Ascension.01 - For What Slight Thing You Are Betrayed

What he never told me was, once given, I would have to give and give again

I slumped to the floor, suddenly feeling the pain in my shoulder, feeling hazy, and not so very brave, after all. The gun in my hand I set to the side; I wasn't completely convinced that the need for it had passed, but it was at least less pressing.

We were still in the room where it had all begun, the warded door hanging open and admitting scant light. We sat across from each other, our backs against opposite walls, the edge of his booted foot barely trespassing in the light. Between us, was the blood. Mine, some of it; but most of it coming from three cooling bodies. Mark it, one of those a familiar body.

I turned my head away from those, pulling my skirt over my knees in a defensive motion, but it was too hard to look him straight in the eye like that. And he was looking at me as if he expected directness, smiling that Cheshire cat smile--a spooky smile, when I didn't know to take it as a given.

He looked away finally, leaned his head back against the stones of the wall, and closed his eyes. "They're coming."

"Hrm?" I hadn't expected him to have anything to say to me. I didn't think there was a fine conclusion to his licking my blood off the floor, saving my life, and then proceeding to state his inevitable bond to me as the leader of Hellsing. But surprises abound today, apparently.

"They're on the second floor. They'll be here to get you cleaned up in a bit." He looked at me, surprised at my lack of reaction. "You should be glad."

As glad as any to be "rescued," but I was a little bit too focused on the wound in my shoulder at the moment. Had the bullet gone cleanly through? Was it lodged in the bone? Normal little thirteen year old girl questions, I'm sure.

You don't want to die now, do you? he had coaxed me. He could have saved me the bullet in the shoulder and been a little less dramatic. But the blood needed be shed, and here the old saying about spilt milk applies.

So I gritted my teeth, and determined to make conversation as best a bleeding thirteen year old could.

"Alucard." He raised an eyebrow. I laughed roughly at the joke in the name. "Got a last name?" He gave me an unamused look, and I replied to my own question with, "Guess you don't need one, with a name like that." I continued the inane prattle. "And how long have you been alive?"

"You seem to forget that I'm not."

I nodded. "My mistake. Then how old are you?"

"Older than you."

Silence. Finally, I asked what had been on my mind all along. "And you're going to help us?"

If he had seemed distracted before, now he paid attention. "If you ask nicely."

"And what do you want from me?"

"I already have what I want." He had said it; Your blood woke me after twenty years, and though I was young, I wasn't fool enough to forget that.

I felt at the wound on my shoulder, feeling the pain pulling at me, coaxing me further into retreat. So very young, and so very weak.And tired. Would it always be like this?

I drifted.

There was a shuffle at the end of the hall, loud enough to wake me from dozing. I lifted my head; heard sounds of footsteps on stairs and low-pitched voices.

They were at the door; they were rushing to MY side. I am still fuzzy on who it was, exactly; someone careful, and deliberate, who hushed me and pushed back the cloth at my shoulder, examined the wound, but someone otherwise unmemorable. They were saying words, and I didn't know what. I caught sympathy, though: "First her father, then this. Poor dear."

Still he was there, on the other side of the room, standing now; and really looking more like a monster of shadows than ever, red eyes poking out of the death's head. My "rescuers" had no doubt seen the violence wrought here; but they were careless; they would have been so complacent had they had noticed that the source of it were still around.

Then they noticed. They were suddenly all scrambling to share the wall with me, both sharing the look of... well, the look of unarmed men cornered by a vampire, who realized a bleeding girl with a gun might be their best hope.

"We should have brought along guns," one managed, more calmly than the other.

"Fuck tha', should ha' brought along Walter."

But he was still looking at me. "What do you make of them, Miss Hellsing? Seems there's a lesson in this, one your father didn't learn. Those who keep their pets behind locked doors are the ones scared when they escape."

Considering that was more words than he had spoken heretofore, and my current state, I understandably declined to reply. He laughed.

But he held back, retreated into the shadows, looking positively delighted with himself and disappointed with me.

One of my "rescuers" looked back down at me. "Can you walk, Lady Integra?"

I nodded. I thought I could at least, and I managed a stumbling rush to my feet. Not surprisingly, I was more than a little dizzied by the effort. One of them took my hand, for a guide. "Come on. We'll get Walter down here-"

"No. Not Walter," I said quietly.

They looked surprised. He looked surprised. I gave him a hint of a smile. "I'm just keeping my word."

"You gave me no word of anything."

"I might as well have. I lived." And blood was word enough.

I reached out a hand, to coax him to come along after me. He chuckled at me, and stepped after me, looked amused enough to whistle. " 'This door you might not open, and you did,' " he quoted. "Miss Hellsing."