Title: 100 Moments Integra has to live with
Chapters: 1-20/100
Ratings: PG-13 at worst
Pairing: General, light AxI undertones
Genre: Various, Character Analysis



Light

Until she was almost sixteen Integra insisted on staying up until Alucard had returned from each and every mission she sent him on. No amount of coaxing or reassurances from Walter would suffice until she saw to his return. She defended her stance by stating that it was her responsibility to see to the welfare of her people. Eventually he gave up trying to dissuade her, only carrying her to bed as dawn broke.

She quit immediately after she found out Alucard knew.

*************

Lipstick

The first time Integra tried makeup, she did it in absolute secret, locking the doors to her room and closing all the curtains. As soon as she was finished she knew she didn’t like it. She looked like a painted harlot! Turning from her vanity to go wash, she walked straight into Alucard. Silently cursing that she hadn’t seen him in the mirror, they simply stood for a moment. He had a strange look on his face, and his eyes were fixed directly on her mouth.

Forcing herself not to blush she met his gaze impudently. She had chosen, like most girls on their first experiments with makeup, a bright red shade, which, she now realized, was probably far too close to the color of blood.

Alucard finally blinked, looking up at her eyes. “Red suits you, Master.”

That night she flushed all the makeup down the loo.

*************

Cat

Integra had always liked dogs. They were obedient, loyal and, if trained well, did what they were told.
Rubbing her head from the migraine she was getting, she looked up. It was the justification paperwork for Alucard’s latest rampage. She had been making excuses and inventing details for the past two hours.
On the other hand, Dogs were loud, high maintenance, and often lacked any refinement.

Maybe it was time to get a cat.

**************

 

Chocolate

Integra Loved Chocolate. She loved the dark, dreamy, rich taste that seemed to unravel the stresses of the day and allow her to fall into an innocent guilty pleasure.
That was, of course, until Alucard made a comparison between what he deemed the very similar flavors of dark chocolate and blood.

The next day, she started smoking. She hasn’t had chocolate since.

*************]

 

Violin

Integra was almost positive if Alucard played an instrument, it would be the violin. She almost asked him a few times if he knew how to play, before stopping and reprimanding herself sternly.

Music was the voice of the soul after all, and Monsters don’t have souls.

**************

 

Passport

Three weeks after she assumed the Hellsing family mantle, Integra ran away.
She told herself it wasn’t running away. It was simply better for everyone if she went abroad for a while. No one wanted her in this position anyway. All of the Round Table had protested her father’s decision…
‘So why am I giving in to them?’
Sitting alone in the airport, she stared at her shoes.
A few minutes later a man in a black suit with sunglasses sat next to her.
“They sent you?”
“Walter’s checking the Train Stations. So, where are we going, Master?”
She stared at him for a minute before laughing. Rising to her feet, she started walking away.

“Home, Servant. We have work to do.”

*************

 

Forgotten

For years, she had nightmares. She’d wake up screaming, only to stifle her cries immediately so as not to call anyone.
Locked away for years, never to see or hear another living person. Never to be thought of or missed in any way. What was it, to be utterly and totally forgotten?
She liked to think she was strong, but she knew that she wouldn’t have been able to stand it. In the early days, she swore that she would never do anything so cruel to anything, not even a vampire. Something like that could break a man.

Maybe it had even broken him.

*************

 

Window

The Iron Lady of Hellsing stood in the remains of her office, looking out over the carnage that London had become. The last of the Zeppelins were deflating before her eyes, and smoke rose from more than a dozen places in the city. Hellsing Manor itself was almost totally destroyed, with only the sub-basements surviving the last of the bombings. She currently stood atop a pile of rubble; with a corner of what could have been her desk peeking out from underneath what she hoped was only a uniform. She didn’t want to dig deeper to see.
‘Do you like it, Master? Does it excite you as it does me?’

She denied it. She shouldn’t like it. She couldn’t. She mustn’t.

*************

Roof

In the middle of the rainy London night, a fourteen year old girl crawled out of her bedroom window and clambered onto the roof. It was deafeningly quiet, all sound muffled by the falling rain, but she still felt the man behind her approach. Pulling her knees to her chest, she accepted the coat over her shoulders, shivering slightly. Seeming to recognize her desire to be left alone, he sat down beside her, staring out at the foggy lights of the city.

The next day they would pretend the wet streaks on her face had been rain.

*************

Filial

“Sometime Children Do Forget Their Filial Responsibilities.”

Integra looked up from her book and sighed. She understood why her father gave her these quotations, but it was hardly as if she could forget her responsibilities. She was prepped and primed for it every day, and never allowed to forget that she was a Hellsing and all that that entailed.

“Integra.”

“Yes, Father?”

“See that you memorize those quotes.”

“Yes, Father.”

*************

Signature

Sighing, Integra looked up from the pile of paperwork covering her desk and stretched. Blinking down at her work she read what she had just written.

Sir Integral Fairbrooks Wingates Hellsing

It was an execution order for a vampire terrorizing a shop on the waterfront. Alucard had already dealt with it…but that didn’t matter. The paperwork had to be done.

The first time she had had to sign an order like this, she had done it without hesitation and with a firm resolve that had impressed everyone in the room with the teenager. Later that night she had cried for an hour.

She wondered when she’d stopped caring.

*************

Specimen

Integra slumped over the pile of paperwork covering her massive desk.

“If Ronald boards Train A at 8:34 AM, and Debra boards Train B at 9:27 AM, and both trains travel in the opposite direction at 55 Kilometers Per Hour, at what time would the two trains pass each other?”

She sighed. Homeschooling was fine, but doing that on top of running a top secret organization was ridiculous. She threw the math book across the room. Walter would reprimand her, but it was better than nothing. She shouldn’t blame him though. He’d taken on extra responsibilities to help her run the Organization too.

“I hope bloody Debra turns out to be a vampire and rips the conductor and Ronald’s heads off. That’d stop the trains,” she sighed, flopping back in her chair. “…No wait…” She frowned, “I don’t. That’d mean more bloody paperwork for me.”

Picking up what she vowed would be her last textbook for the night, she read.

It was her Biology textbook, and tonight she was to do an experiment.

“Pick a Non-Human living organism and perform the following chemical tests on it…”

She looked up and grinned.

“Oh Alucard!?”

Homeschooling might be fun after all.

*************

Movie

In a darkened movie theater in the dead of the London night one late summer night a man and a girl sat alone in the back row.

The flickering grey light fluttered over both of them, revealing the man’s barely repressed sneer of contempt and the girl, doubled over in her chair from laughing, her sides aching.

Seeing the midnight showing of Bram Stoker’s Dracula had been a great idea.

*************

Chess

When Integra was six, her father had taught her to play chess, but he soon became too busy and withdrawn to play with her. Walter would play a game when he got a chance, but he too was far too busy with his duties, and by the time Integra was ten, she had a suspicion that he let her win.

Alucard made her play a game every week until she was twenty. He said it was vital for her to learn to think like a commander if he was to be her pawn. He was good, very good, and for years Integra found herself planning moves and strategies whenever her mind wandered.

The first time she beat him, she felt a feeling of immense triumph, but managed to keep it contained. He had simply nodded, and said good night.

Now, as she reviewed the latest intelligence on Millennium’s movements, she couldn’t help but feel a slight sense of defeat.

‘Twenty years of setting up their pieces will be difficult to defeat with a single move…”

She smiled, the memory of that feeling returning.

‘But I can do it.’

*************

Grin


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That Grin…

With those horrid, pointed fangs, dripping with the blood of men she had known all her life…

The memory stayed with her for weeks, and she would wake up screaming in the middle of the night, those jaws wrapping themselves around her own throat…


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That Grin…

Showing his delight to do her bidding, his anticipation at the hunt ahead…

Flashing up at her on a Brazilian News Station, matching the gleam in his eyes…


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That Grin…

Try as she might, she couldn’t quite pinpoint when that emblem of terror had become a symbol of security…


*************

Cupboard


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Drunken conduct is unbefitting a Hellsing. Therefore Integra always frowned upon liquor as she was taught, (Ignoring her father’s blatant hypocrisy in this teaching) and avoided it entirely.

Except for once.


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One night a fifteen year old girl lay tossing and turning in her bed, unable to sleep after the chaos prior that evening. Grabbing up a torch, she decided to explore the catacombs beneath Hellsing Manor further. Her butler was already fast asleep and her servant out for the night.

After passing by the all too familiar dungeons and poking around the old library, she came across one of the wine cellars.

After a few minutes of examining the dusty bottles, she turned to leave, when a cupboard in the corner caught her eye.

‘Vintage Port; Decanted 1886’

Dozens of bottles of this filled the cabinet. Integra recognized them as the bottles Alucard always had by his chair in his room. She had wondered where it came from…What’s more, what did Vampires drink besides the obvious?

Curious, she reached for one of the bottles, waving away the tiny pang of guilt she felt. It was obviously expensive, but it technically belonged to her anyway.

Breaking the ancient seal, a pungent and sharp aroma wafted across the musty room. Interested, she took a sip.


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The next morning, Walter desperately searched the house for the Hellsing Heir, calling out the troops and even daring to wake Alucard to help in the search.

Four hours later, when the poor geriatric was reaching near hysterics from his usually composed demeanor, the vampire and a slightly stumbling girl emerged from the basements.

An empty bottle of claret lay on the floor in the cellar for months as a reminder.

*************

Mirror

“Fuck!”

Integra cursed, staring down at the shattered remains of her hand mirror.

“It isn’t proper for a lady to swear, Sir Integra.”

Walter’s firm tone washed over her from behind. Wincing, the guilty culprit turned to face her guardian.

“Alucard!?” Embarrassed at being tricked and she turned back to hide her reddening face, resolutely determined not to ask how the vampire had done that.

“I’ve known Walter a long time.”

She spun back around, now more angered by the vampire’s ability to seemingly read her mind than embarrassed.

“What are you doing here, anyway?!”

The vampire gestured towards her hand. “You cut yourself.”

Integra glanced down, noticing for the first time the blood dripping from a nasty gash along her palm. Quickly grabbing the towel from her vanity to stop the bleeding and hopefully some of the smell, she stammered, “Yes, well…I broke mothe-my mirror.”

The vampire grinned. “Ah. What a pity. That’s seven years of bad luck, Master.”

Integra scoffed, stepping over the wreckage of shattered glass to pick up the silver hand mirror. “Superstitions are a lot of rubbish made to frighten the unimaginative.”

“Do you know why it is considered bad luck to break a mirror, Master?”

“Yes, of course.” She busied herself with picking out the last bits of mirror sticking to the frame.

Alucard advanced towards her, carelessly, his boots grinding blood and glass further into the carpet, speaking as he moved.

“It was because the soul is supposed to reside within one’s reflection, and to break a mirror housing one’s reflection would let the demons at the soul for seven years.”

Integra stared at the vampire for a second, only inches away from her, before bursting out laughing. “Quit trying to scare me! All sensible people know that when mirrors were first made they were so expensive that the nobles invented that story to scare the servants into handling them carefully. You and I know that fully well.”

Alucard smiled and leaned in to whisper in her ear. “That may be so, Master, but tell me this: Why doesn’t my reflection appear in a mirror?”

Integra paled, and Alucard tipped his hat, vanishing into the wall.


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Integra had a new mirror put into the frame, and never broke a mirror again.

Not that she was superstitious.


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Seven years and One day later the Valentine Brothers attacked Hellsing Manor.

Which, proved once and for all that superstitions were a load of rubbish.

…Not that she was counting, either.

*************


Spot/Shiver

There is a spot in the Hellsing Manor.

It’s nothing special, just a square of tile in one of the endless hallways.

It always makes Integra shiver.

There’s no reason for it; no drafts or currents of any kind, she had Walter check.

She refuses to believe it’s a ghost; she’s eight years old now and far too sensible to believe in such things.

She still avoids it.

But every once in a while, she forgets, or she’s in a hurry, late again for one of Father’s lessons, and it makes her shiver.

Two levels down, still deep in his slumber, a vampire’s mouth twitches up in a smile.

*************

Knight

Integra’s knighting is hurried affair.

There can be no pomp and circumstance, just a hurried tap of Integra’s own sword on her shoulders. An annoying formality before her first Round Table conference.

It’s the first time she’s ever met the Queen, keeping her eyes downcast as she kneels on the hard floor of her office.

“I dub thee, Sir Integra Fairbrooks Wingates Hellsing…”

As she looks up she tries to hide the disappointment in her eyes, or at least disguise it as something more appropriate.

“Thank you, your Majesty.”

She’s sixteen.

*************