You guys wanted it, and here it is. I'm really sorry that it hasn't been posted until now, but hell, I JUST wrote it like... five seconds ago. :P Anyway, the epilogue chapter to "How Time Flies By". Hope it's as much a tear-jerker as I tried making it. It's kinda hard to make Alucard believable in this situation. But I THINK I got it. :) Read, review, fave, do whatever you see fit. Now if only I could get my other fics read like this I'd be a happy camper. XD
~LD

Alucard stood at his master's bedside two years later. "You summoned, Iron Maiden?"

Integra scowled, making the lines in her face even more prominent. "Don't make me sock you in the jaw, Vampire. I can no more strike fear into my enemies than I can roam my estate anymore." She held up her wrinkled hands, looking at them with a cold, blue stare. "You know it as well as I, it is almost time."

Alucard tried masking his knowledge. "Almost time for what? Tea was an hour ago, Mi'lady." He ducked a rogue pillow thrown his way.

"Try to not tempt me into imprisoning you, Servant." Her stern gaze did something he rarely saw before. It grew softer. "You know. You can't hide behind those eyes any longer. Seras has changed you too much these past two years."

The vampire also did something rare. He smiled warmly. "I do know. I just choose to not dwell on the matter." His smiled faded. "What are your orders for afterward?"

Integra stared ahead. "Cremation is what I've decided on. Ashes to ashes, as my enemies and threats have died, so shall I." She closed her eye, more so in respect than in exhaustion. "I do not want many to mourn. But instead, to remember." She opened it again. "Hellsing shall die with me."

"The estate, the soldiers. What of them?"

"The estate will be left to those who have become my family through these long and tiring years. The soldiers are to receive half the fortune."

Alucard frowned. "You have grown close to no human apart from Walter in your long existence. To whom are you referring?"

Integra closed her eye again and forced a laugh through her nose, smiling all the same. "You and Seras will need a dwelling after I am gone, and I would prefer you to keep it, instead of it falling to pieces or becoming infested with disease-ridden rodents."

He failed to hide his shock. "You would leave all of this," he swept an arm around her room, "to us? Everything your father, hell, your grandfather, worked so hard to create? A dwelling created to house a vampire eradication mission, left to the very things it was made to extinguish?"

Integra continued to smile. "Ironic, isn't it?" She slipped off her glasses with shaky fingers, keeping the empty socket closed. "As I said, Hellsing shall die with its last heir; I will leave it up to you on what you do with the rogues you come across."

Alucard couldn't help but feel something was wrong. Integra, who had spent her whole life learning of the supernatural, and killing those who stepped out of line; Integra, the Iron Maiden; Integra, who stepped down from not even the strongest man, losing her eye in the process, giving words such as these? To someone such as him, no less. "Do you really trust someone like me to be free again? To roam the streets at night with no restrictions, no limits? You know what I was like before I was imprisoned, what makes you think I won't revert? You've been afraid of that all these years we've been together, have you not?"

The smile never faded from her face. She chuckled softly. "Empty threats."

He snarled.

"You will not. I know for a fact." She forced herself to sit up, to stare straight into the vampire's eyes. "Your love for Seras has calmed you profoundly. With that, I trust you to make the right choices, for as long as you both live."

His heart skipped a beat. It had never stopped beating since his mating ritual, as he had predicted. Though now, it seemed to stop for a few seconds before starting again. "It is a big risk to take," he continued on.

Still, the smile didn't waver. "You know, for the longest time, I had a crush on you. I always hid it, considering what Father taught me."

His red-orange gazed stared at her. Of course he had known of it; every time she had seen him while she was still developing her heart had started beating erratically. He had liked her for a time as well, but the feeling faded as she grew older. And continued to refuse his offer.

"It's just funny, you know? How things turned out."

"How do you mean?"

She slid back down into bed. "You have been given a second chance at many things. At life, love. Fatherhood." Integra looked thoughtful. "How far along is she now, three months?"

"Yes. How is it 'funny'?"

"It is something we both never saw for each other. You never saw me as getting old and decrepit, and I never saw you as kind and warm." Her eye closed again. "Take care of everything, Alucard. I leave it all up to you."

He wiped a single bead of crimson from his eyes. "I shall do your memory as best as I can." When he looked at his gloves again, the binding symbols had vanished.

Seras crept into the room then. "Is she-"

Alucard nodded once, trying to form words around an unexpected lump in his throat.

Wordlessly, his wife crossed the room and wrapped her arms around his middle, both on the same level of emotions. "What did she have to say? Obviously one is that you are free. You are not bound in the dungeons."

"I am. And all of this is ours, along with half the fortune."

She snapped her head up, looking at him with wide eyes. "What?"

"It is in her will. Half the fortune is spread out as compensation pay to the soldiers, and the rest is for us." He paused before adding, "The closest thing to family she had."

Seras stepped cautiously over to Integra, placing one hand on her cooling one. "You are full of odd surprises, aren't you? Integra Wingates Hellsing." A few drops of crimson tears dropped onto their former master's hand. "You were like a mother to me."

"Come. There is much to do."

Seras nodded and left with her husband, giving one last look behind her. "You will be missed greatly." Without another word, she closed the door behind her, sealing the room in after-worldly peace.