I'm a thief, a liar, and a dreadful plagiarist. I just thought that I'd make that clear from the start.

Honestly, I've stolen quotes and storylines left, right and centre, up and down. It's amazing nobody's called me out on it but then again, perhaps there are simply too many bits of thievery for any one person to count.

Another thing that should be made clear: if you've found any spelling mistakes, missing words, extra words, errors grammatical in these revised chapters of S&D I'd be very grateful, very, very grateful, if you'd keep it to yourself. Honestly, the amount of times I've asked for a beta reader and received only dead silence in return is ridiculous. In the end I've done the best I could and that will have to suffice.

Prequel: Delilah 1:

This whole story originally started out as a one-shot drabble, the first Delilah piece. I tend to start a lot of things this way; I get an idea, I write a drabble and the clutter in my brain is temporarily gone. Delilah unfortunately stayed, mutated and bred. Editing aside, S&D took me about fifteen months to complete. It's the longest complete work I've ever done and weighs in at around forty thousand words. Considering that I'd much prefer writing a drabble or vignette any time, this was sheer agony and I'm delighted it's over.

Chapter 1: Samson 1

This chapter has received the most extensive work out of the whole edit. Mostly everywhere else just made do with a shave and a haircut, this one got rewritten.

Important interaction between Walter and Integra, and a nice contrast between the Walter before she gets shot and the Walter afterwards. For the first time in his life he's helpless. He doesn't cope well with it at all. Also, it's important that his dislike of Sir Hellsing is shown to be not entirely warranted, and that Sir Hellsing's dislike of Walter probably is. I should also apologise for having an original character, but I honestly couldn't figure out a way to do without him entirely.

Chapter 2: Samson 2

S&D set mainly in the manga and OVA-verse, but there's a distinct lack of named characters in either that would do what I needed them to do. So, I roped in Chris Pickman (along with certain other characters) from the television series and gave him a personality. Strictly speaking, Captain Gareth would have been better as Pickman comes across as rather serious and dour in what time he has before Alucard shoots him, but as both characters have approximately a collective eight minutes screen time, it probably doesn't matter.

There's also an Angela Carter reference at the end, but there's a lot of those about.

Chapter 3: Samson 3

Gerontophilia: Sexual attraction to the elderly amongst the non-elderly. Strictly-speaking Alucard is far older than Integra so matter how wrinkled she gets, it's not gerontophilia. It is, however, quite possibly paedophilia. This is based on several places in the manga where Alucard states that he finds older people more attractive. My personal feeling is that it's midway between a sexual kink and a simple observation that the older people have more experience in life they and so the more interesting they tend to be.

Alice in Wonderland is, I feel, an excellent accompaniment to Hellsing:

'But I don't want to go among mad people,' Alice remarked.

'Oh, you can't help that,' said the Cat: we're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad.'

'How do you know I'm mad?' said Alice.

'You must be,' said the Cat, or you wouldn't have come here.'

Everyone in Hellsing is, in their own special way, quite mad. And Walter is quite possibly the craziest of the lot of them and hides it the best of them. There was a fanfiction that came out at much the same time as this that examined the similarities between Hellsing and Alice in Wonderland beautifully, but I didn't favourite it and for the life I can't remember who it's by. A pointer would be fantastic.

The rabbit Giggi was actually my brother's. The My Little Ponies, I must admit, belonged to me. "A horse that is smiling is a horse that is planning something." This comes from Terry Pratchett. It's not an exact quote, but is close enough.

There's also a quote from Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of War of the Worlds at the end there: "Abruptly, the sound ceased."

Chapter 4: Sound of Spiders Weeping 1

The chapter title comes from a section of Peter S. Beagle's The Last Unicorn; it refers to the despair one has when all one's illusions have been destroyed and one is left with nothing. I've quoted it in full in a later chapter.

A lot of people asked about the significance of Walter's dream. It's partially to establish a certain tendency towards sexualised violence towards women on Walter's part (as opposed to his regular kind of violence) and also to provide a reasonable explanation as to why he'd still be a virgin in his sixties. I played fast and loose with a lot of cannon, but the 'only virgins can become vampires' rule I kept. It also makes clear that whatever he tells himself, his love for Integra is not purely platonic. Up until this point I'd been deliberately vague about this but even with this definition there were many who still persisted in seeing Walter as entirely 'innocent'.

I cannot emphasize just how much influence the first OVA had on this story: that shot of Walter in the opening frames, tenderly taking off her coat, staring at the world through Integra's falling hair with this unbelievably creepy smile. It made my hair stand on end and it also made the wheels in my brain turn furiously. I didn't think that creepiness was an accident. This continual bullshit that is sprouted, about Walter and Integra having a father-daughter relationship holds as much water as the persistent tendency of so many fanfic writers to interpret him as a wise, kindly old man who just happens to have a rather sordid past. It's about as fatherly as my ex-landlord who tried to get me drunk so that he could rape me, and when that didn't work, hid cameras in the bathroom ceiling.

I should also mention the other main influence on Walter's characterisation: one of my brothers talking about the war in Iraq. We were discussing the main bitch that the Australian media had about our troops, which was that while there were whole packs of media following the Yanks around no media whatsoever (at that stage) was allowed close to our own Australian troops.

"It sounds rather suspect to me."

"Oh, come off it," he snapped. "Our troops there are all SAS. They're not going to want cameras anywhere near them. They're probably already living in holes in the desert, eating snakes and drinking their own urine like the freaky little nutjobs that they are."

It must be said that my brother is like a hefty percentage of my family, i.e. a one-time member of the armed forces. Doubtless he knows a freaky little military Special Services nutjob when he sees one.

The little dance that Alucard and Integra do in the moonlight has no intrinsic meaning beyond a basic demonstration of their relationship, i.e, that as much as a monster like him is capable of love, he loves her and that Walter is not jealous of their bond like he is of Pickman. Also, I liked writing it.

Integra's little hissy fit should have dealt yet another blow to Walter as a sympathetic character: she's just beaten the crap of an innocent woman and here he is congratulating her while the poor nurse is bleeding gently into the carpet.

Chapter 5: Samson 4

There were many people in the beginning who interpreted Walter's 'love' for Integra as purely paternal, tender and nurturing. It seemed strange just how long this interpretation persisted, right up to the last chapter in a lot of cases. A certain number asked me directly whether his feelings were, ah, 'pure'.

In the beginning when I conceived this story these feelings certainly weren't. Indeed, one of the first pieces from S&D I ever did was the scene where Walter performs his armature gynaecology to ascertain if Integra's hymen was still intact, only this incarnation it was a full-on digital rape. Not pretty and frankly, a little rough on the ol' nerves for this writer. The sheer, blinding stupidity of relying on the presence of a hymen as an indicator for virginity aside, it was too raw. I wanted people to feel sorry for Walter, at least at first. (I also didn't want to be woken in the middle of the night by Molotov cocktails flying in through my bedroom window.) Not quite as much as some evidently did, but pity was required the first half of the story. So, the digital rape was converted to what could be interpreted as an accidental slip and the story moved on with much more ambiguity. Ultimately, what it comes down to is this: Walter thinks he loves Integra in a purely platonic sense. Walter is lying to himself. And if you believe Walter when he says that his little grope was just an accidental slip, consider that the timing, where any injuries she'd inflict on him would not be questioned given her violence in the hours before, was more than a little on the convenient side.

Note that in the case of the loquacious security systems planner, that Walter's not above premeditated, cold-blooded murder if he thinks that it's in the best interest of the Hellsing organisation.

As for him being a human with unique biology, I'm personally convinced that he's a bit more than someone who just happens to have good reflexes. In the manga just about everyone has had a flashback origin scene, Walter has not. And in the Hellsing prequel, The Dawn, Arthur says that Walter received training before he came to the organisation, making me wonder if he wasn't part of some super solider experiment. However, that remains to be seen.

Chapter 6: Sound of Spiders Weeping 2

"Sympathy from the devil." Hahahaha!

Walter's little speech is the single best part out of S&D, IMHO. Well, that and it's finished.

I remember having a row with Thess (Sir Hellsing over on LiveJournal) about Integra being sacrificed by the Queen at the end of the television series. She didn't think that it was fair or right. As I pointed out, fairness has nothing to do with it. Her role was to remain hidden from the world and she blew it, spectacularly, no matter the what the circumstances behind were. The same applies to Walter getting the blame over Integra being injured. It doesn't matter that he was helpless to prevent it. He was there. He was there when his superior officer was shot. And Walter being Walter, the blame heaped upon his head would only be higher.

The story about the RAAF (Royal Australian Air Force) was part of a set of two narrated to me by an older gentleman who swears that both are true. The second story, which I couldn't find a way to use, involved the Scottish Highlands, a group doing bombing practice, and salmon that were not legally allowed to be fished but could be collected if they happened to be already dead. Connect the dots and add Winston Churchill- apparently he was there and participated enthusiastically.

Mutton: boiled, baked, buggered and bewildered. One of my grandfathers would never allow any sort of sheep's meat in the house after the war.

In regards to Pickman being a formidable war nurse, my family's military history again rears its head.

Nanna was a ranked officer as well as a nurse and she ended up in a rather large number of theatres of war around the world. Now, there was a certain amount of people around at the time who didn't have much respect for the war nurses, and thus wandered around saying that all they were good for were sleeping with the officers. Naturally, the idiots saying this tended to be the ones not actually doing the fighting and getting patched up afterwards. So a particular idiot mouths off at Nanna during a war memorial service, and my father watches the whole thing. Said idiot was lucky that one of her former patients got to him before she did- I never met her, which was probably a good thing because she'd have eaten me alive- and told him quite a few things, first and foremost that he was indeed an idiot, because she'd saved that former patient's life.

The former patient also went on to add a few more things during later conversation with my father, like how my Nanna was the first woman he'd ever heard swear in those more gentile times: a mortar came flying straight through the hospital tent to land right in the middle of the rows of beds.

"Oh, fuck!" yelled my grandmother (as you would). And then immediately turned around to this solider in his bed and growled, "You heard me say nothing, solider, is that understood?"

About Walter sleeping less than two hours every night, see articles on manic depression and try living with a raving manic depressive that's off their medication. They're crazy enough to do anything.

Chapter 7: Samson 5

Venice doesn't smell that bad. Trust me, I work with raw sewerage on a regular basis. If you think Venice smells bad, believe me when I say that bad smells can get a lot worse.

That said, I've tried to be brief as possible on all the cities and countries that this covers. I've done a nine-day Contitki trip and that's not really enough time to learn anything. But of all the places I went to, Venice was what I most wanted to see and what made the most impact on me. It was sad. Seeing Venice is like hearing all your life about a fabulous courtesan and when you finally meet her, you discover that she's become an aged tart with her lipstick bleeding into the wrinkles around her mouth. Everywhere you look you can see ruins of what was once fantastic beauty.

Kinda applies to Walter too, if you swap 'courtesan' with 'warrior'.

Chapter 8: Samson 6

Helena was one of the few original characters from the television series I liked, despite the fact she was a lousy Claudia rip off.

Ever come across a black German Sheppard at night? All you can see are white teeth rushing up at you from the darkness, and those teeth are huge.

"Will you walk into my parlour?" said the spider to the fly;'Tis the prettiest little parlour that ever you may spy.The way into my parlour is up a winding stairAnd I have many curious things to show when you are there.""Oh no, no," said the little fly; "to ask me is in vainFor who goes up your winding stair can ne'er come down again."

Millarca.

It's weird.

Bizarre, actually.

So many people asked me who she was, yet were apparently perfectly familiar with the original Dracula. So many people asked me yet there it was at the bottom of the chapter, right there in black and white.

To rehash:

It seemed appropriate, given that Hellsing is essentially based on the whole Dracula mythos, to bring in a vampire that's been ripped off, reused and abused almost as much as Dracula himself: Carmilla, Countess Karnstein, who made her original appearance in Sheridan LeFanu's Carmillaslightly before Dracula was published, if memory serves. I also needed an old and powerful vampire that would give Walter a fight but not too much of one. Carmilla was old, cunning as hell and quite frightening but in many ways she was quite weak. As an added bonus she appeared as 'Laura' in the television series and while she was able to fuck with just about everyone's mind with ease, was easily annihilated by Alucard.

By the way, there are some people who will tell you that Carmilla in the television series was not Carmilla at all, despite the fact that Integra calls her first Laura, the name of the main character in Carmillaand then asks her point blank if she is Carmilla, here to get revenge on the Hellsing family for wiping out her family. There's also the mysterious black animal that Seras saw in the foyer- possibly Alucard, but likely to be the same black cat form that Carmilla takes in the book.

Some people will tell you that Carmilla is not Carmilla at all because apparently 'Boovanshe' is poorly Romanised "Baoban Sith" a kind of Irish vampire.

Some people will not be able to tell you why being called 'Boovanshe' automatically negates all possibility of Carmilla being Carmilla.

Some people are full of shit.

In the meantime, read the original CarmillaIt's actually better than the original Dracula and as a bonus contains lesbians.

Chapter 9: Samson 7

It's worth noting that Carmilla died at the end of CarmillaIt's also worth noting that Dracula died at the end of Dracula, and it doesn't appear to have stopped either of them much.

There's a quote here from the amazing short story Escape Artist by Caitlin R. Kiernan.

The scene with Walter and the old woman was unbelievably difficult to write. Not because of garden variety writers' block, but because it's an extremely nasty scene even by my standards. It's horrible. One thing to get into a brawl with fellow monsters, another thing to prey on the helpless and elderly.

Chapter 10: Samson 8

Not much to say here other than that it's amazing how characters sometimes do things you don't expect. I was halfway through this chapter when I suddenly realised that Pickman had developed a life of his own: he'd turned the gun on Integra, threatened to shoot her and informed the world in general that his goal was to keep Walter under control. Integra herself was irrelevant. Of course it fitted with nothing before and since and it had to be deleted. Still, it's fun contemplating how things would have turned out if Pickman really had murdered her.

A favourite question at the end of this chapter was, "Why wasn't Alucard angry with Walter?"

Quite simply, the entertainment value. Honestly, Alucard's going to get centuries out of this.

Final Notes:

Integra's Characterisation

You have no idea how difficult it was to write Integra the way I did. I essentially took everything about her that I loved and removed it. It hurt. A lot.

What it comes down to is this: I can either write about Walter, or Integra. But when I write with the pair of them together it becomes about their relationship, not the actual story. So in order to write about Walter I had to lobotomise Integra. And that was that.

Where was Seras

It's not that I don't like her, it's just that I honestly can't think of anything to do with her. Also, with Seras it would change the whole Walter/Integra/Alucard dynamic and would render S&D unrecognisable.

Sir Hellsing

I tried to have as little to do with him as possible, but I couldn't figure out a way to do without him entirely. If you're like me and generally dislike OCs, please accept my apologies. That said, despite my best efforts he did begin to develop a personality. He'd have to, I think, caught between two strong-willed monsters like Alucard and Walter. It's either that or join S&D Integra in the nuthouse.

The Final Word

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is that. Thank you to everyone who read and kept reading even though my take on the Hellsing characters was not the usual one. Thank you to everyone who put this as a favourite and reviewed. S&D was often painful to write, but as with all writing it helps to know if someone is reading.

I have written other Hellsing stories, but to date they've all been more adult-orientated and so have ended up at the Brothel rather than here. You can find direct links to other sites in my user profile.

Again, thanks so much for reading.

There will not be a sequel to S&D.

Amazing fanart can be found on silverjane's Deviant Art page and LiveJournal.Direct link to it in my user profile. Check it out, she's extremely talented (and I'm extremely flattered) and there are other artworks there as well.