obviously, I own nothing. This is a repost of a fic that I first published on AO3, where my name is also Annabel Lioncourt, and the title is the same.

The thunder outside did little to comfort the aching feeling of dread. Her mind kept going back to the storm that raged outside the first time that she had confronted him over their personal connection earlier that year, which ended in her bruised and partially dressed on her bedroom floor before the fireplace, with his head resting on her stomach, her hand running through his hair, fascinated at the way his edges faded to shadows and then nothing, as if he was going to evaporate from reality at any given moment and his arms around her delicate waist were all that was tethering him to existence.

He's still the same person now that he was then, she tried to rationalize, but a voice even farther back in her skull retorted he's not even a person to start with. Since then she called for her servant's evening presence once or twice a week, but recently with an increase to near nightly assignations, she had noticed that sometimes the face kissing hers with such reverence was not his own, and even in the pitch black of his crypt she could feel that the contours of his face would change when he was over her. Sometimes differences in the texture of his skin gave away that he was in another form, and she had every right to know what her lover chose to appear as when he took her.

Often she was afraid to open her eyes in bed, be it in his or hers, for fear that he might look more monster than man. Her fear was more for the fact that she didn't think that it would bother her, than what he may actually look like.

Without noticing his arrival, she heard the door click open.

"Master?" She could see that Walter was at Alucard's heels, and none too happy.

"I said leave her be, its late and—"

"She said there were urgent matters, I intend to rid whatever weight off of her shoulders I can, as a good servant, to ease her sleep. I'm only doing my job." It seemed to placate him enough, and Walter left the hall, down to his own quarters. Alucard locked the door behind him. "Does it ever bother you that he seems to be trying to keep us from ever being alone?"

"He's just protective, he doesn't trust you. I probably shouldn't," he smiled. His whole countenance was friendly, conversational, and eerily domestic.

"There's tea here for you, I know you don't like to drink wine on colder nights." He still had a half-full bottle for himself, and set down her cup and saucer, and his glass on the table by the chaise. "What's wrong with you? Was it work?

"No, its nothing, and…thank you for thinking of that." She was in her pajamas, a satin nightdress in white that fell nearly to the floor, with her red flannel robe pulled tight around her. He had gifted the dress to her on her last birthday, and it made her look more like a Hammer horror heroine than she really wanted to—it was a role she felt that she was living out too much to enjoy playing at—but he admired it. Her glasses were already off and folded on the bedside table.

"It is not 'nothing,' you can't lie to me, our minds are connected," he was mocking, cocky. She grit her teeth behind tightly pursed lips, watching him hang his coat and hat, place his boots by the door, the vest from over his white shirt, shedding them like a skin. It was so rare that he appeared in anything other than full dress that this alone was something intimate and strangely….normal. "What has you so bothered? It can't be my pathetic excuse for a tease," only then did she realize just how closely she had been watching him undress.

"No." he looked her over, and she could feel the strange haze of his thoughts wandering in her head. She tried to block him out.

"Then what is it? You can tell me." The mocking tone was gone, replaced with a softer voice of concern.

"I've known who you are since I was a child," she chose her words carefully, speaking with a steady voice. He didn't meet her eyes, becoming busy with stoking the dying fire.

"I was under the impression that my identity meant little to you."

"It doesn't-…It does. It means very much to Hellsing as a whole, and it is something that weighs heavily on my mind when I consider the full reality of it."

"You mean," his tone was still serious, "the full reality of calling me voivode or count during moments that you'd rather not think about the fact that you're fucking a character from a horror novel?"

"You were my great-grandfather's gravest enemy." When he stood and turned to face her, he stood two heads above her, but she didn't allow that to intimidate her. "Whom I am inviting to my bed in what was once his room. That alone nears sacrilege, nevermind your persistent lack of moral code, and the fact that you're…" dead, she wanted to say, she never did, and while it was a fact that never seemed to bother him, it wasn't something that she wanted to blame him for. He seemed bemused at the words that she did say, but his reply was cold.

"And you never thought to consider that I may not enjoy the idea that the one soul I've been soft for in five hundred years, is the blood of the man who dedicated his life to ending mine? Or that there are moments when you're angry with me, and your eyes take on the same shade that his did as he preformed vivisection on me? No."

"Alucard—"

"I don't mind that name, really I prefer it mostly. But…" he placed a hand on the side of her neck, angling her face upwards to his, "I do enjoy hearing the reverence of my old titles coming from that lovely mouth of yours, as I envision what Abraham would think of his granddaughter willingly impaling herself on a nosferatu ." She slapped his hand away, "Perhaps I should reconsider this unholy union for my own sake."

"Your sake?!" she was fuming,

"You are in this century little more than a child, after all, surely there's—"

"I won't listen to you bullshit bluffing. You're loyal as dog, to myself and this organization. Not to mention that you wouldn't last three days without my validation of you." His smile was no longer human, and displayed a threatening array of fangs. She was still shaking, she trusted him, she knew him, and she knew he'd never hurt her, but the capacity to kill her as easy as blinking was always there below the surface, and no matter what sentimental rubbish fell from his tongue during their usual nights, he was not a normal lover.

The only issue was that whenever she stopped to meditate on his monstrosity, on the hands that touched her and mouth that kissed her, the teeth that never broke her skin but would drag across her throat—forcing herself to remember all the things and men that these weapons have destroyed for her or in her name, she was all the more fascinated by them.

"Contesa there's no need for argument, whether you hate me or otherwise."

"Life with you is an argument." His fangs retracted as he leaned down to kiss the crown of her head, impulsively, but she backed away.

"I take it that whatever was bothering you earlier has not been covered?"

"…As I started to say earlier, I know who you are, what you are, but…there is a form you take on some nights, and it is not your shadow, or your hound, or this, and I—"

"It doesn't matter, its just another skin," as if it meant nothing at all.

"I want to know whose face you wear when you're…."

"Inside you?" her mouth opened in protest at the bluntness of his words. "Honestly, Integra, the virgin blush is charming, but a good year overdue." Again, more out of impulse than anything else, he tucked a strand of hair behind her ear

"I order you not to touch me until you tell me the truth. Who is it? Did you steal that form, or—" he ignored her, took a seat on the chaise before the fire, poured a glass of wine, drank half of it, and despite the fact he rarely breathed, he sighed in contemplation. "Alucard?"

"What you see now is a product of a carefully wrought disguise, combined with your grandsire's fine work, and natural re-designing brought on by being a no life king. Its not what I ever looked like exactly when I was alive, more like an electrified mirror of it."

"And…the other?" he leaned his head back against the chaise and shut his eyes and went to shadows: another man was in his seat. Still pale, but more human than his usual corpse-coloring. There were deeper shadows around the eyes, and even the ghosts of lines on the still-young face. His open white shirt revealed scars that could only be done in a scene thick with violence.

The hair was as black as Alucard's, but longer, there as a moustache and beard, where Alucard never even seemed to have stubble. The jawline was stronger, but noes less sharp, ears not pointed. The hands at rest on the knees were similar, but given to the appearance of mortal flesh they seemed different, and this figure had the same height, but with more muscle on the frame than Alucard had. He opened his mouth to speak and Integra's hearing increased ten-fold, ready to pick up on the differences.

"How awful is it to want to feel the touch of a woman I love against my own flesh? It's not living anymore, still cold I'm afraid, and bloodless, but its mine."

After the first disastrous meeting of the Round Table where she took her father's seat, Integra made a promise to herself to never let anyone make her feel small. She always took the upper-hand, she dressed for the role, and was always looking down figuratively if she could not do it physically. She could not afford to be taken as anything other than a pillar of strength and power—right now though, she felt very small indeed.

"I…I didn't realize…I…"

"I'm merely a servant, you do not need to apologize." The voice was blessedly the same.

"Open your eyes," he looked up at her with the same inhuman red eyes that he always had, searching her face for an answer, or even a reaction other than the shock and apprehension she had now. "So this is you…? This is…."

"Count Dracula, Contesa." The lopsided grin was still the one she saw everyday, even on a different face, and the knowledge that he had that expression even as a mortal half a millennium ago tugged a smile from her.

"Thank you….and thank you for tending the fire, its been cold in here." He shrugged slightly.

"I would have been noticed by you in this form eventually. And the fire is nothing." Considering that she seemed less angry, and trying to salvage what chances he had, he continued "I recommend you continue to avoid my touch if you're still cold though." She shook her head.

"May I?" she reached a hand out to him, and he didn't draw back. She touched the side of his face, his throat, the visible scars that quickly vanished below his shirt, his arms through his sleeves, and eventually she was beside him on the chaise, continuing this vision of the body she had known only by touch, and eventually was reaching over to lift his shirt. "And this?"

"You give orders, you do not need to make requests."

"I'm asking." He helped her remove it, and then slowly slid her robe off her shoulders. She didn't stop him, and he pulled her gently up on to his lap, she thought he would try to kiss her again, but instead he buried his face in her chest, and wrapped his arms around her tight as he could without hurting her. The words her muttered were not in English. "Sorry?"

"Let this dead fool stay," her throat closed up and she forced herself not to cry.

"Count?"

"You've never once complained…but at some point you'll realize I'm a dead man, and you'll come to your senses. I am a selfish beast though, and until you do discard me, I will ask to stay." She smiled, her voice regaining her usual commanding tone.

"Look at me. You're not going anywhere tonight that takes you farther from our bed, and that's an order."

"Our bed?" she kissed his forehead, still not used to the new face.

"It's been long enough, and there will never be anyone else to claim possession of it. I would call your bed ours as well, but a coffin is not something I want to hold ownership of." She smiled slightly, but he laughed, letting out the tension of the evening. "You are a pleasing sight in this form, count." She wrapped her arms around his neck.

"Give me a moment, at the least, one more affectionate remark, and I'll end up having to take you on this couch." She removed herself from his lap and walked toward the bed, he followed, the light casting shadows on his skin, making the scars seem even deeper. She winced looking at a few of them, and though he had been injured on her watch many times he had healed instantly without pain or marking, these old wounds beckoned her to kiss each and every one of them.