Time and Time Again

I looked at him. He had changed again. While I watched him fight through London, he had looked like some sort of warlord in his armor and beard, but this vampire I faced was the Alucard who had served Hellsing under Integral. This was the vampire I had been ordered to attack.

Even after what they did to me, I was not in Alucard’s league. I’m dangerous, but I’m not that dangerous. I heard the Major’s commentary as he watched Alucard and Father Anderson battle. He was throwing me into the fray to harm the vampire in a less physical manner, to damage my former allies’ spirits. See what we have done to your little butler? My presence was to be an attack on Alucard, Integral and Seras without my having to even touch any of them, although I would if I got too close. With my orders and the seals, I was going to do exactly what the Major ordered, no matter what was going on behind my eyes.

And there we were. The best I had been able to do with the orders that the Major had given me to “Find, attack and destroy Alucard, Integral Hellsing and Seras Victoria,” was to attempt to attack Alucard first, using the reasoning that his name came first on the list. That was my piece of rebellion, of keeping my self through the experience. He would destroy me and I would not have an opportunity to harm Integral or Seras. Dying first was the only way to protect them.

I had easily cut my way through his slaves. Between my work and the damage that Father Anderson had wrought before he fell, Alucard lost countless slaves in those minutes during which first he fought the crazed paladin and then I fought my way through to him.

We faced each other with a surging tide of slaves between us. They would flow toward me only to be cut down while I kept my wires as an almost invisible wall of death around myself. It had not been this easy even when I was at the height of my abilities as a human. I admit to a small amount of personal shame that I found a large part of the experience exhilarating.

“Walter.” His voice carried through the sounds of war and came to me perfectly clearly. His doing or my newly-heightened senses? Both, I decided.

I couldn’t read his tone, though. Surprised, yes. Angered, yes. Saddened? Can he really feel sadness? If he can, then I believe he was saddened then.

“Angel, have you fallen so far that you would oppose me and betray your master?”

I told him that I was as free to choose as any other dog on a leash. Talking wasn’t part of my orders, but I was twisting the words in my head. I felt like a djinn from legend, taking the words of a wish and parsing them for my own use. I twisted a bit of freedom to speak with my executioner from those orders, with the reasoning that the Major hadn’t told me to do it immediately. It hurt to force myself to accept that twisting, the seals pushed at me to follow the spirit, rather than the letter, of the orders. My will pushed that much through, that I would follow the orders exactly as given, no more, no less.

Understanding – a bit of it – dawned in his eyes. I watched them flick to my hands. No. No gloves, no sigils on the backs of my hands as with you. I held out my right arm and showed him my symbol of slavery, the bracelet that wrapped around my right wrist and constrained me as he was constrained until released. He had always been aware of what he was doing, but he must do as commanded. So, too, was it for me.

Even though I had spent a lifetime saying no to him. Someone else had forced yes on me. I was what I had always denied him and I belonged to the enemy.

“What do you want from me now, Angel?” His voice was so soft that I knew that he had pitched it just for me. He was so skillful that I could not tell if he had somehow twisted the sound waves to seek my ears only or if he was simply speaking directly into my mind. His lips moved, but there was no way, even as a vampire that those words, spoken so gently and so quietly, should have made it to my ears.

So many times I had told him no because I wanted to die human. That wasn’t going to happen anymore. If I lost my life to my old friend and onetime lover, I wanted to have what I’d always turned down. I smiled. I think it was a good smile, but maybe it was only sad. I told him that I wanted what he had; just as he had asked, so many times, “Do you want what I have to give you?”

I did. He couldn’t give me vampirism any longer. He couldn’t give me his body in the middle of a battlefield. He had no love to give. But he could give me peace. He could kill me and save me from myself and save those I cared about from me.

I said yes.

His servants parted, no longer throwing themselves at me in an attempt to stop me from reaching their master, or more importantly, those he was shielding behind himself. He stepped forward through the open row they had made and stopped outside the boundary my wires had established – the pile of dismembered bodies that circled me like a low wall.

I warned him that even though I had said yes, I would have to fight. It was not my will, but it was what the hooks in my soul demanded. He nodded his understanding and we began to dance.

I made those guns. I built them lovingly. I crafted every piece with my two hands and tested them myself until they were the perfect instruments for Alucard. I had never expected to see them firing at me, but then again, I had never expected to be a vampire fighting Alucard for my death.

He is a deadly marksman, of that there is no doubt, but even as an aging human man I had been insanely swift and deceptively dangerous. I swept the bullets out of the air with my wires and waited for the next volley, stepping aside and allowing them to plow into his slaves that stood behind me.

We stepped through the opening of our engagement until he was out of useless bits of metal to throw at me. I was pleased with myself. I wanted him to kill me, but I wanted him to work for it. We had known each other too long for this to be easy for either of us without it being anticlimactic.

My turn, and I was moving forward through the open space, running at him at full speed with my wires sweeping the path in front of me.

Hellhounds. Sudden leaping doglike hunks of darkness came between me and my target. They were solid enough to do damage, thus solid enough to take damage, and I listened to the abyssal howls as I tore into them. The pieces fell at my feet and puddled and dissipated into wisps of shadow like smoke.

Step. Step. Turn. Advance. Retreat. Step. We danced our dance like the partners we had been for so many years.

I made him bleed. I could smell his blood; out of all the odors of blood and death that filled what had been London, the scent of Alucard’s blood called to me. It stood out from a scent cacophony like a trumpet suddenly sounding out over a background of drums. I had turned it down so many times only to have it calling to me in the moments that would lead to my death.

I followed the lure of his blood. I listened to that siren call and came closer and closer to him. Part of my mind knew that he was letting himself bleed and letting me close and I overrode that concern because one way or another, it would give me what I wanted.

Because the part of me that Millennium had twisted and made a vampire wanted his blood, and the part of me that was still Walter C. Dornez, Hellsing Trashman and faithful retainer just wanted to die before I hurt someone who mattered to me.

And then our dance moved into its final step, the final twist and turn and dip and I was caught in shadows that held me while he leaned over me and whispered, “Do you want what I have to offer?”

Yes.

Compared to my death at Millennium’s hands, my death in Alucard’s was sweet. I had to fight the shadows that held me because that was what the seals compelled me to do, but my mind and my soul were at peace. They were not fighting and when Alucard’s lips brushed over my neck, that same thrilling shiver I remembered from each time he asked me was there.

It didn’t hurt when his teeth closed in my flesh. It was better than anything, ever. Better than sex. Better than my few passing encounters with drugs, better even than the sex spiced with terror I had experienced just once with the vampire who was now killing me. It felt like my reward for being loyal and strong, for doing what I knew was right despite the hold that Millennium had over me.

And then it was over.

The swoon was gone. The compulsion from Millennium was gone.

But so was my body. I could see, but not move, nor control what I looked at, which I realized was my body. My body held in shadows and being lowered to the ground with what felt like respect and care.

Willing blood.

The extent of my calculation in giving myself to Alucard was to keep myself from harming the people I cared about and in doing so, I had bought myself a new form of life. I could feel his amused attention turn to my presence and we shared an easy understanding. I let go of the hold I had in his mind and he pushed me out.

In moments I stood before him, whole and free, or so it feels, at least. My existence may only be that of a fragment of his mind that he allows to roam free and consider itself autonomous, but many people of many religions believe that of themselves and their gods. I just happen to know that it is true.

And so it is. The first time, will always remain the first time, but the last time…? When one is a walking figment of an immortal’s imagination, who can really say what the last time really is?