Servants Quarters, front porch, the wee hours of Friday morning
Not sleeping was getting old. It was getting very old.
Walter had snagged a couple of catnaps since Monday, but that was it. He'd been glad of the distraction that had come from doing things like being "it" in Nadia's running game in SERF, but when the distractions were gone, he was left with his thoughts.
Those who knew him, knew he brooded extremely well.
So, he was on the front porch, smoking and brooding thinking.
What the brooding came down to was the fact that he needed to be two people at once if he was going to be able to satisfy the two people he loved. Or was it three people? Did Vlad count as two people when Alucard was waiting for him in 1947?
When it came down to it, Nadia gave him something Vlad couldn't - her very human self. Not "normal" perhaps, but human and smart and funny and beautiful and occasionally nicely ruthless and whether it spoke good or ill of him, he thrived when he was with her and when he could take care of her.
The dream of a future in which they were together and had found a way to balance both their lives enough to have Bailey warmed him.
At the same time, there was Vlad. And Alucard. To have a future with Nadia in which that happened, was to abandon Alucard and Hellsing in the past and Vlad in this present. Vlad had more than fifty more years of memories of the two of them together, and without those? How could he leave Alucard with nothing? He had nothing. Everything he was belonged to Hellsing.
Walter usually respected Arthur and he believed in Hellsing's mission with all his heart, but his treatment of Alucard was that of an owner.
After a fashion, he reconciled that as Alucard's prison term for past crimes. If he figured it properly, Vlad had served more than a hundred year sentence and now he was free.
So, Nadia, whom he loved in all her human frailty and destiny-touched madness and compassion and humor and beauty.
And Alucard, whom he loved in all his inhuman madness and bloodthirstiness and intelligence and humor and beauty.
And Vlad, whom he loved for all the same reasons and who was free and who had waited seven years to steal just a little more time with him.
He wanted to be Bailey's father and Alucard's companion during his servitude and Vlad's companion in a long and empty freedom.
And somewhere he'd chosen at least two of those things, hadn't/wouldn't he? Bailey existed, so he chose Nadia. Vlad remembered half a century of the two of them together, so he'd chosen Alucard and Hellsing. If he'd chosen two things, why couldn't he figure out a third?
And how did the first two choices work?
The same way he'd been Brian Slade?
Add that in. Somewhere, he was a 70s glam pop star.
And somewhere he'd died in the Blitz. And somewhere he'd burned out and died when his metabolism had eaten him alive? And somewhere else he'd probably been killed by a vampire in his first foray into the world of vampire hunting.
He sensed an answer in there. Maybe he didn't need to sit back and say, "Somewhere I'm Bailey's father." Maybe he needed to make it happen....
By the same token, maybe he didn't need to feel so helpless about Alucard and Vlad.
Maybe...
Maybe he didn't have to leave his lover alone in the past or the future....
[ooc: Establishy, but it's a public place.]
Walter had snagged a couple of catnaps since Monday, but that was it. He'd been glad of the distraction that had come from doing things like being "it" in Nadia's running game in SERF, but when the distractions were gone, he was left with his thoughts.
Those who knew him, knew he brooded extremely well.
So, he was on the front porch, smoking and brooding thinking.
What the brooding came down to was the fact that he needed to be two people at once if he was going to be able to satisfy the two people he loved. Or was it three people? Did Vlad count as two people when Alucard was waiting for him in 1947?
When it came down to it, Nadia gave him something Vlad couldn't - her very human self. Not "normal" perhaps, but human and smart and funny and beautiful and occasionally nicely ruthless and whether it spoke good or ill of him, he thrived when he was with her and when he could take care of her.
The dream of a future in which they were together and had found a way to balance both their lives enough to have Bailey warmed him.
At the same time, there was Vlad. And Alucard. To have a future with Nadia in which that happened, was to abandon Alucard and Hellsing in the past and Vlad in this present. Vlad had more than fifty more years of memories of the two of them together, and without those? How could he leave Alucard with nothing? He had nothing. Everything he was belonged to Hellsing.
Walter usually respected Arthur and he believed in Hellsing's mission with all his heart, but his treatment of Alucard was that of an owner.
After a fashion, he reconciled that as Alucard's prison term for past crimes. If he figured it properly, Vlad had served more than a hundred year sentence and now he was free.
So, Nadia, whom he loved in all her human frailty and destiny-touched madness and compassion and humor and beauty.
And Alucard, whom he loved in all his inhuman madness and bloodthirstiness and intelligence and humor and beauty.
And Vlad, whom he loved for all the same reasons and who was free and who had waited seven years to steal just a little more time with him.
He wanted to be Bailey's father and Alucard's companion during his servitude and Vlad's companion in a long and empty freedom.
And somewhere he'd chosen at least two of those things, hadn't/wouldn't he? Bailey existed, so he chose Nadia. Vlad remembered half a century of the two of them together, so he'd chosen Alucard and Hellsing. If he'd chosen two things, why couldn't he figure out a third?
And how did the first two choices work?
The same way he'd been Brian Slade?
Add that in. Somewhere, he was a 70s glam pop star.
And somewhere he'd died in the Blitz. And somewhere he'd burned out and died when his metabolism had eaten him alive? And somewhere else he'd probably been killed by a vampire in his first foray into the world of vampire hunting.
He sensed an answer in there. Maybe he didn't need to sit back and say, "Somewhere I'm Bailey's father." Maybe he needed to make it happen....
By the same token, maybe he didn't need to feel so helpless about Alucard and Vlad.
Maybe...
Maybe he didn't have to leave his lover alone in the past or the future....
[ooc: Establishy, but it's a public place.]