AUTHOR'S NOTE: aaaaaaand here's the sequel. I must confess that this story took quite a bit out of me and I worry that people won't like it as it goes.

If you haven't read The Way to an Heir, I suggest reading that one first. Don't worry. It's good, or so people tell me. If you really don't want to, well, basic gist is Alucard and Integra, after a lot of hardship and struggles, had a daughter together and finally admitted their feelings for each other.

This story was supposed to be funny and relaxed and cute, and focuse on Alucard and Integra making blunders as parents. This first chapter is how I originally intended the whole story to be. But something happened and the story took an unexpected turn for seriousness and mystery. There is still plenty of AxI stuff, parenting issues, Convention issues, but much more serious and a little angsty. I won't bore you with details. I'll just cross my fingers and hope people like it.

Enjoy & review!

THE WAY TO RAISE AN HEIR

Chapter 1

Her name was Anessa Elizabeth Cneajna, surname Hellsing.

The events that led up to her birth were extraordinary and chaotic to say the least, but her arrival was joyous. She was healthy, beautiful, and royal blood flowed in her veins from the joining of two ancient, powerful families. She was special, both blessed and cursed, which in the end somehow balanced out. She was a miracle.

Her father was a vampire, one of the most powerful on Earth at that, wise and strong with age. She inherited his sharp senses, reflexes, and peculiar tastes. Her mother was a woman of steel, a natural leader on all accounts. She inherited her intelligence, determination, and cool, collected demeanor.

Already the life laid out before her was filled with challenges and hardship, glory and dishonor, obstacles and comrades. She was to become the new leader of Hellsing one day, take over for her mother and lay down the road for vampire hunting for the next generation.

But right now, it's time to change her diaper.

oOo

Seras leaned over the crib. The baby inside gurgled and opened her eyes. Seras grinned. Annie always knew when she was near. She was definitely master's daughter. She stuck out her tongue and made a face. The baby giggled in delight.

"Hello Annie," she said. "And how are you this evening?"

The baby babbled and clapped her hands. Seras felt a tingle in her mind as Annie poked around inside. It was their form of communicating, at least until Annie learned how to talk anyway. At four months she had already mastered a respectable degree of telepathy, although most of it involved projecting the desire to feed, play, or be changed to the nearest person available. Every now and then she would seek out new things in other people's minds, like she was doing now. A human, or even a lesser vampire, wouldn't have felt it.

She found an image from Seras' last mission – blood, guns, ghouls, and vampires – and got a confused look on her face. Seras chuckled.

"When you grow up I'll explain that to you," she said, stroking the baby's cheek. "But you don't have to worry about that right now." She paused for a moment to reconsider. "Well, considering your parents, maybe you do. I think it's too early to teach a baby about vampires, but with Integra you never know…"

"She'll learn at her own pace."

Seras straightened as Walter approached with a bottle filled with pink liquid. It was milk, mostly. A small amount of medical blood had been added to it. Though Annie did not seem to require blood to live, they have found that giving her a mixture with milk made her digest better.

Walter picked up the baby and fed her with the bottle, smiling as she sucked eagerly.

"It's been a long time, Miss Victoria," he said. "The last baby I took care of was Lady Integra."

Seras nodded, though it was hard to imagine Integra as anything other than the steel maiden she knew. "Do you think maybe she already knows on some level?" she asked. "Maybe she already senses that she's different."

"That I don't know," replied Walter, rocking the baby. "She's already displaying many vampiric traits, though on a lesser extent than normal. I don't think she can comprehend it as being abnormal just yet."

"Master says she already recognizes her parents."

Walter set down the bottle and bundled Annie in layers of blankets. The weather hasn't quite warmed up yet. "That I believe. She wouldn't let anyone else touch her if Alucard or Integra is in the room, even if she can't see either of them."

Seras gazed at the baby lovingly. The Hellsing house has always been a cold fortress, but now, with her here, everything seemed so warm and bright. "She's so precious."

"That she is," said Walter. "That she is." The baby wriggled and started to cry. "Why don't you come out, Alucard? She already knows you're here."

Seras stood aside as her master emerged from the shadows. He was wearing a simple attire, a white dress shirt, black slacks, and his usual gloves. Shortly after Annie's arrival he took to dressing more simply, comfortably. She wasn't sure whether it was because he wanted to be more comfortable while he took care of his daughter or because she had spit up on his coat one time too many.

"You ought to know you can't hide from her," Walter said with a wink and handed the baby to her father. Seeing her master holding a child was still a strange sight to Seras. He was different when she was in his arms. His eyes were softer and he actually smiled instead of smirked, which she thought she would never get used to.

The baby stopped fussing as soon as Alucard got a good hold on her. He stroke her hair, which was as dark as his own.

"She's spoiled rotten."

"Only because you're there at her every beck and call." Seras knew what was coming next. "But you should be used to it. She's shaping up to take over for her mother, after all."

Alucard gave the butler a glare, which would have made a lot more of an impact if he didn't have a gurgling baby in his arms. He started to made a snarky comeback when a image filled his head, followed by a particular smell.

Both Walter and Seras had picked it up also, and both took a step back.

"Walter…"

"Oh, no no no," said the butler, heading for the door with the milk bottle. "You can't pawn it off on me every single time. It's been four months, Alucard. About time you did your fatherly duty."

"I do!" Alucard said desperately. Annie writhed. "I take care of her whenever Integra wants, feed her at all hours of the night…"

Walter was already gone.

"Seras."

Seras pretended not to hear. She looked at the door, mumbled something about weapons duty, and slipped out, leaving her master alone. She felt a little guilty, sure, but he had single-handedly fought some of the biggest wars in history. He can handle changing a diaper.

Right?

oOo

Alucard loved his daughter.

It was a strange thing to say and even stranger for him to admit, but it was the truth. After five hundred years of living in darkness and fighting war after war, she was a breath of fresh air even if he no longer breathed like humans. Just being near her made time stop, looking in those blue eyes that duplicated her mother's exactly. She was perfect and lovely in every way, more precious and valuable than all the jewels in the world and all the power he once desired. He couldn't believe she came out of him.

Well, he could, he just rather not think about that part.

An announcement was made after her birth: the heir of Hellsing had been born. Integra stayed out of the public eye, using recovery from the ordeal as an excuse, when really taking the chance to catch up on work and, more often than not, just sit and admire the baby. She was happier, something else that brightened Alucard's world considerably. In all the time he'd known her she had never been this happy. Like him, she had learned to smile.

Walter had fixed up Integra's old nursery, which had fallen to shambles and dust from disuse before. Now it's draped in colors of soft lavender, with a mobile hanging over the old crib, where her daughter now slept.

Annie whined, bringing Alucard back to the present. He looked at the baby and scratched his head, then held her tight and carried her through the walls of several rooms, into Integra's office.

She was busy at work when he entered with the baby.

"Did you need something, Alucard?" she asked without looking up. Some things never changed, but her tone was softer nowadays, and she smoked a lot less.

He held Annie out to her. "No," he said. "Nothing at all, but your daughter wanted to visit her mother."

Integra looked up as if to scold him to disturbing her, but her face softened as the baby babbled at her. She leaned over and kissed Annie on the cheek. Alucard grinned. He truly did love getting away with things using the baby.

She turned back to her work. "I'm not changing her diaper."

His face fell. "But Integra…"

"I'm busy," she said, ignoring his pleading gaze. "You're supposed to take care of her while I work, remember?"

He sighed. "Are you going to make me beg, master?"

"It would be entertaining, though it would do no good. Didn't Walter make us all agree to some degree of diaper duty at one point?"

"The police girl has been doing mine."

"Then it's about time to got some practice." Integra kissed the baby again. "Tell daddy to change your diaper, Annie."

As if understanding her, Annie began to cry, louder by the second until she was howling at the top of her lungs. Alucard wondered exactly how much of his sneakiness she had inherited. Rocking her from side to side, he left Integra's office.

There was a changing table and several bags of diapers in the nursery, although their functionalities were beyond Alucard. It had been centuries since he's touched a baby, much less take care of one. Feeding was easy enough to learn, and it took a few tries to figure out how to hold her the right way, but he had avoided diapers at all cost until this moment.

He laid the baby on the changing table, opened a bag of diapers, and pulled one out. None of this made any sense to him. The last time he was near a baby, women were still not allowed to wear pants.

After five minutes, he finally managed to wrestle the old diaper off, getting bits of glue, tape, and other things on his hands. Anessa giggled as he swore in several languages and wiped off his fingers. He was almost sure she didn't understand him.

Another ten minutes passed as he tried to lay out the new diaper, tore it in the process, and had to get a new one. This one was stubborn also, but he was more careful. Wrinkling his nose, he cleaned Annie off, laid her on the new diaper, and somehow got it to stay using the sticky things on its sides.

Annie clapped, as if congratulating him. He smiled and picked her up.

Seras and Walter were peeking in at the door, curious. He smirked at them. "No confidence at all," he said. "You really think I can't handle a diaper?"

Walter adjusted his glasses. "Yes, you sure showed us," he said. Seras was looking rather apprehensive. Alucard pushed her aside and walked out of the nursery with his daughter. Seras stared after him, then turned to Walter.

"Should we tell him it's on backwards?"

TBC