multiversallogs | go and tell that midnight rider

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go and tell that midnight rider

Who: Integra Hellsing & Sam Winchester.
What: STUFF.
Where: Hellsing's residential mansion and surrounding areas.
When: This evening.
Notes: Assumed prior meeting, etc. TIME HAS NO MEANING.
Warnings: TBA.

It would be fantastic, Integra thinks, if she could ever get more than four hour's sleep - just sometimes. Perhaps even on a weekend. Usually it's less than that; the idea of something ludicrous as five strikes her as almost gluttonous, at this point, and perhaps it's with that vindictive thought that her tone with the man she's speaking to goes from flatly irritated to obviously angry. She's very aware that there are a number of councilpersons and lobbyists who are aggressively pushing to tighten guild regulations, and that Hellsing is the prime target for such legislation. But the idea that she should parlay and shell out money and favors to get this to go away - when Hellsing is frequently hurting for funding to begin with - makes her positively livid. It's an opinion she makes known - very loudly.

Heaven forbid there's anyone else about at this hour; if her screaming on the phone didn't disturb any other residents, the fact that she slams her bedroom door in a fit of violent pique and all but storms down stairs to the kitchen certainly will. When she yanks open the refrigerator and hisses "Bastards", it's almost reserved, in comparison.

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Sam is still settling in to everything in Baedal.

It's a lot to take in all at once. There's Dean, and all these people who know him and care about him, and it's pretty much everything he wanted for his brother when he jumped. It's almost too good to be true, and he doesn't know what to do with it.

There's still part of him that thinks this is a trap. In fact, there's a feeling in the pit of his stomach that tells him this is a big, giant trap, but there's not much he can do about it. At the moment, though, sleep isn't an option, and won't be for a while. It isn't Integra that's keeping him up. It's the nightmares that sit in the back of his mind when he closes his eyes, and he's not inclined to give in to those yet.

That doesn't mean he doesn't notice, however, when the owner of the house he's now living in storms past, muttering to herself and clearly upset about something. He raises an eyebrow before sliding his hands into his pockets to follow, stopping in the doorway of the kitchen to watch her.

"Integra? Everything okay?

Oh. Sam. Integra is drawn out of her own little world of irritation by his inquiry, and she looks up, not-quite-surprised. In truth, she's more immediately flustered by the use of her first name than anything; she's grown quite used to only Alucard using it without the prefix.

"Mr. Winchester." She releases the death grip on the fridge handle and grabs whatever's - bread, fine, she'll make a sandwich for breakfast. "Yes, it's fine, I am just thoroughly impatient with political hand-wringing. I hope I didn't alarm you."

Sam is aware of the 'sir' in front of Integra's name, but it feels weird to call anyone other than John that. And since she doesn't seem to react too adversely to the informality, he's not going to worry about it for the time being.

He shakes his head as he takes another step inside. "I was just looking around. Still ... trying to get used to everything."

As Sam isn't (yet?) officially working for Hellsing, merely residing in the house as a courtesy to his brother, it's not like Integra can insist - well, she probably could, but she recognizes it as something that would be seen as unnecessarily hostile, and so she decides not to. She likes Sam well enough, she's just not sure what to do with anyone outside of a productive setting.

"I know that nothing about this place is comforting in any remote way," she sighs.

No. He's not official yet, but he's definitely considering it. It would be a way to keep him from getting bored, and making sure his brother doesn't get himself killed. Mostly the latter, but that's what happens when your brother is Dean.

He shrugs a bit. "I can safely say I've been to worse places. This is almost normal."

"I certainly hope not." The kidnapped to another dimension bit, anyway - Integra's world is in a significantly worse state than this, also, but at least it's her proper reality. She's still a bit miffed she isn't there, because as horrific as it all is, she's got a war to win, and a few more particular people to execute. Life and times, and so on.

"Would you like one?" A sandwich, presumably, as she's holding up one slide of bread as she puts together what she's eating. (She'll put too much mustard on it and no mayonnaise, but it'll be well-balanced aside.)

Being kidnapped to another dimension has actually happened to Sam! He went to TV Land once.

He doesn't like to talk about it.

"You might be surprised. Our world got ... interesting, but Dean hasn't lived it yet." Which is still weird to say. He nods in terms of the sandwich.

And Sam doesn't like mayonnaise. So it all works out.

Integra doesn't say that she hopes Dean doesn't ever live it, but she thinks it. She knows full well that it's an unfair thought, stubbornly childish at best, but she's seen people - not just Sam - from the future of that world, even without knowing what she does, she wouldn't wish it on anyone. Home may be where people belong, but sometimes...

(It's funny, perhaps, that despite what she thinks about Dean, she really would prefer to be back home, knee-deep in the blood of eight million people.)

Sandwich, then, and she hands it to him (in a paper towel) when she's done. "He does fine work despite it." Senior staff and everything.

"Never said we weren't good at it," Sam says with a nod as he takes the sandwich. There may be a slight bitterness to that, that is what their lives had become, but it's the truth. They are good at what they do.

Even if sometimes Sam wishes they weren't.

"Dean's always liked it, too. The whole saving people thing."

'Saving people thing.' That's puzzling. She's certainly never considered her job or this work particularly heroic, just necessary. She'd wondered, when she was first taken away from that apocalyptic battlefield, if the experience would harrow her past being able to make critical decisions for fear of the cost of human life - yet still she goes forward, as if her heart felt nothing. (She remembers her struggle to order Alucard to cut down innocents to get to his target - how brief that struggle was.)

"I've never heard it put quite like that before," she admits. "My father was never much for inspiration past duty, however." And the thrill of it, she suspects. She knows Arthur lived for the blood and the fire of it all - she's still not sure what broke him. Maybe it doesn't matter.

Sam at this point feels that weight as well. His battle is done, but he knows how long the road is that Dean has ahead of him, and he doesn't want to wish it on the man in front of him. He wants Dean to stay like this without the weight of the world on his shoulders, but he doesn't know if he can keep him that way.

Dean still sees the good in what they do. One of them has to.

Sam smirks, but it's dry -- sad, almost. "My dad was the same way. He raised us to be soldiers. But Dean always managed to remember the fact that we were doing the right thing. I was the one who was always running away."

"I've heard a little about your father." Little, yes, but enough to know that remarking to Sam that she thinks John Winchester sounds like he was a very nice man is probably not the most advisable course of action. Arthur Hellsing was without a doubt mad, but Integra has never resented her lot in life. Themes, perhaps, and the deliberate holes in her education that her father left for her, but never the grand sum of it.

"The constitution for this line of work is rare," she tells him. "You are doing the world a great service. Perhaps that is heroic." Integra balls up her paper towel, sandwich consumed, and throws it away, before she starts to pack up the sandwich-making-supplies. Wryly, "But what do I know. You don't happen to know how to ride a horse, do you?"

"Dean probably talks about him a lot," Sam says with a nod. He knows his brother. He knows how loyal he is to John. Sam wouldn't expect anything otherwise.

He laughs softly, before shaking his head. "No. I think I'm a little too tall for it." In fact, Sam doesn't learn to ride a horse until much later in his timeline, but he doesn't know that yet.

Integra raises her eyebrows at him, faintly incredulous, but not unkind. "Warriors were bigger than you when they invented the art, Mr. Winchester."

Knights and Vikings, preceded even further by Greek and Turks and all else, weighed down by armor and hefting spears and swords, still moving fast enough to kill each other. (And slay dragons! Or hydras, as it were.)

"If you'd like to get a leg up and see the grounds, I need to do a perimeter walk, shortly." She's heading back upstairs now, to finish getting ready - Sam can join her outside in a minute if he likes; if not, she won't hold it against him.

His eyebrows go up a bit at that as well, before he nods. "Point taken. I'll keep that in mind."

His head picks up as he eyes his sandwich, and he nods. "I'd like that a lot, actually."

A nod, then. "I'll see you outside."

After she changes - pulling on gloves and boots, kitting up with her usual semi-formal garb and her usual array of weapons - Integra breezes out into the front walk. It's not more than a few minutes on foot out to the stables, where two horses are kept (sometimes three - Martel stables his own, when he's working). Integra's is a sturdy black Spanish thing, and on its own, seems just to one side of being too large to be anything but frightening, until you see the workhorse. Nearly eighteen hands high, dappled black and grey, the Percheron looks like it could easily trample even the hardiest of men.

"He's a walking sofa," Integra insists.

Yeah. Sam totally isn't intimidated by this at all. He stares at the horse like it has a second head, and then swallows.

"Right. Walking sofa."

C'mon, Sam, little girls ride huge horses and pull carts and jump fences all the time. Integra smiles and hands him an apple. "Fingers together, hand flat. They can tell the difference between a person and an apple."

She demonstrates with her horse, who inhales the thing, while the bigger one gives Sam a wide-eyed excited look that all horses get when within a half mile radius of treats. "I think I missed some kind of 'standard girl' gene with horses," she admits, and goes to start tacking up the horse while Sam (hopefully successfully, and while not losing a limb to the docile thing, or running away screaming) sees about that apple. "I've not been able to come up with a name for mine, though Mr. LeMat's taken to calling this one Rabbit." Yes, a giant gray horse named Rabbit. Sure.

Giant gray horse named Rabbit. Great. That doesn't exactly inspire confidence in his ability to ride him, but he does as he's told and holds out the apple to the horse. He's also trying not to look too terrified.

"He seems like a rabbit," Sam says with a nod.

Rabbit - which Integra finds somewhat pointlessly whimsical, for a name, but oh well - really is very docile and steady, and somewhat of a rare find. He'd make a very valuable workhorse out on the farmlands, and usually farmers manage to spirit away all the beasts of burden with such mellow tempers before anyone else. Once he's tacked up, she gestures to Sam to come over to one side so she can help shove him up on the horse.

"Don't make me have to tell your brother you were terrified when I go to instruct him on how to do this," she admonishes (not unkindly), because if pleasantries aren't going to work...

"I'm not terrified," he says, straightening slightly. "I'm just ... cautious. That's all."

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