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19.
merciful, merciless
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Walter remembered last summer, when the rainfall had been heavy even by English standards. It had been of little concern, initially. But the lady had not come down for tea, and her office had been vacant; he found her instead standing cross-armed opposite the door to the basement.
"Doesn't it flood down there, in this kind of weather?" she had asked.
It had taken Walter a moment to digest, without upsetting his stomach, what she was getting at. He went straight to the point. "He would not mind, my lady."
"Are you certain? He becomes a petulant child with just a bit of sunlight," Integra said with a frown. "I don't want his coffin to get wet, he'll be insufferable." She snorted. "Although it would be amusing if he woke up to find himself afloat."
Her gibe was to mask the concern underneath. He chose his words carefully. "Since it would not be running water, it would be a minor inconvenience, if any."
"Hmm."
"My lady, you do not need to trouble yourself with his discomfort. You have been—lenient, allowing him an entire hall, a seat—" A bastardization of a throne, as if he deserved that. "And though your kindness is inestimable, I must caution you, the more Alucard is given, the more he will seek. He is a monster, after all."
"But he is my monster," Integra said with conviction so quick to rise that Walter was taken aback. "I am responsible for him, and the welfare of my subordinates is important to me."
She said it as a matter of fact. She was ever unwaveringly sure of her right over Alucard.
Walter settled on a mollifying expression. "Our benefits are England's best."
Integra chuckled, and finally moved, albeit at a slow pace.
She would deny it, for Hellsings were good at denial, but Walter knew she waited for Alucard. Even if it was purely to question the vampire to sate her academic curiosity, she waited for him.
He's not worthy of your regard, was the viscus Walter himself denied. You weren't supposed to become so fond of him. You weren't supposed to care.
Yet he was the flawless butler, so he added, "I shall ring up the contractors, to reinforce the basement against future flooding."
He heard the smile in her voice. "Just make sure he doesn't eat them."
If only things were as simple as last summer. If only Walter could expect. Because he was able to, before. The lines in between were ones Integra herself disciplined. He had been grateful for that. Proud of her. As long as they wore their masks and pretended, the clock would tick away. The years would turn into months and then weeks and days, until it was the zero hour.
Walter, battered and sleep-deprived and most likely jeopardizing all of them by currently flying the helicopter back to headquarters, suppressed a shudder.
Now he had—whatever this was.
The clock was broken.
Integra was no longer the Integra he had known.
And Alucard—
When the vampire emerged from the forest, Walter—who had somehow made it out with a half-dead soldier on his back—had kept his mouth shut.
Every instinct had screamed at him to keep his mouth shut.
Walter had wanted to pry Integra from his grasp. Every instinct told him he would have died if he did.
"It's all a bloody game to you," Walter had spat, when he was young and stupid. "Because you don't care about anything. You have fucking nothing to lose."
"Oh, little Angel, a game isn't fun if there's not any risk," Alucard had simpered. "But you're right. Why should any of these puny human lives and their motivations matter to me?"
And that's why you have to die, Walter had thought.
Yet in his youth and stupidity he had never once stopped to consider what it would be to stare into a monster who did have something to lose, who ceased to play games.
It was the absolute quiet of the unblinking eyes, the hollow curve of the unsmiling mouth. They told him, It's a merciful world, isn't it?
It's a merciful world, if a monster such as Alucard is careless. It's a merciful world, if a man can hinge his grand plans on that carelessness. It's predictable, isn't it? If a monster acts only according to his Master's will, if he is assured of the victory he will bring her, if he is not desperate?
Isn't it? his own voice, too much like his younger self, snickered in his head.
The same Hellsing denial affected Walter. This, however, he could not deny.
He would not have a chance against Alucard if Alucard was not careless.
The world would not have a chance against Alucard if Alucard was not careless.
So Walter suppressed everything, and put his mind to avoiding a crash. Because—fuck, it was not even that, it was not the undeniable truth forcing him to keep his mouth shut and keep his eyes on the air. No, the worst thing was—
The silhouette of his younger self—
The silhouette of his younger self had not been combative from the start. It had been sitting on a tree branch, and waved as he approached, as if to say, Fancy meeting like this. When Walter felled the tree, the shadow had descended and placed a hand on his shoulder.
That had been all it took, really.
It dragged him through a confusing hodgepodge of sounds which, akin to a radio, tuned in to a single frequency. The same cocky laughter of a stupid youth who, tainted by desperation and fallen from grace, had never truly grown up in the fifty years that had passed.
He's dead! He's dead! he was crowing.
He's gone! He's gone...
The angel has fallen from grace. Yet had he ever been an angel? Was he not, perhaps, an Icarus, too human and too prideful of the wings granted to him? He refused to eat them as Hermes' bird had, he flew higher and higher. For his zero hour, the one glorious night, should he rebel against the sun and plummet to his ruin, so be it.
(But after the glorious night, what remains?)
The youthful laughter died down.
This is what I wished for? he whispered.
This?
And that one word haunted Walter, as on the horizon, the dawn broke.
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Her sleep ebbed and flowed. She was aware, for instance, of her Count's hair slithering under the coat. It coiled over the pulse of her wrist.
Greedy, she would have said. All that, and you still scrabble about for the minutiae of this stubborn heart.
But she only let out a sigh, warming the skin above the dark leather of his neckline. His arms tightened around her.
When she was again conscious, they were in the chopper. A heavy weight lay across her front, and her eyes opened a sliver. A mass of black tendrils suffused her being. He was folded over her, guarding her heart.
Really, she would have said then. I'm not going to stop breathing in my sleep.
What escaped between her lips was his name, so softly it was swept away in the din of the flight. Yet he heard, and turned, a red gleam visible behind a cage of tangled strands.
Rest, my Countess.
She tried. She let herself be reeled back into slumber, but this time she saw many different things. The meadow. The daisies. Seras. Her head was bowed. Her face was hidden. Seras, she called. I'll be home soon.
The Seras in her dream did not answer.
The meadow withered into ashes. London, burning. Her, running, running. The back of him. Alucard, she called. Alucard, I'm here. You are here; look at me.
The Alucard in her dream did not answer.
She woke up.
It took Integra too long to realize the morning was not that morning, and she had not been running, running; the air was sweet, the grass was dewy, and the curl of hair around her wrist clinging to each erratic stroke told her she was here.
She twisted her head into the crook of his neck and breathed heavily, open-mouthed against his throat. His grip turned almost painful.
The manor was above them, austere in the early bright. We're here. Of course we're here—we always return. To this glorified mausoleum. And then Integra laughed into his neck because she thought it fondly.
Something amusing? His voice came tenuous in her mind.
"Isn't it? All of us here have died at least once."
He had been holding her for so long and so closely there was heat trapped in those hands on her waist and her knees. How she would like them to touch more. How she desired to take this ridiculous coat off and make him touch her proper, instead of his sneaky hair. But his every detail had gone utterly silent, and when she tilted back and reached up to turn his face toward her, she saw his eyes were raw.
They looked as tired as she was.
She traced the creases under them. The inflamed orbs flitted with the movement. He had her in his possession and yet he sought these little allowances.
There were no words.
Integra could pretend. In an innocent way, not like how she used to. That this was the morning after her death. That she was in his arms because he was there. That her sleep had been dreamless, her night had been uneventful and the light she had swallowed was nothing. Pretend, for only a bit.
The manor's clock still tolled, even if all of its numbers were in disarray.
Walter was at the doors. She knew without looking; she heard the dark hiss of thousands of souls behind the pale mouth. Ah, that was why he was not speaking. Perhaps they would run amuck. Integra dug her nails into his skin lightly.
"My lady. The medics are here."
"The soldier, Dylan," Integra said, her eyes on Alucard. "Has he been taken in?"
"He is being treated," Walter replied. He sounded exhausted. "They must see to you."
At once, ragged ends of black and red sprang up. Alucard had barricaded them in his shadows.
"Count," she chided.
"Integra," Walter said weakly, "the doctor must see you."
"Get yourself treated, Walter, and rest." Integra looked at him then, beyond the line. "You've done well. Meet me in the office before lunch."
They sidestepped him.
"I'd prefer to avoid a welcoming committee," she murmured, and they bypassed the doors and shifted through a wall.
Quietude greeted them in the upper floors.
They always returned, to this glorified mausoleum. Where one was enslaved and one was a child soldier, where one was a monster because she had no other option, where one was drained in her arms and became its walls.
They had nowhere else to go.
Yet there still had been laughter. There still had been joy. Despite the lack of anything to laugh about, despite the lack of joy.
His shadows subsided. They stood in a corridor, in the shade between the windows.
"Put me down."
He did no such thing.
"Alucard. You can't hold me forever."
Can't I?
"Obstinate creature." Integra moved her hand to tug at the coil of hair which had steadfastly clung to her wrist. "You'll tire soon enough. Will you cram both of us into your coffin?"
She was half-serious. He had offered.
His face was shuttered, his voice faint even as a mere echo in her mind. Perhaps I would have wanted that, a night ago.
"And now? What do you want now?"
Without his levity he was the weight of his years and thousands and thousands of souls. Alucard spoke at last.
"I want you to eat my heart."
Integra only smiled.
She tugged at his hair again, and this time he did put her down.
She leaned against a window, her legs sluggish. She closed her eyes. She did not see herself as he saw her. Haloed by the sun, his living, breathing, beautiful and terrifying justification.
He pressed his hands on the glass behind her and canted his head, shrouding her in shadow.
The coat on her bare shoulders was like him, encompassing. It was purely his, unaltered, and Integra realized the question she had thought unanswered—Why do you wear it, this relic of your most hated past?—had meant to ask, Why do you remind yourself of your defeat?
There was no need for him to answer that.
"Shall I eat your heart, Count?" she asked instead. She remained in the dark of her own making. With a flick of the wrist she bound his hair tighter around. "I wear your color, your marks, your subtle wreath. But what rite is this? You know Donne's poem is not so innocuous. It won't do for us to emulate it."
"But we are inverse," Alucard parried, his voice now feverish. "We are not Theseus and Ariadne, yet I followed your thread. It led me to you, my cruel, glorious Countess."
"The thread was to have him escape the labyrinth, not guide him into it," Integra pointed out.
"Thus I pace within this reality you have wrought, at your mercy."
Still, she demurred. "It would be too fleshy."
"Drink it, then. A drop."
"If I will have a drop, what of the rest?"
"I'll paint it into your hair, your skin." The words strained at the seams of sanity. "You can crush it underfoot. You can have me eat it for you. If you will have a drop."
She arched her spine. "Why?"
"You have everything of me. This is merely its sum."
"Ah, but I recall, you said you would take back everything."
"I will have," Alucard said, and there was no inflection, no art. "Because you are Integra."
Just the integrity of the truth.
She is Integra.
Integra opened her eyes. She cupped his cheek. The wreath of his hair fell away.
"I accept."
Her gaze was blue and clear and absolutely damning.
"That single drop, which I rejected before this night."
She thumbed his upper lip.
"Let it be our consummation."
Alucard brought this upon himself.
He told her, he required indemnity. He told her, he would be holding her in his grasp, as she divulged her secrets to him willingly. She was in his grasp. She relinquished herself. She was his as he was hers. Yet he is the one damned. His heart used to be dead. Now he feared it beating. He must carve it out. For if it was hers, if she had it, he would only have to guard her heart.
It's a merciful world, isn't it? To a monster if he does not have consequence? But what does it mean, to the monster, to the world, if he does? In a span of mere days the world had become merciless. He no longer could lack consequence because he now had everything.
He had Integra.
The glass cracked under his hands.
"Patience." She coaxed his twisting mouth with a sweep of her thumb. "You won't have us desecrate this poor window, will you, dear Count?"
He hissed. He did not know what he would do.
"You won't. We have more urgent matters to attend to." Her gaze hardened. "I need to tell you about—"
Integra cut off. She looked over his shoulder.
"Seras?"
What?
And in a move torturously reminiscent of a few days ago, Integra slipped out of his arms and, with the glass further cracking under his palms and with his damned soul already in shatters by her own hand, left him, for the girl.
The girl had burst out from her room down the corridor. Her eyes were wild. They darted around, less searching and more beseeching—then she crumpled, her knuckles bloodless against her head.
"I—I'm—"
"Seras." Integra grabbed her, and the girl jumped. She stared up at her.
Then she flung herself into her, and Integra stumbled only a bit.
"I'm sorry! I'm sorry!" Seras gasped out.
Her arms were startlingly strong. Almost bruising. Integra bore it all.
"Integra?"
"Yes."
"Are you here?"
"Yes, you silly thing." Integra loosened her injured arm from the coat and held her gently. "I promised, didn't I?"
She glanced at Alucard. He looked thunderous.
Seras shivered. Perhaps it was the dip in the temperature, but she was not quite herself yet. "I'm sorry."
"Why, did you break a window?" Integra kept her tone purposely light while she guided Seras back to her door, away from the indignant shadows spiraling up the walls. "What do you have to be sorry about?"
"I—I don't know," Seras whispered, brokenly.
Nightmares, again. Why? It prickled at Integra.
Why did they persist?
The girl's room was filtered white by the curtains which swayed as they entered. It was summer. The windows were open. The sheets were on the floor, thrown off in terror, and the blue pitcher of daisies lay wobbling on the windowsill.
Integra sat Seras down and righted the pitcher. The daisies waved in the breeze.
Alucard followed in silently. He haunted a corner, dimming the room, and Integra shot him a look. She sat beside Seras on the bed, making a point of facing them both.
When the warmth that had become familiar smoothed out her brow, Seras calmed, though she still shivered.
"Seras, I'm here. I've come home, like I promised."
A strange picture. Yet strangeness is normal in this house. The lady with the blood-soaked perfume of the night in her air and the red coat wrapped around her bare shoulders, borrowed from the gentleman whose edges swirled and snapped like angry mouths. Stranger was the girl, and the strangest her dreams.
"Integra," Seras choked, the haze lifting, "you're hurt."
"It's nothing," Integra said.
"But, Integra—"
"Seras, will you tell me something?"
Integra thought of her own dream. Seras, she had called, and the one in the dream had not answered; her head bowed, her face hidden. The question sharpened in her mind.
Why did she have these nightmares?
"Seras," Integra repeated, and she took the shaking girl into her arms again. For all it was worth, what with the blood that permeated everything. "You didn't use to have these dreams."
"What—what do you mean?"
"Before you came here," Integra said steadily, "you didn't have these dreams, did you?"
"I've—always had nightmares." Seras' eyes deadened. "But not—"
"Not these," Integra continued. "And you forget them."
There was a nod.
"It's fine if you can't remember them. It's fine if you want to forget. It should be that way. Dreams, should only ever be dreams." Yet it was never quite so simple, was it?
Sometimes dreams, are more than just dreams.
Sometimes nothing, is more than just nothing.
Integra met Alucard's gaze. He was frowning, the turn of the conversation distracting him. She herself understood little. Merely that one question led to another, and then another, and then another, and they all could end up at the beginning. They all could end up being the same.
"Seras. The first dream I bought from you, will you tell me what that was?"
Seras curled into a ball, seeking more of Integra's warmth, though there was the summer breeze, and the sun that shone through. Integra was red. She smelled like blood. Seras clung to her. None of that mattered.
"In my dream, everyone—"
Why does everyone always leave me?
"—everyone I loved was dead. But I don't know who they are." Seras looked up at Integra, desperate, as if surely she would know who they were. "And—"
"And?"
"And I didn't want that to happen."
Integra was quiet. She brushed a lock of hair behind Seras' ear. "Thank you for telling me."
Seras clutched at her. "Integra? Did I—did I do something wrong?"
She shook her head. "No, my darling."
None of it mattered, the girl thought. The blood, the dead, the past, the future; if she had Integra in the present. Integra, who took her in, who said she loved her. She was Seras Victoria, and Seras Victoria had always been unlucky. Except now. Except here.
"But if I did—if I ever did something wrong, will you—will you still love me, even then?"
The daisies caught Integra's left eye. White, fragile, waving in the breeze.
"Yes."
She felt the weight of this house.
This house. Where they all returned to.
Integra turned to Alucard. To Seras.
"I will love you, regardless."
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NOTES
Spring is a difficult season for me and this came later and shorter than I would desire. I couldn't reply to everyone this time, but please know each and every comment gives me strength. I devour your thoughts and speculations. Thank you as always!