caustic flames. When he felt her tense, the Count did not make the same mistake as before. He gave her breast one last lick, and withdrew. He drank in the image of his Master, his Countess, draped over his shadows, her chest rising and falling, adorned with his marks and bared for his gaze. But when she closed her eyes to gather her wits, his grasp on her nape pushed her up to his face.
His eyes were violent and fragile.
"You are not allowed to leave me," he hissed.
Integra pushed as well. Their foreheads collided none too delicately. "Taking the words out of my mouth, Count?"
His voice was something from the pits of his ancient madness. "You Hellsings have made me into this. You took, and took and took, but in the end I shall take back everything." His visage twisted. Crimson tears leaked from the corners of his eyes. "Four hundred years of wandering, one hundred years of enslavement, and I have you at last."
Do you dream? she had once asked him.
Yes, my Master.
What do you dream of?
He had worn his crooked smile and answered, Of everything.
The Integra who had once been, would not have understood. She would have thought his words insubordination, or a desire for revenge. Yet the Integra who had become him—a creature that should remain dead, but did not, could not—she had come all the way here to tell him, Yes, I see what you mean.
It will be enough, wandering this earth, yearning and dreaming for centuries, centuries—if at its very end I find you.
All this while she had been holding his hand in a grip that would have been bruising to a human. Integra took it between their faces and kissed it, the hand she had wanted to grab, to make him stay.
"And you, you are not allowed to leave me," she said softly.
They had done things a bit backwards.
But he was here. And so was she.
"Count," Integra called, and leaned into him. "Your Countess is tired. Let us return home."
And his tears dropped, like hers, as fleeting as time.
"Yes." A ghost of a smile settled on his face. "My Countess."
Alucard conjured his coat and wrapped it around her. He gathered her in his arms and stood. The void dissipated in their wake. Integra felt heavy-lidded. Her Count's shoulder was quite nice to doze off on, and besides, she really was very tired.
But she was the Hellsing director, and some things were a force of habit. "Walter?" she prompted.
"Alive."
"The soldier?"
"He will be alive, if Walter can help it." His edges darkened. "He tasted like nothing when I drank to read him."
Integra was quiet as she turned the information over. Alucard's eyes never left her.
"The target?"
"Destroyed when the fire started. I assume you had to do with it, my dear Countess."
She was not eager to discuss her devouring space-time just yet. "Go on."
"You are tired," Alucard said, with some of his levity flickering back. "A full report can wait. You will want to be awake for their descriptions."
She presumed he would have met a shadow, like she did, in the shape of his female form as the laughter had suggested. Their descriptions?
Integra was quiet again, and almost let herself drift away, when it was he who prompted, "The enemy?"
So he thought the same.
Dylan, the soldier who had never been in Hellsing. Yet he knew to bring her cigars, to address her as "Sir." He had volunteered as the pilot for this trip. He had waited for her to send Alucard and Walter off to approach her. He had known how the void would act, the nature of the Incongruity. He had neither confirmed nor denied he was under orders. The cards were stacked against him; however, Integra could feel it in her bones that he was not the true enemy.
The one responsible for time folding back on itself, the one who had spirited her here, was out there.
Dylan's objective had been seeing her off to the Incongruity. There had been an intended conclusion.
A conclusion where Integra ended up with the singularity.
Who would want that?
"Unconfirmed," Integra said, eventually.
Moonlight streamed through. The deviltry was all but vanquished. Now that its spatial influence was gone, she could see that the shack was small and dingy and—the smoldering remains of its skeleton notwithstanding—quite ordinary. Integra thought that would be the end of that.
"Wait," she said.
Alucard stopped.
Integra shifted in his arms, looking back.
"What is it?"
She buried her face in his shoulder and shut her eyes. "Nothing. Let's go."
They went.
The specks of white between the warped flooring waved in the breeze.
xx
xx
xx
xx
NOTES
Hello wonderful readers. There was a misunderstanding, so I would like to make this clear.
The plot of Satis has been never been intended as a linear time travel fix-it where I walk through canon events and undo everything. The beginning, middle, and end of Satis has been pretty much set in stone since its inception and I have been steadily manifesting it, despite my unfortunately frequent hiatuses due to work, burnout, and anxiety.
What I write is not filler. I do use a lot of metaphors. I will finish this, however long it takes, just as I did with Snow White. My only hope is that you will enjoy the ride.
Thank you always for reading and encouraging and expressing your thoughts to me. They are precious and what gets me through. It will be warm soon, or at least in my part of the world, and I hope the warmth will touch your heart just as yours have touched mine.