A/N: So a lot of people loved my mini fic called "The Give and Take of Relationships", which was based on the scene after Alucard turns Seras and has to face an irate Integra. I decided that the ending in the 10th volume left an opening as big as a football field to let writers like me interpret what happened and tell you what I think they were thinking. I always wanted to know what happened right after the Manga ended, and wondered what happened to Alucard and Seras after that scene. So I thought I'd start out with the ending scene, and depending on how well this is received, I may continue it. How, I don't know. But that's the greatness of being a writer who writes based on stream of consciousness. It's a gift and curse...writer's block is more severe, I'll tell you that!

Enjoy! Review and Respond if you like it, otherwise I'll think you don't...or not enough to tell me you do like it and wish for me to continue.

Disclaimer: I do NOT, in any way, own Hellsing or the characters in it. It is owned by Kohta Hirano, Dark Horse Manga, and any other business or people who assisted in creating these fascinating characters!

Heartless Handsel

Seras strolled through the garden. Times were quiet most days, with hardly any vampires worth killing or ghouls worth wasting bullets on. Sadly, such a task had to be done, and she had to protect her master, Sir Integra. The nights were quiet, and peace had been restored; the balance returned, and days full of renewed hope. But there was the fact that Hellsing could not make up enough excuses for what had happened thirty years ago. They could not explain the entire massacre of London that reached 3,718,917 along with the destruction of the entire U.S. presidential cabinet and 64,300 other citizens. The crown claimed it was a bioterrorism incident, but that was believed for only so long. People who had survived, people who had witnessed their family members turn into ghouls were fools for only so long. The people believed the doctor's claims of it being a terrible and estranged retrovirus as long as they wished to believe it. With mass media, videos, the Internet, and cell phones, it didn't last as long as originally hoped.

The young Draculina kicked a marooned pine cone off of the immaculate pathway through the garden as she inhaled a breeze of cold night air. It calmed her nerves once more and brought her thoughts back to duty. She felt the protective wall, or 'shadow', she had around the mansion for Sir Integra's safety and felt nothing except Integra's presence, sleeping, a few maids in the laundry room, and a new butler that had been hired two years prior. Seras, a wave of nostalgia hitting her, succumbed to her thoughts once more as she remembered a certain charming, old fashioned butler she had known thirty years ago. Ah, but that was another time, and hadn't Alucard taught her to let go of the past, not to hold onto it for it would become a dangerous spiral into insanity?

Gladly, and sadly, it all made sense to her now. Seras understood, after years of living it, that people would grow old, and right in front of her red eyes, forever frozen in time. As if she had been stopped, as if she was in a bubble of youth that never would pop, she watched, quite miserably, as people aged and aged; especially Sir Integra. A knot of angst and sadness balled up inside of her stomach as she shook herself once more from her thoughts. Seras turned around and headed back up to the mansion and back to her room. So many nights she was bored and didn't know what to do that she ended up reading, going on the computer and attempting to rot her brain, and she even tried knitting once…never again…

Suddenly, she felt a breach in her lines, an intrusion of her shadow that she cast on the entire mansion. Her heart felt as if it would burst as she concentrated on the location of where she sensed it emanate from. Trotting to the door, she felt it resist, which caused her to use up all of her strength and zero in on it. Seras gasped and stopped to a dead halt. It was coming from Sir Integra's room! Within milliseconds, Seras knew that getting there on foot was out of the question; it would take far too long. The only other option was phasing. Seras focused and felt her molecules separate enough to phase as she seeped through the walls and up four flights of stairs. But just as she arrived to the door, gunshots were fired which caused Seras's dead heart to jump. The Draculina kicked the door down, splintering it into two jagged pieces as she stormed through the room with her two Harkonnens on either shoulder.

"What's going on! Master!" Seras shouted as she burst through the door.

But Sir Integra did not answer. Seras glanced at her master and noticed the discharge smoke from the barrel of her personal pistol she kept at all times. Lying on the other side of the room, steaming from silver bullets , was, by the look of it, another vampire.

Oh, they just get more and more rude each time. Why don't they come and face me in an honorable fight? Why do they cheat like cowards and phase through my protection to kill my master without even a worthy battle! Seras angrily thought.

Wait…

Those boots looked too familiar…that coat looked too familiar…that raven black hair which spiked out past the shoulders looked too familiar…that soft chuckle coming from the hunched over body now slouched and sitting with its legs extended…

Seras ran to the light switch and turned it on, as if it would help her vision. She gasped as an all-too familiar vampire raised his head to rest on the wall and grinned.

"That was a rough welcome, and it was as noisy as ever," Alucard smiled.

"MASTER!" Seras screamed. She fought the urge to run over and grab him into a hug. It had been thirty years! Thirty years since she felt his mind connection to hers, thirty years since she heard any snide comment pass his lips, thirty years since she heard his voice of gold make her shiver, thirty years since those vermillion eyes had made her blush.

But Sir Integra, to whom the comment from Alucard was addressed, had sat back down on her comforter. She folded her arms indignantly across her chest and crossed her legs as she frowned at the elder vampire. Seras looked at her and couldn't help but notice the fact that she looked like a child pouting before she would admit that he was missed.

"The battle ended long ago, Alucard," Integra softly chided, "What've you been doing?"

Alucard grinned once more and sighed. He knew she would begin by scolding him. And if that's the only way she showed her affection, tough love as it was, he would willingly accept. "I've been killing my lives inside me," the vampire's eyes glazed over; he looked like he was envisioning their faces now. "Three million, four hundred twenty-four thousand, eight hundred sixty-seven. I killed them. Killed all of them but "one"."

Seras listened to him and felt his connection to hers once more. Like a rusty lock or an old wooden drawer that creaked. It was there, but it hadn't been used, unlocked, or opened in ages. She stood, quite dumbfounded that she was right in front of her master. She reached back into her memories, her eidetic memories as the first year of being a vampire and felt like she had seen him only a week ago...and thirty years ago But it was realities like Integra's wrinkles and new maids and a new butler that caused her to remember the years that had since passed without Alucard. She suddenly felt sad that all that time hadn't been spent with him.

"Now I'm here, now I'm nowhere, yet I can be anywhere. Therefore, I'm here," Alucard stated and eased up against the wall, looking Sir Integra over hungrily.

His master shook her head in a disbelieving way, "You're late…so late. It took you long enough, Alucard," she chided once more, but her eyes smiled at his presence.

Alucard smiled sheepishly, "Sorry," he apologized, and Seras's eyes widened. He looked sincere in his words.

Sir Integra then let out a smile. She couldn't help it. A sudden feeling crept into her, a feeling she had not felt in thirty years. Closure. Absolute closure. Her entire team, save a traitor, was now returned. All of her angst had washed away as she realized that he was safe, that everyone was safe…and present. Accounted for. She could now stand at ease, and get a full night's rest without an empty space she hated to accept.

Sir Integra stood up and approached the collapsed vampire, his wounds still slightly steaming from her blessed silver bullets, "You were about to suck my blood, weren't you?" she asked as she put a heavy emphasis on the last two words, making it sound like a grave trespass of conduct.

"Yes, I was," Alucard's eyes brightened, "I haven't eaten in thirty years. I'm famished," he stated and suppressed the urge to lick his lips.

Sir Integra remembered his womanizing charisma as he constantly looked her over with unsatiated needs. That is, her young body over. She was now much older, and suddenly felt like a mother lecturing her son on about how he was late in returning home. She sighed, saddened by the thought. "I'm an old lady now, you know…" she trailed off.

"Fine by me," he stated, which surprised her. But then, he was brutally honest with the only woman he had considered higher in importance, more than himself.

The Hellsing Director smiled, content with the answer. "Hm!" as she bit her finger and tore at a scare she had made by using a knife to feed another, more hesitant vampire in the room, it exposed blood that the elder vampire immediately smelled. "Welcome back count."

Integra walked forward, extending her long arm out above Alucard's head. He opened his starved mouth and let his fangs elongate. The blood trickled down her finger and to the tip, agonizingly slow for him. But it beaded at the end and finally dropped into his mouth, immediately swallowed.

"Indeed, Countess. I'm home," he grinned and became gladdened as the blood continued to be held in front of him.

Seras smiled, but it was not one of happiness; it was one that masked and veiled the underlying sadness that built within her. She had so much to tell him, so much to say that would catch him up. To a vampire who had lived for so long, thirty years was like taking a two-day vacation. But to humanity's history, it's like missing an era. She would have to tell him about what happened after his disappearance, and what happened to the secrecy of the vampire's existence.

There you have it. Hope you liked it. If you did, please go and write it.

Looking forward to see what everyone thinks...

:)