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There were a lot of things happening to Integra Fairbrook Wingates Hellsing. Within the last 48 hours Integra had seen her uncle dismiss all of the servants, attempt to kill her, actually shoot her, had her blood rouse some dormant vampire from a deep slumber (Count Dracula, most likely, Integra was smart enough to figure out), and finally, the crème de la crème of the evening: Integra had killed her uncle.
She didn't really feel bad about it, to be honest. It could have been the shock or the adrenaline still pumping through her. But no, Integra didn't feel bad about killing her uncle.
The squelching noise of the vampire drinking from her dead uncle brought her out from her trip down memory lane.
Integra looked at the vampire and asked: ''What do I call you?''
''Whatever pleases you, Little Master.'' He wiped the blood around his mouth with his hand in a very uncouth manner.
Integra was sitting in the blood, blinking, the gun in her hands heavy. ''What did my father call you?''
''He called me Alucard.''
''All right, Alucard.''
Integra was afraid at first. Even when the vampire had swooped in to grab her and carry her from the basement. She gripped his shirt and leaned into his chest. Such a strange notion, Integra allowed her mind to wander, to seek comfort from a monster who had helped her kill her uncle and then feasted on him until not a drop of blood remained in that basement. She screwed her eyes shut and didn't dare think about it. His chest did not rise and fall how hers did. This was a corpse. An animated corpse. He was deathly cool to the touch. Integra, with the adrenaline rushing through her and the fever slamming into her, leaned even more into the cold. It soothed her. And Integra wished to be soothed.
A bath would do her some good. Integra went to the bathroom to do her business, making it obviously clear that she was not to be disturbed. Alucard had nodded and said that, of course, he wouldn't
''It never ceases to amaze me, this English arrogance.'' Alucard had said something interesting. ''You believe everyone that is not from your little sphere a barbarian incapable of conducting themselves with gentlemanly manners.''
Integra pursed her lips, couldn't be bothered to debate him about this because she figured he may have some point if she just recollected English history, and closed the bathroom door so she didn't have to look at him.
He was making her bed for her. And he seemed to be struggling with the duvet covers.
''You – you don't need to do that.'' Integra blurted out.
''There are no other servants available, Master.'' Alucard said. He sounded so old. He sounded ancient, even. ''Rest. I will be but a moment.''
Integra was dressed in pyjamas instead of a nightgown. She walked over to a chair at her desk and waited until Alucard battled the duvets into submission.
Alucard looked at her. ''Is this how women dress now?''
''What's it to you? You want to dress like a woman, too?'' Integra loved dressing up as her father. She found the notion of dressing feminine absolutely horrifying and had become so attuned to defending herself against all manner of comments.
Alucard looked animated as he told her all about how he had shape shifted to a woman's figure in the 1940s, thank you very much. Integra was horrified by what her father had asked of him. ''I don't believe you!''
''Ask your Walter when he return for he was there!''
''Aaaa!''
Things were becoming even more worrisome for Integra. She smelled food. Freshly cooked food. There were no servants here. No, Integra followed the scent of the food and saw Alucard in the kitchen.
''You know how to cook?'' She blurted out.
The telephone lines had been cut, wisely, by her uncle so she wasn't capable of calling for help. It would have unnerved her to find this out while she had a blood thirsty vampire in her vicinity were it not for said bloodthirsty vampire trying to make her a meal in the kitchen.
''I am very rusty.'' Alucard divulged. ''I haven't had to cook since the 19th century. Your ancestors, at least, saw fit to have servants in the kitchen as they made me occupied with other tasks.''
''All of these skills you have kind of paint you as a man capable of running his own one-man bed and breakfast.'' Integra tried for some humour.
It wasn't caught on. ''I entertained needy solicitors.'' Alucard said gravely.
The food was definitely something.
''I need recipes.'' Alucard said. ''This isn't my best work.''
Integra ate without comment. Food was food. And since she didn't know how to cook, she was glad not to antagonize someone who could.
Integra took him to the library. Alucard claimed it'd moved since the last time he'd been free to roam around this estate. ''We renovated when I was ten.''
''That would do it, yes.''
''What are you looking for?''
''Recipes.''
''Oh.'' Integra was flabbergasted by the man. ''For what?''
Alucard waited a moment. He stared at her. Then he narrowed his crimson eyes in deep contemplation. ''I do not know its name in English.''
''I understand.'' Integra nodded. ''As long as it isn't bloody steak.''
''No, no,'' Alucard continued trying to find a recipe book. He made a noise of recognition as he pulled out a book of bound letters.
''What the ruddy hell is that?'' Integra noted the scribbles.
''Shorthand. I did not know how to read it and was as baffled as you are now when I first encountered it.'' Alucard explained. ''I did learn it afterwards. Abraham Van Helsing saw fit to teach it to me upon my request.''
''Who is it from?''
''Paprika hendl!'' Alucard exclaimed in joy. ''That is what it's called.''
''Oh.'' Integra said. ''And these letters? Are they from my great-grandfather?''
''No, these are from the solicitor.''
''Ew.'' Integra showed her disdain for all things solicitor.
''Solicitors were easy to ensnare.'' Alucard explained. ''They travelled all around the country and had to put up with a lot of nonsense for their salary.'' A pause, as he regarded Integra with a mixture of surprise and glee. ''Do you not know the story of my good friend Johnathan, Little Master?''
Integra shrugged her shoulders. She was still in shock, she had to be. ''No, you can fill me in over this paprika dish, if you like.''
And fill her in he did. Not a detail was missed. Integra ate the paprika hendl and refused to cry at how spicy it was. The story was fascinating, at least. Alucard was an animated sort of storyteller, putting his entire body into the performance. Integra was fighting off sleep during one of his tangents. The next time she opened her eyes she found herself in her bed in her everyday clothes. At least the vampire had enough decency not to undress a twelve year old girl.
Integra couldn't sleep. She twisted and turned in her bed, replaying the events of her uncle's demise in her mind. It was beginning to catch up with her, it seemed. A scream was trapped in her throat. She willed it down as she willed herself out of bed and to the window to get some fresh air. Perhaps she should have smothered herself with a pillow until she lost consciousness and awoke well rested instead.
The vampire, Dracula, Alucard - he was scaling the walls of her home downwards in a very lizard-like fashion. Integra closed the curtains, travelled back to her bed, pulled the covers over herself, and decided she didn't want to know what the matter with the vampire was. Soon, soon Walter would come back.
''Did you get staked?''
''I did, yes.''
''But you didn't die.''
''No, as you can see.'' A pause. ''Well, I died hundreds of years ago.''
''Yes, yes, I understand that.'' Integra was growing bolder when she spoke with the once upon count. He was her servant now.
''Do you want coffee?'' Alucard asked her in an attempt to change the subject.
''I'm twelve.'' Integra deadpanned, looking at the vampire with bemusement. Wouldn't that keep her up all night?
The vampire countered: ''You have killed a man. I think you can bend the rules a little bit for yourself.''
''If it will please you to make me coffee, go on ahead.'' Integra rolled her eyes. Her vampire was an eccentric sort of man. Besides, she was beginning to realise he enjoyed her company and due to their ''time-zone'' differences he was left unattended for most of the evening as she was for most of the day. Perhaps that was why he was so keen to have her drink coffee.
''This coffee is bad.'' Integra grimaced after taking her first sip of caffeine, ever.
''My good friend Johnathan liked it.'' Alucard scoffed at her, clearly offended.
Integra wouldn't be cowed by a centuries old vampire. She was his Master and her word was final. ''Well, you can make it for him all you like then!''
At her flaring temper his eyes lit up and he spread his mouth in a wide, fanged grin. ''I see you will do nicely, Little Master.''
''Why do you call him your good friend?'' Integra asked, having heard the tale of woe from Dracula himself.
''It is a habit.'' Alucard said. ''I have not yet learned which role you will expect me to play so I have reverted to the role I crafted for myself first. That of Count Dracula with his dear fascination of the great England.''
''The great England.'' Integra scoffed at the broken English.
''Ah, yes! Language changes.'' Alucard remembered. ''Teach me how you speak now.''
Integra figured this wouldn’t be the weirdest thing she’d have to do in her life.
Integra saw Alucard reading the oddest of things. ''Is that just a list of parks?’’
''Do you have any train schedules?'' He asked her instead of answering.
''Fancy a trip to London?''
''No, but the patterns amuse me.''
Integra felt so much older and bigger even when she was dwarfed by an outdated newspaper. She handed it over to him and gestured to a small section. He snatched the newspaper from her and read.
It was during another dinner with lovely (if too spicy) food that Integra dared ask a lonely, but incredibly important question: ''Did you know my father, Arthur Hellsing?''
''Yes. He was my master.'' Alucard said. ''I take it he is dead, then?''
Integra fought the tears down. She was a killer. She was the master of a vampire. Grief was but a small, squashable thing! Girls cried! Little girls cried! Integra would not. Integra was a Hellsing. But she couldn't bring herself to speak, so all she did was nod and bury her eyes downward into her dish.
Perhaps if she had looked she might have noticed how Alucard's eyes had softened from their usually manic glint. Perhaps it was for the best she hadn't noticed the shift, either, for Integra would have seen it as pity. And there was nothing more humiliating than for a vampire to pity the vampire hunter.
When Alucard spoke of the previous Hellsing men he did not speak with any ill will towards them. Integra had noticed this. He spoke of them as if they were just facts that he had learned and survived. Just as she, no doubt, would become one when she had children to continue the line of vampire hunters.
''Was he kind to you?'' Integra was a girl engrossed in grief with blood on her hands and blood splattered all over her. No matter how much she cleaned herself, no matter how much she cried during the day when the vampire was not there to see her weakness. She was clinging onto this vision of her father. Her father had been kind to her. Her father had been the kindest man alive.
''No.'' Alucard said, again with that painful neutrality of his that made Integra frustrated because she could not read him. ''He was not kind to me. A Master cannot be kind to their servant.''
Something in Integra broke. It was a thread holding her vision of her father together that shattered and splintered the pieces all over her head.
''But he was more lenient, let us say.'' Alucard said, noticing how deflated his Little Master had become. ''All of you become more and more lenient towards me as the generations keep going. Abraham treated me like one of his asylum patients. His son treated me like a peculiarity, like a thing. Your father treated me like a novelty to amuse him. How will you treat me, I wonder?''
Integra sighed, then. ''I don't know. I'm new to this. Were they all young?''
''I never met a single one of them before they were eighteen.''
''God.'' Integra closed her eyes at that. ''You weren't supposed to meet me either, then.''
''No, I suppose not. All of them were young and arrogant men. Save for Van Helsing. He was a strange man. Dutch. I understood him less than I did the English. Perhaps because I had made Count Dracula so fascinated by England that it had seeped into my core to understand it better.''
''And what do you think of me?''
''You will be the worst of them, I fear.'' Alucard gave her a fanged grin.
Integra scoffed at him, the tears forgotten, ire seeping into her. She would later learn this was his way of banter and that he was not insulting her at all, but praising her. ''You're a menace.'' She said to him. The fanged grin widened even more.
''This is so spicy!'' Integra was British.
Alucard scoffed. He was a vampire. He was dead. Once upon a time he'd been alive with all of the taste-buds of a Balkan man. ''It most certainly is not.''
Integra was rushing to find some milk.
Integra was brushing her teeth and staring in the mirror. She looked haggard. Her eye-rings were becoming much more prominent as she tried to stay up longer and longer to keep the vampire company. He was thirsty and ravenous for conversation. Integra was not a solicitor to have to put up with him, but she was scared and bewildered. He assured her he could not harm her, but Integra did not know if he lied.
''Little Master,'' Integra almost choked on her toothbrush when she spotted Alucard right next to her, his hand on her shoulder. She whirled, toothpaste all over her mouth, as she pointed the toothbrush menacingly at him.
''Don't sneak up on a person like this! You don't even have a reflection, Alucard! For fuck's sake!'' Integra knew the exact moment when she had begun cursing like a sailor and she fondly remembered it as this moment when all hell broke loose. ''Do you want to give me a fucking heart attack?''
Alucard apologized to her, giving her a slightly crooked grin as he did so. It appeared that this sequence reminded him of a memory from a long time ago. He was quick to regale her with it.
''Why would you throw the poor man's shaving mirror out of the bloody window!?''
''I panicked.'' Alucard admitted, gesturing to the lack of reflection in the big mirror he could not, in fact, throw out of Integra's bathroom window. Mind you, he could, but he'd learned more tact in these decades.
When Walter came back he came back to the sight of Alucard trying and failing to make fish and chips. ''This isn't healthy, master. I could make you goulash.''
''If I have to sit through another one of your monologues about how great you were in the 19th century I will eat what I want, at the very least. While we wait for Walter to finally return I want to eat what I want!''
Well... Integra was not afraid of him, at least.
''Miss Integra!'' Walter made his presence known. The little girl looked at him with such fondness.
''Oh Walter!'' Integra opened her arms and bolted to hug him. He hugged her back, pressing his hand gently to her hair. It was braided. In a very old and intricate way.
Walter asked her about the hair.
''He had three wives.'' Integra wrinkled her nose at such a peculiarity. ''So he learned a lot of things about hair because of them.''
''Miss Integra…were you frightened?'' Walter asked after having been filled in by Integra about the events that had transpired.
''The day I ever fear that disaster is the day I'm ready to be committed to an asylum.'' Integra said.
Alucard phased through a wall to announce: ''I decided against the fish and chips so I made goulash.''
Integra shouted at him.
Alucard tried defending himself that he hadn't disobeyed her if this was in her best interest. Besides, she hadn't ordered him to make her fish and chips, anyway! And he didn't understand this nation's fascination with the blandest foods. ''Master, this is a favour to you!''
Integra screamed. ''I'm going to get my gun!''
''Master –''
''Miss Integra –''