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They didn't talk about Integra much. If ever her name was mentioned, which it invariably was whenever the old Organisation came up, Seras would pretend not to notice the strange glazed look Alucard's eyes took on, or the way the corners of his mouth tightened and the muscles of his jaw tensed. Anyone but Seras wouldn't have noticed it anyway.
She never asked him for the details about his relationship with their former commander, but needless to say she could hazard a pretty healthy guess. She remembered how the woman had reacted when they first met, on that 'perfect night' that now seemed so long ago... The bite wounds in Seras's neck were still fresh and throbbing, as was the stinging bullet hole in her chest, slowly knitting itself together. Sir Integra Hellsing had frightened her at first - this tall, stone-eyed woman, beautiful in an untouchable way, like a statue, or a goddess. She had looked at Seras then like an unwelcome tag-along, and that alone should have been enough for the girl to at least speculate on how things might have stood between the director and her 'pet'.
Still, Integra Hellsing was twelve years dead.
Seras remembered, too, the recovery of her body. After the battle, when their enemies were dead - and Seras had made sure that they were all dead - she had lifted the woman's ruined body gently, cradled her like a fragile doll while her blood mixed with that of the FREAKs on their clothes, and flown her home. Alucard hadn't been at the funeral, such as it was. Seras hadn't seen him for a decade following that battle, and had gone through mourning of her own - for Integra, for her master, for the Organisation, and for the world which, she had known at the time, would never be as it was.
He was sitting in his chair again, that anachronistic throne never free of dust, an antique just like the creature in it. He looked up as she entered, and for a moment Seras thought - could have sworn - he had expected someone else. Just that instant of expectancy, before his usual gloomy expression resumed itself. He smiled slowly, with no humour, and she padded toward him, respecting the cobwebbed silence that hung in the stale dark air. Twelve years, she thought. It's been twelve years to the day.