No Destination by Alicia
SUMMARY: Continuation of John's story after "Haunted." Spoilers through and for "Haunted." Flashbacks to John and Helen's courtship. Although there's nothing that contradicts canon at the moment, I expect that this story will become AU at some point because I have filled in some significant unanswered questions from canon, and the writers will probably have different interpretations. Written after season two aired, but before season three started.
DISCLAIMER/WARNINGS: I don't own "Sanctuary," Helen Magnus, John Druitt, or any of the people I'm borrowing for this fic, and I'm not making any money. Only having a good time and jumping on the fanfic bandwagon! I suppose the angst warning goes without saying since, well, it's me. But also, I'd like to put a warning that I am writing Jack the Ripper. Although there's nothing graphic, there are some fairly horrible things that happened in this story. I squicked myself out too.
DEDICATION: To Rowan_D, for all the reasons I can articulate (fic! Whee!) and for all the reasons I can't, but that we both know. And for introducing me to "Sanctuary" in the first place. Now it's your turn to write Will angst so I can squee!
THANKS: To Annieau08, for an awesome beta. I don't think I'd have the courage to attempt something as challenging as Helen/John if I didn't know you were there. Anything you need, just ask.
No Destination
"I need to leave now," he said. Any place would do, any place that wasn't right in front of the woman he hated more … loved more … hated more than anyone else in the world. She shouldn't have talked about inane things like medical aid, as if a mere electrical bolt was capable of damaging him in any way. She shouldn't have made condescending noise about him keeping a creature locked down inside of him. Violence was good. Poison was necessary. The invisible airborne poison was going to be finished and aimed straight at Helen Magnus in a few seconds if John could just pick up the utensils and finish the job, but no, he wanted to kill her with a knife, but no, he couldn't kill her, his heart would be dead if she were dead, but she was infuriating him, and she needed to be dead, they all needed to be dead, he hated them all.
"Where are you going?"
"I have no destination in mind," he said in that same deceptively controlled voice. His simply wanted to be elsewhere, before he destroyed everything he'd ever loved.
So instead he went to those who he did not love, but did not hate. He destroyed them instead. It was easier that way.
When it was all over, he waded out into the sea. It was so different than the lakes behind the school in England, or the swimming pools of the Old City. The water was warm, even at midnight. It was murky and clouded, and the salt alone kept John afloat, although he moved his arms in a half-hearted breast stroke out of habit. The water swirled around his hands, making the skin dirtier than it had been, but less sticky. Brown grime replaced red grime. For the most part; the bloodstains over John's entire body were too deep to ever wash off. But he had needed be somewhere besides inside the now-deserted African village, and the sea was as good a place as any.
John thought about simply swimming out to sea, as far as he could go, until at last even his enhanced strength wore out. But he had always been a survivor; the only reason he had at last been willing to let Helen kill him was that his guilt had grown too great even for him to live with. Now the guilt was washed away in a blaze of rage, and he had a reason to stay close to the shore that he had not had before. So long as he lived, the darkness that called his body its home was under his control. So long as he kept control, the creature inside him was not unleashed on the world. Perhaps it would die with him if he was drowned and not shocked back to life. That had been the way things had been supposed to happen. However, perhaps it wouldn't die with him. John was a survivor. He still had things to live for: his power, his dreams, Helen. As long as he was alive, he had a chance of someday destroying the creature for good and returning to the life he'd had once upon a time. He'd seen that life for a precious hour only that afternoon.
Or so John told himself, as he paddled back and forth in the African sea, and tried not to picture all the dead African villagers' faces. That day he had killed more than he had saved.
It had been a rainy evening. Which, of course, didn't separate it from any other evening throughout John's years at Oxford. That evening his cough was bad, which again did not separate it from any other. John's flatmates had announced they were going swimming in the river, dismissed John's polite "no, thank you," attempted to throw a wet washcloth on his textbook but missed and hit his face, then scampered out of the flat like churchmice off the look on John's face.
He was going to kill them,
After his lungs at last settled down, John spent the evening working on latest Chemistry exam. Much later, he looked up idly at the space between the book and the window, wondering what the three insufferable blokes he was cursed with living among were doing. Swimming his foot; they were probably chatting up girls in the local pub.
John didn't have any personal objection to chatting up girls, but whenever he tried it the girls didn't reciprocate. "You're as beautiful as the symmetry of water" didn't go over all that well, after all.
There was a tap on the windowpane.
John ignored it.
The tap came again, louder.
John growled, pushed his book aside, and stalked across the flat to the window. He expected to see a familiar and an unshaven ugly face at eye level with his. Instead, he saw curls. He looked down. There was a small frame barely visible below the windowsill.
John turned, walked back across the flat, unlocked the door, and stepped outside. Thankfully it had stopped raining for the moment, although the sky was still steel, so there was no accompanying coughing fit. The woman from the window met him in the doorway.
"I thought it would take them all night to leave," she said.
Upon second look, even below the soaked rain hat, John recognized her. Helen Magnus. A third of their class did not like her because she was female; the rest did not like her because she persisted in answering the professors' questions with mini lectures of her own and taking up all the class time. And probably because she was smarter than they were. What on earth was she doing outside John Druitt's window on a weekday evening?
"Well, come on," Helen said, turning before John could get a good impression of her face close-up and walking back toward the school at a brisk pace.
John followed, barely remembering to lock the door behind him. What else could he do? "Where are we going?"
"To do something about your cough."
John stopped walking.
So did Helen. She turned around again, facing him seriously. "I know it isn't consumption," she said.
"I'm beginning to doubt that," John murmured. "But it is none of your concern…"
"It is because if we combined…" she said quickly, trailing off into a long string of chemistry talk that John barely understood.
Barely, but he did understand. And the thing she was suggesting was possible.
As Helen spoke, she turned as quickly as she talked and headed back for the lab, this time with John almost jostling her out of the way, he was also hurrying so quickly. Suddenly he said, "It's late. Won't the lab be closed?"
"Of course," she said, not slowing, but turning her hand upward so that John could see the key buried in the palm. "The advantages to having a father on staff."
"Your father isn't supposed to have a key, is he?"
"Of course not. Now come on!"
It would not be the first time John Druitt would break school rules with Helen Magnus. But it was one of the rare times when the escapade was entirely of Helen's creation.
In the few months after he had left the Sanctuary, John moved very quickly. Over the previous half century, he'd perfected the art of being invisible, staying in one place no more than a few months, vanishing and resurfacing as completely as he teleported. But after departing the Sanctuary, he stayed in one place no more than a few hours. Overnight at most. Sleep was haunted, not only by the faces of the dead Africans and the dead Zulu woman, but by dead Ashley. Human Ashley, killed not by the Cabal but by John's own hand. Dead Helen, in the same way, in the same gruesome manner.
Best not to attempt sleep at all.
Violence was more like a drug than a hunger, John had decided a long time ago. The more he killed, the more he – no, the creature of hatred and darkness living within him—no, he—wanted to kill.
Best not to attempt to be around people at all.
For the first time in over a hundred years, John Druitt had a fresh memory of real peace. He would search the world to find that again, if it was to be found. But it had to be.
Peace was ultimately to be found in the ancient eyes of one woman, through the rain-soaked skies of the place that would always be John's home, so long as Helen lived there. Lived, that was the most important word of all. So John could not go back yet.
He searched instead. And he found that his goals helped tremendously with the loneliness. Before, he'd hated Helen for that. Hated her for tapping on his window, barging into his life, showing him the world through the eyes of another human being, and then pushing him away and abandoning him. Violence helped with the ache, and guilt had fled a long time before, but neither violence nor numbness could bring peace.
But peace was out there. Somewhere.
John would find it as soon as he had freed himself from the creature. He could kick it out of his body by asking Helen to shock him to death and bring him back to life again, but not until she also had a means to destroy the creature immediately, so it would not take over the Sanctuary and the world. The violence in his own nature had a reason, to contain a thing that could not, must not, ever be free.
That was where John's train of thought always stopped. He could find a way to kill it. If he'd managed to locate a vial of ancient vampire blood, keep himself and his beloved … oh, yes, and his irritating friends … safe while they changed themselves in ways no human should change, then locate a second vial of ancient vampire blood and defeat the Cabal almost single-handedly, he could find a way to destroy one abnormal. "You are just a shadow," he would say to it a night. "You are the shadow of a pile of excrement, and I will flush you out with all the rest of the trash."
If it heard, it gave no indication. Perhaps it thought that John was talking to himself.
One such sleepless night, a lady of the night surprised him in the alley.
"Go away," said John. He tried to put every warning he had ever needed into his voice.
"Hi, handsome," she said. "I'm off duty, but do you care to share the corner?"
"Go away." John needed to teleport away, and he willed his body to obey. But his body instead responded to something baser: the woman's scent, the helpless weakness of her limbs and her vulnerable, exposed neck.
One more wouldn't make any difference.
She reeked of several different kinds of drugs. Had she actually poisoned herself, or simply had a crazy night? John backed up a pace. "Go away," he said. Why wasn't she listening?
"Why won't you share the alley?" the woman slurred, not quite throwing herself at him.
John grabbed both her arms and flung her past him, into the wall.
Her upper shoulders impacted the stones with sharp slaps, and she cried out in pain. The cry was far more muted than it should have been, though.
Why didn't she scream? Why must she deny him even that?
John broke the woman's arms, then methodically snapped her neck. And then just waited. Waited for his rage to subside or take him over, waited for the exultation of victory or the frustration of easy death.
And instead, for the first time in his life, John wept for a life that he had taken.
John had not always been a murderer, and he had not always been more than human. On the evening before everything changed, he said, "you don't have to do this."
"Tell that to my father," said Helen.
"As I recall, your father said much the same thing," observed Tesla dryly. "Which is why we get drunk and ignore him!" He raised his glass, looking squarely into the eyes of every occupant of the pub table until they rolled their eyes and joined his toast. "To drunken ignorance!"
John followed Nikola's gaze to Helen and winced. First came the drinking, then came the flirting, then usually came the slapping. He followed Helen's gaze to Nikola, met Helen's eyes, and looked away. He wasn't sure what he had seen. Tolerance and amusement, but something darker too. And she was only pretending to drink.
"Watson! Can you make sure our drunken friend here doesn't make too great a fool of himself, please?" John said over the general noise of the pub. "I'm going to take Helen home."
"Drunken ignorance is not drunken debauchery," Tesla protested, "and now we are all going to play drunkenly ignorant pub quiz. Come on," he said, gesturing extravagantly at the loud crowd gathering at the other end of the room. Griffin had been in its midst for the past half hour, loudly proclaiming that there was no soccer game for which he did not know the final score. He was probably well on his way to gaining a black eye from the first more-sober patron to call his bluff. Well, if Nigel wanted to spend his last night as an ordinary human being in excruciating pain from losing a barfight, that would just make their story more exciting later.
"Yes, yes," John said, setting his untouched drink down squarely in front of Tesla and "accidentally" smacking Tesla's hand as he withdrew. "You will make sure he gets home eventually," he said to Watson.
"You are abandoning me to certain defeat," Watson said.
"I highly doubt that. No matter how drunk you are."
"I am not drunk, I am…"
"Goodnight, my old friend." John tossed a bank note on the table, which he'd cleverly folded to look as if there were more than one in the stack even though it was only one, and took Helen's arm. He led her into the relative quiet of the night.
"Thank you," Helen said, once they were far enough away that the sounds of the night were louder than the sounds of happy carousing.
"I live only to serve you," John said with a mock-bow.
"Yes, that's what all three of you say."
It was true. Mostly because she was so charming and beautiful, but also because nobody else liked her still. Nikola, James, and John were Helen's self-appointed knights in shining armor. John was more than that, though. Much more.
Helen walked with her face turned to the sky. "What do you suppose they were like?" she said softly. "The Ancients. The vampires."
"Well, not like Nikola, much as he likes to brag that he is part of the vampire race."
"Can you imagine a whole city of Nikola?"
John laughed. His laughter was subdued tonight, like all his other interactions had been; it was like a part of him recognized that this was a solemn occasion. It was a time to walk softly, see deeply, and say farewell to the old. "Helen, what is troubling you?"
"Nothing at all. We're right at the edge of uncovering the whole world. Finding things out that we don't even know we don't know."
They walked in silence, almost all the way back to Helen's flat.
"I just wish," Helen added.
"What, love?"
"That Father …"
"Believed that we could?"
"Yes."
John took her hand, and Helen leaned her head on his shoulder.
They walked the rest of the way back in that manner as they had done so many times before. "Stay," Helen whispered as they reached the door.
Killing the Africans had been unavoidable. Killing the prostitute had been a slip. He was who he was. He could control the bloodlust. He needed to kill again. All the dreams that had flooded John Druitt's mind only hours earlier seemed painfully unrealistic. He couldn't wander the world to find a way to kill the creature when hatred flooded his heart, when he murdered all along the way, to the point where their deaths didn't matter anymore. Helen had been right to try to lock him up. He needed to turn himself in. That would mean an eternity confined in a small space, away from Helen, unable to ever use his powers. That would be much worse than allowing himself to be executed. John was a survivor, more so after many weeks of hope than he had been before. But he knew himself well enough to know that now he would kill again, soon.
It was nearly dawn. A child wandered into the alley. A little girl, no more than nine or ten. Scraggly blonde hair.
Ashley might have looked like this when she had been younger. Anger flooded through John again, and he knew he wouldn't be able to stop it. At Ashley, for being so much like the father who had spent his life protecting her from him. At the Cabal, for the unspeakable things they had done to Ashley. At the Cabal for being dead, damn it, so none of them could suffer at John's hands any more. At the girl, for daring to look so much like Ashley.
John took a step toward her. The child shrunk back. Street urchin, probably, too thin, looking for something or someone. He couldn't kill her. But he had to kill.
How many times would he be faced with this choice, John wondered: to kill or to die? Using every shred of willpower he could call from the remnants of hope that he'd let grow in his heart, he teleported away. Anywhere away, but he happened to rematerialize over the middle of the Pacific Ocean. He fell, and his long-delayed skill at swimming took over. He kicked his way to the surface, gasped for breath, coughed a few times out of old habit although cold water was no longer dangerous to him, and then swam toward shore. He gathered his attention to teleport somewhere back on land, treading water for the moments when his efforts went into his ability rather than his limbs. His mind was clear. There was no anger left.
He had not killed the child. That was all that mattered.
She was even more beautiful in the moonlight than John remembered, her hair blowing back toward the Sanctuary as she faced the city. She sensed him somehow, and turned to face him. John wanted to take her in his arms, but he held up a hand to stop her. "I haven't come home yet, love," he said.
Helen stopped. Without his having to tell her, she would know why she couldn't touch him, she would know that if she did all his resolve would melt away.
"I just came to tell you something. I figured it out. All I have to do to stop the bloodlust is to put myself in danger. Survival takes over." He shrugged. "And since I can teleport into danger at any time, I think the rest of the world is safe from me."
"Will you stay, then?"
"Not until this creature is gone. I don't want to risk your life. But I'm going to find a way to get rid of it, Helen," John said. He added again, "I love you, don't forget that, always." Just as he had once, he teleported away without giving himself a chance to see her reaction, since his resolve could not bear it.
As John broke the daydream, he told himself that reality was a dingy hotel room somewhere in Scotland, not Old City. Reality was that he needed breakfast and more than two hours' sleep, not the desperate daydream that he'd been playing in his mind for weeks. He would find the courage to tell Helen all that he had learned. Someday. Unless he killed the creature first. Someday.
In the meantime, he would keep moving. "No destination" was suddenly the most important place in the world for him to be.