Excerpt/fragment of an old, unfinished idea I had. "Hellsing and Integra are done, and what happens to Seras and Alucard in the aftermath."

you are free

The end is at night. And with him.

In hindsight, it is only appropriate. That was how everything started as well.

He is sitting on the stairs. One leg bent, white gloved hands resting against his thigh. The moon hangs off pale naked branches, darkening the world with strips of shadow.

When he sees her, a smile forms ruefully at his lips. Small and desolate. It is the first time she's seen him with any expression since the funeral. He almost looks like a man.

"Master," she breathes, rushing up to him on strangely stumbling legs. A torrent of words flood her throat (where were you I looked everywhere are you alright oh master I'm so sorry), but none move past her tongue.

"Master," she says again instead, the only word her mouth remembers how to form.

The smile shatters with a quiet scoff. "Still stuck on that, are we?" he props his chin with a hand, almost as if bored, "I'm not your master anymore."

And the sheer ridiculousness of such a sentence, the impossibility, breaks free her voice from the ice.

"Yes, you are," she replies, with simple, thoughtless conviction, akin to childishness, but there is no reason to think about it like that. There is no reason to think about it at all.

What was once born of blood bond and gratitude is certainty—solidified from a shard of faith given thirty years before. He had never let her go and this had only strengthened her belief in his invincibility, his inevitable return. Her master would never leave her to eternity alone.

"You are free," he says, with strange sternness, "Free to live and make your own way. Appreciate it, silly girl. You don't have to stay here."

Seras stares. "But you're here," she says simply, because that is all that needs saying.

A soft sound slips past his lips, almost a sigh. "Don't be a fool."

She blinks at him. "Why is it so foolish?"

"Because you squander too much for too little."

There is a pause. She regards him with dumbfounded bemusement, though he doesn't fidget under her gaze or even really look at her, transfixed by something far across the moors.

Seras sucks in a thoughtful, needless breath. "You've always told me to take what I want. So what reason do I have to leave if what I want is to follow you?" she tilts her head, wondering why he found this so complicated, "When you said I wouldn't walk the night alone, you meant that right?"

Alucard's eyes snap to hers instantly, glittering with something like surprise. They soften a moment later.

"I did," he says unhesitatingly, and then with a wryer tone, "I would have you with me if I could. You would hardly survive out there."

She snorts, "And whose fault is that exactly?"

He almost smiles at her and the reassurance that floods her veins is more intense than she'd anticipated.

It was what made any of this even remotely bearable. For thirty years, it had been only her and Sir Integra after all. Day and night and night and day, the two of them against a silent, empty world, until some part of Seras began to think Sir Integra would live forever.

It is not a thought that is new to her.

It was there with her father and mother. With Walter. With Pip, even as he filled her mouth with blood.

A desperate, horrible hope that is always crushed. Perhaps, though she tries so hard to keep it alive, it is the human in her that causes such torture. Perhaps she has still yet to understand what forever really means.

When she looks at her master, she compares the myriad of stars in his eyes to his past souls. She catches the alien flicker, the otherness that makes him so unfathomably inhuman and misses the pity that makes him otherwise.

"Come on, Master," she says, eager to leave the graveyards behind her, "Let's go inside."

For a moment, he just stares at her with a tight, closed expression, like he doesn't want to leave. But then his head dips the slightest bit and he rises with soundless grace.

"Very well," he says quietly, and gestures her ahead of him.

Seras frowns in faint concern, but obliges. She mistakes the pain in his eyes for grief.

"So," She grabs the silver door handle, "Who's in charge now?"

His reply is lost to her, or maybe he'd never bothered to answer. The hinges creak and groan as the door swings open, drowning out all sound. In hindsight, it's almost all she can remember, the screeches of it, how it sounded like an ancient dying thing.

Sir Ironwood is standing in the foyer. Five years have drawn faint lines across his face and he is garbed in mourning black.

"There you two are," he says, with a tired sigh, "I was about to organize a search."

He turns slightly to the group of soldiers standing behind him, wide-eyed and clutching their guns as they regarded her and Master. They have never seen monsters before.

"What are you doing here, sir?" Seras asks, "I thought you would have left after…after the funeral."

The edge of Sir Ironwood's mouth twinges. "Yes, well, I still have my obligations to fulfill here."

Seras stares for a moment. "Are you taking over Hellsing?"

It's the most sensible choice and she is somewhat fond of the young Ironwood, not yet hardened by the weight of reality. Other than Sir Integra, he is the only one that had ever looked them in the eye, that had ever respected what he saw.

Sir Ironwood's shoulders stiffen. "No, I'm afraid not. Hellsing is…not a matter of concern anymore."

She blinks. "What do you mean?"

Sir Ironwood sighs, and looks away for a brief moment, his profile haggard and stressed.

"Hellsing's activities will become a government operation," he finally says, "The era of vampire-hunting has changed. Private agencies are disappearing. I believe Sir Integra had told you this long before."

She had. Seras lets it sink in a moment. She had walked the manor's halls and floors for fifty years and in many a ways, had not lived until then either. Now it would be gone. Gone.

"What will happen to us?" she asks, gaze narrowed, "Is that why you're here? To tie the final strings."

Her arm dissipates into shadows. The soldiers yelp and cock their guns and for a second, she is excited. She wants to see them try. Sir Ironwood though, looks not so much frightened, but troubled. With something that strangely resembles pity.

"You have done Hellsing a great service, Miss Victoria," he says, "You fought for her, bled for her, kept her company for fifty years. Do you honestly think that at the end, she had still thought you a mere vampire?"

Seras stares at him—the ire flickering out as quickly as it'd come to life.

"I—"

"You can go," Ironwood says, "Anywhere you please. You'll not meet resistance from me."

His words are measured and careful. Seras does not like how insular they are. How singular.

"And Master?" she says, voice sharp, frightened, "What of him?"

Sir Ironwood is silent and Seras doesn't want to understand what that means. But then a cold hand touches her shoulder from behind and then she must look up at him, crimson against crimson.

"I told you, Seras," Master says, a whisper of breath across her crown, "You are free."

He comes to find her later. It is his heady scent of ash and snow that she catches, because the sounds of his footsteps have not been heard since the 1400s. It's always surprising to her that he does not smell of blood.

"It was Master's order," he says simply and she can imagine his half-lidded eyes, his relaxed, colorless mouth. For all his madness and his bloodlust, there is not a shred of rebellion in him.

A burst of painful, angry despair courses through Seras's veins.

"To abandon me?" she snaps, "To leave me to this world on my own in eternal misery and solitude, that…" She pauses, barely stopping the tremble in her voice, though he must have heard it anyway, "…that was her order?"

"You are no longer a child," Alucard replies, as calm and soft as a spring breeze, "You do not need me anymore."

And the statement is so ridiculous, so completely and obviously wrong that Seras cannot help her laughter. She cranes her pale neck back and mirthlessly cackles at the stars, at Heaven and its indifference to Hell's pain. It echoes loud and broken through the moors.

She laughs until it begins to hurt. Until she starts to cry instead.

Alucard watches her. He doesn't move up to caress her hair or lay her cheek against his shoulder. He doesn't wipe her blood-tears away. Her master is not a creature that could be softened by tears.

What he does do is move to stand by her side, his inhuman eyes staring unblinkingly out into a point in the moors. Perhaps he's watching the rosebay willowherb sway with the breeze or a ladybug in its final hours. But his gaze is infinite and ancient, like he is trying to remember every blade of grass.

Seras shivers and hiccups, hugging her knees tight with lack of anything else to hold. Her face is caked and crusty with tears.

"I don't want you to go," she whispers, choked.

"I know, my childe," he says softly, but without pity, "I know."