1944, an airplane in the night skies over Europe
"It's over, Count."
He's lying on his back in the dirt, the soil of his native land. This, in itself, is not unusual. What is unusual is the fact that he feels next to nothing.
Not the earth....not the air...not the gypsies...not his wolves...not his brides.
Not her.
Only the stake that pierces his heart and the blood that runs, weak and useless, down his cheeks.
The man standing over him speaks again.
"It's over. You've lost."
He shakes his head in denial and the man, the human, lunges forward and hauls him up.
"You. Have. Lost," the man shouts in his face, shaking him to punctuate each word "Your castle has fallen. Your creatures are dead. Your mark has disappeared from her brow. You have nothing left."
...nothing left...
Alucard's eyes flicked open. He touched his cheek and drew his hand away once more, staring at the red smears on his finger tips.
"Ridiculous," he muttered, glancing quickly over at Walter who slept nearby. The young man's cheek and jaw were still swollen. The Polish military hospital had been a joke. Arthur's doctors would see to him.
The aircraft's engines hummed in his ears and Alucard felt a twinge run the course of his body; they'd soon be crossing water. Alucard grimaced. He had never traveled well. He cast one more look at Walter's sleeping form, and in the blink of an eye, he changed his own shape into that of a large black wolf.
He eased himself up onto Walter's makeshift bed and prepared to cross the water.
The droning engines, injury, and exhaustion had lulled Walter into a dreamless sleep. One that was welcome after days of renewed nightmares about his experiences during the possession.
He woke when he shifted in his sleep, jarring the broken bones in his cheek, then opened his eyes with a naked groan, one unfiltered through the masks of wakefulness.
For a few hazy moments, he couldn't even hear the persistent noise from the engines, and the furry body that provided the warmth of a blanket without generating its own was Pup. In a moment, his eyes would focus, his pet would greet him with a face lick, and another day at Fandom High would begin.
Then the pain asserted itself, radiating out from the broken bones where the werewolf had hit him, the noise of the airplane crashed in on him, and the eye that could focus, did, telling him quite clearly that he wasn't sleeping with Pup.
"Alu-" the word rasped in his bruised throat and he stopped to find his voice before trying again. "What are you doing?"
Alucard raised his head and gave Walter a look that plainly said, 'Isn't it obvious what I'm doing? Now, go back to sleep so that I may continue doing it.'
He lowered his head once more and made a small sound of displeasure. How completely like Arthur to bestow new power after new power but never think to remove any of the old weaknesses.
Walter made his own sound of displeasure and narrowed his eyes, only to hold back a wince. The last thing he wanted was to show any more weakness in front of the vampire.
He rolled away from the monster masquerading as a man masquerading as a wolf and closed his eyes again, trying to slip back under the blanket of sleep that would mask the grinding ache in his face.
Alucard noted the wince, but made no comment. The werewolf had managed to kick a hole straight through his guts, after all. He could make allowances.
He'd had just enough sleep to make unconsciousness taunt him without embracing him. He lay quietly on the cot, trying to sleep before finally rolling over to look at the wolf lying next to him.
Alucard sensed Walter's eyes on him but remained as he was, eyes closed, massive, furry head resting atop his paws.
I should want to see him suffer he reflected Why don't I?
Walter watched the wolf and realized that he was just about ready to murder for a cigarette in no euphemistic terms.
This trip just kept getting better and better.
"Wake me when we're there," he said thickly and closed his eyes, determined not to open them again until they were home.
You always brag about being a light sleeper, Angel, whispered Alucard into Walter's mind Wake yourself.
Walter opened his eyes long enough to give Alucard a dirty look then closed them again.
"Stay out of my head."
Alucard sensed, but did not see the look.
I am barely brushing your conscious mind, Angel. As you well know. Surely, you recall what it is to *truly* have me 'in your head'.
Walter sighed in irritation. "You could change back and talk to me in a more normal manner."
I could, conceded Alucard.
And, he did. One moment, a wolf was curled up upon the bed near Walter. The next, a young man sat there, gazing down at him. He appeared to be not many years older than Walter with longish black hair, pale skin, and dark red eyes.
"Is this better, Angel?"
That depends. Although Walter worked to keep that thought to himself.
Why did he always have to be so damned beautiful?
He cast about for an answer and settled for, "Thank you."
Alucard inclined his head.
"You wish to converse?" he said, speaking in a mildly surprised tone.
Walter shifted to sit up, bracing himself against the myriad aches that moving woke.
"It's more that I wish you to stop speaking in my mind." His words came with less than their usual precise enunciation, but that was forgivable, all things considered.
Alucard looked at Walter. His gaze was lingering and intense as though he was trying to both memorize and decipher the other man's expression.
"You do not trust me."
It was not a question.
"You locked me in a room with that werewolf," Walter pointed out.
"I got you out again. And carted you to the nearest Allied hospital. If that institution can actually be called such."
Alucard stood from the bed and moved over towards his coffin, stroking his fingers over the varnished wood.
"But, that is not the point. You have exhibited discomfort in my presence since before we departed for the front."
"How would you know? You were in that box." Walter shot the coffin a less than friendly look.
Alucard shrugged, keeping his back to Walter.
"Simply because I was unable to leave my coffin does not mean that I was oblivious. I awoke every night, as usual, and you know that I can stretch my senses to beyond my immediate surroundings. You kept yourself as far away from me as was seemly."
Delicately, with one long finger, he traced the letters engraved in the coffin's lid.
Bird of Hermes...
"Besides, you made yourself perfectly clear when I greeted you upon your arrival."
"You were reading my thoughts," Walter said, watching Alucard's every movement. He could tell himself it was because he shouldn't look away from a vampire, but that disingenuous and he knew it.
"I have had some traumatic experiences since I last saw you. I prefer to keep my mind my own."
...is my name...
Alucard's fingers continued their tracing.
"I have heard nothing of you in four months. Are these experiences also why you are so loath to be in my presence?"
"I am not loath to be in your presence. After we last spoke..." he started to shrug then thought better of it. No facial expressions, no gestures. What fun.
"But no, my experiences made me value being alone in my own head."
"I see."
"I'd be surprised if you did," Walter said, still watching Alucard, despite being unable to read anything from a view of his back.
"At least not without my telling you what happened."
Alucard turned to face Walter then and stood watching him with unearthly stillness.
"You understand the nature of my bonds to Hellsing," he said, "The restrictions which are placed upon me. I may not know the details of what occurred, buy, yes, Angel, I can understand the desire to have one's mind to one's self."
Walter restricted his response to a nod that made him think better of even that much demonstrativeness.
"I see the parallel." And Alucard had endured half a century of it.
The thought made him ache, even if he couldn't fault Abraham or Arthur for what they did.
"Do you wish to enlighten me as to your experience?"
No.
Yes.
I don't bloody know.
"I brought a curse upon myself and a friend of mine that resulted in our being possessed by a fairy in her case - not a nice one, I should add - and a vampire in my case. It was complete enough that my body, for that time, was that of a vampire."
He kept his attention fixed on Alucard during this. "I was mostly a passenger in my own body while he used it for his own pleasures."
He paused before finishing, "And he claimed to be me, from my future."
Alucard seated himself upon his coffin, not taking his eyes from Walter.
"Do you believe him?"
Walter considered his answer carefully in light of what they'd seen in Poland.
"No and yes," he finally replied. "I do not believe that he is me from my future. But I believe that he could be a me from another parallel reality. He did not know some things that are important to me, but he did know Hellsing, he recognized Pup's significance, and he could use the wires, which some random vampire would not have been able to do."
"So...he is not you so much as a possibility of you?"
"Yes. I think that's a way to put it. But he was an ass. Someone I never want to be."
Alucard's quietly spoken words were somehow audible above the engine's drone.
"Then don't be him."
"I don't intend to be. Ever," Walter said firmly.
"I can't become a vampire the 'natural' way." He said the word natural with a bit of an eye roll.
"And we destroyed the Nazis who would create fakes..." but he couldn't keep the doubt out of his voice.
"You are uncertain as to the success of our mission? You do not believe all targets to have been destroyed?"
"I don't know," Walter admitted. "I saw the fat man, the man with the strange glasses, and the werewolf at school. But I can't know when they were from. It seemed as though we destroyed them and everything there..." But he just couldn't be certain.
"At school?"
Alucard's eyes may have glowed slightly at that.
"That is...interesting. I agree that it seemed as though we destroyed them all. However, with Arthur's latest experiment, I can not say with absolute certainty that that is true."
Walter refrained from frowning. "Something about the experiment makes you doubt? Can you say what?"
"Each experiment, on some level, changes what I am. And, after each change, I must relearn how to exist-- how to use my abilities. I do not believe that Arthur allotted me enough time before sending us out on this mission. I could not entirely trust my perception..."
Hence the mongrel's being able to kick straight through his guts...
"So we do not know for sure. Despite the facility's utter destruction and our killing every living thing we could find..." He closed his eyes.
"We cannot be certain."
"Correct, Angel."
"Then Hellsing will have to be vigilant, be prepared." Walter hated this questionable success. "More vigilant. Better prepared."
Was what happened in 1999 his fault? Seelowe II? Because of his failure in 1944?
And the Nazis in the park in Fandom?
All his fault...
"And if they rise again. We will kill them all."
Alucard's eyes glowed briefly in the darkness.
"Yes. Purge the world of their filth."
His lips curled into enough of a smile to allow a glimpse of fang.
"Hellsing's Trash Collectors..."
Walter gave Alucard a half smile, one corner of his mouth twitching up as he met the vampire's eyes.
"We do it so well together."
Alucard was still a moment. Then, he inclined his head and returned the smile.
"The seasoned hunter and the gifted rookie. A fitting team, indeed."
A fitting team.
Walter slowly bent his head in agreement. Because when it came down to it, when he was done in school, the vampire in front of him was who he'd have.
"I may still be annoyed with you for locking me in with the werewolf, but you're the only one who would have enough faith in my abilities to do it."
He cocked his head slightly. "Unless you were trying to get me killed."
"Is that what you suspected?"
"I prefer to believe that it was faith in my abilities and that you would not choose such a manner to rid yourself of me."
Not that the other thought hadn't crossed his mind...
"It was you who rid yourself of me, Angel."
Walter narrowed his eye and bent his head a bit more, enough to allow his hair to fall in front of his face and hide the bruising and swelling there.
"I..." How did he respond to that? "...have had occasion to regret that decision."
"Have you?"
Walter nodded, a bare movement of his head. "Yes."
"Why have you decided to confess this to me?"
I don't know.
"Because that is where the conversation went." He shifted positions and stretched his legs. "But nothing more need be said of it."
Alucard's fingers had returned to stroking the sleek finish of his coffin.
"If that is what you wish...Walter."
Walter. Not Angel. "I don't know what I wish, Alucard. "I've spent the past few days thinking of little but."
Well, that and anticipating getting out to do his job.
"What do you wish?"
Alucard was silent for a few long moments.
Then he shrugged and rose.
"I wish that Arthur had not sent you away to school. But, like most wishes, it is a foolish and impotent thing. For, he has."
"Yes."
He drew a slow breath. "But we will work together again, and I wish- I want to have this behind us. Will you take my phone calls if I call you from school?"
"What exactly do you mean by 'this'?"
"This feeling that there are land mines in our conversation. This time where I don't know how to act with you."
Alucard turned to face Walter. His eyes had begun to glow once more.
"I'm confused, Walter. Is it that you wish me to behave as though we were never lovers? Or that I should pretend that you did not break with me with in less than two months of your leaving? Or both?"
"No. Neither." He closed his eyes, a flash of memory tightening his expression.
"I was going to die, and I wanted to see you." His lips quirked into that one-sided half-smile again. "A lot of it was because I really didn't want to die.
"But not all of it."
Alucard remained silent, waiting for Walter to continue.
"Part of it was that I really wanted to see you before I died." And that had been somewhat eye-opening in regards to Nadia and his priorities.
"So, I don't wish to pretend we weren't lovers or that I didn't break with you," he said carefully. "But I don't want you to be just someone I have to tolerate working with on occasion."
Alucard gave a humorless laugh.
"And what would you wish me to be, Walter? Your distraction? Your secret? Your dear and obliging friend?"
The pain when Walter swallowed was not solely because of the fact that the werewolf had nearly choked the life out of him.
"My wish is, as you said, a foolish and impotent thing. I apologize if I have insulted you with my request."
Alucard remained still, regarding Walter for a few endless moments.
"You apologize?"
"Yes," Walter answered slowly, feeling another land mine just underfoot.
Alucard moved forward and stooped to place a slow, deliberate kiss on Walter's right cheek and then on his left. The gesture, performed with surprising care, was at once lordly and intimate.
"I forgive you."
Walter resisted the urge to flinch from the kiss to his injured left cheek and regarded Alucard steadily. He had no idea what Alucard was forgiving him for, just the request? Something more?
Given he'd never expected to feel Alucard's lips on his skin again, he kept his response to a simple, "Thank you."
Alucard paused for a heartbeat before withdrawing and returning to sit on his coffin.
"Why do you wish me to take your telephone calls?"
"Because I..." ...miss you. ...want to hear your voice. "...value your perspective, and no one at school can give me anything close to it."
He remonstrated himself against cowardice and told a bit more of the truth. "And because I have missed talking with you."
Alucard's lips twitched.
"Because you so value my perspective?"
Not getting off so easily. What a surprise. But not.
"Sometimes," he said quietly, counting on Alucard's hearing to catch his words over the engines. "Sometimes just because I miss you."
"Ah..."
Alucard inclined his head.
"A heated quilt truly is a poor substitute," he conceded.
Walter's lips twitched again, reminded as he was of the postcard that Alucard had sent not long after he had arrived in Fandom.
"By 2006 they still have not found an adequate substitute for a loved one in one's bed."
Alucard considered and discarded half a dozen or so barbed comments.
"I see."
That said it all, really.
That? Was the sound of his foot hitting another of those land mines.
Walter closed his eyes and kicked himself before reopening them. He wasn't afraid of anything.
Right. He'd learned otherwise with a pair of huge hands wrapped around his throat.
But he refused to be afraid of the truth.
"I made a mistake. I made the wrong choice, and because of that, hurt two people I didn't want to hurt."
"Why?"
Why? Go right to the easy questions, why don't you?
"I thought that it would be enough if Victor loved me. And I thought you couldn't. And I thought that what I felt for him was love. And it wasn't."
He shook his head, just a fraction. "And even if I had, I would have hurt him more and more with time because he couldn't accept all of what I am."
"You did not believe I could love you? Had I ever behaved in a manner that suggested I could not? I gave you my trust, one of the few things left to me to bestow. I knew you. All of you. And, I never once judged you. I did more than 'accept' your lust for the kill. I embraced it along with you."
When what he wanted more than anything was to look away, Walter kept his gaze steady on Alucard. All his usual defenses were stripped from him, the firm jaw, the frown, the stoicism.
He was tired, he was hurt, and he had been wrong.
He had nothing in the face of that.
"I was wrong. I can't change that, and saying I'm sorry isn't at all good enough."
"You're right, Walter. The past can not be changed."
Alucard uttered another humorless laugh.
"Were it my habit to utter cliches, I would say that I must be cursed in these matters."
Now Walter closed his eyes in a long blink before he opened them again.
"I'm sorry."
Yes, he'd just said that wasn't at all good enough.
"You keep saying that."
Alucard kept his eyes on Walter's face.
"But, you've always been a creature of action, Walter. What do you intend to do about it?"
"I don't know." Walter shifted to try to find a more comfortable position. "I think I have to start by asking you if there is anything I can do."
"You said earlier that you had spent the past few days trying to decide what it was that you wished. Ask me that question again, once you have."
He wanted to tell Alucard that what he wanted was him - to make things right somehow and go back to what they had, but he couldn't. It seemed to him, in retrospect, that what he wanted was to be with who he was with at the time.
Would he still want Alucard when he was back in Fandom?
To be fair to Alucard and to Nadia and to himself, he needed to answer that question first.
"I will. Will you take my calls until I can?"
"I will."
Alucard laughed once more, and this time the sound was more genuinely amused.
"Though, whatever will you talk to me about?"
"Last weekend I helped destroy a demon," Walter offered. "I was possessed. I have learned about people from other worlds and other times. I have seen Nazis in Fandom's park."
Wincing, he scooted back down on the cot. "I doubt you want to hear about the details of my training with Alfred or my roommate's cat, but I think I will have stories that will interest even you."
And we'll be speaking again.
Alucard watched Walter settle down into the cot once more. He could hear Walter's breathing and his heartbeat, sense the living blood flowing through his veins.
You have nothing left...
"Very well."
"Thank you."
He settled onto his right side and closed his eyes. "If you wished to take your other form and join me again, I would not object."
Alucard cast a glance over at his coffin, his last domain...
They had crossed the water, and the after effects of Arthur's experiment were almost mended.
He made his way over to the cot and settled down, facing Walter, studying the lines of his face and feeling the other man's warm breath against his own cool skin.
"Let me know if your dreams become too troublesome," he said in a voice not much more than a whisper before shifting back into the shape of a wolf.
Walter lay next to the wolf for a moment before draping an arm over the furry body.
"Thank you."
He wasn't sure whether he'd sleep or brood think. Maybe one then the other.
[ooc: NFB due to distance. Preplayed with union_jane who is all kinds of cool for helping me drive my boy just a little crazier. Peanut gallery is open; interaction, silly rabbit, is not.]