Disclaimer: See Ch. 1.
There was a pregnant silence as the four of them surrounded the bed. Seras Victoria was tied down to Walter's bed, convulsions stifled by the straps around her wrists and ankles. The bedposts wobbled with her struggling, and her face had taken on a sickly, greenish tone. She looked, Maxwell thought grimly, like something from a science-fiction movie, something possessed and lifeless.
The situation did not seem to faze Alucard at all; he merely aided Walter in positioning her so that she would not hurt herself. His voice was hard. "What happened, Walter?"
"I honestly don't know," Walter grunted, attempting to secure her left hand more tightly to prevent her jerking from tearing the bed down. "By the time I was aware of her condition, she was already semi-conscious and convulsive. I don't notice any other obvious symptoms other than the pallor, but when I was restraining her... she seemed very cold to the touch, even for a vampire."
Integra's voice, as well, was nearly toneless. "Alucard, is there anything you can do to bring her out of it?"
"I can try." Alucard's hands were firmly fixed on Seras' shoulders. His eyes closed as he leaned further over the bedside. "Wake up, police girl."
The command shot any faith Maxwell might have had in the vampire to begin with. "If one could wake a person up just by--"
"Be quiet!" Alucard ordered harshly, and Maxwell shrank into a corner, unwilling to repeat the night before. Integra chuckled lightly, something that Maxwell might have protested if Alucard had not been there.
Alucard's voice was very deep, even for him. "Wake up, Seras Victoria. Throw off whatever pathetic chains the maggot vampire has locked you in. Prove your worth and get up! Prove to me I'm not wasting my time training you! GET UP!"
Seras' eyes snapped open and she sat bolt upright, staring wide-eyed at Alucard. The vampire returned the look with something resembling pride. "So you were able to come out of it."
"It's getting light," Seras murmured. "He can't do anything more until the sun sets."
"Walter, draw the shades and let her get some rest." Alucard nonchalantly exited the room through the wall. "I'm going to bed. Seras and I will deal with this bastard 'vampire' tonight."
"Are you sure that's--" Integra began as Walter pulled the shades down, but Alucard was gone. She groaned in aggravation. "Seras, are you all right now?"
Walter returned to Seras' bedside, his hand covering hers as he sat down. "She'll be fine. I can watch her."
Integra nodded. "Very well. Maxwell, would you care for some tea?"
"Yes, please," said Maxwell, grateful for permission to speak once again. As he followed Integra to the kitchen he had a vague sense that there was another reason for them to leave the room, one that had to do with Walter's caress of Seras' hand and the hushed murmurs in which the two were speaking to each other.
He sat down at the kitchen table and folded his hands in front of him. Cautiously, he asked, "Are they..."
"I don't care," Integra answered curtly. "Perhaps they find some comfort in each other. I don't care what goes on between them, disturbing as it may be for a couple like that, as long as it doesn't interfere with their work, and so far it hasn't seemed to."
Maxwell thought, as she turned away from him to make the tea, that he might find some comfort in her, but the suggestion was so absurd he tried to keep it even from himself. He looked uncomfortably down at the table, trying to interest himself in the grain of the polished oak.
"They're cheating themselves, though," she went on. "Walter may be dead soon, certainly within the next thirty years, and Seras is a vampire."
"The hormones fool their minds," Maxwell suggested, willing the conversation to end immediately, or at least before it began to have certain effects on him. "Or the... the closeness makes them feel loved."
"The pleasure, you mean."
He swallowed uneasily. "If that were so Seras would find it in shady areas at night. And I'm sure Walter doesn't--" He stopped himself before the discussion could spark another image.
"Even one-night stands are a coping mechanism. But Seras is just a girl. She needs the comfort more than the sex."
Maxwell made a silent pact with himself never to say or think the word "sex" in Integra's presence again.
"If I may say so, Maxwell," she added as she poured the tea, "you're quite the candidate for such coping mechanisms yourself."
Any thought of him and Integra fled from his mind. "You may not, Sir Hellsing. I did feel a certain affinity for chastity when I entered the priesthood."
She shook her head. "Milk and sugar?"
"No, thank you."
She served him his tea and sat down across the table with her own cup. "I suppose you must still see me as the enemy."
Maxwell looked at her for a moment before turning his face to the window. With a slight pang of sadness and remorse he remembered the chain of events leading up to this moment. When Anderson had died, it was her who had brought him back to reality and dragged him out of the cathedral, which had burst into flames moments after they were out of range. Where would he have gone, after the funeral, had it not been for her offer? He looked down at his arms and chest, scarred from the fatal cathedral battle; she had even dressed his wounds, being deprived of nursing staff, and they had healed nicely.
"I have very little right to claim that now." He sipped his tea; it was strong, the sort he would expect her to drink. "As one of the last surviving Vatican officials, killing all of you is going to get me nowhere except perhaps Hell. It would appear I owe you a great deal." He lowered his head. "Perhaps I owe you my life."
She looked up at him, the glaring accusation gone from her pale blue eyes. "Maxwell, you've..." Her voice failed her, and she took another sip of her tea. "You've grown up."
"I had to. My father is dead." He closed his eyes at Anderson's memory, trying to suppress the images of his bloody end.
She seemed to know what he meant, however vaguely. "But you have the opportunity to avenge him."
"I killed him." He was just barely holding back tears, and he knew the sob came out in his voice. "I just lay there... and look." He held out his arm. "This is what I escaped with. A couple of scars."
"It was his duty to protect you." Her voice was unreadable. "Maxwell, it's... it's not your fault..."
"You had no duty to protect me!" Reflexively, he pulled his hair out of its ponytail, a feeble attempt to hide himself behind the blonde curtain. "You should have left me to die! God knows I deserved it, and it would have been better for you!"
"Does anyone really deserve that?" He was vaguely aware that she was standing beside him now.
"I did!" The flashback was playing itself in his mind now; his chest felt sticky, and he snatched a napkin from the table to wipe away the blood. "I deserved to die, and you know it!" Earlier; himself as a child running to Anderson for protection from a nightmare. "And I deserved so much worse. I deserved to go to Hell."
Her hand rested gently on his shoulder. "No."
"Don't lie to me." He pulled her hand to his cheek, seeking the emotional warmth, someone to care whether he died, someone to keep him sane and alive. "In fact, Integra, just don't talk at all."
She obliged him; one more thing he owed to her. Her hand remained where he had put it even when he folded his arms on the table and lay his head down on them. Tears streaked down his face like the blood down his chest that night, and when one rolled into his mouth he tasted metal. His two realities meshed, his memory and his consciousness, and finally he was a boy of three in the body of a man of thirty, crying himself to sleep without his father to stay by his bedside.