A/n: HOLY SHIT IT'S FINALLY COMPLETE! Had no idea it would supersize into over ten chapters, but thank you so, so much to everyone who ever reviewed or followed this story. It was quite honestly all your enthusiasm that kept it alive to the very end.

My time in Hellsing is not over yet (*cough* Witch House *cough*). So I do hope you guys will keep checking in for more.

Sincerely hope you enjoy and please let me know what you think!

12.

He carries her back. Given the distance from the manor, Integra is at first afraid they'll go plunging through a blood portal, with tendrils and a myriad of blinking eyes skimming right past her nape. She imagines with a strange and chilling clarity how dark it would be.

But he observes her and after another moment, he tucks a hand beneath her knees and lifts her up. Nothing has changed since the last time he's held her—down on the basement stairs beneath the torchlights. The arm is still stiff and unyielding. The hold anything but gentle. Nothing has changed and yet...

He's finally looking at her.

Really looking. As if for the first time, he's seeing her and not the remnants of a decayed past.

He says, "The wound's barely closed and the drug still lingers in you. Don't move around."

Integra isn't sure she could if she wanted to. Her head pounds with nausea and the adrenaline crash, and the burn of her shoulder is a distant but incessant ache, becoming realer by the second. Her cheek brushes light against his chest and because it is the only thing to rest on, she presses closer. It is heavy and soundless, akin to a stone wall or a tree's hallow. He smells of ash, earth and snow, and is realer than he's ever been.

"You don't need to carry me," she says, blinking weakly.

Perhaps it is her imagination, but the arm around her tightens. "I think," he says, "that I do."

Integra doesn't have the energy to argue. She looks at the forest floor, crunching and wet beneath his long strides. He walks so purposefully, as if he knows exactly the way despite the numberless trees and paths that all appear the same.

"Must be nice," she murmurs, "Seeing so well in the dark. To never get lost in the woods."

He scoffs. "Must be." His gaze slides down to hers. "Or you could simply remember your way. I'd think you would by now with often you wander off."

She scowls back heartlessly. "I didn't wander off, I was bloody kidnapped." Another dismissive noise slips by him, like a snort, and he mutters something along the lines of 'same difference practically.' It makes her lips twitch. Makes her want to smile. God knows why.

He continues walking, each large step echoing through the moorland fog.

For a moment, Integra enjoys it—the silence and the solid presence of his hold, the alien glimmer of bemusement in his expression. Part of her wants to cling to this moment and crystallize it forever, as if just by wanting desperately enough, she would be able to stave off what was to come.

The rest of her knows better.

Her gaze trails over his shoulder, to the dimming path as foliage ate it away. She tries not to picture how much blood there'd probably been, how it had splashed everywhere and mixed with the mud. She tries not to think of the Commander's face at all, etched in grief and madness.

"Where's his body?" she asks softly.

"Whose?"

Integra sighs.

"The commander. Once we return, I'll send the men to retrieve it," she murmurs, more to herself than Alucard, "He'll need a proper service. And his daughter-in-law needs to be taken care of."

He's studying her again. Glowing eyes full of otherworldly puzzlement. He doesn't understand, she concludes, why she would go back for him. In Alucard's undead eyes, he had seen only the rage and the pointed gun. Not the old man drowning in despair or a dead child lying in the rain.

The thought hits her endlessly. Integra is so very tired.

"There is no body."

She stills.

"…You ate him then?"

"I tied him to a tree."

"…What? Why?"

Alucard looks down at her oddly.

"Because he would have run away otherwise."

Integra stares and stares.

"You…" she whispers, "…didn't kill him?"

For a ridiculous second, he seems nervous, like he's wondering if she's expecting some specific answer.

"I didn't think you would have wished for it." His mouth twists, and a furrow pinches his brows. "…Was I wrong?"

Integra scarcely breathes. She feels suddenly and inexplicably like crying. Like laughing until her heart bursts in two.

"No, Alucard," she croaks, and rests a hand across her eyes, "You did well."

"You said you'd tell me what happened."

Alucard does not look at her.

"I did."

"I want to know from the beginning."

"Yes, master."

Integra thinks she ought to nod with satisfaction then, or triumph. Instead, she stares at her lap and wills her heart not to tremble.

"A long time ago, I led my country into war. Brutal, savage, lightless war. My father, you see, had been…selfish. And a coward. I was on the path of conquest for no better reason I suppose, than to be anything but him. And war was all I knew. I led them, hundreds and thousands of soldiers, nobles and commoners alike, to their ugly demise. And I paid back the horrors of their deaths tenfold upon my enemies. Who knows why they fought me. Religion, glory, desperation. I didn't care. I killed so many that sometimes I can still smell the blood of those battlefields."

Alucard smirks, and something of hunger dances in his callous eyes. Integra forces herself not to shudder.

"Yet in the end, I still lost. A war dog charging without direction usually does. I was captured and set to be executed. I saw then suddenly, that I was alone. That I had sacrificed all which was mine for some nameless, incessant wanting inside me that had never been quenched."

He exhales, almost a sigh.

"I was angry and afraid. Why had God done this to me, I'd wondered. Not once had I ever asked Him of anything and yet He would forsake me now? It's all I could think about as I saw that axe rise, that I had offered all those innocent lives for a shapeless dream. I couldn't take it. Couldn't accept it. So when the axe fell, I…I chose to abandon God in turn. I left every part of me on that hill and fled into the dark."

The flow of his voice is somber, detached, stripped down of all rawness or feeling. For a split second, their eyes meet and he regards the naked horror upon her face.

"Hm," he sounds wry and vaguely hollow, "Do I sicken you?"

Integra bites her lip. Somehow, she keeps her own voice steady.

"What happened next?"

Something flickers in his eyes.

"I thought I was free. Ageless, heightened, powerful. Hunger seemed like such a small price to pay. I walked the Earth. I kept killing. Centuries passed and I never changed. And one day, suddenly, there was nothing left to see. All the color and meaning of this world had long bled away and only the hunger remained. How it chased me, haunting my every thought, an eternal reminder of what I'd done."

He grew hushed, as if a child divulging a terrible secret. "You know nothing of Hell, little master, until then."

Integra ponders if he can hear her heart, pounding wild against her breast.

"I finally realized how wrong I'd been, that I was a shell left with nothing but my shame and my regret. Yet it didn't matter anymore. It didn't matter and it was too late and nothing mattered eventually anyway, except for trying to appease the hunger. I secluded myself in an old Transylvanian castle, overlooking one of the land's largest villages. And then…"

"…You met Jonathan Harker," Integra whispers, "And Mina."

Alucard smiles, a small wistful thing.

"She had blue eyes too."

It is all he says, or ever will say, about her.

"After our fight, Abraham kept me imprisoned for over three years. He came every night at first, demanding my obedience and my servitude. I turned him away each time, cursing his name. Eventually, he stopped coming and for three years I sat in the dark and starved. I realize now, that when he returned that final time, it wasn't because he was out of patience. It was because I was dying."

A chilly wind creeps by that rustles their hair and lets Integra see the hatred smoldering in his eyes. He chuckles, low and bitter.

"That damn bastard…said I could be forgiven. That if I surrendered to his command and did as I was told then, in the end, when Hellsing was done with me, the Light would take me back. I believed him. I shouldn't have, but I did. I knew it couldn't be true, but…"

He trails off abruptly and Integra can feel his fingers dig into her skin. The silence matters little, as the words are as clear as if they had been said, echoing in the space around them.

I wanted it to be.

I wanted it to be.

Almost of its own accord, Integra's hand moves, resting lightly upon the long, cold one digging into her shoulder. She says nothing and neither does he, even as she feels his knuckles jolt. He carries her through another snarl of old branches.

He doesn't pull away.

Eventually, they need to stop so she can fall on her knees and vomit into the frost-dusted shrubbery. Alucard stands over her, the straggling locks of her hair held loosely back in his hand. He doesn't touch her beyond that, to which her bruised pride is unerringly grateful.

Whatever had been in the drug makes her dry-heave painfully, head pounding and piercing with ache. Her vision swims and she has to struggle not to sway and land face-first into her own sick. Uncontrollable tears gather in her eyes and her gut wrings with frustration.

Wordlessly, she shoves out of Alucard's hold.

"Give me a minute," she says, before he can speak and then tries to breathe in spite of the sour taste of bile in her mouth. The air is shivery and mired in silence. Integra sighs and collapses onto an old log, dragging a hand through tangled hair.

"God," she mutters, aimlessly, "It's freezing out here."

He doesn't respond and she doesn't expect him to. For a while it's quiet and Integra focuses more on riding the waves of nausea before a soft flutter of clothing comes from next to her.

Alucard sits with a lithe and soundless grace. Integra's sullen eyes shift to him as she draws her legs up, hugging her knees.

"What about my father?"

It takes him a moment to begin speaking again. He tilts his face towards the stars.

"After Abraham died, I served the next heads without protest. Arthur as well. He was a never-ending well of questions. Perhaps out of them all, he had understood me best. But then there was war again. He was still young at the time, only recently a man, and new to the sight of so much death. He was afraid. Maybe he could not bear the thought of men perishing in his name," Alucard's gaze is distant and Integra wonders what scene of the past he is witnessing, "I don't blame him for what he ultimately decided to do to me. It was our deal after all. I was not a comrade or a friend. Only Hellsing's weapon to be used as he pleased."

"But the pain…" Integra says, a truth slipped pass the seam of her lips. Alucard shakes his head. The frame of him tenses, muscles coiled tight enough to hurt.

"For what I thought I would have, all the pain in the world I could've endured. Anything could've been done to me. Anything. And I would've listened. I would've obeyed. I'd never have blamed him." His jaw clenches, rows of knives glinting across her cracked glasses, "If he had just let me…at the end, if he had let me…"

And suddenly, with as much biting fierceness as a punch to the gut, Integra understands.

She thinks of him beneath the yew tree, how the bullet holes that shrank and smoothed into untouched flesh. She thinks of the blood splatters that were absorbed into the swirling vortex of his body and all the slashes and cuts that closed with a hiss of steam. Alucard cannot die. He had been promised salvation in death.

And Alucard cannot die.

He's looking at her and she sees the betrayal gaping like an open wound in his eyes, the agony, the age-old despair that has dried up all his tears.

"Abraham never intended to keep his word. He didn't know how. It was all a fanciful lie," he lowers his gaze and the sigh he releases is short and desolate, "He really played me for a fool."

The forest blurs at the corners. Integra does not realize she's crying though, until she's already thrown her arms around him.

He is cold, colder than ever and in a sense, the touch is unbearable, but she doesn't let go.

"God," she croaks, "God, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, I didn't know…"

The words trip over each other, apology after apology, and still Integra cannot convey how deeply she means them. She soaks his chest with human tears and his coat barely muffles the hitch and gasp of her sobs. It almost feels like a dam has burst inside her, sending forth an outpour that cannot be staunched. She supposes she's crying for them both.

It all makes such terrible sense now. His anger. His pain. His hatred of her and all those before her. It all makes sense.

"I don't hate you."

Integra's eyes widen. Hesitant hands lay against her shoulder and the crown of her head.

His breath wavers in her hair and he says, "I thought I did. I thought I had to. Your father is dead. Abraham is a pile of bones in the ground. Who else was there to hate but you?"

A thumb reaches up, smearing away the thick trail of her tears.

"Forgive me," he says, "I was weak."

At some point she shuts her eyes, just to rest them a second or two. When she next opens them, she's in his arms again, with the forest floor passing beneath her.

"Almost there," he says softly, "You should go back to sleep. You're exhausted."

Integra blinks blearily at the sky overhead. It is not as bruise-black as it was before, the pink wash of dawn seeping in amongst faded stars.

"The sun," she rasps, "Will you be okay?"

There is a laugh. Incredulous. Baffled.

"Yes, I'll be fine."

Integra leans against his arm. She catches the seals on his hands, regarding them with some surprise because they're no longer glowing. Gone is the harsh, brilliant red that had nearly stung her eyes and seemed as if it had hurt so terribly. She realizes then too, that the clambering voices of her ancestors have also ceased, leaving a blessed silence in their place.

Strange.

"Do you still seek salvation?" she asks.

A crease lines his jaw. "What does it matter? After the things I've done, the things I will do. My only purpose is to kill."

"You didn't kill the commander."

He stiffens, but doesn't reply.

Integra yawns, fatigue swooping down to tow her under once more. But she can't sleep yet. Not until the words within her, from that soul-deep place, can reach him.

"I don't know if there'll be redemption in the end," she whispers, "But…I do know there will be peace."

And even as her heavy eyes close, ferried into dreams by the sounds of an arriving day, she'll still recall his face. The stark surprise across his features. And the spark of hope in his gaze.

At the beginning of December, she beckons him from the dungeons. The skirts and shoe buckles have changed into a suit and ascot. She is twenty-two and fierce-eyed and beautiful beyond comprehension.

"Come," she says, hands tucked into her pockets, "Take a walk with me."

He shoots her a mildly curious look. "May I ask the occasion?"

"Nothing in particular," a glimpse of amusement in her eyes, "Just a tad nostalgic."

His brow arches, but he shrugs and saunters up the stairs after her.

"Shall I carry you again, Master?" he questions, grinning sharply.

She scoffs, cigar dangling between her lips. "The enthusiasm is noted, but unnecessary." And then with an abruptness that still makes him blink at times, she's looped her hand around the crook of his elbow, resting her glove against his forearm.

"I think this will more than suffice," she says, with an easy smile. Alucard is glad she turns away before she can catch the deep softness in his eyes.

Or how the new thrum in his chest beats with something like warmth.

And something like peace.

fin.