Memories of childhood came in fragmented pieces.

The human mind had a fascinating way of dealing with trauma, locking it away, tucking it into the wrinkled recesses of your brain to help you go about your daily life without being too fucked up. Repressed memories shoved down in pandora's box, ones that would cause as much chaos as the fabled story told.

But there were still bits, here and there. Photo shots of brothers, of strict rules, of rough hands grabbing his arm hard enough to wilt and bruise.

"How sad," a voice commented. Whoever it was, the audience to his past life sounded truly remorseful, upset by what had been a fairly miserable childhood. There was the feel of slim fingers shifting through his mind, poking and prodding, turning through the images laid deep like one would flip through the pages of a worn scrapbook. The spectator drew these out for them to look with no resistance, although somewhere deeper he had the bother to be disgruntled by this intrusion.

When the voice spoke again they still retained the same edge of sadness, but held a more wry tone, as one would when trying to lighten the mood at a tragic event. It was getting more distant, as he began to breach the surface back to conscious life, but he managed to catch it before coming back to Earth.

"Do you think experiencing trauma as a kid is supposed to be a requirement for joining Hellsing?"

Stone was what Vilhelm was met with when he awoke. Slowly other senses came to him - the sounds of people walking and talking above, the feel of a scratchy blanket encompassing him, a lingering hunger in the pit of his stomach, the lack of pain where the gunshot should have utterly destroyed his heart. His mouth was dry, and the darkness on the grey ceiling seemed to swirl in dark patterns. There was, also, a woman sitting beside his bed, and he swore he smelled her ( roses, blood, comfort, power ) before he saw her.

If her voice wasn't anything he had imagined, her appearance was just as less suited. Doll-like as she was, wrapped in a uniform with a far too short skirt.

"Good, you're awake!" she beamed, standing up with such force it knocked her chair right over. It was here he noticed that her left arm was a queer red, a red that moved incessantly like the shadows above."I've never done this before - well, I've bitten people but they've never stayed long afterwards - and I wasn't sure how long your post-transformation rest should be."

As she rambled, Vilhelm rose a hand to his chest. He was out of his uniform, placed in what seemed to be cotton pajamas, and the hole was gone. There was no movement under his flesh.

As she rambled, he could see her fangs periodically flashing.

"Where am I?" he managed to ask, cutting off the girl's speech. He had gotten the gist of the situation, still could recall everything that had happened - but again, that tricky human brain. Vilhelm considered himself to be the sort of man who could roll through any sequence of oddities without harm, but the idea of vampires existing still managed to give him that good ol' dose of shock.

The woman (mistress, something in him called), did not answer at first. She looked at him, appraising him, and for whatever reason the stare unnerved him, made him want to duck his head in some form of animal submission. He was not fond of having such a reaction from a girl half his height simply staring at him.

"Romanian!" she finally cried out, nearly making him jolt with her loud enthusiasm."I knew I recognized it. How fitting."

Still grinning wildly, she bent over to pick up her chair, once more taking a seat. "You are currently in the headquarters of the Hellsing organization, a group dedicated to snuffing out bad supernatural events. As you may remember, you were confronted with a bad supernatural event, and to keep you from permanently dying, I had to take some extreme measures." She levelled him with another look, a pinch more serious now. "I've turned you into a vampire."

No one could blame Vilhelm for initially not knowing how to take this. It wasn't that, logically, he couldn't believe her - there was no giant chunk of flesh missing from his upper body, all of his senses had appeared to be heightened, and he had felt no heartbeat. He was all, for all intents and purposes, dead, and an experimental prod at his mouth allowed him to feel those twin pointed teeth.

She was watching him for a reaction, and again a forceful thought was thrust into him, a dozen monikers at once that made no sense.

( Seras, our sire, our mistress, lady of the night, lady of them all, our queen )

"Vampire," he repeated.

"Vampire," Seras ( mistress ) affirmed.

As one had to do when pushed into a situation, Vilhelm was forced to make any sort of shock melt away. He was greeted with the director of his newfound line of work (the master of my master) and the butler (who didn't look as he seemed). And then he was immediately brought to the kitchen, woving through the several hallways of the manor to get there. He had once lived in a manor, when everything was alright.

The new childe watched as Seras grabbed a bag of red from a medical box, placed inside the fridge. She was still talking. She talked a lot.

"We're going to let you take a couple of days to get adjusted to everything, but there's one thing we need you to do before we go any further."

The bag was placed in front of him. The crimson inside called to the young midian, ached like a man confronted with food after a long fast. There was a straw affixed to the side.

"It looks like the world's most macabre juice box," he muttered, previously saliva-less mouth suddenly flooded with an influx of need to drink. He was a bit afraid that if he parted his lips any more, he'd start drooling.

"Pretty much!" Seras began the process of opening the bag for him. "Now, for most who didn't actively choose to become undead, this is usually the hardest part at first. You're hungry, but you still have that instinctive revulsion as you were still human mere hours ago. But we can not take your training anywhere unless you do this first."

Head down, she looked up at him, coals of fire burning through lace-woven eyelashes. Again it made him freeze, and again he didn't like it.

"The one thing I told myself is if I ever did have a childe, I would make them drink blood right away. Even if I had to force it down their throat personally."

It was the most stern she had sounded, a lingering regret caught up somewhere in the seriousness of her statement. Vilhelm couldn't help but look at her arm. Dark maroon shadows periodically rose in small rivets, like ghostly waves.

"Do you understand?"

He hated this part. Hated having someone above him. In Cheddar he actively fought against his superiors, made himself out to be one with a rebellious attitude who only wished to take orders from himself, not the rotund, useless, weak men who had worked above him. He hated saying, ' Yes sir ', and he hated having to submit to others.

But this was different. As a police man it was part of the job, you do this, you do that, or you get fired and struggle to sustain yourself. Here it was pure, abstract instinct, a sharp resolution that she was the Alpha and he was merely the lowly servant who's only task was to obey.

Vilhelm hated it, but it compelled him strongly.

"Yes, Mistress."

Certainly there was a sense that he was repulsed by his new diet. He had experienced many a awful thing, and had done many things folks would balk at as well, but there was something inherently wrong about drinking the fluids of another person (although he wasn't a person anymore).

But the elation washed any disgust away, as he drank. Replaced it was with strength and power, a promise of speed to outmatch any creature and the raw force of a jaw that could crush steel if he so wished. Hypnosis and shadow powers, transformation and the ability to create even more strength beneath you.

It was power that no human could dare dream to achieve, power than he could have never even begun to reach shooting up murderers and terrorists as a mortal.

Vilhelm drank to the last drop.

His mistress surveyed, features a harsh mix of pride and disconsolation.

In the two days that Vilhelm was allowed to explore and adjust, he came to a quick conclusion that he was not fond of.

His sire was an absolute disappointment.

When one imagined a vampire, they usually saw the same image - powerful beyond belief, ruthless, bloodthirsty, terrifying creatures who stalked the night and terrorized the towns they resided in, picking off victims as the moon slowly waxed overhead, bathing in the perfume of fear of those who still lived.

Seras was like a puppy.

She was always inexplicably happy. Always smiling, friendly towards the general staff and the soldiers, chatting away as if she were a social butterfly of the age she looked (he wasn't sure of her actual age just yet).

She hummed under her breath, sometimes belting out right into slightly off key song, and had an affinity for flowers, something he had discovered after stumbling across her in the hallway, parading about with a large pile of dandelions.

"The gardener was just going to destroy them," she had said merrily, as if that explained anything.

Disappointing.

Even more so because as he explored, he could hear the rumours.

Everyone with high positions in Hellsing appeared to have their own nicknames. Iron Maiden for the head, Angel of Death for the elderly butler.

The No-Life Queen. Hellsing's Red Angel. The Bloody Siren.

None of these fit the bubbly mass of sun that was his mistress. Vilhelm's instincts may have called to it, but she certainly didn't act like a queen. Or even held the air of a regal. Sir Integra exuded that sort of air, and from the get go Walter gave off the distinct vibe that he was far more than he looked.

Seras, with her bright disposition and cheerful manner she talked to him in, was an utter let down, a black sheep of the main trio that made the heads of Hellsing.

He himself felt a melting pot of abilities he never could have imagined. Even within that short amount of time they allowed him to wander and adjust, Vilhelm was quickly discovering the many wonderful quirks that came with his new undead life - he could hear everything, conversations from several rooms over, bugs in the walls. Sight allowed him to see with better vision than even the most gifted human, and in the text he took to reading, he discovered it would give him the affinity of a telescope.

But to his chagrin, he could not use that power as of yet. None of them really; as enthusiastic as Vilhelm was growing, he surmised that like a wolf pup must learn to live in the wild from their mother, he needed the guidance of his sire.

Seras had smiled, told him to slow down and to relax for now, and that he had the rest of eternity to learn.

Disappointing.

It was the second day he resolutely decided he would best his sire, surpass her, and quickly asked for his bed to be replaced by a coffin.

"You're taking this quite easily," Walter hummed, as he carried the spectacularly crafted casket through the doorway. The elder man held himself with a quiet dignity and refinement and in his presence Vilhelm was immediately sure that he was carrying about the 'friendly old bloke' act as easily as he could lift that coffin. A mask, and he wondered if his Mistress could see it as well (probably not, as dim as she was).

Vilhelm's old uniform had been replaced with the official Hellsing garb, complete with the patch where his heart once beat, where it bore their creed, ' We're on a mission from God' . He smoothed out wrinkles as he answered steadily, "I am used to being thrown into unexpected situations, so I have learned to adjust."

"You were perfectly alright with leaving your old life behind?"

Where did this impromptu investigation come from, and why was it the butler who was conducting it? Brushing his own inquiries off, Vilhelm graced his company with a rare smile. The movement of muscles allowed him to feel the outward press of thick fangs, sharp enough to pierce bone to dust without the slightest bit of effort. The points knicked briefly at the skin inside of his lip, only for the area to heal not a second later.

The feel was a good one. It gave promise to power, strength, death and command.

" I was only just turned, but I suppose you can say I never truly had a life before I became undead."

Quite suddenly, he was dying to go on his first mission.

Something that Vilhelm learned rapidly was even with his eagerness to jump right into the role of a nightwaker, human habits still stuck with you when you were only just bitten. Your heart could still feel like it was racing, you still experienced adrenaline, and you continued to pant when you were running away from something especially dangerous.

His first outing into the night had gone smoothly, if not a bit dully. Seras had all the fun of breaking into the house, he merely shot a running target.

His second outing showed promise, much more promise when the bible quotes-spewing Irishman turned up. But again. Reckless. Arrogant.

For a moment, he had imagined longingly that this was a chance for redemption, another priest that he could decimate. Instead, Vilhelm found himself staggering down the darkened hallway of the building the mission took place in, holy weapons lodged into his back and Seras' neatly severed head tucked into one arm. Their master-relationship servant had compelled him to pick it up, but the dracula was still seething in the failure of his mistress. Up against a actually strong enemy for the first time since he was turned, and she had been killed so damn quickly.

Pathetic.

But for as pathetic as she was, Vilhelm had the grace to be aware that he was no better here. He had used up nearly every last bullet he had on him, fought with the same reverence that night in Cheddar, and had received these blades that burned like fire into his spine. He was still young, just an infant among vampires, with no true hold over his powers just yet. If she could be erased so easily, so could he - something that was far too close to happening before his boss arrived.

Stunned as he was that this human woman was holding her ground against a man with the ability to regenerate, Vilhelm pulled himself back into action as he aimed his gun towards Anderson's back, ignoring the insistent voice mocking (you only have the courage to aim again now that he's not facing you), snarling wildly like a cornered dog. Anderson merely laughed in return.

Their noisy intimidation tactics were stopped as Sir Hellsing spoke. Calm. Confident. Amused.

"Staked her heart? Cut off her head? That's all?"

A scuttling in the background, and Vilhelm involuntarily shrunk back like a whipped dog.

"I'm afraid she isn't like any other vampire you've known."

A torrential wind burst into the hallway, nearly drowning out the sudden chorus of screeching bats.

"Seras has been broken and beaten and experimented on in our organization for over a century now. It's going to take far more than a simple decapitation to render her useless."

The winged creatures were in a frenzy, flocking together in an erratic group. Vilhelm watched in simple astonishment as a human form was created from the ground up.

Veins, muscle, tissue, rapidly melding together as his mistress came back to life. Energy poured out of her in such astonishing waves it crippled Vilhelm's thoughts and nearly forced him to his knees. Dandelion hair flowed out like watercolour splashed across a canvas, red eyes glowing so brightly it was blinding, every tooth behind pink lips sharpened to a point. An utter demand for respect and obedience, a reminder that the angel-like figure being reborn was the highest in rank of the undead.

Beautiful.

Breathtaking.

Our Queen.

My Queen.

The sudden fascination did not cease even after the priest had fled in a flurry of weathered paper. He lingered after her, and for the first time Vilhelm found something other than a need to obey her orders shifting in his system; a desire for acceptance, for approval, for her to look onto him with pride.

As stubborn and prone to talking back to authority as he was, Vilhelm could respect those who proved that they could deserve it. And Seras certainly still didn't look like she did, but she felt like she did.

"And how did the police man do?" Integra was asking, producing a cigar. She didn't look bothered that her men were dead around her.

Vilhelm raised his head as he was mentioned.

"He fights recklessly," Seras mused, drifting a glance his way. Her voice wasn't cold or demeaning, but it wasn't the approval he now craved either. "Doesn't take the time to process who he's up against. Honestly, we're kinda lucky he didn't end up with his head on the floor too."

"I trust you to reign him in then."

He didn't want to be reigned in. Vilhelm frowned. "I deserve more credit than that. I fought back to the best of my abilities."

"You only ran when you finally realized he was out of your league, and that should've been sooner. Like I said, you're pretty lucky you didn't end up rolling around lifelessly around with me," came the smooth counter. "Many vampires fight frantically like that, and they end up dead the second they come across anyone more experienced.."

There was no room for any more argument, as the two women left, compelling him to follow, feathers thoroughly ruffled.

"Teach me to do that."

Seras looked up from her book - some sappy schlock - to regard her childe. "Teach you what?"

"How to rebuild yourself after being completely destroyed. Everything."

"I'm afraid you will never be able to do it that easily," the draculina responded, easing back into her chair. Velhilm had found her in the library, the day after the incident in Ireland.

"And why is that?"

"You have my blood, but you do not have the experience Hellsing has given me. When you release all of your powers you'll be incredibly strong, but the right hit at the right spot in the brain or your heart will kill you immediately."

A disconcerting notion. "I may not have been a vampire for long, but I doubt a human could so easily kill me."

His Mistress chuckled, the sound infuriating. "You really shouldn't underestimate mortals."

"Why don't you use yours more often?" Vilhelm pressed, switching the subject as he stood by her. "I've never felt anything like that with any of the other vampires I've come across, and everything in me tells me I never will."

He knelt before her, imploring. "You have such promise, such potential for destruction and command over others, and yet you never use it. You let yourself be tied down like a dog."

Seras' fingers curled in their gloves. She had explained that they were important for keeping her powers in check, as well as her loyalty to Hellsing, the dark ruins stark on the white material.

"You could burn this entire place to the ground, kill off everyone and be free-"

As was the case the night he was turned, the attack happened as fast as he could blink. A force had struck him, slamming his lanky body into a bookshelf. It rattled, threatened to topple, and several books struck his head and shoulders as they came lurching down. His vision was blinded by scores of red eyes and undulating shadows. Her arm had come undone.

The human in him, his ingrained personality, was amused that he managed to spark such a nerve that Seras would strike him.

The fledgling vampire was positively terrified he had angered his Master. Against his own will Vilhelm found himself tilting his neck a bit, baring his neck.

"I'm not as stupid as you think," Seras uttered, voice now thickened and gutteral. He still had to rest his chin against his chest to look her in the eye, but there was a hellfire in that gaze that both enthralled and frightened him. "It was obvious from the second I drank your blood that you were going to be the sort of fledgling who'd be a prat when they gained their first taste of power. You were the kind of bloke who'd imagine vividly how he'd wrong things with an iron fist once - if - you became police chief."

Vilhelm stiffened, despite being well aware by this point of how his blood transferred memories to the girl.

"It's a common mistake people who actively yearn to become vampires make. They just want the cool powers, they want to make an army of the undead, they want to feel that strength. They go overboard, and you know what happens to those vampires?" A grin split over her mouth, impossibly wide. He could hear jawbones creaking with the effort. "They get a stake in the heart by a human, or get a silver bullet from me."

She let him go. The stab of the shelves behind Vilhelm left deep bruises, rapidly healing.

"You think that you're a proper nosferatu because you drink blood and can crush a human in a single blow. Those are merely elements of being one of the undead. It doesn't make you one. And once you cross the line of wanting to wipe everything around you, merely to show off, you become a monster."

The statement managed to catch him off guard. Vilhelm couldn't look away as she monologued, his brows furrowing. "But we are monsters. We're vampires."

In the quiet of the library, Seras didn't initially respond. She went to retrieve her book, which had gone flying when she did, and smiled. It was genuine, melancholy, very much unlike the one that ripped her face apart. A tendril picked up the fallen item, and she answered presently, "In the literal sense, yes. We feed on human blood, we can transform into wolves and bats, hell - children dress up like us for Halloween. We're a fixture in monster movies."

Plopping back down in her seat, Seras regarded him, undoubtedly sensing the confusion rolling through Vilhelm. Confused at the several different faces he had seen in his Mistress over the last couple of weeks since he had joined Hellsing - the sweet, overly cheerful face of a girl who looked far more dull than she appeared, the descent of the Queen of vampires who could end life without having to touch her foe, who dared those around to challenge her, and this kind, understanding, patient woman, speech fraying with a soft sorrow. Not for the first time he wondered just how old she was, what she had experienced throughout her endless lifetime.

"But we don't have to be in the psychological sense."

It was a few days later, when he popped the question. There had been no more missions, and Vilhelm had spent the time training on the outside shooting range, still managing to fight a faint delight in just how easily he could use that third eye of his.

He found her in the library again.

"If you knew instantly that I was the sort who craved power, the most dangerous human to turn into a vampire, why did you keep me around?"

Initially he expected her answer to be of the simpering sort. Some nonsense about how she didn't want to kill an innocent.

What he didn't expect was, "As you may remember me telling you, I gained all of your memories that night. It told me you were rash and prone to going to the extreme when in certain situations, but it also told me you aren't all that bad."

Again, that smile.

Vilhelm scowled in return. "If you tell me some nonsense like 'it told me you were actually a great guy deep down', I will forfeit any of the begrudging respect I have gained for you."

Seras laughed, high and girlish. "Then I won't."

The massive collection of books within the mansion were, unsurprisingly, loaded with many stuffed with information about vampires. Many more were fictional tales; Sir Hellsing boasted too many copies of Dracula to count, from newer editions to ones so old they looked like they would disintegrate if touched.

With no missions, Vilhelm took to these when he was not practicing his shot, not bothering to socialize with the soldiers or his other co-workers. And as he read, he pondered.

Still so baffling was his Mistress, with her ability to be both genuinely kind and distinctly vicious in one breath. The vampires in these books took on both the appearances of twisted, gruesome beings with sharpened ears and skin like ancient paper, and devilishly attractive creatures who stole into people's bedrooms and seduced them for their livelihood. Even when she exploded with power, Seras matched neither of these descriptions.

He tooled over the books and his thoughts, of the things that caused him to become a dangerous candidate for a nightwalker in the first place. Of a child who was quiet, but perfectly fine, who played in the woods with his brothers before he was caught and turned over and broken.

The human mind had a fascinating way of dealing with trauma, that didn't involve repressing memories. You resolved to pull yourself up from the depths, not allowing anyone to harm you in such a manner ever again.

Vilhelm refused. He fought. He maimed. He struggled to get to the top.

( The sort of guy who would take advantage if he became boss, to compensate for a weak past )

Becoming one of the supernatural would have been the ultimate trip, but he recalled the priest on the night Seras took him in. Mad with the possibilities being a vampire could bring. Snuffed out instantly by a silver bullet.

The books spoke to him of vampires who met the very same deaths. Pitiful. And always at the hands of humans. Too vain for their own good.

He thought of Seras warning that could be his own fate.

As he threaded page through page, he began to notice a pattern among the texts. Vampires who longed to be as famously regarded as Bram Stoker's creation, who took on pseudonyms to make them seem more like the fabled King of the Vampires. A simple variation on the name, pulling it backwards.

In those brief few weeks he had tumbled his way through varying emotions - elation at this new lease to be powerful, frustration at his Mistress, an utter befuddlement at how the ' we do not have to be depraved creatures ' rhetoric she had thrown at him.

Yet, mixing somewhere with all of that, he was pleased with this shift in his story.

A new life, after one stained with so many horrid things.

Vilhelm thumbed at the typewritten words. Alucard.

Seras was undoubtedly going to scold him for continuing to be a show off, for trying to jump the gun before he truly learned what it meant to be a nosferatu (whatever that meant in her eyes), but when one was starting a whole new journey and leaving the past one behind for good, they deserved to make a few changes.

I actually wrote most of this the day after I posted the first chapter haha, had to stop myself from publishing it that soon!

So, apologies if this seemed rushed, I really just wanted to get Alucard's first few weeks - including Anderson's appearance - out of the way. The next some chapters are going to really focus on the growing relationship between Integra/Seras/Alucard, while also explaining how Seras' own vampirism came to be. :

While the other fanfic with the same story had the characters as they were when Hellsing started, I opted for Seras having her 30 year timeskip personality (MUCH more confident and badass, but still her nice and goofy self), while Alucard's personality is situated during his human years, but before he started throwing people onto spikes; so because I'm not trying to write a historically accurate Vlad Tepes, he's mostly a lot of headcanon. :'D