(Untitled)

[alucloset]

Who: Alucard (alucloset) and Integra Fairbrook Wingates Hellsing (integrability)
What: Christmas presents! and a chat.
When: Christmas day~
Where: Integra's room
Rating: A+! Or.... should be PG, PG-13.

Comments

[integrability]

Integra did not much go in for the sentimentality of Christmas now she was a grown woman. She respected it as the birth of Christ, and attended church on the day, but gifts were usually limited to time off for her subordinates and perhaps a nice bottle of port, or a new waistcoat for Walter.

But here Christmas was so different, just another reminder that she had failed to free herself already. It was frustrating and infuriating, hampered all the more by Alucard's recalcitrance in so many matters.

When the knock came, she had been finishing her evening meal and was not expecting company. Still, it would be impolite to ignore it.

"Come in."

[alucloset]

On the matter of Christmas, Alucard himself happened to be remarkably close-mouthed. Privately, he enjoyed the whole mess the holiday had evolved into. Tacky and grating and superficial as it was, it reflected a current of humanity that didn't often otherwise show itself. It also meant, generally, that even he got some time off, which was great fun.

When there were children in the Hellsing manse, his masters often entrusted him with the great task of playing 'Santa'. What fun! What astonishing amusement he gained from such a childish thing! (He wondered if he'd done a similar task for Integra, and forgotten, but then recalled the time periods. No, no. He would have still been locked away, wouldn't he?)

At the permission, Alucard simply drifted through the door, calling out a warmer-sounding welcome than he'd intended. (Sentimentality, he chided himself, was not useful in facing women like this.) His eyebrow rose at the sight of his master finishing a meal by herself. "No company for the holidays, Integra?"

[integrability]

Placing her cutlery on the plate neatly, she pushed the dish to one side and turned to better face him. His presence both soothed and irritated, as it always had, a fascinating creature who would she had imagined would always be standing at her side.

"Even the birth of our saviour is not an event to be overly celebrated, if it comes at the price of spending it in captivity."

[alucloset]

Alucard was privately wondering how the hell this girl was Arthur's child. The fruit, in this case, seemed to have been stolen and shipped half a world away from the tree. "Well," he said, measuring her tone as best he could, "I suppose nothing too good does come of excess."

He eyeballed her plate. Perhaps the dinner hadn't been so good, if she was still sour over the whole thing.

[integrability]

"Excess is hardly the problem here, Alucard."

Folding her hands into her lap, a habit she had carried over from childhood when she wanted to appear calm and needed to keep her hands still, she sighed slightly.

"Does it not chafe you to be imprisoned here?"

[alucloset]

He laughed rather darkly at her question before he could help himself, shoving his hands in his pockets and gliding to stand somewhere behind her. "Chafe? To be imprisoned? Why, my master, what a strange question that is indeed."

He grinned to himself somewhat ruefully.

[integrability]

"There are different levels of imprisonment, my servant."

Surely he could not blithely accept this other world...

[alucloset]

To be lectured on the nature, and levels, of imprisonment, in his circumstances, might have irritated a lesser man. Alucard just laughed- the serious type, this kind. All the better to prickle and taunt, to drive into passionate furies so she'd let the leash slip, if even for a second.

"Even so, I'm rather enjoying myself here. It's a tidy little horror of a retirement home, isn't it?" In truth, the issue of his thoughts on the castle were far more complicated than that. But he wasn't here to spill his heart to her, so he continued this amusing ruse.

[integrability]

The thought of Alucard enjoying himself here was such an incongruous one, that she simply stared at him a moment.

"Regardless of your enjoyment," She said eventually, raising an eyebrow. "We will be returning to our world as soon as possible."

[alucloset]

He grinned boyishly at her. What more could he ask for than to be stared at like that all the time? It was good fun, and he could swear he heard her blood pressure skyrocketing.

"Mmm, yes. I suppose that's good enough. The rosebushes might be getting lonely without me to keep them company." Another good-natured grin. He had no idea whose rosebushes he slept under at the manse, but he remembered being distinctly pleased by their very existence. Grand as the bushes here were, they were no match for those towering cruel briars of the Hellsing family.

[integrability]

She had no idea what was going on through her servant's mind sometimes, he seemed to be acting contrary for the sake of it.

"You will return because our duty lies in England, not for frivolous reasons."

[alucloset]

Well... yeah.

"Oho? Does it? I think it's rather more that your duty lies there. After all, now that all is said, all is done, what use is there for an old warhead such as I?"

[integrability]

"Your duty is whatever I, or the Hellsing estate, commands it to be."

That is something he will not be allowed to forget again. He is her servant, not a free creature.

[alucloset]

He looked at her askance.

"No wonder you dine alone." And, with that, he flicked the parcel in his pocket onto the table. He sort of regretted the gift already.

[integrability]

Looking down at the present, she ignored his childish outburst and merely stood to retrieve a neatly wrapped present to pass to him in turn.

[alucloset]

He accepted the thing without comment, turning the parcel around in his hands. How odd. How very odd.

"Wrap it yourself?"