Disclaimer: Not my sandbox. I'm just playing in it.
I've never really made a foray into Sanctuary before, other than drabbles, but this oneshot popped into my head and screamed to be written when I was jogging one day. This is a post-Into the Black moment in John's head. It's pretty angst-tastic, particularly considering where the episode left John. Anyway, reviews are loved and much appreciated.
She is the sun, he is the night.
There is so much distance between them, yet he is nothing without her. Time, betrayal, pain – there is so much that separates them.
His world is incomplete without her light. He is the utter darkness that comes with her absence. He is her opposite – he has been nothing else since the day when they became what they were. What they are. He became as dark as a starless night. There is blood on his hands and he would do anything to turn back time and take it away, to give her the life she wanted. It would change the world; it would change the course of history, but he doesn't care.
John Druitt's world does not revolve around what the rest of the world thinks. His world revolves around Helen Magnus. She is the light, the goodness, the hope that he clings to.
John regrets more than she could ever understand. The rage inside of him is not his fault – it is not him at all. He still blames himself for everything he has done under the influence of the creature that resides in his body with him. She could never understand how it feels to be enraged and never comprehend what has come over him.
That is part of the problem. Helen does not understand what it has been like for him for the last hundred years. She does not realize how much he hates what he became. She seems to think he enjoys the bloodlust that he constantly has to try to curb. He is not always strong enough to control it and what he has done under the influence of the creature haunts him.
There is nothing he can do to remove the bloodstains from his hands. There is nothing he can do to make up for all that he has done, no matter how hard he tries. He feels as though he is a monster.
All he wants is to live in peace. All he wants is for the part of him that is Jack the Ripper – the creature itself – to disappear. Yet it has already proven to be impossible. He has known peace only a handful of times since he encountered the creature.
But it is not simply Jack that will not allow him to live in peace. He loved Helen more than anything in the world, but there was so much that kept them apart. His failure to control Jack. Her refusal to understand his motives – that he would keep her safe no matter what it cost him. Everything that he had done. Her inability to decide whether she wanted him to be part of her life or not. It all stands between them.
Every mistake he makes pushes them apart.
In the end, it does not matter. He will always love her. He will always do everything in his power to keep her safe, as he has done for more than a hundred years. James knew that. Nigel knew that. Nikola knows that. He has followed in the shadows, rarely showing himself, always taking down obstacles she never saw.
He will do anything for her. Even condemn himself to certain death so that she can stop Adam Worth from destroying their future.
As he watches her go, his heart aches. She will ensure that all of this will happen. She will stop Adam Worth. And she will never worry about him again. If John survives this, he will leave her be and remain in the shadows. That is how it is meant to be.
She is the sun, he is the night.
The night was never meant to know the sun. It only exists in the absence of the sun's light. So long as he is how he is, he knows that they will never be. If he survives this.