Hellsing Fan Fiction ❯ Smoke ❯ Just a Puff of Smoke... ( Chapter 1 )

It's funny, when you think about it. When I was a child, my parents and teachers always told me that smoking was horrible for you, and for a woman, it was almost unheard of. Well, if you take a good look at me now, you'll see that I honestly don't care. I smoke an average of five cigars a day. Too much? Abusive? I think not.

I sat there, that night, with - guess - a cigar propped in my mouth. It's red tip reminded me of blood; the blood of those that were to be eliminated, the blood of my family, my own blood were all on fire in that cigar, and it almost started to scare me.

My boots were propped up on my desk, and one of my arms cradled my tensed neck while the other rested in my lap. A most comfortable position, I must say.

As I was saying, I was really just spacing in and out of my own world that night, not particularly up to working or doing anything. It must have been the hunt early that morning that made me feel so exhausted without being tired. A few calls came in, and I took messages for myself later, not trusting myself to remember the next morning.

Watching the ribbons of smoke my cigar was making, I wrote my name in the stars… well, the frame of my window. Integra Wingates Hellsing. My father chose my name for me, telling my mother that I would need a strong and supportive name for myself when I was older. He was right, wouldn't you know.

Now I'm the Leader of the Hellsing Organization and all is well. In the meantime, anyway.

I was sitting, relaxing in the moon's rays. On a night like this, it was rare to find peace and solitude. I was lucky to be able to sit, let alone recline and have a smoke.

Suddenly, I felt a familiar energy in the room, one that I had felt for many years. I knew exactly who it was and why they were here.

"Arucard, come."

The night suddenly got a bit cooler, or maybe it was just my imagination. A dark hole voided the floor beside me as he rose through, his bright red coat discarded for a more simple, less eye-attracting black leather one. His defined cheekbones rose out of his sculpted face, his eyes a cool crimson. He stared down at the cigar in my hand, the one dropping ashes into my lap.

Suddenly, he did something I never expected him to do, something so out of his character that I couldn't even bring myself to ask him why he did it.

He whipped his hand to my pants, brushing off the hot ashes in one sweep, concern written all over his face. He looked at me in question as he brushed my pants a few more times.

"Why would you let this happen, master?" His voice was hushed, but the sting in that deep, throaty voice touched me. He wasn't just concerned for me as a master, but as a friend, an equal, perhaps even more.

He realized this suddenly, and with one step, he backed away, almost sadly, back into the darkness of the room.

"I apologize for touching you without order, Sir."

I was speechless. There was nothing I could say.

'I want you to touch me? I've dreamed about you touching me?' No, those were… my mind was filled with the fantasies I was so trying to rid off, but I could not help it. With a grown man following, protecting, obeying your every command and calling you 'Master' every time he saw you, you would have some romantic-hero fantasies, too. But it wasn't just the fantasies, I thought silently. It was having a real vampire near you, not to cause you harm or turn you, but to keep you safe from others like him, and even worse.

The sad thing was, the race that I fought my whole life to kill was…

Was just what I wanted to become.