I claim no ownership of Hellsing or the crazy Millennium Nazi villian people. Kouta Hiraino came up with them.
Everything was dark. Everything was light.
Everything was quiet. Everything was noise.
Then, he opened his eyes, and everything was fuzzy.
"Are you still with us, Hans?"
Of all the faces he could have woken up to; Rip's, Zorin's, the Major's; it had to be the Doctor's. He held back a grimace and blinked.
"Yes, yes you are definitely in the world of the living. Which, really, is more than can be said for myself." He chuckled, the high ringing laugh echoing in the empty chamber.
Hans hated that laugh. "You perfected it?"
The Doctor noted absentmindedly. "Yes. It is complete. It took decades, but we have finished. An army of the undead, a battalion of vampires. All troops under your command. And you under the Major's command, of course."
"Decades?" he said as he tried to sit up. He noticed vaguely that he was lying naked under a thin hospital sheet. "What year is it?" He wondered why the doctor had bothered with the sheet until he glanced to the right and saw glass window. The Major, Rip and Zorin were there, joined by a small child in a Hitler Youth uniform and a man dressed in a dandified white suit.
"Nineteen eighty nine," the Doctor said absentmindedly, cleaning his tools. "The war is forty years over. The Soviet Union is on the verge of collapse. I doubt it will last two more years. And now we have completed our army."
"I'm alive?"
"Yes. Yes, you are no vampire. You are the culmination of everything I worked for, everything I strived for. The culmination of family's work over generations." The Doctor turned to face Hans. "You died, Hans. The vampire and the child killed you. We took your body. We rebuilt it, we made you better. Faster, stronger." He chuckled again. "Though I suppose you wouldn't get the joke."
The vampire and the child. The memories came flooding back to Hans. The vampire had interrupted his fight with the child.
He had lost his voice, but the child would have lost his life. A fair trade against such a powerful opponent.
Then the vampire had interfered, and Hans had lost his arm. And then he had to fight the vampire and Hans had lost his life.
It wasn't the losing that bothered him, he realized on reflection. It was the interruption. The vampire had interfered with a duel. The vampire had taken away his victory. He would have gladly fought the vampire, and quite possibly lost, but he had been busy.
And the vampire had interrupted his duel. This was unforgivable.
But it was like the indignation had never happened. He was new, he was whole.
This was unacceptable.
Hans reached over to the tray beside him and picked up a scalpel. He glanced over towards the window as he moved the instrument towards his throat.
He locked eyes with the Major, and his superior slowly nodded in affirmation.
The Doctor turned around suddenly as he heard Hans grunt. His eyes widened as he saw the blood streaming from his patient's neck.
"No! I haven't completed the process for regeneration yet! You can't die yet!"
"He doesn't want to die, Doc. Quite the contrary, I believe he wants you to give him all the power you can."
The Captain dropped the scalpel. As it clattered to the floor he slowly, almost imperceptibly, nodded.