The Child of Seras - by MindAsylum - Anime - http://www.hellsingfanfic.net/hellsingfanfic/The_Child

The Child of Seras

Chapter X

Integra Hellsing sat at her desk, her jaw tight from the artillery barrage aimed at her head. The over-the-counter medication Walter had been giving her hadn’t helped much, and she wasn’t about to waste precious time in the sickbay when there were more important matters to attend to. Besides, the notion of breaking her “if you’re still breathing, you don’t need a doctor” rule was far from appealing.

Her mind went back to the first night Rivers arrived in her office. He’d put on the most obviously false display of confidence she’d ever seen, in an attempt to prove that he wasn’t utterly useless. Even then she thought there was something strange about him, something so obscure his very presence unnerved her. Alucard’s presence wasn’t exactly comforting, either, but at least his nature was obvious. Rivers, however, was a different story altogether. He seemed conscionable to say the least, but with what she knew about him since Dr. Harding’s call...there was no way of knowing what was really going on behind those earnest eyes. He was, in essence, a wild card; a powder keg waiting for a spark.

“Doesn’t that make it all the more interesting?”

If her head hadn’t already been pounding, Integra might have felt the familiar, cold tingle and braced herself. But for once, he caught her by surprise. She made no move to show it, however, and tilted her head up slowly to meet his lustful stare, masking her surprise with a look of annoyance.

“And just what is so ‘interesting’ about having damaged goods living in my home and fighting alongside my men?” she said coldly.

Alucard looked slyly at her. “Damaged goods? Is that how you see him?”

“His mental issues are nothing more than a dangerous liability. Were it not for Seras’ ability to keep him under control, I would have shipped him back to the Foundation the moment Dr. Harding called me.”

A sudden gleam went over Alucard’s eyes. His smile broadened. Integra knew this look all too well.

He had an idea.

“What if I were to turn this ‘liability’ of yours into an asset?”

Integra raised an eyebrow in skepticism. “What are you talking about?”

“Master, I disagree when you say that he is ‘damaged goods.’ In fact, I would even say that we were lucky to find him. He’s a gem; he just needs to be washed clean and cut in the appropriate shape.”

“This is coming from the one who called him ‘utterly spineless?’”

Alucard ignored her lack of enthusiasm and went on. “He is, at the moment. But I can change all that. I can melt his hesitation, burn his regret to ashes, carve away his weakness and leave behind a perfect soldier of Hellsing, an engine of destruction second only to myself.”

“In other words, you could turn him into a monster?” She said tonelessly, showing that she was listening but not remotely interested.

“No, only he can do that. But I can awaken the monster that sleeps in him. You know it will awake eventually; why not harness its power, just as you have harnessed mine? Give me a month, no, half that, and it will be done.”

Integra paused for a moment, as though considering it. “Alucard, I’ll allow it...” she began, shielding her thoughts and letting his excitement build, “...when Rivers waltzes into your quarters and asks you himself. You must think me utterly mad. Do you think for an instant that I would snatch him away from his master, throw him squarely in your hands, and leave you to do whatever you wish with him? I would just as soon put him in front of firing squad on a hot July morning. And as for your perverse interest in him, I suggest you end it. You had your chance with Seras, and by some miracle, she came out of it still decent and speaking in full sentences. Rivers belongs to her, not you.”

A miracle indeed: once she became Nosferatu, Alucard subjected her to training rites that would turn the stomach of a Viet Cong torturer. Integra herself had been overly occupied at the time to see it, but each night she seemed to slip away more and more, until she finally spoke up about the things Alucard had been doing to her. Alucard was kept at an arm’s distance from her ever since, and no one ever spoke of it.

Alucard’s face betrayed no disappointment, but his smile shrank back to its normal width. “It really is a shame to waste such great potential. Not even in the Crusades have I seen hatred so concentrated and pure. If you don’t make it work for you, in time it is sure to work against you.”

“I will not repeat myself, Alucard.”

Alucard turned smoothly toward the wall. More specifically, through her father’s portrait, which he always did in spite of her.

“My patience is eternal, Master. I have faith that you, and he, will see things my way.”

--

The projection screen fizzed to life and showed something Seras had never seen, or wanted to see again.

Jake was in a steel chair, panting, tied down by the wrists and the forehead with leather restraints. He writhed and thrashed against them, jerking the entire chair an inch or so where the bolts that held it down were loose. His eyes were wide and fiery, his teeth bared, his hands clenching and easing in time with his sporadic movements.

“Jacob, listen to me; what happened to your sister, in either case, it was not your fault.”

“Bullshit!” he screamed back, in that horrible serrated voice that Seras hated more than anything else. ”She suffered and she died because of me! She even let that piece of shit...”

He didn’t finish his sentence, he just screamed with a set of thrashes so forceful the bolts seemed to give a little.

“Monsters...” he growled, as though gagging on glass and hot asphalt.

“Monsters...everywhere...the world is crawling with them!”

Jake’s pale face was a mask of such consummate, primal rage, that Seras swore for a moment that a demon was trying to eat its way out of him.

“I’ll kill them.” he said quietly, as if it were an oath. “I’ll kill them all. Kill them all. Kill them all kill them all kill them all killthemallkillthemallkillthemall...” He chanted it over and over like a prayer to some dark god, getting louder as the thing that had replaced the gentle boy she knew grew stronger and stronger.

“Or,” Seras thought in terror, “What if the gentle boy is just a replacement for the monster?”

Jake’s chanting degenerated into more animalistic thrashing and wordless screams. He must have paralyzed the entire room in fear, as no move was made to sedate or calm him. Seras could hear the leather straps straining against his little wrists, and it seemed as though he might actually break out of them when he finally wore himself down. His breathing became sporadic, his eyes scrunched. His chest quivered as he gulped in air at irregular rhythms. In a moment, it came to Seras what was happening: he was crying. Tears still streaming down his face, the sobbing stopped, and he spoke in a voice so calm it unsettled her more than the raving he had done before.

“I’ll never get rid of it, Dr. Harding,” he said lifelessly, even less human than his demonic growls, “It’s always gonna be there, looking over my shoulder.”

Jake smiled through the tears, but it wasn’t the smile of a child. It was the smile reserved when one sees their death approaching, and welcomes it with open arms. Seras knew instinctively that this was his way of thanking the good doctor for all his efforts, even though they proved useless.

“I think,” he said, with a single, desolate laugh, “we’re done for the day.”

Seras’ jaw trembled and her vision began to grow red. Her chest shuddered, and she heard the sound of little droplets hitting the table. She wanted to reach through the screen, to hold him, to tell him that she’d never give up on him, and that she’d protect him from the Monster forever. But all she could do was watch, as the tape faded to black, as the though drawing a curtain at the end of the last bloody act of Jake’s tragic, tortured past.

But then the tap cut loudly to a scene of Jake in a bare, off-white cell. He was laying in a cot, as though asleep, with several masked orderlies scurrying about him, frantically strapping medical instruments to him. Seras saw that his eyes were barely slit open.

“What happened?” barked one of the orderlies on screen.

“I-I don’t know!” pleaded Dr. Harding helplessly from off screen. “We were taking him back to his cell and he collapsed!”
Seras didn’t know if any of the doctors noticed, but his slit-open eyes closed completely, as though he had only just now lost consciousness.

“Dr., he’s flat-lined!” cried one of the nurses frantically.

“Jesus...perform CPR, hurry!”

Had he done this to himself? Was he so afraid of becoming the puppet of a Monster that he’d actually forced himself to die?
The nurse was on her second attempt at CPR when the camera cut to black again.

Seras saw Jake again, but he was not raving, sobbing or apologizing rampantly, or even staring straight ahead in unspoken horror. Nor did he show any signs of physical illness or even exhaustion. In fact, the most Seras could make of his expression was mild nervousness and a bit of uncertainty, like a kid called up to the principle’s office.

“You’re heart didn’t function for over five minutes. We had to shock it back to life or you might have died.”

Jake didn’t speak, just wrinkled his nose in confusion. Then a look of understanding came across his face and he returned to his former expression.

“Jacob, this ‘monster’ of yours...if you truly wish to conquer it, you must first accept that it is a part of you. You can’t treat it as if it’s some kind of disease you need a cure for. It’s something that you need to sort out, not get rid of. And I still have faith in you.”

Jake blinked, not understanding any of what the good doctor had just said. Finally, he spoke, and Seras suddenly understood everything.

“I’m sorry but...what are you talking about?”

There was an awkward pause, but Jake looked on, waiting patiently for an answer.

“Do you know who I am, Jacob?” asked the doctor worriedly.

“Yes, you’re my doctor. You’ve been helping me since the car crash.”

“Car crash?”

“Yes,” said Jake, as thought it were a well-known fact. “My Dad and Sister died four months ago. It...made me very mad for some reason, and you’ve been helping me get better so I can leave here. I think I’m starting to be OK, now. When do you think I’ll be able to leave?”

The hellish nightmares he’d endured, past and present, his near-psychotic rage; it had all just disappeared as if it was never there. Then Seras understood just what he had done in the session before: he forgot everything. Replaced it with nothing more than cheap facades he had created to shield himself from the horrors wrought upon him.

The next three hours went by in a grayish brown sludge. All the sessions afterward were more of the same: the doctor would try to tell him what truly happened, and Jake would calmly disagree. “That’s silly,” he’d say, “Everyone knows monsters don’t exist.” And he’d truly believe it, beyond any doubt whatsoever. He was even hooked up to a polygraph, and his pulse didn’t jump in the slightest when Dr. Harding gravely went over the incident, or even said Ceil’s name.

“What was Ceil like, Jacob?” he’d asked him, hoping to conjure a response; anything except the pretty lies he kept vomiting up.

Jake just smiled warmly, the same way he did to Seras that first night in the gym.

“She was an angel; a perfect person.” He dreamily replied.

The tape ended and Seras stared at static for what had to have been hours. She cradled her head in her hands as her brain feebly tried to process what she’d seen. She tried to tell herself that none of this mattered; that Jake was fine the way he was. After all, if the “monster” was going to show up, wouldn’t it have done so already? No, that wasn’t the Jake she knew. Jake wasn’t vengeful. Jake wasn’t bitter or angry. In fact, he could do with a bit more assertiveness.

But what really loomed over her was that horrible question: what was she going to do about it?

Her conscience demanded that she tell him everything. He had the right to know; for God’s sake, she was holding his entire life in her hands. Sure it had been Hell for him, sure she didn’t know what the consequences would be, but it was the right thing to do.

Another part of her, however, questioned her sanity in doing so. What would happen when the facade Jake created was smashed to pieces, the vault finally cracked open? Would he change? Break inside? Or would the “Monster” he had tried so hard to cage run free again, now endowed with power beyond his wildest dreams? Surely it would be more merciful to just let him live the way he was, where he wasn’t suffering endlessly; to let the sleeping dog lie.

Besides, he wouldn’t have gone to such extreme lengths if he was able to handle it, even now. Even the polygraph tests the doctor ran showed no signs of recollection; he might have buried his past so deeply that it was beyond recovery.

Then Seras remembered that night in the gym, the way his voice wavered when he talked about his family, how uncomfortable he seemed with the subject. Was it because his memories weren’t as well hidden as before?

You can’t take the easy way out, she told herself, Jake’s life and sanity are at stake here, you can’t just sit on your hands and pretend everything’s OK. You made a promise that you’d take care of him, so damn it, work up the guts and live up to your word.

Seras swallowed hard and glanced at the clock on the VCR.

6:00PM

Jake was probably just waking up. A plan was forming in her head as she opened the door and took the longest walk she could ever remember taking to the subbasement. She would take him to her room, sit him down, and, very calmly—“

“Seras, you’re up?”

She nearly leapt out of her skin and fell down the few steps that remained.

“Sorry,” said Jake, looking just as modestly chipper as he always did in her presence. “I thought you’d hear me coming like always. You’re probably still half-asleep, huh?”

Seras was speechless for a moment. She had worked up all her nerve to come down here and now, here she was, her fledgling staring straight at her, with that naive, warm smile and those trusting eyes, pinning her to the wall like a butterfly. Her voice caught in her throat, her mouth opened and closed, trying to get some audible sound out. Jake’s expression turned to worry.

“Are you OK, Seras?” he said, his sincere concern only making things harder for her. “You look really pale, are you sick or something?”

“Jake...” this was her chance. She had to take it. It was now or never.

“Yeah?” he looked at her, his attention undivided, just as always.

“I’ll kill them all”

“It’s always gonna’ be there, looking over my shoulder.”

“I’m fine. Just didn’t get much sleep,” she said, with a fake, reassuring smile that made her hate herself immeasurably. “Go ahead to the gym. I’ll meet you there in a bit, OK?”

Jake’s worried grimace faded to a smile again. “OK, Seras. You better be on your guard though, I’ve been practicing a lot.”
Seras watched him turn to leave with a noticeable spring in his step, while Seras mentally bashed her head into the wall for her cowardice.

“Look at him,” said a voice from behind her. “Like a child: fast asleep and dreaming. Do you want to wake him up, or should I?”

Seras gritted her teeth and clenched her fists. Possessed by what she could only think of as a maternal rage, she whipped around and brought a right hook straight into Alucard’s face. He was knocked backward slightly, and a quick sweep of his ankles made him fall further. Her hands were around his neck before his glasses shattered against the ground.

“You don’t say a word to him, you don’t touch him!” she screamed so loud she would be thankful later that the subbasement was soundproof. “Do you hear me!?”

Alucard leered and spat a fang onto the floor, making no move to escape her grasp. “It’s rather selfish of you, keeping such important secrets. Besides,” He said, his grin widening, “even if you can protect him from me, do you truly believe you can protect him from himself?”

She pushed him to the floor and let him stand back up. “That’s none of your god-damned business. Jake’s a good boy, and that’s exactly how he’s going to stay, with or without your stupid games!”

Seras walked briskly up the stairs, grinding her teeth all the way to the gym. She would tell him the truth; that much was certain. But not yet. He just wasn’t ready.

And neither was she.

The Child of Seras Review

Please make constructive reviews - NO FLAMING.

Please fill in the blanks. Fields marked with * are Required.

Private If private is checked, only the form owner can see your entry.

Your Name:

Your Review:

Your eMail Adress:

LJ URL:

FF Net URL:

matoska_2000@yahoo.com

Visitors: 00097

Page Updated Mon Sep 7, 2009 12:04am EDT