blow me (one last kiss)

[scubatankfilledwithfarts]

Back in the days of the war (not this one, but the one where airborne fireworks terrorized neighborhoods and wives didn't know if these kisses with too-red lipstick would be the last) when his grandfather hardly scraped into the trenches somewhere on the other side, Londoners sent their young into the countryside. Bombs still thunder overhead and shake their rafters, with all that open field, but there's too much space and they aren't trapped like rats [yet].

This time, the fields burn and the dead awash the countryside with glee and the rafters are naught but ashes. The open air smells of scorched flesh. The young are eaten just as quickly in the jungle as they are in the plains.

And the Geese's young wouldn't get on a train to nowhere for the life of him, even if such a thing were still available. It's precisely why they must go to terrible measures like this, why it tastes like the ashes of the dead long before this on his tongue [why, when their girl had looked at him with both understanding and pity in baby blues, he couldn't even joke about the boy getting one last gander at her jugs].

It's exactly why they've been invited to this grand dining room of the Hellsing estate, why the bombs drop and the soon to be dead howl in agony for their fate and here they are, pondering over which fork is the salad fork.

[it doesn't matter much because in about twenty minutes the blunt end of it will be up Morris' nose in a sad mimicry of his last encounter with a woman]

Their boy isn't suspicious yet, merely curious. Preens because the old butler made him set some of this up, doesn't deflate so much as bristle when Torrez asks just how far up the tailcoat is wedged in his ass.

["Bout as far as Matthew's dick is lodged up your ass!"

"Hey now, little baby chicks shouldn't talk about grown up matters like that. There's a thing about brotherhood you haven't figured out yet-- why, just yesterday Matthews romanced me with a cigar and a little weed, and when I was nice and relaxed he slipped in..."

"STOP!! NO!! I'M GONNA PUKE IN THE DESSERT!"]

A stocking encased knee finds his beneath the table, and just when he opens his mouth to roar at Buchanan for trying to find their girl, again, his single eye meets a pair of familiar baby blues. Pip's bony knee nudges back, his mouth tightened into a grim line. He can't even muster a smirk over first base, not when it feels like his chest is going to cave in on itself.

When Sir Integra Fairbrook Wingates Hellsing takes her place at the head of all table all sound appears to be swallowed whole by that steely blue gaze.

"You all know as well as I do this could be our final meal; as soldiers, as defenders of the United Kingdom-- as ourselves, fully free."

Iron sweeps around the table, for that is what it feels like when her eyes lock on them individually-- and for a moment it slips away and all that binds them are these chains, these words. She looks, as if looking for nicks in armor, not to take apart, but to fortify. Fold and forge iron, like a sword and a flame.

"But there is one thing I swear to you, if that dark should pull you asunder-- you will die with honor, your names remembered-- I will take them into the future. Your struggle won't be in vain. We are going to decimate those bastards until they are but a dirty smear in Time’s memory.” He knows it’s a lie, but he wouldn’t dare call her out on it.

It’s the kindest anyone’s ever been to wretches like them.

Through a somber moment, his geese are always here to lend some noise to the cause: with raised glasses and crowing and whistles, all very respectful, Integra takes her cue to take her place at the head of the table, gaze miles away once more.

Somewhere to his left he hears Badou complain about his alcohol, how, just because they're in half-decent company doesn't mean they should be cheap.

"We must save the good stuff for the warriors, master Nails. Those who at least know how to arm themselves...your tie is done up crooked. After all the time I took out of my busy schedule to teach you…”

The Butler turns his nose up at the kid but there's a tell-tale twitch at the corner of his lined mouth that tells of the tutting and the harrumphing being for show.

It's definitely a show when Badou jumps from his chair red faced, hair streaming, nearly movie-esque. Only to miss Walter entirely and go speeding into a curtain instead. How many of them are going to nearly piss themselves with laughter tonight? Better than the alternative.

The second course that’s set under his nose solves most of the troubles, long enough for the teen to take a seat again, napkin forgotten [why had Walter even bothered with the pretense??] while he stuffs his face. Last Supper is lost on them, even Paul didn’t dare throw peas. But they are disciples of Integra’s Church of Hard Knocks.

It should be telling. He’s an investigator, and he completely misses it. Pip can’t blame the kid—the world has all but ended. He’s with his brothers in blood, sweat, tears, ear wax. His guard is down. Badou’s future is careening somewhere he can’t see in the distance—this time his mortality and the rest of the world spins on its axis.

Pip has killed countless people, ripped off a couple of women in the past, betrayed to live.

This must be the worst he’s done. Reasonings be damned, tattered promises built on patched jackets and booger-y sleeves rubbed under button noses.

Pip Bernadotte you have spike the drink of a 14 year old the first time he’s allowed wine with the big boys.

He counts down the clock.
He leaves his opposite eye with Badou.

Tick.
A soft, raspy yawn rises above the mumble of soldiers on their last leg. Jameson doesn’t fight the urge to lick his (real fine china) bowl.

Tock.
That eye droops, droops, droops under heavy crimson lashes.

Tick.
Seras’ hand finds his beneath the table.

Tock.
Badou nearly drowns in the soup as that green eye closes.

The weight of the world isn’t nearly as heavy as babysitting duty. His kid is warm in his arms, tucked to his chest as he takes him from his seat, knees cradled. The table hushes, on standby.

He takes that first step. His gaze flickers to Integra’s [and dammit if she’s not the worst boss they’ve ever had….

Steel blue softens. She says nothing.]

“It’s about time he goes to public school, anyway,” he says, before the moment is broken and he breaks away in kind. If she hears him mutter his gratitude, it’s the one time no one’ll call him out on it.

Later, the irony won’t catch up to him. Pip lives and breathes it in, it settles in him like the shattered spurs of bone you can't quite dig out without leaving splinters.

The first time they meet the kid is half dead. The last time they meet Pip smuggles him out of the country in a coffin.

A mercenary, a soldier, has no room for a heart.

Pip Bernadotte tucks something beneath Badou’s crossed hands and leaves it at that. Fire red is the color of the string of fate and this one snaps with the sound of the lid sliding shut.

Badou Nails awakens to silence. Groggy, his hands flail until they meet a solid surface, wood beneath his palms, his nails as his heart quickens, scrapes at the lid, breath caught—

The night sky is full of the stars of their ancestors, wheat fields sing in the breeze, and London [bridge] is burning from beyond the sea. As the flames lick up the atmosphere, from his safe vantage point in quiet fields, Badou finally feels Something smooth beneath his fingers. Paper crinkles.

It’s a terrible, terribly ripped Baby’s First Birthday card. Elmo holds a big number 1 candle. Signatures and praise and bitching litters the starch white paper, and at the bottom in Pip’s tiny, scratchy handwriting reads,

“Sorry, we’re leaving first. Thanks for all the memories.”

The shudder of his bones when the air dips low isn’t quite as loud as his broken howl into the night. There's a hole in the Earth here.