Fanfic / Honey and Vinegar

Honey and Vinegar is a Fusion Fic between Hellsing and Castlevania (2017) written by AutumnMobile12.

Set in the medieval era, Seras Victoria Draculina is the fledgling daughter of Vlad Dracula Ţepeş. The story chronicles the lives of her, her father, and Lisa, with Seras trying to figure out what to make of Dracula's new student.

The story is now complete with eleven chapters, including an epilogue.

The story has a sequel titled Court of Intrigue.

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This series provides examples of:

• Abled in the Adaptation: Seras never lost her arm here like she did in the manga and Hellsing Ultimate.
• Abusive Parent: Dracula was once rather harsh and even cruel to Seras in her early years as his fledgling, even going so far as to either brutalize her or give her off to be married as a bargaining chip. Though in later years, he moved past this and became a decent parent to her. Unfortunately, he descends right back into this after Lisa's death.
• Achilles' Heel:
  • For vampires, blessed weapons and tools such as Holy water, the Cross, stakes, iron and salt are useful for killing them or causing them great pain. Averted with Alucard, who, thanks to being a dhampyr, is immune to such things. This is also averted with Seras and Dracula, as both of them are so powerful they've transcended most of their species' conventional weaknesses. In Seras' case, about the only common vampiric weakness she still possesses is running water (with regular running water being annoying while saltwater hurts like hell), and even then, it's unknown if even that would be able to outright kill her.
  • Seras' shadow powers are insanely destructive, but they do have one major weakness: They need actual shadows to manifest them. As a result, she can't create any shadow constructs when in total darkness.
• Actual Pacifist: Lisa doesn't like fighting. Even when she took up Seras' cannon, it's made clear that she had no intention of using it and bluffed her way to ending the fight with Godbrand without further bloodshed.
• Adaptational Early Appearance: The events of Honey and Vinegar are set after Dracula first met Lisa during the events of the first season, but before Lisa's death. Godbrand makes his appearance in this fic to fight against Seras when canonically he wouldn't officially appear until the events of the second season long after Lisa's death.
• Adaptational Heroism: The Millennium vampires and the Captain are re-imagined as Seras' household workers and servants rather than genocidal sociopaths who want to kill For the Evulz.
• Adaptational Jerkass: Seras here is cruder and more aggressive than she was in Hellsing, where she was a Nice Gal and one of the few unambiguously heroic characters in the series. Her being more callous here is a result of her being much older, more jaded towards the human race, and having grown up in the more crapsack medieval ages. By the time of Court of Intrigue, she's far more like she was in canon.
• Adaptational Job Change: In Hellsing, Pip was a mercenary. In this story, he's the head librarian for Dracula's castle.
• Adaptational Sexuality:
  • Integra in canon was asexual and remained a virgin all her life. In this story, she married and had multiple children.
  • Seras is bisexual here, having had a romantic relationship with Lenore in the past and one with Pip in the present.
• Adaptational Villainy: While Dracula was the main Big Bad of the second season of the show, the series also Adapted Out his past as Mathias Cronqvist alongside the terrible things he did in Castlevania: Lament of Innocence. With this fic being a Patchwork Fic regarding the Castlevania side of the crossover, such actions are brought back in, and Alucard struggles to comprehend them.
• Adaptation Name Change: Due to being Crossover Relatives, Integra and Alexander have the last name Belmont rather than their canon last names of Hellsing and Anderson respectively.
• Adaptation Relationship Overhaul: In canon, Seras and Integra were close friends by series end, and she possessed Undying Loyalty towards her master. Here, they're enemies/rivals and Seras only ever worked with Integra on an Enemy Mine basis.
• Age Lift:
  • Seras is much older here than she was in Hellsing. By the end of Hellsing, she was almost half a century old, while here she's already well over a century old by the time the story begins.
  • Walter C. Dornez being composited with Walter Bernhard means that he pre-dates Dracula's existence, making him multiple centuries old, while canonically he was a human in his late 60s.
• Animorphism: Vampires all have the ability to turn into animals. Seras can transform into a large wolf and does so to carry Lisa to Bucharest.
• Anti-Villain: Seras in Court of Intrigue still serves Dracula and aids his war effort, but she doesn't particularly like the idea and acts as a Noble Top Enforcer. It's later revealed that she and Pip are moving against Dracula to try and hold his warpath, but they're having limited success on that front.
• Asshole Victim: The Nosferatu Dracula killed wiped out an entire village, threatened to rape Seras and held her hostage. Needless to say, Dracula's brutal killing of him was very well deserved.
• Arc Words: Seras' coat of arms motto: "Though Hell shall bar the way."
• Arranged Marriage: It's revealed through Trevor that Seras and Godbrand used to be married via Dracula arranging it. The purpose at the time was because Dracula wanted an alliance with the Northern vampires. They were married for nine years and it's confirmed by Pip that it wasn't a happy marriage in the slightest.
• Beware the Silly Ones: Godbrand is kind of an idiot, but he's still a force to be reckoned with. He's lived for many centuries and was raiding and slaughtering foes long before he became a vampire. He's reportedly lived to 40 as a human, which is kind of an impressive longevity with the life he lived in such a Crapsack World the medieval era was, where life expectancy, especially for one of his profession, was far less than that. He even gets the jump on Seras, pushes her to the brink and blinds her in their fight. Considering he's fighting the second most powerful vampire on the planet, that really speaks volumes of his abilities.
• BFG: Seras' main weapon is a large, heavily modified arquebus-type cannon that fires blasts so loud that Lisa compares them to thunder and so powerful they can destroy large trees in a single shot and sink Godbrand's warships from afar. It's also so large that Lisa can barely hold it with both hands.
• Big Bad Wannabe: Walter calls Carmilla out on being this. For all her ambitions and desire to rule in place of Dracula, she's ultimately just a foolish dreamer with delusions of grandeur, and is far too reliant on her sisters to do most of the heavy lifting.
• Big Sister Instinct: A major reason for why Seras opposes Dracula is because of the love she has for her younger brother and the fact that Dracula admits to having tried to kill him.
• Body Horror: Discussed. While never seen and only talked about, Lenore used to be a member of Seras' court, and when she kicked her out, she flayed her skin off.
• Brought Down to Badass: Walter lost much of his power after Dracula usurped him. As seen when he threatens Carmilla, he's still an incredibly powerful vampire that is not to be trifled with.
• Bullying the Dragon: The Nosferatu that attacked Cascaval tried insulting Dracula. This goes as well as you'd expect for him.
• Call-Forward:
  • Seras has traveled around a lot and tells her father of events and people that became important to the series later, such as a Styrian fledgling (Carmilla) killing her master, a forge-master causing trouble in Moldova, and Godbrand coming down from the North.
  • While in Bucharest with Lisa, Seras points out all the logistical problems of running an entire vampire army, as there's too many to feed and can lead to territorial in-fighting. She also brings up the flaws of attacking humans at random since it causes their food supply to dwindle. These are all factors that would befall Dracula's war council two decades later in Season 2 of the series.
• Canis Major: Seras and Dracula can turn into wolves that are far larger than the average wolf. With Seras, her wolf form is large enough to easily carry Lisa on her back.
• Casting a Shadow: As seen when she fights Godbrand, Seras has her shadow powers from canon which she uses in the form of jagged tendrils to try and rip her opponent to shreds.
• Combat Pragmatist: According to Godbrand, Seras doesn't fight fairly. Seras confirms and outright relishes in her enjoyment of not playing by others' rules.
• Composite Character:
  • Dracula is combined with Hellsing's Alucard as the one who turned Seras into a vampire. Then again, Alucard was Dracula in his home series anyway.
  • Walter C. Dornez and Walter Bernhard are combined into the same character under the name of the former here.
  • Pip gets mixed with the Master Librarian from Castlevania: Symphony of the Night.
• Crossover Relatives:
  • Integra is Trevor's grandmother in this story.
  • Alexander is "The Mad Belmont", making him a distant cousin to Trevor and Integra.
• Dark and Troubled Past: Prior to becoming Dracula's daughter, Seras' parents were killed by common thieves, forcing her to live most of her life as a beggar on the streets of Cascaval. She was left as the only survivor of a vampire attack on the village and would have been raped by her attacker had Dracula not killed him. This ultimately left her mortally wounded and she had to become a vampire to survive.
• Daywalking Vampire: Seras, Dracula, and Alucard are shown moving and walking around in broad daylight without showing any sign of strain or the negative effects that would befall other vampires. While Alucard's ability to do this is a result of his dhampyr nature countering typical vampire weaknesses, Seras and Dracula's is a result of them being so powerful that they've transcended most things that would harm vampires.
• D-Cup Distress: Downplayed. While Seras doesn't hate her large breasts, she dislikes how they've led to many a joke that gets on her nerves.
• Demoted to Extra: Alexander, unlike the manga where he was Alucard's Arch-Enemy and one of his most frequent opponents, is already dead by the time the story begins and only ever gets mentioned in passing.
• Does Not Like Men: Carmilla, thanks to her past abuse under her sire, really doesn't like men. She was highly reluctant to submit her servitude to Dracula and only did so when it was clear the alternatives would be worse and for her sister's sake.
• The Dreaded:
  • Dracula is the most feared vampire in the world. While Godbrand doesn't have many qualms fighting Seras, he gets the hell out of there when he thinks Dracula is coming.
  • Seras also has this reputation. The Belmonts (exception of Integra and Arthur) are wary when it comes to her, and she's even referred to as "The Red Death". Of all Dracula's generals, Trevor is shown to be genuinely afraid of her, even calling her a demoness. The minute she shows up to the War Council meeting, all the generals immediately stop arguing and heed her words carefully.
• Dumb Blonde: Inverted with both Seras and Lisa.
  • Seras is Dracula's most trusted general, showing her intellect when she goes over all the logistical errors in having a vampire army as well as having the cunning to use the Belmont family as a means to draw attention away from her own keep since it's relatively close to the Belmont hold.
  • Lisa is a practicing doctor. Throughout Seras and Godbrand's fight, she takes into account all the injuries, both external and internal, that Seras accumulates with a lot of medical detail.
• Enemy Mine: In the past, Seras teamed up with the then Belmonts active at the time to defeat all of Godbrand's forces because she didn't want them in her territory.
• Eye Scream: During their fight, Godbrand manages a surprise attack on Seras with a knife, taking out her eyes. They regenerate thanks to her Healing Factor, so she doesn't make a fuss over it once the fight concludes.
• Foil: Lisa and Seras, both being the special women in Dracula's life (Lisa as the woman he loves and Seras as his daughter), but practically being polar opposite to each other. Lisa is a human woman who dislikes violence, is rather naïve, wants to use whatever knowledge she gains to help others, and looks for the best in everyone, human or otherwise, even if there might be nothing there. Seras is a century old vampire who is a crass, rude cynic expectant of the worst in almost everyone, doesn't see the point in using what she knows to help others, and relishes in when she gets to cut loose and kill whatever she hates. Lastly, the knowledge Seras learned from Dracula revolves around methods of murder and death, while the knowledge Lisa seeks is of healing and preserving life.
• Friend to All Children: One of Seras' major rules is that she never harms or goes after children, being friendly with them and even protecting them. In fact, the entire reason Lenore was cast out of Seras' court was because she kidnapped a child from the Belmont estate.
• Fusion Fic: The setting of the Castlevania series is combined with the characters of the Hellsing series, with some even getting composited together.
• Happily Adopted: Seras was made a vampire by Dracula and taken in as his daughter, but it's shown that she loved her adoptive father and is unwaveringly loyal to him. Dracula himself also treats his daughter with nothing but love and respect. Though later chapters in Court of Intrigue make it clear that this wasn't always the case.
• Has a Type:
  • Dracula is attracted to women with an extreme sense of determination and bravery. His lost love, Elizabetha, clung to her life for as long as she could before she finally succumbed to her illness, and Lisa bravely crossed far into Dracula's territory and demanded to be taught proper medicine.
  • While Seras' marriage to Godbrand was arranged and unpleasant, it's joked that, thanks to her later, more mutual romances with Lenore and Pip, she might have a thing for redheads.
• Healing Factor: Seras possesses the ability to heal from any injury and her healing surpasses most vampires. Without blood to rejuvenate herself, something like multiple broken bones, limbs, and sliced out eyes would take about half-an-hour to fully heal.
• Heel–Face Turn: The Captain used to serve in Godbrand's forces before he joined Seras.
• Hidden Heart of Gold: While Seras is bitter, cynical, aggressive, and bloodthirsty, it's heavily implied to be a front she puts up so as to keep others away from her. Lisa even points out that she only ever targets the guilty, never attacks those that don't attack her first, and is on a first name basis with the Belmonts, meaning that she must care for them in come capacity. This is shown in the time skip, where she visits the ruined Belmont home to pay her respects to them.
• Humans Are Bastards: Seras has seen much of the worst of humankind in her life, and as such, she dislikes them, to the point where she almost attacked Lisa on sight when she saw her in Dracula's castle. Of course, she's also seen the worst of her own kind and isn't very fond of other vampires either.
• Kick the Dog: Dracula does this to Seras in Court of Intrigue whenever she questions him. It tends to involve beating her within an inch of her unlife. He also did this a lot more to her back when she first became his fledgling.
• Lady Swears-a-Lot: Befitting the show, Seras is pretty dang vulgar, as seen when she first fights with Godbrand.
  Seras: You're going to best me? C'mere and try it, you feckless, cock-witted whoremonger!
• Locked Out of the Loop: While Alucard knows a few things about what his father was like before his mother, it's made clear that he was unaware of the atrocities that Dracula committed leading to his feud against House Belmont.
• Mood-Swinger: Thanks to Dracula's suicidal grief, he can go from polite and courteous to violent and cruel as soon as someone says the wrong word to him.
• No Name Given: Similar to canon, the werewolf Captain doesn't have a name, which is lampshaded whenever he comes up.
• Not Afraid to Die:
  • Discussed and averted. Seras questions whether her choice to become a creature of the night was rooted in her will to live or if she was afraid of death.
  • This is also averted with Walter. When Mathias drained him of his power and became Dracula, he saw the shadow of Death himself loom over him and was completely terrified that his soul would be claimed.
• Out of Focus: Seras was the primary protagonist of Honey and Vinegar, with the story being about her learning to open up and become friends with Lisa. In Court of Interest, she's more absent with the focus being centered more on Dracula's assault on the world. According to Sypha, this is because she's looking for something, but what that is is unknown. It's not until Chapter 5 that she fully returns to the story.
• Patchwork Fic: The series takes the Netflix animated series and adds in the lore and story elements from the games that the show either Adapted Out or glossed over, such as Dracula's past life as Mathias Cronqvist and the actions he committed back then, as well as more elements from Symphony of the Night.
• Pay Evil unto Evil: Seras' most preferred victims to hunt are typically the ones who deserve a horrific demise, such as rapists and murderers. It's the first sign that she's not as bad as she tries to make herself out to be.
• Pervert Revenge Mode: According to Alucard, Seras once slapped a guy (later revealed to have been Varney) for staring at her breasts and did so with enough force to remove his jaw from his head.
• Pet the Dog:
  • Granted, it was followed up by an immediate Kick the Dog moment, but Godbrand did briefly open up to Seras about his feeling regarding being a vampire and the overall existence of their kind back when she was only recently turned.
  • Seras and Carmilla manage to share a genuinely pleasant moment of conversation with each other by making fun of Godbrand.
• Politically Incorrect Villain: While Deliberate Values Dissonance of the era is somewhat at play, Godbrand is still highly sexist. He looks down on Seras simply because she's a woman and can't stand the thought that he lost to her.
• Power Gives You Wings: Seras can use her shadow powers to manifest demonic wings from her shoulders for flight, as seen when she fights Godbrand.
• Rags to Riches: As a human, Seras was a poor orphan girl who spent her life on the streets begging for scraps. When she became Dracula's daughter, she gained a lot of wealth, including her own personal keep, as well as servants and riches.
• Red Baron: Seras has both "Draculina" and "The Red Death" as her titles. In the former's case, it's also part of her name.
• Skilled, but Naive: Alucard is a variation of this. In terms of skill and power, he's right up there with Seras and Dracula. However, he's shown to be rather ignorant of the world of vampires and only really has knowledge on the basics. This is seen when he, Sypha, and Trevor explore the Belmont hold, as much of what he learns about his own kind there is rather new to him.
• Shadow Walker: Seras' shadow powers allow her to travel through shadows with ease, as seen when she first enters Dracula's court in Court of Intrigue.
• Sudden Sequel Death Syndrome: Lisa gets killed before the start of Court of Intrigue like she did in canon, setting Dracula on the warpath.
• Super-Speed: Seras' wolf form can casually run at over 60 MPH, taking Lisa to Bucharest from Dracula's castle in a very short time. She's also shown to be able to fly at much faster speeds through her wings than she can run, with the most often comparison being that she flies "like a red arrow fired from a bow drawn taut".
• Time Skip: The epilogue for Honey and Vinegar skips ahead by years, with Seras watching after her younger brother, Adrian (aka Alucard), as they visit the abandoned Belmont home and she pays her respects.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: As a result of Lisa's death, Dracula begins acting far more caustic and aggressive with anyone he was previously nice to whenever they defy him.
• Too Dumb to Live:
  • A lone Nosferatu seriously tried insulting Dracula. Y'know, THAT Dracula. Needless to say, he dies almost immediately after the fact.
  • Even though Godbrand does do well in his fight with Seras, she still points out that fighting her is really stupid, as doing so would bring Dracula's wrath on him.
• Underestimating Badassery: Decades of being the second most powerful vampire in the world and Dracula's daughter have given Seras kind of an ego, which shows in her fight with Godbrand. She believed that it would be an easy victory like their previous encounter. Unfortunately for her, Godbrand uses his greater skill and experience as a warrior to trip Seras up and blind her in their battle. Dracula even calls Seras out on how she underestimated her opponent.
• Undying Loyalty: Subverted. With exception to Walter and the Captain, the rest of Seras' house won't follow along with her plan to stop her father from going through with genocide because they have more to lose if they fail.
• Un-person: Because of his monomaniacal obsession with seeing to the obliteration of all creatures of the night and how he warped his body to do so, Alexander Belmont was exiled from his family and stricken from their records to be lost to time. His enemies (especially Dracula and Seras) actually remember him better than the Belmonts following him do.
• Vague Age: Seras is roughly 119, having been almost 20 when she died, but Word of God states that it's a bit tricky. Since things weren't exactly written down or kept track of well during the Dark Ages due to widespread illiteracy, Seras' exact age is a little hard to gauge. Seras even tells Lisa that she isn't sure how old she truly is.
• Weak, but Skilled: Godbrand is this to Seras. He doesn't have the same level of strength, destructive weapons, and abilities that she does, but he has far more experience as a warrior and gets the upper hand on Seras with better fighting prowess and precise attacks to areas like the eyes.
• What Does He See in Her?: Seras tends to find herself questioning why Dracula is so enamored by Lisa.
  Seras (to Lisa): What is wrong with you! Why does he... (stops and proceeds to storm out)
• Worthy Opponent: While Godbrand does hate and look down on Seras, he also gives her credit as a fighter during their battle.
• You Remind Me of X: Dracula states that he turned Seras into a vampire was because she reminded him of his then lost love, Elizabetha.

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