#shiningwires

  "Miss... Saya?  My, it has been some time, hasn't it?  It's very good to see you again.  My apologies for my absence, things have been busy as of late."  He bowed, briefly, smile coming to his face as he shifted to face her.  It was always good to see her, always nice to see her well.

  "I am pleased to see you well."

*extremely long and drawn out sigh*  "I'm a butler that runs a household, I don't take the opportunity to have sex with anyone.  I'm far too busy."

"You're jokin' right?  Please, tell me you are.  Stay out of my business.  But no, no I wouldn't."

*intense glowering coupled with several odd subvocal noises of disapproval*  "Kindly fuck off."

There's a problem when you're a dog and it's really very simple: Once you become a dog you never stop being a dog So don't even think of trying your hand at leaving

War wasn't something pretty. No matter how people liked to say it was, no matter how they liked to romanticize it. Even from a young age, people should be able to tell as much. But here they were, in the aftermath of a global blast zone, and people still romanticized it. They made the winners out to be wonderful and liberators if they were supporters. Those that didn't support them saw their losing side as martyrs. Romanticizing. Beautifying. They made it so much nicer than it was.

They didn't think about all those lost to this war on any of the sides, none of the sides, all and some of the sides. They didn't think about the crunch of ash that was probably a person once. Or the stench from now rotting bodies. Even children of war, even warmongers, they couldn't see this as beautiful. It was enchanting with its horror, yes, but it wasn't lovely. It was disastrous.

Smoke drifted from everywhere. There was so much that it was hard to tell where and what it came from. The scent was overrun for once. It was so, so hard to get over the smell of smoke from anything. Especially since it lingered on people, on skin, on clothes, on everything. And it was being drowned out. It was disconcerting and foul.

It made Walter's skin crawl and his nose itch. His cigarette was hanging limply from his lips, the fifth from his third pack in the past hour and a half. Trying to rid himself of the smell of death and decay that normally didn't bother him. But this wasn't his doing or Alucard's. He could handle those, he could handle and succeeded in keeping sane with those. This wasn't and it made him feel sick and disgusting. Not disgusting as a person but more that he would never, not in a million years, be clean again. And no amount of scrubbing would convince him otherwise.

Another drag on his almost gone cigarette, blue eyes flashing silver in the pale light of the full moon as he looked over the battlefield. Did Alucard ever feel like this? When he was human did he? His hands curled into fists and then crushed the nearly full pack before it dropped. His nerves were fine. Everything he was was fine. But he couldn't figure out why looking at this made him so uncomfortable. Why it made him sick. Not even his first mission had done this.

Not even the first human he'd killed had done this either. And he remembered that clearly.

No, this was something else. While it bothered him, Walter wasn't worried. After all, if anyone could understand it would be his ever tardy partner. And, thinking of him, where was the blood drinking menace? This was ridiculous. He'd been standing amidst dead bodies for nearly two hours. The scent was probably soaked into him. A familiar surge of annoyance covered up the uneasiness that was plaguing him. Covered it, but didn't get rid of it. And that made it worse, made him want to be sick. Usually his annoyance got rid of other feelings.