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Disclaimer: Hellsing isn't mine, nor is anything else. Just the plot (as pathetic as it is).
Dedicated to Shehcelciudat, who came up with a majority of the 'bad things' that happen to Anderson (almost too readily). Also dedicated to Matty, my boyfriend, and his forever pursuit for Pike street (and his desperate escape from Pine).
And dedicated to Alucard's vagina.
Oh, and Nasumaru. She's a great humorist.
Sort of edited. shrug
Note: Girlycard is Alucard's female form in the Dawn. Yes, you can argue with me about how he's not female, but many fans believe he was a female in the prequel. In this fic, he is. So there.
Sympathy Card
Anderson twisted the white bottle in his palm slowly with chilled, stiff fingers, the cold of the snow outside still permeating through the walls and into the small convenience store. The windows were silver and opaque from the cold, moist air outside, making the already small store seem somehow claustrophobic, smaller. It would have truly bothered Anderson once a long time ago, when his claustrophobia was at its peak. Nowadays, it was nothing more than the mildest discomfort, an itch in the back of his mind that urged him to walk out the door and into the open terrain of London.
It was simply a dusty, wooden room with a few dustier shelves laden with foods, magazines, and medicines. Most of the more prominent stores had been destroyed and burned in the war, leaving the smaller, less conspicuous ones almost completely intact. It was yet another strange aftereffect of the war, but Anderson didn't dwell on such trivial things, not when the war was over and done with.
So he instead tried to busy himself with reading the bottle in his hand, but his eyes were unseeing to the small print. His head was somewhat foggy from the thick stench of mold and dust hanging in the air, and his instincts again tickled at his subconscious, urging him to leave the store.
But at the moment, such a thing was impossible. The war had left its share of orphans, several of which were roaming through the store in search of treats. In light of the holiday cheer, Anderson had promised them each any candy of their choice. After listening to twenty minutes of noisy, incessant squabbling and banter, Anderson was beginning to thoroughly regret his decision.
So he vaguely attempted to look enraptured in the small bottle of pills in his palm.
Calcium pills, he realized belatedly. From the way the tips of his hairs were interfering with the ceiling lights, it's more than obvious than calcium was hardly something he needed at this point in his life. But he still didn't put down the bottle; it was enough of an excuse to pretend he was too busy for their bickering and whining, and he gently brushed away the few children that tried to tug at the cuffs of his sleeves for attention. He only kept an ear out for the bell on the door, to make sure that none of the boys slipped out while he wasn't looking. Fortunately, they all seemed far to content in their pursuit of chocolates to consider escaping.
Which was a relief; most of them seemed more than happy to try their hand at living independently out in freezing temperatures. Anderson was baffled beyond all reason on why any child would attempt to do so, but shrugged it off to simple puerile reasoning.
Anderson twisted the bottle in his hand again, listening to the dry clink of pills rolling inside the plastic container.
'Enjoying yourself?'
For a moment, Anderson didn't realize the question was directed at him. But he looked up, mildly startled, meeting the dark brown eyes of a girl leaning over the wooden surface of a shelf. She had black hair that's neatly cropped, falling down so straight it was like a curtain around her small body. She was wearing what proved to be a very unique outfit. It almost seemed too white, too perfect.
A small voice in the back of his mind gently nagged at him, wondering why he hadn't heard the chime of a bell when the girl entered the store.
'Nay,' he replied shortly, a hand instantly moving to capture a small orphan careening past him. It was an impressive motion, graceful, but the following action was not so graceful. The bottle of pills fell casualty to the movement, dropping to the floor with a snap. The cap – as pathetically easy to damage as it was – broke off and sent a flurry of white pills over the dusty floor.
Wonderful.
Anderson grimaced and gave the child a berating pat on the head, sending him away. He was just in the process of kneeling down to collect the fallen pills when he saw a quick shift of movement, and the strange girl was suddenly kneeling next to the mess, carefully and quickly picking up the white capsules. Stranger still, she was silently muttering curses under her breath, most of which sound foreign, rough.
'Don't bother,' she said sharply, halting Anderson. The brown eyes seemed almost territorial as she retrieved the pills with deft, slender finger, placing them back in the plastic container one-by-one. 'I'll get them.'
Genuinely baffled, Anderson awkwardly remained standing. He was on the tip of saying an apology, but was again interrupted when the amused brown eyes of the girls flickered behind him. He turned, eyes falling on a young orphan girl carefully peeling back the outer wrapper of a candy bar. Before it had been bought, of course, which is when children seemed to believe that the food tasted its sweetest.
'You might want to keep a closer eye on them, priest,' said the girl, her tone sounding more taunting than anything else. It was a familiar, grating tone that Anderson couldn't quite place, but he again dismissed the small part of his mind that again blithely, cheerfully informed him that something was amiss.
He stopped listening to that little voice of common sense some time ago, when it had begun to sound disturbingly like Alucard.
It didn't take long to retrieve all of the children, for despite the excitement, many of them were weary from the day's tasks and ready to depart. The sun had set some time ago – being winter, night came at a ridiculously early hour – and it was almost time for their bedtime. Anderson silently berated himself for have the shortsightedness to promise them candy when the sugar would do nothing to aid their sleep.
Anderson held back an exasperated sigh when he paid for the treats, trying not to imagine what kind of hell the condensed sugar would bring. The other priests had already made it clear that Anderson's presence was somewhat tolerable, but not at all likeable. Since the end of the war, the Iscariot survivors had hardly been readily accepted back into general society. Maxwell's foolish actions – and tasteless ranting – had tarnished the Catholic church well enough, especially in the eyes of any British citizen.
But, as per the Catholic way, Anderson could not simply be tossed out of the church. He was, after all, a priest senior to all the others in the church, he had dealt with orphans many times before – and after the war, there had been plenty more in need of help – and he had thoroughly repented for his past actions. To them. Kind of.
He couldn't really feel bad for killing heathens and vampires, after all.
He supposed it didn't matter, in the end. Besides, he had Sir Integral Hellsing to back him up. In all probability, it was the only thing that Anderson could rely on now. Which was, of course, not a reassuring thought.
She had approached him with the offer to keep him as an assassin, perhaps out of some twisted charity. He had felt much like an abandoned puppy on an abandoned street corner, and as any lost puppy would be, he was more than eager to follow Integral right back to the furnished comfort of Hellsing manor. There had been intense, arduous damage control after the war, which had lasted several months – almost a year, he realized – and had finally died down after his final eradication in Russia.
His only order throughout the entirety of the task was to avoid Alucard at any and all costs. If he had to jump out a window, over a fence, through a wall didn't matter, as long as he avoided Alucard. With the way Integral had lectured him, it might as well have been the eleventh commandment. He had been quickly, implicitly forbidden from socializing, fighting, or even mentioning the vampire under any circumstance.
An order Anderson had not expected to remain upheld. In fact, he had expected it to be upheld for no more than a day before Alucard would track him down and forcefully goad him into another duel. But surprisingly, he had only seem Alucard once since the war, and only from a distance. The proud silhouette of the vampire against the moonlit horizon, a specter in the frozen winter night.
It had been a strange moment. The vampire himself was not a strange sight to behold, but the fury that Anderson had once felt towards the man was completely deflated, weak. He had, if anything, just felt a mild irritation at seeing Alucard in the night like that, free and content despite his sins.
It was that night that Anderson decided that he had possibly gone irrevocably insane.
Which wasn't entirely unlikely.
He gathered the children and led them out of the store. He didn't think of the girl again for the rest of the day, not when he was trying to coax the sugar-high children to just go to sleep. He eventually had to resort to threatening them, instilling the fear of none other than Santa into their little hearts. It was underhanded, and the other priests would certainly have something to say about it, but it had worked well enough.
He didn't think of the strange girl again. That was, until she had shown up at his doorstep.
'You owe me nine pounds,' she said, smiling up at Anderson so sweetly that he almost forgot that it was odd that she had found his residence, and somehow miraculously guessed which door led to his room. Had Anderson had even the slightest inkling of what the day was going to be like, he would have buried himself back under the covers and pretended to be asleep. Or dead.
Anderson stared at the girl dubiously. 'For what?'
An exasperated flash went through the dark brown eyes, as if it should have been perfectly obvious why she had shown up at his door at six in the morning, demanding money. That little voice in the back of Anderson's mind again nudged at him, insisting that he was missing something very, very obvious, but he spitefully ignored it.
'Because I had to pay for your pills,' she said slowly, annunciating each word with thick, taunting sarcasm. It would have worked better, perhaps, had she not been smirking. 'After you broke the cap, I got stuck paying for the damage.'
Nonplussed, Anderson stared at the girl, but it was more than obvious that she had no intention of leaving before getting her money. Defeated and too tired to argue with the strange girl, he groped around for the money he had left on his dresser.
Which was, of course, not there.
Anderson stared at the spot in abject bewilderment, wondering how in the holy hell he had managed to lose several hundred pounds of Christmas money. Money he had made at minimum wage over the course of the year. Three hundred pounds that had been intended to be stretched over just about everything related to Christmas – tree, lights, and presents alike. Money that had sat on the top of the dresser for seven months, and now, a few days shy of Christmas… miraculously disappeared.
Anderson tried to keep his composure in front of the stranger, but he was certain he couldn't hide the eye twitch.
'I don't have any money with me,' he said in a steely tone, miraculously managing to ground out the words between clenched teeth and tightened lips. 'If you come back later, maybe after Christmas, I might be able to help you.'
The girl smirked, eyebrow raised. 'No money, right before Christmas?' she mocked, crossing her arms over a flat, lithe chest. 'None at all?'
Anderson shut the door in her face and locked it, trying to will himself to breathe. The money was gone, and Anderson knew himself well enough to know that he would not misplace money. But that certainly didn't stop him from completely upturning every single object in the room in a desperate, fruitless search. He had found a few pounds in his pants, and two more in the change cup. Barely thirty-two pounds in all, hardly enough to even pay for gas.
He decided to ask the other priests if they'd taken the money, but he also knew that in itself would be a fruitless search. But that doesn't stop him from asking, and he spends the better part of the morning stopping nuns and priests in the halls and asking them, quite seriously, if they had stolen his money.
Between the appalled gasps of the nuns and the stony glares of the priests, Anderson determined that it could have been much worse. He wasn't sure how, but he remained firm in his conviction that somehow things could be worse.
Finally deciding the search was futile, Anderson trudged off towards the kitchen. It was a small kitchen, down a small flight of stairs and behind a wooden door held by rusted hinges. Every morning, he would fight with the door – trying desperately not to snap it clean from the frame – and enter a kitchen heated at near boiling temperatures. After the initial shock of heat had worn off, he would sit at the table and eat a meal of soggy eggs and over-toasted bread.
But not today.
When Anderson opened the door to find himself in a gust of cold wind, he knew something was horribly amiss. When he felt ice cold water lapping at his ankles with the same gentleness as a tide of an ocean shore, cold tendrils of it sinking down his socks, he knew something quite horrendous had happened.
The pipes had never been very useful, and were prone to leaks several times a year that usually ended with Anderson being appointed plumber since they hadn't the money to afford any real repair. But he had never flooded the kitchen, and at the very least, he was not to blame. He hadn't been in the kitchen since the prior morning, and he was grateful. Had he been the one who had flooded it, he would have been met with an instantaneous bellow of 'this is all your fault, isn't it?'
Instead, he was met with another, entirely different bellow. 'Don't just stand there, Anderson! Can't you see I flooded the kitchen?'
And Anderson's afternoon was already set. He would have to fix the pipes, and somehow drain the water while simultaneously trying to convince hungry orphans not to dash through the newly created pond. But he couldn't leave them starving, so he trudged to the kitchen midway through his task, and opened the fridge. This was only to be assaulted by boxes upon boxes of food falling from the shelf and into the water, where they floated and slowly sunk like dying ships.
Directly followed by a shower of frozen blueberries.
Sometime well after three, Anderson had finally trudged back up the stairs, soaked and glaring ahead sightlessly. The money in his pocket would be just enough to buy a Christmas tree, until he could find some way to replace the rest of the cash he had lost. He had a debit card hidden nicely in his desk, but he was hesitant to use it.
Even if this did qualify as an emergency.
In the end, the debit card wouldn't have done much anyway. Twenty minutes later, Anderson stood at the gates of the Christmas tree lot, staring at a sign clearly marked 'Sold Out'. It must have been an awkward sight, a grown man staring unblinkingly at the sign uncomprehendingly for must have been five minutes. Somehow, without any provocation, the priests were going to find some clever way to blame him for this too. He had already endured a morning of 'Anderson flooded the kitchen?'
And it certainly hadn't helped that the water had seeped into the storage room, quickly and effectively ruining every piece of stored Christmas decoration. They had only managed to salvage the ornaments, but the Christmas lights had been a lost cause. So now, not only was he being blamed for the kitchen he fixed, but the ruined basement that he hadn't managed to salvage.
Killing vampires had been much easier than trying to prepare for Christmas.
There was only one other possibility at this point – one legal possibility – and with a heavy heart, Anderson went to the very last place in the world he wanted to be: the Lutheran Church. They always had Christmas trees after their annual sale, perfect emerald pines displayed neatly through wide windows, blinking with gentle lights and sparkling ornaments. Certainly, they would share one of their trees.
Evidently, none of the Lutherans were expecting to open the door to a glaring Catholic priest. The priest opposite of him – a small man with large brown eyes – stared up at Anderson, mouth parted in soundless 'o'. It was quite clear that the man probably would have been less startled to find Smokey the Bear knocking at his door.
After a long moment of staring, Anderson finally broke the silence. 'I need a Christmas tree,' he ground out.
Fortunately, the priest scuttled off and indeed returned with a tree. Unfortunately, the tree was too small, and even Anderson – to whom everything looked small in comparison to himself – knew that words would be exchanged when he got home. From the sad state of the barren pine, it would be more than just a few words, and probably from a variety of different people.
He had thanked the man – reluctantly – before returning to his car with the sad, small tree. As it turned out, the tree was not so small that it couldn't break a car window, and a moment later, Anderson was chanting a silent mantra of 'if you impale the car with bayonets, it won't solve anything!'
Anderson stuffed the tree into the back seat, far too agitated to have the patience to secure it to the roof, and he drove home, trying to ignore the fact that it was snowing on the inside of his car now, and that the tree was dropping dead pine needles over the carpet. It was his own car he was destroying, at the very least; the other priests would probably be more than happy with the destruction of his own possessions.
At least it was something to get praised over.
Nonetheless, he felt relieved when he finally parked in front of the church. It was already dark, and the temperature was dipping to some ridiculously low temperature the he was sure only penguins and abominable snowmen would wholly appreciate.
He turned the lever and pushed open the door, showering the rest of the glass over his lap in the process. No cuts, of course; it was a relief that car glass broke into cubes rather than jagged edges, and he simply brushed them away, willing himself not to use some of them more colorful facets of his language.
When he trudged up to the door and pushed it open, he was expecting to see a few priests perhaps decorating, children eating some cereal – being the only food they had the capacity to make without electrocuting themselves in the kitchen. He was expecting maybe, if he was terribly lucky, a nice warm fire burning in the fireplace and maybe cocoa.
What he was not expecting was a loud clank against the door, a loud crash of glass, and the remains of ornaments shattered amongst the ground. Anderson stood there in the doorway in what might have been shocked silence – which it wasn't, because shock would probably override anger, and he was definitely feeling some anger – for what must have been a full minute.
All the while, desperately wondering what kind of psychopathic bastard would stack boxes upon boxes of glass ornaments, next to the front door.
'Oops.'
And of course, as if God himself were giving him an answer, the strange girl was sitting on the floor before him, blithely threading popcorn with the orphans.
Her soft brown eyes were looking at him slyly, an expression he recognized from somewhere he couldn't quite place.
'Goddamn it, I don't have your money!' he snapped viciously, shaking the dead tree with emphasis. Unfortunately, Anderson realized his fault far too late, when he heard the identical gasps and shocked looks of the children. But none of them argued with him, most likely because they couldn't figure out whether to point out he had used God's name in vain, or that he had swore.
'Such language,' said the girl, clucking her tongue disapprovingly. She threaded another piece of the popcorn carefully, dark eyes focused on the string. 'What would the other priests say if they heard you talking like that, paladin?'
And as if cued by the girl, two of the orphans ran from the room, most likely to go tell the priests. Anderson debated running back to the car and getting away before the others could walk in and see him standing incriminatingly amongst the shattered remains of ornaments, holding an almost barren tree that was far more brown than green. He didn't, though, just stayed in place and willed himself to look less pathetic than he felt.
It wasn't his proudest moment.
However, it didn't go nearly as badly as it could have. The priests seemed much more keen on reassuring the girl that it wasn't her fault the ornaments were broken than yelling at Anderson. He did, however, get sternly ordered to go and buy more Christmas ornaments and lights.
Anderson figured, that wasn't so bad. He would have had to do all of that anyway.
When he opened the door to find that, in the span of about ten minutes, the weather took a dire turn and turned into a full-fledged snow storm. At this point, nothing was going to surprise him, not if the sky fell, not if a specter form Enrico showed up playing a harp. Anderson trudged through the snow, shoulders slumped and arms crossed. The specks of snow dissolved against his glasses, blurring his vision.
Quickly, he got into the car and shut the door – which really didn't provide much protection from the snow storm, since it was still snowing in his car. The leather of the seat was icy against him and he had to repress the urge to swear violently. He took out his key and turned on the ignition.
Which promptly died with a loud, metallic sputter.
With, of course, noprovocation.
Anderson got out of the car, slamming the door hard enough to dent rim of the window, and promptly threw open the hood. Of course, being a priest and an Iscariot soldier gave him no expertise on exactly how a car worked, and he wasn't even such why he was trying to fix something he didn't understand in the first place. But after ten minutes of prodding around the interior of the hood and still not determining how the car worked, he decided it was a lost cause, grabbed his map, and departed.
He would have to walk.
In London, getting where he needed to be was never so much of a problem as it was getting back.
He had managed to get ornaments and Christmas lights – and to spend the entirety of his remaining savings in the process – but he had not yet managed to figure out where in the hell he was. The limit of his knowledge was that he was on a street called Millington, it was very cold, and it was still snowing. Anderson sighed and pulled the jacket closer, trying to see through an indistinct blur over his glasses and the thick white snow fluttering to the ground before him.
Blindly, he staggered down the street, cradling the boxes of Christmas décor to his chest tightly, as if expecting Satan himself to perform a hit and run robbery. Anderson could see that particular situation going over well.
'I met Satan,' he would tell Alucard one day, a last resort to somehow outdo the vampire. He wasn't sure how this would outdo Alucard, but he knew somehow that meeting the Prince of Darkness – and being subsequently robbed by him – might be considered pretty damn impressive.
'I see.' At which point, Alucard would look thoughtfully upward, and for those few hopeful moments, Anderson might believe that he had Alucard stumped. But it would all come miraculously crashing down with Alucard would ask, 'Does he still wear that God-awful black smock?'
Anderson turned down another road, not really having a destination, just hoping that some primal instinct inside of him had some small inkling of just where the church was. As it turned out, and as he had wholly expected, it didn't help in the least. If anything, the new road looked even more ominous than the last, and he wondered if it was possible that it was actually snowing twice as hard on one street than it was on the other.
He turned again, hoping that somehow, this street would prove to be more negotiable than the last. When he turned and saw the sign proudly declaring he was on 'Millington,' he found himself using some very colorful language.
'Tsk. And you say you're a priest…'
Anderson was almost ready to snap at the girl, and tell her he hadn't said anything of the such to the likes of her. It was a delayed reaction, a long moment before he realized that she was actually there, and probably not lost at all, unlike himself. He turned on his heel, nearly overthrowing his balance in the process, to face the girl.
'You're stalking me, aren't you?' he asked hotly, rounding on the girl. 'I don't have the money and even if I did, I don't want to give it to you!'
The girl scoffed in exasperation, but the slender brown eyes were amused. She reached into her pocket and took out the bottle of pills, holding them out. 'Do you treat all women like that?' she asked, sounding far too sweet. 'No wonder you're celibate.'
Anderson almost dared her to repeat that, but decided against it ultimately, because he knew she would. And then he'd be stuck with an empty threat, bluff called, and he would still be completely lost in the middle of London. So instead, he took the pills the tossed them to the ground, scattering them.
Probably not a better way to convince her to help him, but it was liberating, nonetheless.
'I don't care about the goddamn pills!' he said snappishly. 'Now I want you to lead me back to the church, lassie!'
The girl's nose wrinkled slightly in annoyance, and she fell to her knees, retrieving the bottle. 'I can't,' she muttered, tucking the long locks of black hair behind her ear.
Anderson's heart sunk. 'You can't?' he asked in disbelief. When she started to slowly pick up the tiny, dissolving pills, his temper completely, utterly snapped. 'I DON'T HAVE THE TIME TO WANDER AROUND THE WHOLE OF ENGLAND, LASS! When I get back, I get to spend the rest of the holiday trying to string up lights!' A snarl. 'I've never strung up Christmas lights in my life! I already know it's going to be a disaster, but I want to get it OVER WITH so I can get back to leading a normal, sane life! And I haven't the faintest idea where I am! The last time I checked, the only way back to church was on Lyndon street, which is connected to Pike, which is connected to the end of Millington! But apparently, the only map I have is LYING! Pike doesn't exist! If it had, I wouldn't still be in the fucking middle of Millington!'
'No,' she said, not even bothering to stifle her snicker, deft fingers slipping into the snow. 'I have to pick up the pills.'
Whatever madness Anderson had believe the girl to possess had definitely breeched a new level. Complete, unadulterated insanity. For the few seconds he thought that arguing might actually help, he told her that picking up tiny white pills in the white snow was a fruitless effort, and he didn't need any damn calcium.
Predictably, it hadn't worked in the least, and two minutes later Anderson was yet again walking down the length of Millington street.
Hands shaking, Anderson slowly set down his boxes, staring at the tree as it twinkled and blinked at him mockingly. His fingers twitched.
Don't attack the tree, he silently told himself, willing himself to take deep, slow breaths. This is an orphanage. If you attack the tree… that girl would probably never let me live it down. And as an afterthought, he added, it would probably be a problem for the orphans too.
Anderson forced himself to just ignore it, ignore the fact that he had spent the last few hours panicking over something they already had. And also spending all of his remaining money on the damned decorations that they already had! Breathing in deep, unsteady gasps of fury, Anderson stomped down the hallways to his room, leaving a trail of damp footprints in his wake.
The moment he shut the door, he threw himself onto the bed. He didn't bother to strip of his wet clothes, to toe off his shoes, nor brush he teeth. He simply curled himself up against the wrinkled sheets and willed himself to fall into the nice, pleasant numbness of sleep, with the mild hope that he might fall into a hypothermic coma until January.
Even if hypothermia didn't cause comas, which he was positive they probably didn't.
Nonetheless, sleep took him easily. The stress coupled by the long, cold walk had exhausted his body. Regeneration or not, he was still prone to tiring under mental and physical strain. Fighting the war had been easier than Christmas. Fighting Alucard had been easier.
It was a sad, sad moment when Anderson genuinely began to miss his limbs being shot off.
But his sleep was thankfully utterly dreamless. No nightmares of That Girl (whose name he did not want to know; he was certain that if he learned it, then she wouldn't leave), no lingering memories of ornaments flying to the ground in slow motion, no sweet dreams of his car being set aflame. Nothing.
Except, of course, the feel of something, or rather someone, groping his crotch.
Usually, Anderson was not prone to being slow to awaken. He would simply fall asleep, and then wake up as awake as one could be. But as tired as it was, and as much as he wanted to just not wake up, consciousness was a slow, arduous journey with a mysterious something still feeling him up.
'That… tickles,' he managed to mumble. His brain's higher functioning was still lost in some other world, a pleasant place that made him forget that something was very wrong with the idea of him being groped.
There was a deep, feminine chuckle against his ear. 'Merry Christmas and season's greeting, Paladin Anderson,' purred a soft voice.
That Girl.
Oh… Well. That was an interesting, and deeply disturbing development.
'OH FOR CHRIST'S SAKE!' cried Anderson, up like a shot. The girl laughed heartily, a feather light sound that somehow managed to be more vindictive and cruel than any laugh he'd ever heard – except, of course, from Alucard. She didn't panic or started when she was forcefully shoved back against the bed, pinned down under Anderson's weight and fury.
'Father Anderson?'
Anderson looked up, sighing in relief when he saw two priests standing at his door. At the very least, the girl had to stop trying to tempt him. At least this way, she would leave in peace, rather than having to be thrown out the window.
'What are you doing?' cried Father Harrier. 'She can't be more than fifteen years old!'
Of course, it was only then that Anderson noticed that the girl wasn't actually wearing very much. And that, of course, Anderson was pinning her down, on the bed, hand pressed against her naked torso.
'How dare you defile the name of the Catholic church with you heresy, Anderson!' growled the Priest, advancing on him, flushed with rage. 'Get off of her this instant! How dare you seduce a young, impressionable girl like her!'
Of course the priests liked her. Of course they did.
Anderson wanted to argue, wanted to tell them quite thoroughly that he would never ever commit such an act, but his voice seemed to wither and die in the center of his throat. The perfectly devised bad situation was taking place, right before his eyes. It was actually quite impressive. 'But… she…' he tried to argue.
'I don't want to hear it!' yelled the priest, his pale eyes flashing with contempt. Beneath him, he could feel the girl snickering. 'Either you get her out now or you're going to spend tonight sleeping in prison!'
Whatever argument Anderson could have quickly devised was shattered when the priests stormed from the room in a huff, slamming the door loudly behind them. Surely, the entire house would be awake now, and in less than ten minutes, Anderson would be forever believed to be a pedophilic heretic by the inhabitants of the orphanage.
Had she honestly walked all the way to the orphanage just wearing her pants?
The only thing she had brought were the calcium pills, which had spent the better part of the morning sitting on the edge of his dresser, mocking him. They were in the same damn place the money had been, before it's miraculous disappearance into thin air.
Making breakfast had been a near nightmare. The kitchen was, at the very least, dry now, but just about everything was ruined. Except for the oatmeal, which was hardly a fitting breakfast near Christmas. It had been a grueling task to convince the children to tolerate the horrible, stale mush. This was particularly hard when he himself was having trouble shoveling the goop into his mouth without flinching.
Afterwards, he had taken the kids to the park to play in the snow. This had been a good idea, in theory, but as it turns out it was a horrid idea. There was a lake in the park, a very cold lake as Anderson was forced to find out. A strangely familiar child – not an orphan, incidentally – with dark, wavy hair had managed to nail him in the face with a snowball. Startled, Anderson had reeled back right into the pond, snapping the thin sheet of ice in the process.
The child had, of course, fled from the scene of the crime. But not before Anderson had heard his chillingly familiar laugh.
Trembling and sopping wet, Anderson had trudged back to the orphanage, so cold his lips were a pale tinge of blue. The priests had felt no sympathy for his plight though, and instead elected to give him those nostril-flared glares that clearly informed him that they thought of him as nothing more than a deviant.
So, almost the moment he had entered through the front door, he was firmly ordered to go and put the Christmas lights on the roof. And make it look acceptable, they had told him. To Anderson, acceptable meant that the lights worked and were on the roof. However, acceptable to the other priests meant that the lights had to be flawless, color coordinated, and blinking.
Anderson didn't know how to make lights blink.
'Enjoying the view up there, priest?' asked a languid voice.
Anderson jolted so badly he nearly slipped from the edge of the roof. He just managed to grab onto a row of lights before falling headfirst to the ground, ripping the stapled out of the tiles in the process. A few shards of the roof scattered over his lap.
'If they see you here, they're going to make us regret it,' snarled Anderson, sending That Girl a threatening glance. She was wearing his cassock, which was wrapped around her slender body so warmly that Anderson couldn't help but feel a flash of fierce jealousy. 'Get out of here!'
'How are you going to make me?' mocked the girl, hands tucked neatly into her pockets.
Anderson growled furiously, stapling the line of lights back against the damaged roof. 'Isn't my coat payment enough for the pills?' he snapped, emphasizing the snarl with another clanking stab of the staple gun. He tried to ignore the cold shudder that slid down his spine at the mention of the coat; a more than adequate reminder that it was freezing outside.
'Well, no,' said the girl slowly, withdrawing a hand from her pocket. 'But this is.'
A cold shock when through Anderson when he saw what she was holding in her fingers. Three hundred fucking pounds of raw cash, right there, in That Girl's grasp. His entire Christmas depended on whether the girl was going to be charitable to hand the money over or not.
If he wasn't certain that Jesus hated him before, he was damn certain of it now.
Anderson leapt from the roof, bypassing the ladder completely. He landed on the ground hard, nearly slipping on his face as the snow gave way beneath him. But pure determination fueled him, and he launched himself at the girl, hand outreached for the money in her hand.
As it turned out, the girl was unbelievably fast, and Anderson found himself face down in the cold snow a moment later.
'All you had to do was ask,' purred the girl quietly, and he felt the gentle brush of her fingertips against the back of his neck. A moment later, the warm cassock was placed over him. It was perhaps a nice thought, but he was sopping wet. The extra clothing did next to nothing to relieve him. 'If you give me a kiss, I'd be more than happy to return what's yours.'
Suddenly, Anderson felt like laughing, possibly until he cried. He pushed himself up from the snow and in one movement, snatched the small girl and kissed her hard on the lips. Despite everything, despite the fact this was his first kiss in decades, the first intimacy in almost forever, he found himself running a strange train of thought.
How the hell did the girl stop her lips from getting chapped in the winter?
He was secondarily surprised when he suddenly became the submissive in the kiss, pushed back into the snow with a roughness worthy of a full-grown man. Her hands gripped his shirt, her mouth dominated his own with fierce resolve, and Anderson was took frustrated and tired to try and attempt to reassert his masculinity.
'Alexander Anderson!'
Anderson pushed the girl away in an instant at the shout, looking up at the angry priests and a hotly flushed nun following them. But he didn't scramble to his feet, didn't panic and try to preemptively explain the mess he was in. He slowly, steadily climbed to his feet, snatched the money from the smirking girl, and growled a calm, firm 'stop!' to the priests. It was more likely the hot glare that stopped them in their tracks, not the order itself.
Deliberately, Anderson strolled to the power cord lying in the snow and retrieved it. He stood back a few paces, looking up at the orphanage. The Christmas lights weren't done; far from it. However, he decided that he was done. He would not look at another bulb, wouldn't staple one more line.
He flipped the switch.
Nothing.
Wordlessly, Anderson dropped the power cord, turned, and left. Behind him, he heard the girl laughing.
Anderson held the money in his hand tightly inside his pocket, not taking his fingers off of it for a second. He couldn't believe that he had somehow put it in his pocket without actually remembering it. He couldn't picture any circumstance that it could have gotten in there, and that he hadn't discovered it somehow before That Girl had. However, he supposed that it didn't matter.
In a few minutes, he would be on his way back to Italy. It was the best way to spend his money in his opinion. A one-way ticket to far, far away.
His goodbyes with Integral had been short and to the point. He had ended them with a firm handshake, and walked towards the ticket counter. He was just barely three feet away from freedom when he was ambushed by That Girl, roughly yanked away from the ticket counter by his sleeve.
'You were going to leave without saying goodbye?' the girl asked, smirking up at him, brown eyes almost the color of honey from the bright light of the airport. Anderson didn't manage to get a word in edgewise before she continued, but he supposed that was for the best. 'I decided I do want your coat.'
'You want my coat,' he repeated in disbelief. But nonetheless, he shrugged it off and shoved the garment into her arms. 'Fine! Take the goddamn coat if you want it so badly! Just agree never to let me see your face again! Ever!'
'Of course!' agreed the girl smilingly, pulling on the warm cassock. She turned and trotted away, and Anderson wondered if he had somehow gotten off easy.
Maybe things were finally looking up.
But there was no deterring him, not when he was trying to amuse himself. And Integral decided to allow it, a special Christmas present to her faithful servant. Certainly, without Nazis and vampires to take up their time, Alucard needed something else to amuse himself with.
'Sir,' said Seras beside her, a tinge of reluctant sympathy in her voice. 'Shouldn't we tell Anderson that Master has his money… again?'
'No,' said Integra, withdrawing a cigar from her coat when they left the airport. The cold air brushed over her, stirring her hair and sending a cold chill down her spine. 'Let him have his moment.'
Ahead of her, she could see Alucard buying a sympathy card for his beloved priest.
