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The very first time she sees him, she’s running for her life and hopefully not falling to her death. There’s no time to take him in except to notice how very dead he seems, tied up in black leather and bound to a something that doesn’t matter because her only hope is dead. Dead and gone and withered away in the dank basement she didn’t even know they had.
In that moment, Integra isn’t sure she’ll be able to face death with the dignity befitting a Hellsing, but…well, it seems the King of Vampires doesn’t die as easily as her father might’ve thought. And in the next moment, Integra is very sure she’ll be able to mete out death with the stoicness befitting her name. And by the time she thinks to take a better look at her new companion, there’s so much more to do and focus on and bother with than appearances.
In the rest of her life with her pet vampire, there’ll always be something else to focus on. Threats to her organization, threats to her life, the danger of her barely leashed dog, there’s always something else for her. There’s never time to stop and enjoy, never time to do anything but work, work, work her life away. Even when country falls, when dead men storm the streets and her family home burns, there’s more to do than focus on the loss or mourning or numbness of her soul.
Of course there’s only work to focus on after Alucard is gone, Seras to tend to and her country to rebuild from the ground up. So many dead in one night, so many dead by a single monster. After Alucard, there is no Walter and no council and nobody but herself to rely on, and there’s so much more to do than focus on herself.
And the years tick by, the sands of her human clock trickle away with her human life, and there’s still never the time to focus on anything but her duty. There are snatched seconds to wonder about her lost companion, to mourn a monster that she never dared label as anything but an asset. But seconds don’t hold a flicker of a flame to a lifetime of denial and she thinks a few moments of despondency are allowed so long as they are only moments.
But then, the clock stops. And the sand stills. And Integra Fairbrook Windgates Hellsing takes more than a minute to feel something for the first time in years.
When the darkness draws in deep and the cold sinks to her bones and predator warm breath washes over her throat. When she tears a gun from her pillow and screams at the monster she loved and loves. As he slumps against the wall, theatric and terrible. As he bares fangs in a grin for her and bows over his knee to her. His one, last Master.
“My Count,” she calls him as she bleeds for the one abomination she’s never feared. Never been afraid of the way she should, the way that’s smart. And no, not because he wears a handsome human skin or acts worse than a child, not because she’s ever forgotten what he was. Integra thinks, as she bites, that she’s never feared him because she’s known him down to his wretched marrow ever since she jumped down a flight of stairs.
“My Countess,” he coos as he splits his jaw wide for her, desperate for the only taste of blood willingly given. Alive and rich and pure in ways he’s never been blessed to be. Tongue hanging, panting as red splatters his lips, drips down his chin. Taking what he’s given and nothing more, for the only time in his eternal existence.
There’s a horror to it, to her oil slick palm and his predator gaze, but she has never been cowed by horror, eldritch or otherwise. And when she sits at the head of the table, head of the Holy Order, he stands at her back with his hand around her throat, loose and promising. A hound at his Master’s heel and a monster at his prey’s throat all at once.
There’s a terror in the way he cherishes her, comes with blood soaked hands and lust blown eyes, so many eyes. The gifts he brings are grotesque, ragged limbs and twitching organs, the head of a enemy and spine of a traitor. But oh he comes with such sincerity, such grace and genteel hunger, that she forgets how to deny him.
Softer in her old age probably, fonder after a thirty year absence, and more willing to let him slide bruising fangs into her wrist, her thigh, her steady throat. Moaning as he drinks her like the finest wine and lusting like a beast in the field, but he stops, oh he stops before she so much as quirks a brow. He stops to keep her human and alive and lovely, because isn’t she loveliest as she is?
Warm in his gloved hands and breathing against his manic grins. His Countess, who welcomes him home at the end of every crusade in her name. Her Count who returns to her and feeds of her and loves her in his terrible, horrific ways.