This is Tazo's Christmas gift. He asked for Dawn-era Renaldo.
Somehow we ended up with Renaldo, Young Walter, and ickle!Alex.
Hellsing and its characters belong to Kohta Hirano. I just play with
them for fun and no profit.
Walter walked quietly away from the wreckage of what had been
Millennium's monster factory. Alucard had gone dancing into the
darkness earlier chasing down some soldiers that had fled for the
nearby forest, leaving the young man to do his own part to clean up.
The young man's entire body ached from the beating he had taken from the werewolf, but he trudged in an arc, sweeping outward from the destroyed lab, hunting survivors. No one could be allowed to escape.
A bit over a mile out from the lab, the sound of a small child's high-pitched voice caught his attention. Walter crept forward and knelt behind a low stone wall that ringed a modest cottage. The boy was not speaking Polish, but Italian. He froze without looking over the wall when another boy, older, answered him, also in Italian.
Walter's mind did not shift linguistic gears quickly enough, but he caught up with the younger one's next exclamation. Some things just caught one's attention:
"Kill it!"
"Alex, put the frog down."
"But it's a Protestant frog, Marco. Father Andreas says..."
Walter blinked. His Italian was not as good as his Polish, but he was fairly certain he was listening to a small child lecturing an older one about… killing Protestants?
The little boy's babble of Italian continued at high speed while Walter listened from his hiding place. His first intimation that the older of the two boys was not just listening to the lecture was the sharp prick of a knife through the satin lining of his waistcoat.
Dammit, he hated sewing.
"What are you doing here?" asked the older boy in Italian-accented Polish.
Walter started to slowly turn, stopping when the knifepoint pressed harder into the skin over his kidney. He could feel a trickle of blood roll down his back and soak into his shirt.
He cursed himself for a fool that he'd allowed some kid to come up behind him with a knife and get the drop on him to this degree. First the werewolf, which was bad enough, but explicable, now this? Alucard would never let him live it down – the Angel of Death taken unawares by a human boy.
Never mind that Walter was a human boy himself…
"I just wanted to see. I heard other kids and wanted to see." Walter answered in Polish as he held his hands open and unthreatening at his sides – nothing to see here, just an empty-handed boy, right? What was the fun of beating up a human kid? There was no challenge in it – Walter would give the boy his victory.
Unfortunately, the other boy noticed Walter's bloodstained clothes and hands. "I don't believe you." The knife at Walter's back was an unsettling punctuation to his statement.
"Marco, what is it?" A small blonde head poked around the corner of the wall and Walter watched the boy's green eyes widen in surprise. "Who's that? Are you going to kill him?"
He came the rest of the way around the wall and Walter blinked in surprise to see a four or five-year-old boy carrying what looked like a wickedly sharp gardener's trowel. The boy would have looked like a Renaissance cherub if it weren't for the livid scar that marred one cheek and the rabid gleam in his eyes.
"No, Alex, I'm not going to kill him." The knifepoint pushed just a bit deeper into Walter's back. "Yet."
Walter hissed and spun, knocking Marco's knife hand away. Turned around, he finally had an opportunity to look at the person who had been threatening him. They were of similar age and build, both with dark hair. What was this Italian boy doing here?
Marco appeared to be making a tentative go of growing a mustache. Walter smirked at that and regretted that his Italian was not good enough to tell the other boy that he needed to put the caterpillar on his upper lip out of its misery, as it was clearly very ill.
"Tell him it's not funny, Marco! Tell him!" Alex was practically bouncing up and down in a fury. "He can't come here! Tell him!"
"Be quiet!" Marco snapped without looking away from Walter. He also held a knife, but his wasn't as singular as the one the smaller boy was holding, looking more like a traditional stiletto than anything else.
"Who are you and why are you here? Are you from that place?" Marco jerked his chin in the general direction of the now-destroyed lab.
Alex inched forward until he was peeking around the older boy's hip. "He looks like a Protestant, Marco. Kill him."
"We do not kill every Protestant we find. Besides, this is a Catholic country. He's probably Catholic – almost everyone is."
Catholics? Why were two Italian children here in Poland talking so casually about killing Protestants?
Walter opened his mouth to ask them why they were so far from home when Alucard interrupted him.
Angel, our flight home is on its way. Have you found any stragglers?
He grimaced and shook his head despite knowing that Alucard wasn't anywhere that he'd be able to see the gesture. No. Just some kids. I'll be there in a minute.
The helicopter would have to be there quickly and wouldn't wait for long. Walter began backing away from the two boys. "I have to go. Sorry to have disturbed you."
"Kill him, Marco!"
Walter backed up a little more before grinning and shooting a V for victory sign at the two boys. "Give my regards to Il Duce."
He spun and ran, not turning when a thrown knife cut a thin line on his arm.
How embarrassing – to get the snot beaten out of him and then have to run from a human kid. This trip to Poland had been anything but stellar.
"You let him get away!" Alex's little face had turned red with rage and he pulled at Marco's shirt and pants as the older boy went to retrieve his knife.
"Shut up, Alex!" the older boy snapped and softened with Alex's face crumpled in shock. "I'm sorry, little brother." He scooped the boy up in his arms and began to carry him back to the cottage.
"We'll go home soon and we can see Matteo and Bruno and Sister Angelica."
"We will? I wanna go home! I don't like Poland, even if there are lots of Catholics." Alex flung his arms around Marco's neck and glared at the trees around them.
"Shhh…" the older boy carried Alex inside and put him down in the kitchen, where Sister Honorata was making tea for the creepy guest who had driven Marco and Alex outside in the first place.
"Ah, young Alex! Come here little man and let me see you."
Alex clung to Marco like a limpet. "I don't like him," he said in a whisper that carried through the small kitchen.
Marco didn't blame him; he didn't like the lanky blond man either. There was something about the way he looked at everyone as though he'd like to peel them apart layer by layer to see what made them tick… or bleed.
"Doktor, leave Alex alone for now. You can examine him when we get to the port in Swinoujscie." Honorata came and took Alex out of Marco's hands. "Are you being a good boy, Alex?"
"Marco wouldn't let me kill the frog and then a boy came. I know he was a Protestant. He was a bad boy and he ran away and Marco missed him with his knife!"
Honorata frowned and looked at Marco, who shuffled his feet uncomfortably. "Is this true? There was someone here and you let him get away?"
"He didn't see anything," the boy answered defiantly.
They all looked up at the sound of Father Andreas' boots. "The truck is ready, your records are safely stored, Doktor. Are you ready?"
"Yes, let us go." The man who had only been introduced as Doktor unfolded his long legs to tower over the other people in the room. He smiled at young Alex in a manner that was no doubt meant to reassure the boy. "I'm going to make sure you never get another scar."
The boy put a hand to his cheek and tightened his fingers on his kindergarten-sized bayonet. "You're a Protestant, aren't you?"