A significant amount of time later, Heinkel stood alone, pausing along the path of a quiet stroll through the shadows.

It was done, and she'd managed to find herself alone for the first time since. That hadn't been easy, but she'd done it all the same. It was night out, colder than she had been expecting. She had come to Trafalgar Square, or at least what was left of it. They still hadn't quite managed to finish sweeping up the ashes or pick up all the rubble. Nor were they done clearing away the charred-black skeleton of the monster dirigible that had rained hell upon the city for one horrible, never-ending night.

Heinkel shifted her weight to her new leg, and flexed the fingers of her new hand, and tried as hard as she could to remember if that was what it was actually supposed to feel like. Absent-mindedly, she touched the bandages wrapped around her neck and encircling her cheeks; the frayed ends drifted lazily in the evening breeze. She wasn't sure why she'd kept them. She didn't need them, of course, and she wasn't very self-conscious of the massive scars on either side of her face from where the bullet had passed through her mouth. She simply felt incomplete without them, as though they were part of her identity now.

Something to remember it all by, perhaps.

Heinkel looked up. Something red flashed in front of the stars, and then there were two shadows, standing next to each other in the moonlight.

"How does it feel?" Seras asked.

"Cold."

The vampire nodded. "Yes," she said. "Yes, it does."

They stood in silence for a while, watching the quiet ruins. Remembering when they were lit by flames and the sky was shrouded in thick, blood-and-fat-clogged smoke.

"So," Heinkel said, finally. "How long until we have to start trying to kill each other?"

"We don't," Seras said, firmly. "Not ever. That's why I wanted to talk to you, after . . . after it was done."

Heinkel looked doubtful. "Oh? You want to talk peace between Hellsing and Iscariot? You think that we can be friends with each other and end generations of warfare just like that? Just because we were friends for a week?"

Seras frowned. "No," she said. "Not peace between the organizations. That's never going to happen. I'm not stupid, Heinkel. I'm . . . " she hesitated, and seemed to falter for a moment. "I – I'm not stupid, alright?"

"I never said you were," Heinkel said. She felt concerned, suddenly.

"Well, no, of course you didn't. Nobody says it, but almost everybody thinks it. And that's what I know without having to read people's minds, which, for your information, I'm getting the hang of doing a lot faster than anybody thinks I am." Seras scowled. "It's ridiculous. Everybody looks at me, they see a silly girl who doesn't know how to be a proper soldier, and in two seconds they decide I'm a moron. It's not my fault, is it? It's not my fault I'm a copper, not a soldier. It's not my fault that it maybe takes a while to wrap my head around the idea of eating blood, nothing but blood, for the rest of my damned unnatural life! It's not my fault, and it doesn't make me stupid."

Heinkel took a step towards the other woman. "Seras – "

"And it's not my fault that I got thrown into the middle of a war I never wanted, either. But you know what? I think I did all right for all of that. Even now, nobody except Sir Integra takes me seriously. They still think I'm just a silly girl who doesn't understand anything." Seras stomped angrily along the length of the toppled ruins of Lord Nelson's column. "But I fought. I didn't have to, but I did. And I did more by myself than any one of the bloody stupid proper soldiers out there!"

"Seras – "

The vampire began counting off of her fingers. "I shot down missiles, by myself. I stood in the ranks of the enemy and I cut them down, like it was nothing, by myself. I fought a werewolf! A bloody werewolf! With both of my arms off!"

Seras huffed, and spun around on her heel. Her hands were balled up into angry fists. "When nobody else could even touch him," she growled, "I shot that bloody psychotic Major in the face! With a flak cannon! And I killed two bloody dirigibles! On my bloody lonesome self! One when it was trying to crash on top of me! The second from the inside, with my bare hands!"

Seras leapt atop a pile of rubble and pointed to the massive, burnt-out dirigible carcass that still dominated the square. "I! Did! That!" she shouted, breathing heavily, teeth clenched in a furious grimace.

"Seras, please." Heinkel took the other woman by the shoulder. It felt like an unusual gesture to her, but somehow she knew it was what she was supposed to do. "Seras, you're not stupid. You're . . . " she faltered, hardly able to believe what she was about to say. "You're my friend, Seras."

Seras turned, and looked at her, and it only took a moment for her face to soften. "Thank you," she whispered, quietly. "It's been a long time since anybody told me that and meant it." She hopped back down to level ground, dragging Heinkel along with her.

" . . . Which actually brings me back to my original point," Seras said. "Think about it. Let's say we take it as a given that Hellsing and Iscariot are going to be threatening to destroy each other until Armageddon. What have they got toactually back those threats up with, besides a bunch of flimsy human soldiers who are really only there for show?"

"Um," Heinkel said, realization slowly creeping over her. "You and me."

"Exactly," Seras said. She grinned a huge, friendly, pointy grin. "If we put on enough of an act, then the higher-ups can yell at each other all they want and never get anywhere with it. Mutually assured destruction, except that in this case the nukes are friends with each other. Meanwhile, we'll be getting real work done – and working together, we'll probably get more done than either of our organizations has ever managed in the past."

Heinkel rubbed her jaw, thoughtfully. "And when, exactly, were you planning to enact this plan?"

"The next time Hellsing and Iscariot meet. It shouldn't be long, considering the state the nation is in right now." Seras took a step back, flexing her left arm and letting her wing grow out of the swirling shadow. "I'll give you until then to think it over, all right? Please, take me seriously on this. I want this to work – I want to be your friend, Heinkel."

Before Heinkel could say anything, Seras jumped into the air, and then she was off, streaking away across the night sky.

Heinkel stood in the ruins of London, alone again, and thought. She didn't have to think for very long.

It was a tent.

The space wasn't particularly small, as far as tents went, but what with the impromptu maps strung up from corner to corner, mounds of overflowing manila folders, and the sheer number of soldiers coldly glaring at each other from opposite sides of the extra-long card table, it actually felt absurdly cramped. There was a projector set up on one end of the table, clumsily, propped up by books and displaying a crooked image on a screen made out of half a dozen sheets of A4 paper scotch taped together. Plastic thermoses of tea stood haphazardly on every available flat surface not taken up by something else. Someone, somewhere, was taking minutes, by hand, with a ballpoint pen, on a faded legal pad.

. . . The resistance, four months later. They were actually doing quite well, all things considered.

The only problem was that most of them hadn't actually expected a serious threat so soon after watching all of London burn. It was just the sort of thing everyone tacitly expected to get a little breathing room from afterwards.

Unfortunately, this was not to be the case. Hence, the hastily called meetings. Hence, the improvised war room, which was actually a largish tent on the lawn of Hellsing manor, still under reconstruction. Hence, the very, very, very shaky bit of cooperation between two of the most bitterly rivaled monster-hunting organizations in the nation.

Not that that really meant anything, considering how many other monster-hunting organizations there were in Great Britain.

. . . Heinkel frowned.

She was making jokes again, wasn't she?

She was standing, as comfortably as one could, and doing her best to look very threatening towards the group assembled on the other side. Her heart wasn't really in it, though, mainly because it had been two hours since the last time she'd been given the chance to sit down, and it showed. She was standing, protectively, at the shoulder of Iscariot's new leader, who if nothing else was very good at looking smug and confident.

Across from him, newly eyepatched and looking even more intimidating than usual, was Sir Integral. She was shouting something, but it probably wasn't particularly important. Seras was seated next to her, drumming her fingers quietly on the table and looking profoundly bored with the entire affair. She was back in uniform, now, though it was slightly different than what Heinkel remembered – Seras had, it seemed, finally managed to successfully petition for a pair of trousers and a proper flak jacket.

Heinkel sensed a note of relevancy entering the conversation. She turned an ear to Sir Integral's fuming half of the discussion.

"No, of course we can't send in our reserve soldiers," the knight said, icily. "They've taken over the entire military camp. That means they've got all of the camp's weaponry at their disposal, not to mention who-knows-how-many troops of newly-turned ghouls to work with. We'd be torn to shreds, even if we sent all of our soldiers and all of yours combined."

Iscariot's leader considered her words seriously. "That may be the case," he said, after a moment, "but how certain are we that the vampires know how to use the weapons they've acquired? You of all people should know that it's a little more complicated than just picking up a gun and pulling the trigger."

"As far as we can tell, the vampires we're dealing with are stragglers from the London attacks," Sir Integral snapped. "So I'm fairly certain they know what they're doing when it comes to guns, even if they are British-make."

"Well," Iscariot's leader said, sitting back in his chair. "That does present a conundrum, doesn't it? An entire military base taken over and controlled by vampires, which we can't break into because of our pitifully low troop headcount. It's embarrassing, really. You'd think there was something that could be done. I expected better of the woman who claims to be the best vampire hunter in the country."

"You insolent . . . !" Integral began, and then the shouting resumed, and Heinkel tuned out again. This was going nowhere in a hurry, and from the looks of things, they weren't going to be getting anywhere else anytime soon.

Her eyes wandered to the vampire sitting on the opposite side of the table, and Heinkel was startled to see that Seras was looking straight at her. There was an earnest look in the girl's eyes, and Heinkel was only a little bit surprised at how easily she managed to read it.

Now or never, Seras' expression said. And it has to be you.

Well. This was it, it would seem.

Heinkel hesitated, and agonized over the decision she had to make. It was only for a moment, though; hard as it was for her to admit, she'd already made her choice ages ago.

As politely and discreetly as she could, Heinkel cleared her throat. Almost immediately, the shouting stopped, and every eye in the tent turned towards the cassock-clad woman.

Heinkel took a breath. "What if," she said, speaking slowly and choosing her words carefully, "you only sent one soldier?"

Sir Integral raised an eyebrow. "One soldier," she said, flatly, with far less incredulity than Heinkel had been expecting.

"Yes. One soldier. Wearing a really big backpack."

It took a moment for everyone in the tent to realize what she meant. Once they had, the shouting resumed again, twice as loud as before. Within moments, Sir Integral was on her feet, pounding on the table in a frantic attempt to restore some semblance of order.

"Quiet!" She bellowed, and when the tent finally did feel silent: "It'll work."

"Ridiculous!" Iscariot's leader shouted. "It's – "

"It's been done. And it works. One vampire and one . . . gifted human. Airdropped in over the enemy camp. Too small to be fought properly, too powerful to be repelled. My organization – " Integral offered a withering glare to the Vatican side of the table " – has managed to successfully pull off an operation like that before. I don't see why it can't be done again."

"Why it can't be done again is because in this case the agents in question would spend more time trying to kill each other than the enemy!"

"Well, actually – " All eyes turned. It was Seras, speaking for the first time. "If it's this important," she said, looking calculatedly bored, "I think that I might be able to reign in my urge to kill the filthy priest, there, at least for an hour or two."

"Oh?" If Sir Integral was suspicious, she hid it well. She turned and looked directly at Heinkel. "And what about you?"

"What? Oh, um . . . " Heinkel tried to put on a menacing tone of voice. "That's right. I won't hurt your monster while we fight off the scum inside that camp. But, um, after that, you can be sure I'll do whatever it takes to slaughter you all!"

Sir Integral snorted, nostrils smoldering with the smoke from her cigarillo. "Well then," she said. "It would seem that we've reached an agreement."

Two hours later, Heinkel Wolfe was in the back of the smallest, fastest cargo plane available, feeling slightly bored and sitting on top of a six foot long and vaguely coffin-shaped backpack.

"You know," she said, to nobody apparent, "I think they actually bought it back there."

"Well of course they bought it," the backpack said. "Now be quiet. I'm trying to take a nap."

"A nap? You don't plan on being asleep when we get there, do you?"

"Maybe. It'll be cool, trust me. I've got machine guns and everything in here, which, I will tell you, isn't comfortable in the least. Which is why I need quiet if I'm going to get any sleep at all. Just give me a knock on the lid when we get there and I'll be good to go, promise."

Heinkel shrugged. "Fine, whatever you say." She sighed, and went back to twiddling her thumbs. She couldn't help but wonder if this was actually going to work – would they be able to keep up such a ridiculous farce? And would it even be worth it?

She looked down. There were faint snores coming from the backpack beneath her.

. . . Yes, Heinkel decided. Yes, it would work, and yes, it was worth it.

For a friend, it was worth it.

* THE END *