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15.

invisible numbers

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What changed?

What did not change?

If a pair of wings could create a storm, what had she created?

The last time it had been 1992, there had been no disappearance, either of man or fauna. Yet there had been no Seras either, walking the halls of Hellsing Manor. There had been no Alucard, haunted by an elusive future. There had been no Integra with her malfunctioning eye.

Everything has changed. Nothing can be the same. A name, a look, shedding of blood, pieces of broken glass. You've done it. The world turns at your feet.

Integra. Integral. Integrity.

She had never wanted the world.

Integra read the headlines repeatedly, and then the report Sir Islands had transferred, each perusal bringing the smart in her left eye to a throb. As she had done since the first morning, she raised a hand to it, needing to feel a patch or even a gaping hole. But the eye merely sought the slits of light between her fingers.

The last time it had been 1992, it had been during a lull. She had sent most of the men off on hols. Not without uncertainty. Uneventfulness bred restlessness. She had wished for something to happen, so that it would not undermine her God-given duty. That girl would have leapt at this chance to prove herself.

That girl had known nothing. Then again, old Integra knew nothing. Old Integra thought she could have her fetid cake and eat it, too.

She could do better. She could love Alucard and Seras and Walter better, prevent losing them to ashes, prevent another thirty years of wondering because once was enough, damn it, once was enough. The machinations of fate that had brought her here, however, were monstrous. This was their prise de fer.

"Touché," Integra murmured. "Now, how shall I parry?"

She sat at her desk, the sun waning, another day gone. She was young, yet she was also at her moth-eaten table, all clocks cast into limbo, out of time.

She slid her glasses on. She called Walter.

"How many do we have on duty?"

Walter stood in the middle of the office with his hands clasped behind him. "Roughly a dozen."

"Roughly a dozen? Are we missing a head or a limb?"

"That would describe a few of them," he sniffed, "but the number is a dozen, my lady."

"That will do."

"I shall have them ready to depart at a moment's notice."

Integra raised a finger. "Did I say that?"

"Pardon?"

"I meant that will do," she jabbed at her desk, "for here."

Walter's brows rose the steepest it had been thus far today beyond his monocle.

"The men will be in charge of the manor. While we make this a family trip." She gave a skewed smile. "You, me, and Alucard. The three of us."

The three of us.

She brooked no argument. Integra got up, pushing the reports to the side. She sauntered to a display rack in the corner, relieving from it her sabre, which she pulled from its scabbard. The blade pierced the nil. "What do you think is in that forest, Walter?"

"I," he cleared his throat, "I can only surmise. We have little to assume it is vampiric."

"Yet it is inhuman, wouldn't you say? Something monstrous. Waiting for us, the hunters."

Walter inclined his head.

Integra lowered her sabre. "I want to see Seras before we leave. I have to promise her. That I'll return by dawn. It will take only a night, to search and…"

The butler waited. The lady did not finish. He opened his mouth to comment, then closed it.

Integra, why do you sound like a farewell?

He excused himself, but the lady did not hear. It was not until the door clicked shut that the scarlet of the setting sun, flooding her office, took shape and stood before her.

"…destroy," he finished for her.

She poised her sabre.

Regardless of what it is. Regardless of who it is. Her own voice became infinite whispers flocking about her. Search and destroy. Search and destroy.

Alucard seized the blade, guiding the tip of it to his heart.

For once he was in full regalia, his coat almost corroded in the sunset. Integra had been disconcerted, the first time she saw him wearing it. She had met him as an emaciated corpse bound in dark leather, raw and barely contained, that to see him in a garish red duster had made her laugh a little.

"This used to be your great-grandfather's fashion, don't you know," he had said.

"I wouldn't know," she had replied. "Why do you wear the clothes of the one who enslaved you?"

"Is that a wise question, coming from the latest master of the slave?" He had stared down at her much like now, eyes hooded, scouring her soul. "Don't be so naive as to say you will set me loose, if you had the choice."

"I always have a choice." She had been stubborn. "As it stands, I have never called you my slave."

Alucard's eyes had widened, as though he had not realized this. At length he let out a puff of air. "Will you?"

"Do you want to be?"

He had lifted his hands to the outline of her neck. To choke or to cradle she could not tell. The sigils on his gloves were aglow with her face in between, a reminder of his tie to her he would never sever, for it was his only justification.

She would never let him, either.

He had lowered his arms. "I wear this in the same regard humans wear the skin of their prey."

Not of the victory, but of the defeat.

Integra in the present was the hunter who had her prey at the end of her sword. Yet it was the prey who drove it into his heart. It was his hand that pushed it deeper and deeper. Their shadows were strange hieroglyphs upon the checkerboard floor—perhaps they stood for a macabre love. Her face was stoic as blood poured and painted him a darker red.

Finally, she yanked the blade out. She dropped it. Integra crossed the space between them.

The prey bent forward, shrouding the hunter.

She focused on his unclosing wound, where he had wanted to bare himself to her gaze. She smoothed out the fabric around it, her touch becoming slick with taint. Then, one hand stanching his wound, she reached up and splayed her wet digits on his cheek.

Look at the mess you made.

Whereas before he had brought his own appendage to his mouth, she now brought her fingers and moved them across his lips in a delicate caress.

His tongue darted out and licked.

She had to arch her back to catch his eyes; they burned with the intensity of the sun which they were denied, a thousand suns.

"Count."

She granted him his title again.

"What do you think comes first? The hunter, or the monster? How much does our existence breed those who would seek to be destroyed by us?"

He smiled beneath her touch. He bared his teeth. They kissed her flesh. How much are we the merciful bullet for those weeping children of the night? His rephrasing was a whisper in her mind. Oh, plenty.

Frail, sobbing children, her father had said.

"I should order you to take them out of their misery, then," Integra said, after a while.

Give me an order.

The girl she had been would have. Search and destroy, she would have said. The girl she had been would have never imagined that her order would fail when it mattered the most.

"Later. When I see for myself what awaits us there."

Her fingers on his mouth drew back, but not before his tongue protruded, laving them.

She still had his heart under one hand.

Involuntarily, her left eye closed. Ridiculous. In all her years, from the moment it was shot, now was the time it decided to be a pain?

Alucard grabbed hold of the hand still over his heart lest she draw back entirely. She felt the flesh mend itself and saw the streaks of blood fade away, but for a drop on his upper lip. Mirroring the cut on hers.

"Will you not have a drop?"

He said it softly, yet the air between them hung as heavy as on a coffin. "Countess." The proverbial nail.

It would be so easy. It would be inconsequential. She could kiss him, take a bit of himself into her, and maybe, maybe, that would counteract the deviltry of her own bitter blood. Deviltry against deviltry. The Hellsing way.

Then Integra was reminded of what a drop had wrought, the consequence of inconsequentiality.

When the scarlet faded from the room and all that was left was silence, Alucard let go. He licked the drop off himself, as an animal would at its wounds. There was a sigh, and a whisper at her ear. Too meager an offer, Countess? He was using her words against her. It seemed centuries ago now, her meager substitute, when really it had been mere days.

Integra took her hand back. It was dry. How ephemeral it was, the taint of blood. Ephemeral and everlasting. "The last time someone was offered something red and glistening, they lost paradise."

"It was not the one who was offered who lost paradise. It was an arbitrary god who took it from her."

"Oh? Should we not strive to reclaim it?"

Alucard laughed. As the eve descended his silhouette became little by little indistinguishable from the shadows. "Why settle for a poor man's holy ground, when we can make our own?"

"That didn't end well for you," Integra said.

God—

She picked up her sabre. It alone remained coated in his blood. She sheathed it and set it on her desk.

—does not help those who kneel before him.

God—

There was a whisper at her ear again, rougher. And it was a lesson well learned, for now I know true Jerusalem lies in the integrity of the human will. Lines, echoes of a once-king, deepened under his eyes.

—does not save those who pray for mercy.

He pulled her into his shadow by the waist. Her chest knocked against his, heart to heart and hers beating in his stead. Integra chuckled. Her arms wound around his neck in retaliation.

It was an embrace, yet twisted as they were, they wrapped each other as ancient trees—her arms dark boughs, his hands white roots, their hair entangled vines. His mouth brushed her ear. "You, dear Master of the demon, proclaimed God in this very room. Take on your mantle and shape your Eden."

"How tiresome," was her reply. "All these titles and all I have to show for them are more tiresome duties."

"Would that include the duty of a Countess?" Alucard dared.

He dared, and she denied. Or so it had once been. Integra slid an arm down his shoulder.

The Count could have gloated. Instead he sobered; as he lifted his hand to meet hers and lowered his head to kiss her nape, numerous red eyes burst open from the shadows and gazed upon their embrace. And what they saw was her indulgence turn into something soft and sad, and in a moment, just a moment, contained in one single grain of sand falling through an hourglass, they saw her grey.

They stood in the coming dark, poised for a dance.

The phone rang.

Red, red eyes, though they were not mouths, snarled. The Countess and Count were still. It would be easy to delude themselves arrested in time and space, as hieroglyphs or ancient trees, if not for the incessant call of the latter-day twentieth century.

The Countess took a breath, and with that she came alive to youth and color. The Count watched, himself a fixture, as she picked up the phone. She answered wordlessly and hung up the same.

"It's Walter."

Ah, yes. Just like on that day.

On that day, on the second day of a paradise where she was only his Master.

But Alucard bridled his rage and wore a devastating grin. The heart he had pricked with her sword pulsed in anticipation of carnage. For, what else can you offer? What else do you have to compete with her awaited?

Nothing.

"Is it the hour?" he asked. "For this season's Walkürenritt?"

Integra's fingers curled over the hilt of her sabre. "Yes. But I should mention, I prefer the third."

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Siegfried

The third of the four epic music dramas of Der Ring des Nibelungen

Act Three, Scene Three:

"Awaken! Awaken! Holiest maid!"

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She wonders if it would not have been better to never have woken.

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For Seras, there was no past. There was only the future, where she would never be hurt, never be afraid. Her past was shards of broken glass she did not care to glue back together. It was better that way.

In the dead of night, however, the sharp edges of those shards tore and bled into her dreams. (For what are dreams anyway, if not mirror edges of the past?) They were odd dreams. Unforgettable—yet she would forget them all the same. Dreams where blood is on her hands.

Seras stared at her hands, curling them into fists. They shook—she shook—the world shook, though it could have been the undulations of the tangible darkness that nibbled at her profile. Blood—whose was it? There was a body before her. It was faceless. It could be anyone in her life that had died in front of her, even the ones to come.

Dad…Mum...Eddie...Simon...everyone...Pip...

Master...Mother. Mother!

(She never remembered the names when she woke up.)

Her legs crumbled. Light escaped her. The darkness was the abyss and it moved to devour. Her red hands unfurled lifelessly upon her knees. They're gone. All gone.

This is how I am left.

Alone.

What are you doing here?

A hand took her arm and yanked her upright. Integra stood against the current. She wore a sword at her side. Her outline was blurred in the abyss, the left of her face eaten by it. Nevertheless her visible eye was shrewd, and the entirety of her being pulsed with an unyielding light. She pulled Seras to her feet.

Let us not be destroyed along with the past, Police Girl.

Seras let herself be led through the abyss. She noticed how Integra's silhouette, blurred as it was, would ever so briefly be thrown into relief, and made her seem quite tall or quite short, and her hair quite or not quite as silver. She called out, but Integra did not pause, nor did she glance back.

Until they came upon a pool of faint light, large enough to be a clearing. The abyss dared not encroach here, but only just. It was here where, despite its light and warmth, desolation hung as a mourner's veil. Yes, despite its grass, its specks of white and in its very center—

Here we are.

Seras recoiled. The words rang coldly. Integra would not look at her. She would not glance back. Why?

Where is here?

Seras, Integra said. You brought me here.

"Miss Seras."

She gasped.

It was Miriam, looking at her with concern. Seras took an automatic half-step behind and almost missed her footing. It was then she realized she was on the stairs leading to the entrance hall.

"Careful! My dear! For a moment I thought you had gone and frozen! Is something the matter? Are you feeling faint?"

"No, I—where are they going?" Seras asked, turning Miriam's attention to the entourage near the doors.

There were a couple of soldiers conversing with Walter. One saluted off, the other remained. There was also the red gentleman, leaning against the doors. Seras was certain he was without the tinted glasses, yet when she squinted a second later, there they were. She did not dwell too much on this peculiarity however, for with them was Integra.

Her back was to her. She had a sword at her side.

In an instant Seras caught the tail of the dream she found so elusive. Integra, how she had not glanced back, how she had sounded. And though Seras could not recall the words they made her recoil still, even here where the fluorescent lamps were glaring, the summer heat was wafting and Integra was at a height perfectly sensible.

Miriam had started to answer but Seras was already running.

Integra was addressing the remaining soldier when she was within earshot. "Very well, Dylan."

Dylan saw her first and brightened. "Hello, Miss Victoria."

And Integra turned, ever so slightly.

It was enough. Seras collided into Integra with the force of a desperate child, her arms locking around her front for all they were worth. She heard Alucard scoff. Seras buried her face into Integra's hair and shunned the rest of the world.

Integra covered her hands with hers. Just that, yet it was enough. She continued. "You're more capable than you look."

"Uh, thank you, Miss Hellsing," Dylan said.

"Prepare the helicopter."

As the soldier went to carry out the order, Seras lifted her head. "Integra, where are you going?"

"Devon. Specifically, Dartmoor." The answer reverberated in her rib cage. "We're going hunting."

"Now?" Beyond the windows the moon was bone white. Seras shivered. "When will you be back?"

"We expect to return before dawn, Miss Seras. There is no need to worry," Walter intervened, kindly, yet she held on tighter.

"I don't want you to go." Seras herself was not sure where this was coming from, this urgency—it was a certainty, that something was wrong, would be wrong. "Integra, please, don't go. Please."

Integra pulled away.

For a moment Seras stood there, shaking, the beginning of tears blinding her when the fluorescent lamps shone unobstructed. Then she realized Integra had never let go of her hands. She was facing her now, expression placid.

"Why are you afraid?"

"I," Seras started.

Walter was watching with concern, Alucard with disdain. Only Integra saw her without prejudice.

"I don't know. But you shouldn't go. I saw," Seras sucked in a breath, "I forgot—"

"Your dreams again?

"I'm sorry," she whispered. "You gave me the daisy. But they won't stop."

"We can't have expected it to cover our future expenses." Integra was completely serious, as if the exchange rate for daisies to banishing nightmares was a cogent talking point. "Then I shall have to buy them on credit. On my words."

She combed aside errant strands from Seras' eyes.

"I promise, Seras," she said. "I promise I'll be home."

Walter was mystified, and Alucard was more curious than anything, both of them scouting in vain for a clue to decipher their strange and sudden relationship. Integra beheld Seras' blue eyes, those human eyes, and all that they represented.

"I promise," she repeated, almost absently, and almost to herself.

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She counted the bullets in her head.

The bullets had names.

Her soldiers' names.

As soon as Walter finished his report and exited, Integra dropped pretense. She took a cigar, lit it, took a whiff. Then she grabbed the worthless report and threw it in the trash. The cigar followed. She watched them burn.

Eighty-six.

The Valentine brothers' tally. Millennium's tally. No—hers. Sir Islands had been right. It had been unacceptable. Nothing could have been done? They had not been prepared? Bullshit. What she could have done could have been anything other than sitting there as her men met a fate worse than death.

And in the morning it was as if nothing had happened. Eighty-six men had lost their lives, and the halls were clean as if she had not made a pilgrimage with bloody footprints. Eighty-six bullets through eighty-six skulls and not a single trace.

Outside, in the daylight, birds were flying.

"I would have thought the Angel didn't need to remind you of that."

The outside operated on its own mundane brand of reality, and she on hers. Her reality consisted of invisible numbers. She could not count them, even when they were speaking.

He addressed her silent accusations with monstrous levity. "The police girl needed to prove her mettle. Isn't that why you let her deal with the invasion? Had I not engaged the elder in my lair, she, this organization, you—would have been destroyed."

"Ah, so if you had not been waiting there patiently for your toy, I wouldn't be standing here, is that it? My men, their screams, which you would have heard, from the courtyard, they meant nothing?"

"You did not give me your order, my Master."

Integra tasted bile. At the same time she was made painfully aware, in a way Walter's reminder had not, of the fact that yes, that was all it took. Her order.

Smoke rose from the wastebasket, curling like incense. Integra lit another cigar. Its odor and the light of day refused his proximity.

But still he closed in, right at the edge.

"Soon you'll command me to your enemies," Alucard soothed. "Their tally in this battle will be nothing compared to ours in the war."

"Oh? Who says there will be a war?"

"You did, my Master. There will be war, you know this. You want this. A new Millennium...also signals the death of the old."

Birds flew past again. They cast fleeting shadows upon her face.

"Leave. I need to get ready for the service."

She could feel him grin.

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Integra woke up.

The muted hum of the helicopter's rotor had lulled her into slumber. Walter's voice came through her headset: they would be landing in ten minutes.

The moon was following them. And in its skeletal glow Integra remembered something.

She counted bullets. The bullets had names. Thirty years later she could recite them, starting from the first to the eighty-sixth.

The supernatural nature of Hellsing meant there were very few recruits. Most of the soldiers had worked under her father. The ones who died during the Valentine brothers' attack had already been serving her since the beginning of her leadership. She remembered them all.

Integra turned her gaze to the pilot seat, where Dylan sat.

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NOTES

Merry Christmas.

Edit: Minor tweaks, because I was too eager to publish this before the clock struck twelve. Time zones are a gift.