IRON MAIDEN

hellsing librarian, whom integra terrorizes by forcing him to move every book on british history to the crime section whenever a member of the round table comes to the mansion for a meeting, specifically to piss them off, resulting in the librarian being chewed out & forced to apologize & rearrange everything .  a bit of a pushover & a yes-man, dedicated to his work cataloging the centuries of research on the occult within the hellsing mansion library .  when integra isn’t terrorizing him, they can actually get along, & since integra spent her formative years learning almost everything her family’s records could teach, she helps him as best she can, grading his private work in the meanwhile ;

hellsing psychiatrist, whom performs monthly pscyh-evals on the staff & new hires, making sure they have the mental faculties necessary to work at hellsing & also ensuring that repeat exposure to the horrors dealt with by the organization isn’t affecting the quality of their work & service .  consistently tired & exasperated by the eccentricity of the sorts of people hellsing employs .  makes bets w/ integra on which members of the staff have been sleeping w/ alucard .  probably the most level-headed person on site, i mean, she has to be .  her vice of choice is drinking, to parallel integra’s smoking ;

IF IT IS INDEED AN ORDER, then it doesn’t seem to faze him. the only hint he’s heard her at all, in fact, is the peculiar way his gaze begins to shift; the photo to integra and from the corner of an eye. he’s still bent uncomfortably at the waist — hands in his pockets — and yet he doesn’t waver or reposition. stock still besides that awful thrumming one only notices in moments such as these.

he sees no sense in denying any one of her accusations. if integra wants to know something, she’ll know it, and there will never be any stopping her in the pursuit. alucard’s only wish is that he won’t have to spell it out for her, really, and he does feel like it’s a rather workable request.

❝  then i suppose it must be me.  ❞ her deduction skills are no doubt up to snuff. not that it would take much of them to figure this one out, given context, and she knows just about everything, already. if it is alucard, as they both very well know, and he has no recollection of placing himself there——?  

❝   - ———  of  course  it’s  you .   ❞   deep sigh follows her remark ,  the tone of somber practicality .  arms fall to her side ,  fingers dig into her palm ,  forming fists ,  nails threatening skin .  where there was once the softness of a quiet night ,  the harsh edges of the iron maiden dulled by liminal moonlight ,  all is sharpened again .

integra moves away from the desk ,  towards her father’s bed ,  where a little girl ran to hide her tears ,  where everything felt a little less lonely ,  even  if  no  one  was  there .  she takes a photo off a nearby drawer ,  frame held gently between her hands .  it was a picture she must’ve stared at a thousand times ,  her mother mere weeks before her death ,  cradling a baby in her arms ,  wearing a smile integra always wished she could’ve seen in person .  she stares at it once more ,  wondering if this time she would see him somewhere in it ,  darkness looming over them ,  a  memento  mori .

✧*｡ ||   a lackidasial twist of his hand, wrist flicks palm faces out. a gesture that reads with the response ‘ naturally. ‘  to her statement. ＂ i come from two very important magical families that should never have had the chance to meet & breed, yet here i am today.

            && unlike the ancient practicers of  times before us, we have had generations to master these spells & teach them forward down. even so, magic comes at a price always it’s never truly easy. even for someone who lives & breathes it as i do.＂

FINALLY, SOMETHING FORCES HIS SMUG FACADE TO FALTER. alucard knows immediately that he’s never seen them before, and not only has he not seen them, but he’d never knowingly been captured in any of them, either. in fact, when these photographs were taken, he was still quite soundly broken and bound, and rotting in that cell. he’d barely even been conscious, let alone pulling pranks.

and what is he supposed to tell her now? that even he wasn’t aware of the extent to which he haunts this place? that her grandfather has damned her, damned them both? soaked the foundations of her ancestral home in so much of his vile blood that it stains even her most treasured memories like some fucking curse? 

she always forgets it was her who’d traded his bloody shackles for a slackened leash.

he’d often had to do this when integra was still a girl. not lie, really, but tell most of a truth. it often saved the both of them an uncomfortable spot of trouble. ❝  no.  ❞ he replies succinctly, off-handedly. no hanging vowels, no uncertainty; just an answer to a question much like any other. ❝  i can’t say that i recall any of these.  ❞ and then it’s time to move swiftly on to another subject. luckily, there’s another figure in that landscape; one very much human, and out pruning the trees. alucard leans toward the image some, like he can’t see as well from where he stands. ❝  is that ms. kaminski? do you know if her daughter ever got that acceptance from UCL?  ❞

she  could  almost  laugh  at  the  banality ,  how blatant an attempt to course their conversation it was .  her vampire was hardly a creature of subtlety ,  yet the poor effort to mask a struck cord was something rarely observed ,  a moment she would almost confuse as human .   ❝   don’t  deflect ,  alucard .   ❞   is a sharp remark ,  it cuts through the cold air carried into the room ,  & integra wonders if it was meant as an order .

he  always  forgets .  for as well as he knows her ,  watching her grow into the woman she is now ,  integra has had the same time to understand him .

DESPITE HER ENTIRELY FAULTLESS RATIONALE, he still can’t quite help the mild surprise with which he finds her. he is far more beholden to the past than she is these days — or, perhaps, as she has ever been — and it is, unquestionably, for the better. something he is both acutely aware of and glad for. integra has a power the likes of which a revenant such as alucard could never truly understand; the ability to forge a future for herself. to become something new, to grow. 

why, it’s downright enviable, some might say. but even he knows the difference between remembering the past and wallowing in it, and she has never been one to wallow.

thus, alucard is not concerned.

❝  find anything interesting?  ❞ he asks, and makes no secret of peering over her shoulder. he’s smiling in the way he’s usually wont to do, like all the world’s a show and he’s merely among the crowd. 

eyes  move  away  from  the  shadows  behind  the  door ,  following ,  slow , contemplative ,  as they extend through the room ,  beyond it ,  a convulsing mass overtaking the walls meant to protect from them ,  casting doubt on the legacy which forms them ,  molds them into a shame crawling on her back .  she turns back to the various documents scattered on her father’s desk ,  to the photos among them ,  snapshots of the unknowable void that was everything preceding her birth .  events she can only interpret from the bias of those who lived through them ,  a hundred accounts of some prelapsarian greatness she can only hope to grasp .  the shadows were among the photos as well ,  a dark ,  tall figure hiding behind another door-frame ,  behind the smile of her mother & father .