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Walter is sixty seven years old, and he is dying.
He knows this, and he is annoyed by it. Beside him the Major is also annoyed by it, grumbling under his breath in German and occasionally taking potshots over the wall. A useless endeavor- the Major can’t shoot for beans, and eventually their enemy will realize it.
—
Walter is fourteen years old, and he is explaining to his boss how, exactly, he wound up bringing home two vampires when he left for Germany with one.
Alucard is banished back to the basement, all relevant seals and tags in place. Arthur Helsing sequesters himself with the blearily-blinking nazi. It is the first meeting Walter has not been present for since beginning his employment with the Helsing family.
The nazi is not sealed in the basement. He is banished to the library.
—
Walter is nineteen years old, and he hates the Major with every fiber of his being.
The Major knows it, too, and baits him cheerfully, with a wide, sharp-toothed smile. The servants think he’s harmless. The contracted soldiers, like Walter, know better. None of them will visit the library wing after dark. Walter does, sometimes, just to see that white-clad form pacing the windows, muttering and gesturing.
—
Walter is thirty four years old, and the Major is full of bullet holes.
They’re healing, but slowly; he isn’t Alucard, by all rights shouldn’t be here at all, but this is just another leftover from that damn war and the Major knows war like an accomplished conductor knows a musical score.
After proficiently reminding everyone with a wasted clip that he can't hit the broad side of a barn, the Major does a remarkable job tearing the enemy apart bare-handed which makes a complete mess of his white suit.
“I don’t think even you can save this,” he says with a distressed look at his waistcoat. Walter agrees.
“You could have done it without all the bloodshed.” He points out, and the Major says, “What fun would that have been?”
—
Walter is forty five years old, and Master Arthur becomes a father.
Walter swears he will protect her and he means it, so when she is taken to the Library he walks in the shadow of her nurse like a wraith.
The Major blinks orange eyes down at the baby put in his arms without hesitation and says, “What an adorable fraulein we have.”
Walter immediately snaps that Lady Integra Fairbrook Wingates Helsing belongs to no one, and the Major laughs.
—
Walter is fifty seven, and Arthur is dead.
He searches for Integra, searches for Richard, and when he runs into the Major in the hallway he wraps a wire around the vampire’s neck at the same moment the Major points to the stairwell down into the depths of the building.
Walter lets him go half-garroted, and when he takes the stairs two at a time he knows that the Major is behind him because he can hear the wheezing and swearing.
They find her still holding the gun. Richard Helsing will no longer be a problem.
When Alucard sees the Major, one hand pressed to his neck to keep all the skin together while it heals, he laughs.
—
Walter is sixty years old, and he is watching Integra and the Major.
She is smart, and she is deadly, she trusts the Major about as much as Walter does and he knows it. He calls her ‘our fraulein’ and grins when she scowls at him.
The first time she loses men in the field, Walter is there to serve her tea and light her cigar when her hands won’t stop shaking. Alucard is there to praise her, his Master.
The Major is in the library, and when she asks him if there was anything she could have done differently, any tactic or strategy which might have lessened the casualties, he says to her, “No.” And for once, he isn’t smiling.
—
Walter is sixty two years old and their enemy is not unknown.
The Major stares down at pictures of old comrades with a poker face that challenges even Alucard’s.
Integra asks him if she can trust him, and the fat man in the white suit looks from the pictures to her. Walter might as well be invisible, which simply proves that he is the best.
“So long as you promise me war, fraulein,” he says, “you can trust me to hell and back.”
Integra takes a deep breath and says, “then you’d best prepare for battle, Major.”
He grins and if Walter were a lesser man, he would be terrified. Instead, he is grinning back.
—
Walter is sixty four years old, and his only friends are vampires.
He realizes this when Alucard pulls him out of the way of a blow that he would have easily dodged in his youth, when the Major throws him into the car with rarely-exhibited strength and drives off through Berlin like a madman, singing Der Freischütz at the top of his lungs. Seras, doing her best to be polite about where her legs are hanging through the sunroof, exchanges gunfire with their pursuers.
“We’ll get you home to our fraulein.” The Major assures Walter, and Alucard is laughing somewhere in the bloody dark.
—
Walter is sixty seven years old, and he is dying. His friend laces his fingers and Walter knows that not even the Major can get them out of this one.
They’ve done as they intended, drew off a goodly portion of the combined forces of Millennium and the Ninth Crusade. In the city, Integra is holding her final position, Seras Victoria at her side. Alucard will find her; like the finest scenting hound, he always finds his Master.
Walter looks at the Major.
“Max?”
Walter is sixty seven and he has never, not once, used the Major’s name.
The orange eyes that look at him are mirthless.
Walter closes his eyes, turns his head.
“Take care of our fraulein.” He murmurs, and dies tasting his own blood, with the Major’s breath heavy in his ear.
—
Maximilian Von Brandt- the Major- is ageless.
He lights Sir Intega Fairbrook Wingates Helsing’s cigars. He drives her where she needs to go, fetches her what books she needs from her extensive library. He kills who she wants killed, spares who she desires spared. He waits, as she does, for Alucard to come back- for he has faith in that, as much faith in Alucard returning as he has faith in the beautiful cycle of war and peace.
His hair is long and he can’t get it to behave. There is no cutting it.
He takes care of their fraulein, and does his best to be better with wire than he ever was with bullets.