D" for Short

Alucard frowned and shoved yet another cup out of the way as he rummaged through the kitchen cupboards. The ceramic mug met glass with a satisfying clank and very nearly toppled out onto the granite countertop. Alucard would not have particularly cared if it did. There were dozens of cups stashed in various cubbies in the Hellsing manor, and the loss of one would hardly put a kink in the budget when the family received enough money to order silver bullets by the truckload every week. The small kitchen staff had wisely evacuated the area as soon as the vampire had appeared, a dark-haired infant in the crook of one arm, and a purposeful light in his crimson eyes. Alucard was on a mission, and no one would stand in his way.

As the vampire continued to explore the cabinets, the child he had brought with him sat contentedly at a table in the generously sized breakfast nook in one corner of the room. He had a teething ring made of sturdy red plastic clasped in his hands, and was busily gnawing away at it. Tiny holes marred the entirety of the heavy-duty plastic. By morning, the toy would be chewed to the point of uselessness. Icy blue eyes stared past the ring, observing the efforts of Hellsing's vampire with a mixture of confusion and amusement. The child was, in a word, beautiful. He had inherited many of his father's features, and they blended remarkably well with the attributes that had been granted to the boy by his mother. Dante Hellsing was an impossibility, the child of a vampire and a human woman … but that did not stop him from going through teething toys faster than a bulldog went through rawhide.

It had occurred to Alucard that the search for what he wanted could be expedited by taking a more insubstantial form and using his thousands of eyes to explore the entire kitchen at once, but the act of physically rearranging the contents of the cupboards appealed to him. He could not have said why, only that he wanted the satisfaction of banging around a bit. At the very least, the amount of noise he was making would send the absent kitchen staff into silent fits if they could hear it from their hiding places.

After another ten minutes of ineffectual ransacking, Alucard found exactly what he wanted: a plastic sippy cup. It was old, and Alucard wrinkled his nose at the dust that had accumulated on the translucent lid. The cup probably hadn't seen the light of day for at least twenty years. Still, it was about time that Dante learned to use something other than a bottle. He was already eating solid foods, though determining exactly what sorts of solid foods he needed and would accept was an adventure in and of itself—an adventure that Integra usually ordered Alucard to oversee.

As Dante watched, the vampire took the sippy cup to the large chrome sink and ran scalding water over it for a good five minutes before even starting in with the sponge and soap. Once Alucard was certain the cup was sufficiently clean, he set about retrieving Dante's formula from the refrigerator. This particular formula was the third in a series carefully developed by Hellsing's medical and research staff to meet the changing needs of a growing dhampir. The core ingredient was donated human blood, but other elements had been added to help ensure proper development of teeth, bones, muscle, and everything else the doctors could think of. Dante smiled when he recognized the plastic packet his father emptied into a ceramic mug (the same that had almost met an unfortunate end a quarter hour earlier) and set it in the microwave. The teething ring was abandoned as the toddler stared expectantly at the vampire.

The blood was warm in less than a minute. Alucard poured some of it into the tiny green plastic cup he had located, snapped on the alabaster-white lid, and set the cup on the table in front of his son. Dante frowned at this change in routine. He was a rather intelligent boy, and he knew perfectly well that his father warmed the blood, then gave him a bottle. That was how things were supposed to go. This new presentation was a bit confounding to an infant's mind.

“Go on,” Alucard urged. “It's just the same as before.” His prior attempts at raising children had predated the invention of the sippy cup, so the vampire honestly had no clue what he was doing. Reason dictated that the process of weaning a child from a bottle to a cup with a lid would be easier than the process of weaning a child directly from a bottle to an open cup.

Dante's frown deepened, and a little furrow formed between his eyebrows. He hesitantly wrapped both long-fingered hands around the cup and rotated it first left, then right. He lifted it and stared at the bottom. When he was about to turn the cup upside down, a large, gloved hand caught his, and he looked at Alucard to see his father shaking his head. Dante set the cup down, regarded it for a moment, and then seemed to make up his mind. The mouthpiece found its way between his lips, the cup was tilted back, and the child contentedly drained the vessel of its contents. He set the cup down on the table with a small, satisfied slam, and beamed at his father. Blood tipped his fangs, and he licked it off before pushing the cup towards his father.

A pair of holes marred the plastic lid where Dante had instinctually bitten down while drinking. Alucard resisted the urge to sigh. They had gone through this problem when Dante was a newborn, equipped with needlelike canines that were less than conducive to breast- or bottle-feeding. Instead, he ruffled the boy's hair in praise. “I'll just slip an order for replacement lids into the requisition forms,” he remarked mildly. “In the meantime, I suppose this will still do.”

~*~*~*~

Two weeks later, Alucard had gotten nowhere with the boy. Dante was quite comfortable using the cup instead of his bottle, but he had yet to master the art of not punching holes in the poor, maligned lids. As the child once again handed a damaged cup back to his father, Alucard shook his head in mute despair. He removed the lid and tossed it in the trash—number fifty-six, by the vampire's count. A member of the household staff had been assigned the task of buying replacements on a daily basis.

Alucard's pride had prevented him from appealing to Integra for help in this matter, even though it had been she who'd managed to get Dante to stop biting by the time he was one week old. He rose from his seat at the table, glared at the skeleton kitchen staff that had remained to cook dinner while he fed his son, and quickly located a new lid in the hopes that this attempt would finally prove successful. When he turned back to the table, he caught sight of Integra leaning in the kitchen doorway, a smirk on her face as she watched him. He had known she was there, but now her amusement at his expense was painfully evident. Wearing a sickly sweet smile, he asked, “Do you think you can do better?”

“I think it might wound your pride if I did,” she responded archly, “although that might make you more livable.”

Resisting the urge to growl in frustration, Alucard refilled Dante's cup and snapped the new lid in place. He gave the boy his formula with the stern admonition “Don't bite.” As the child lifted the cup to his lips, a solution so simple that it was ridiculous Alucard had not thought of it before blindsided the No Life King. Verbal communication with infants might be difficult to make clear, but Dante was not an ordinary child, and Alucard was not an ordinary father. He gently reached for his son's mind and showed the boy what he wanted him to do.

Dante happily drained the last of the formula. When he set the cup down, he did not push it towards his father in a silent plea for more. Alucard plucked the small object from the table with the tips of his gloved fingers, melted into his shadows, and reappeared just behind Integra's shoulder. Grinning, he took her hand and folded the fingers around the cup. She lifted the tiny bit of plastic and raised an eyebrow.

The lid was unblemished. Alucard's grin became a smirk as he scooped Dante up. It was time for the boy's nap. A chill ran through the room, and Alucard stepped back into the thickening shadows against the wall. “What was that you said about pride