The Green Lady

Disclaimer: I own nothing related to Hellsing! It's all Kouta Hirano!

If you're noticing any minor changes in the earlier chapters – that's me combing through them for housekeeping. I nitpick at every little error or awkward line. Must fix it! No beta reader, woe is me!

Delayed thanks to the reviewers here! Now that I'm all caught up, I'd like to thank k_l_v, darkeloquence, shadowkittae, Ryah, raistlyn, Algaliarept, and Anonebel for their reviews.

Algaliarept - It's all research done by this humble Southerner! If anyone is a native or secondary speaker of the language, I'm more than happy to throw myself at your mercy for corrections in the Romanian parts.

k_l_v - As to the question about the earlier chapter, 'The Jilted' does indeed refer to Seras. I was angling to play off of the idea of how Alucard always considered Integra his Countess, never his fledgling. Those feelings boiled up later on in the chapter and brought inspiration for the title!

Chapter 8 – The Soother

It was only a twelve hour trip by train to Belgrade. However, it would be two trains following the tracks towards Serbia. One was a decoy with only officials, the other conveying the royal party. It was an old policy borne out of necessity since the day modern transportation came to powerful governments. The Tsar of Russia before the revolution would choose last minute which of his two trains to board in an effort to throw off assassination attempts.

For vampires, it was more of a concern that they would be sleeping during the transit. Seras was sure that Alucard would barely crack an eyelid if his railcar was blown off the tracks, but she was desperate for a few hours of uninterrupted peace after the long night. Another worry was the increase in terrorist activity, but the spontaneity of the plan to travel by train was so sudden enough to suggest that nearby cells would have no time to plan an attack.

There was a steward directing the flow of passengers, passengers either associated with the Romanian government or Serbia's. The lucky few that managed to rank high enough to snag suites were high-tailing it to their appointed railcars in fear of being reassigned to a simpler cabin with only upright accommodations.

As the rulers, they were allotted their own private coach. What irked Seras is that there was only one bed in the cramped compartments, and Alucard's coffin was apparently buried deep in the baggage car.

Noor and Gavrail had their coffins wheeled into their own compartment in the front of the train for their rest, bidding both her and Alucard a good night. The first fingers of dawn were beginning to edge under the shades pulled along the windowed passageway of the car. Seras turned on her heel, not sparing her worse half a second glance as she made her way back through the interconnecting halls braced between the cars. A quick nod to the security detail posted at the door of their coach and she was safely ensconced in the sumptuous stateroom.

Alucard soundlessly followed, drifting by to snatch up the blood packet cooling in an ice-filled basin.

Seras cracked the door to the small bedroom compartment with a small measure of relief. Her master was stretching out on the settle, doing away with his tie and shades while the blood packet drained itself into a wine glass set aside for the purpose.

"Night, sir."

He flicked his fingers in what she guessed was a dismissal, the curtains pulling low over all the windows at his will.

It couldn't have been more than a few hours until she was being roughly shaken awake.

"Girl," hissed an urgent voice in Romanian. She tensed, reaching up to grasp the assailant firmly by the throat – she was quite ready to rip it out at the interruption – but the coolness of the skin gave her pause.

Seras had no trouble seeing in the dark, and what her eyes were registering now was her master suspended over her prone body.

Here we go again.

"Sir," she replied calmly in English. "Go and rest already, will you?"

"Where is Van Helsing?" His English accent was heavily slurred by a Romanian lilt, the 'Where' coming out as more of a 'Vhere'.

"…dead?" Seras was dumbfounded. This particular dream was one he had never bothered sharing with her. It was even more of a rarity to find him mentioning the years before Hellsing at all.

"NO! He was there. He took her from me," he hissed.

"Mary, mother of God." Her arms locked in a vice-like grip around the column of his neck to wrench him down and cradle his head to her breast. One inhale and another unneeded movement of air through her chest had his body tensing less.

She'd see the dreams sneak up on him at the most inconvenient of times. He'd wake befuddled and fit to kill out of rage and confusion. On the rougher nights, the dreams would linger. In close quarters, Seras was quick to learn that certain things soothed the savage beast.

Drawing on an old memory from her childhood, she had clasped him to her chest not unlike her mother had done for her father when he was distressed. Whether it was a dear friend killed in their line of work or the situations where her father had to kill a criminal, he would come to her mother in his broken state and sob into her warm throat. Seras would watch from a doorway quietly, afraid to shatter the moment between her parents even when she was small and didn't know any better.

"Lay your head, man." A hand stroked over the curling wisps of his inky hair, strands clinging to her skin and curling like a creeper vine around her wrist.

Time lapsed in the tight space. Alucard was by no means small or light; the weight of him was enough to give her the pleasant feel of heaviness bearing down on her. He took up the better part of the bed tucked into half the room, booted feet hanging at an odd angle off the edge rather than putting them through the wall.

"Forgive the disturbance," he muttered in Romanian after an hour of silence passed. She drew in another useless breath while easing his body up, her hands curving around his jaw to tilt his head and meet his tired eyes.

"I know you think I'm the weakest, meekest thing to ever be considered one of your own. But you should know that I am here, sir. I've waited on you longer than any other on this Earth." That took more than a little pluck for her to speak out loud. Seras choked, burying her face in shame in the only haven she knew. His hair had no distinguishable smell to it beside the scent of blood and old iron, but it had to be the finest silk-like strands ever to grace a head.

"I do love you," she murmured into his hair after a few trickles of blood etched lines down her cheeks. A long hand wrapped around her throat, crushing on her windpipe as he pulled her mouth down into a hard kiss. They stayed locked together for what seemed like hours, tongues twining intricately and reaching to trace along every curve and ripple of the other.

They broke apart, a thin string of saliva linking the wet pink to his darker red flesh before it disappeared in the closing space. Their closed mouths met in one final press, barely touching and as fragile as tension between them.

She didn't know how he was capable of any tenderness, but she had seen mercy and compassion from him once. It was certainly a day for small miracles when he began to trace gloveless fingertips over the reddened bow of her lips only to move to the arc of her brows. Every inch of her face seemed precious to his ageless eyes, something to commit to memory and hold there for as long as time lasted.

He exhaled against the wet skin of her cheeks. A thick, long tongue slithered out to trace the dried trails of blood that had bled from her eyes. All that was left behind was clear skin.

A delayed reply came. It was more than she could ever have hoped for and at the same time not enough, but Seras was a woman who had learned to make do with what one was given.

"I know."