Disclaimer: The characters and background stories of "Sanctuary" do not belong to me, unfortunately, but to Damian kindler and Stage3Media. I just take them out to play. No copyright infringement is intended, no profit will be made.

A/N: Written for the Sanctuary Bingo Round Three, Prompt: "Missing scene / Episode tag: Webisodes". Dealing with the question: "What happened at the end of webisode 8?Where did the Morrigan go?"

Rating: NC-17 for violence. Cabal agents being killed by a very dangerous abnormal.

Pairing: none.

The Morrigan's choice

by

romansilence

Teaser: Previously on "Sanctuary"

Webisode 5:

Outside in Scotland, late evening, Will and Magnus are sitting on the ground in an old graveyard.

WILL, "I said are you sure this is it?"

HELEN, "Keep your voice down! We're trying to remain undetected, that does require a modicum of silence"

Helen looks through a small telescope at something in the distance]

WILL, "Modicum, right. Why are we hiding? We're on an island in the middle of nowhere and it's a crypt not the Pentagon."

HELEN, "A crypt potentially containing an elixir capable of prolonging life for centuries. Such secrets are rarely left unguarded."

A few minutes later in the crypt.

WILL, "This might be my first crypt but aren't they supposed to hold dead people?"

Webisode 6:

Young Helen a.d Gregory in Gregory's hands her father a letter

HELEN; "Like father, like daughter I suppose."

GREGORY: "Helen, I'm so sorry."

HELEN: "I had the highest possible marks in the entrance exam and yet they've rejected me again."

GREGORY: "You already know more than the doctors who wrote the exam."

HELEN: "I cannot legally practise medicine anywhere without a degree from the London school. There's not a hospital or clinic in Europe that would hire me. This is my third rejection, I can't take the exam again."

GREGORY: "Because you are a Magnus."

HELEN: "I do not accept this Father. I will not settle for a life of mediocrity and subjugation, I want more. Teach me."

GREGORY: "My private research is unorthodox Helen. It is not to be entered into lightly, nor with anger."

HELEN: "You are the most talented medical researcher I have ever known and yet you keep your most important work hidden from the world, from me. If you truly believe that I have potential, Father please, help me achieve it."

[Cut to a set of stairs leading down to a heavy door. Helen is descending the stairs holding a lantern while her father waits for her outside the door]

GREGORY: "Once you enter this door you are on a path that cannot be reversed.

[Gregory opens the door and Helen enters]

Webisode 7:

Main lab at the Sanctuary, Danu and her sisters are holding hands and floating in the air on the second level.

Will: "I'm pretty sure we have rules about floating and stuff."

HELEN shoots them down and said, "That's quite enough of that.".

HELEN and Will are in the Lab talking about the Morrigan

HELEN, "From what I can gather our guests unleashed powerful psychic energy on a massive scale. If left unchecked the toll would have been quite substantial."

WILL, "Psychic energy as in they can read minds?"

HELEN, "I'm guessing that's how Danu was able to quickly learn our vernacular of English and instantly pass that knowledge on to her siblings"

WILL, "OK, I saw them floating in the air. I watched them destroy the lab with their minds, I guess but as for them being The Morrigan? There's no way."

[….]

HELEN, "You can't possibly understand. Life without end is not a gift, it's a curse. It means loneliness, isolation. It means being less human. Now if you can somehow prove that these three women are nothing more than misunderstood abnormals believe me I will be the first to applaud your efforts but if they are indeed who I suspect then you more than anyone are in mortal danger."

Webisode 8:

Later, after the Keepers have invaded the Sanctuary.

Slow pan of a now quiet kitchen where dozens of bodies lay including a bloddy Helen and Bigfoot

Many scenes of more and more Keepers entering various parts of Sanctuary.

Several Keepers enter the labs and find three containment cells open and empty and track marks of Henry's tool cart. There is no sign of The Morrigan or Will or Henry. The Keepers howl and hiss in frustration. [text in Italics are dirct quotes from the webisodes.]

-x-x-x-x-x-

And now the Conclusion:

The eight Cabal agents who had been waiting more or less patiently outside of the Sanctuary building in Old City for hours were now getting restless. They had left their vans in which they had waited in vain for the agreed upon signal by the Keepers of the Dead that the Morrigan had been recaptured, and their thieves neutralised. The signal had never come.

The men knew that their hunting instincts would lead the Keepers directly to where the Morrigan were kept by those thieves, the dark-haired woman, the blond girl and the bespectacled geek who had triggered the release mechanism in the first place. It was the first time these vile creatures seemed to have disappointed their masters and failed in their task. Even after they had sent in a second wave, they had not heard back from them.

The Cabal operatives started to disable the outer security perimeter which was surprisingly still active and though they used a frequency analyzer it still took them more than half an hour to break Henry's elaborate code. Two groups of four men each passed cautiously through the iron-wrought gate, crossed the courtyard and opened the double doors leading into the Sanctuary proper; in the vast foyer they were greeted by the eerie silence and the stench of death.

The guardians of the crypt were lying dead on the floor of the foyer and the corridors, some had been shot, some ripped apart by sharp claws, but most of them were just lying there, without a mark or injury on them, as if they had fallen in mid-step or -run.

There was no sign of the two women and the geek who had disturbed the Morrigans' rest and killed the Keepers on duty at the crypt. The Cabal agents split up to search the entire building for their prey, but they had underestimated the size and spread of Helen Magnus' Sanctuary. It took the two teams another four and a half hours to check all the rooms.

They tried to access the computers but were unable to get past the firewall Henry had installed. The residents had seemingly disappeared. The cells, habitats and rooms in the residential area all looked empty, though numerous personal effects spoke to the fact that the creatures inhabitingthem were sentient. There was still water in one of the big habitats of what appeared to be the main laboratory, but when they called out nothing moved or came up from the back of the enclosure.

-x-x-x-x-x-

Finally the first group of the Cabal intruders reached a door on the lower levels of the former Abbey that did not open easily. Clear warning signs had been affixed to the door itself and the small windows, what they could see of the interior of the cell resembled a subtropical rain forest. The four men disregarded the warnings and decided to force the door open though they had to use a small amount of military grade C4 to do it. They blocked the door through which they had come thus disabling their only escape route. The sound of the detonation of the C4 was answered by a loud, angry roar, putting them on edge but when nothing else happened they incautiously relaxed their guard.

Even with the locking mechanism destroyed it took all four of them to move what was left of the heavy metal door. When they slipped inside, all hell broke loose. The door closed behind them with a loud moaning sound. It was as if it were sliding in place, the four men immediately turned around but even with their combined strength the mangled metal didn't budge even half an inch. Focused on their doomed effort and their own heavy breathing neither of them heard the loud rustling of leaves behind them and the distinct cracking of branches and twigs. The roar was repeated, this time it came from directly behind them. They whirled around almost like one man, bringing up their weapons as they turned but it was already too late for two of them.

An arm covered in thick scales ending in three six inches long, razor sharp claws whipped through the air, seemingly out of nowhere and cut the throats of the two men closest to the forest. The claws sliced through their jugulars and ripped out their windpipes killing them before they had a chance to understand what was happening. Their lives' blood erupted in two fountains towards the small windows high on the wall when the force of the blow forced them around again, leaving blood splatters on the windows.

The two surviving members of the team fired their automatic weapons in the direction from which the scaled arm had come. Their bullets impacted the trees and bushes, but there was no indication that they had hit their intended target. With their backs against the wall they fired until their magazines clicked empty. the ten seconds it would have taken them to drop the empty magazines and re-load would have been five too long.

The repeated roar close to their ears made them freeze in mid-motion. They tried to refocus their aim. The scaled arm once again crossed their visual field. Two claws sliced through muscles of an upper arm and the automatic assault rifle clattered to the floor. The man cried out in pain, but his cry was abruptly cut off when the claws were ripped out again the next moment, severing all the tendons and muscles of the arm in the process.

At the same moment the most hideous reptilian head he had ever seen in his five years working for the Cabal came up from his right the snout opened wide. It closed completely around his partner's head, cutting off his frightened scream. Through the veil of his pain he heard the crushing of bones and the crack of a neck breaking. He swallowed hard when the horrible creature shock his head abruptly and the sound of skin and muscles tearing filled his ears, separating his partner's head from his dead body.

Before he had a chance to even reach for his extra ammunition, a second scale covered arm seemed to fly towards him with claws even longer and sharper than the first. They embedded themselves in his chest, puncturing his heart. He died with surprise and pain warring on his face. The monster attacked the stuck door the moment his body had hit the floor. The abnormal vented his rage over the intrusion on the door, but it still did not budge. He tried again and then turned his attention on the dead bodies.

x – x – x –

Numerous floors higher up, in Magnus' office, the other team tried to call their colleagues on their radios, but they only got static. Retracing the other team's steps from their last known position, they went to investigate. They found the blocked door leading to the secure holding unit, but left it undisturbed, at first. Finally, curiosity got the better of them.

The four men dismantled the mechanism blocking the door and entered the quiet and empty ante-room of the high-security cell. The blood splatters on one of the small windows were read as a warning by their leader apparent, a tall well-muscled bald black man with a cold indifferent expression on his face.

"it seems we have found at least one of our missing men. They should have heeded the warning on the walls."

"Do you think they are all dead?" one of the other men asked.

"It's the most logical explanation for the strange radio silence. If they just had disobeyed our orders and turned their radios off, all we would be able to hear would be silence and not that static that almost sounds like white noise. The radios are probably still in there somewhere and they are in no position to answer our calls or to acknowledge in any way that they even can hear them." The leader explained uncharacteristically verbose. "In other words they don't answer because they are in no condition to answer. We have to assume that they are dead, that the hunters have been turned into prey, this time. They should have been more careful."

"let's have a look and see for ourselves," the youngest member of their group said, he looked to be about 25, had a mop of blonde hair and a pair of cute dimples at the edges of his mouth. He walked over to the second window of the enclosure the one not tainted with blood and looked inside as best as he could considering that the wall-mounted lights had been disabled by the C4 explosion. The others asked him to describe what he saw, but he did not answer. His eyes were opened wide and on his face warred disgust with disbelief.

"Get your head out of your ass, Michaels, and talk. That's an order." The leader barked.

"It's too dark to see many details but you were right, the others are no more. I see them and there is something in there with them. Their weapons have been smashed and the creature is tearing them apart, something like this should not be allowed to exist." The blonde answered tonelessly.

"As I always say: Only a dead creature is a good creature." The oldest member of the group who had been silent up until then, spoke up.

"The higher-ups want the Morrigan alive and put back to sleep, for now."

"Those creatures should have been dealt with centuries ago. Or did you all conveniently forget the Blücher note to have them killed? He knew. They have been of no practical use since the times of King Richard, the Lion Heart. "

"That German did not speak for the leadership of the Cabal then, and he does not now. Miss Whitcome and the Consortium want the Morrigan as insurance. History may have forgotten about them but even in our time they could saw the seed of terror and panic without us having to fire a single shot. After nothing more than a small, well publicised demonstration of their powers. We can use the Morrigan for our needs.

"We can't leave such dangerous beings in the hands of those bleeding hearts of the Sanctuary. That woman is liable to turn them into housewives. The fate of our colleagues is the ultimate proof that their philosophy of protecting those creatures is wrong. The Morrigan, we can use. But whatever is in there would be better off,…." The leaders sermon was cut off by the ringing of his cell phone. He pulled it out of his right chest pocket and answered with the third ring.

His whole attitude changed almost instantly while he listened to the voice at the other end of the line, "I know we should have been back a couple of hours ago, but the Morrigan are not yet back in our custody…. No, the Keepers did not get out of line, they have been killed…. Yes, ma'am, all of them, even the second wave we sent in... We are still trying to find that out. The two women and the geek should have been easily overrun or dealt with in the first ten or fifteen minutes of the attack…. There's more, ma'am, team beta has been killed by one of Magnus' creatures…

"the Magnus woman? .No, there is no sign of her or her daughter and the cells and enclosures where she keeps the less dangerous creatures are all empty…. Yes, the Morrigan having fallen for their bleeding hearts' philosophy is the most likely explanation. Yes, Miss Whitcome, we will search for hidden doors and secret passageways and return to our base in New City as soon as that is done."

"Sucking up to the dragon lady, are we?" the oldest member of the group said sarcastically.

"I don't see you telling her off, Harry."

"I'm not that suicidal. She made her priorities abundantly clear, when she took over as the head of the Consortium. Everyone knows that the only thing she hates more than failure are unanswered questions, and everything she considers to be disloyal. I don't know how she did it, but after only two hours alone with her the janitor who had withstood days of being interrogated by our best men without telling them anything, begged to be allowed to kill himself."

"It was easy. I read the protocol. She gave him a choice, to either die alone for having talked to that FBI agent or have his whole family killed in front of his eyes, he believed her and it was a wise decision. There is no doubt that she would have done it. He had a painless death and his family is taken care of. Miss Whitcome is a hard taskmaster, but she also is fair. I "still don't get what he had hoped to achieve by talking to that agent."

"And now, no one ever will. He just might have wished for the return of the old Consortium to power. Anyhow, talking to such a low-level agent was extremely ill-advised," Harry said. "So, now that you have sucked up to the boss, what do we do?"

"get the answers Miss Whitcome wants and find Helen Magnus," their leader said with conviction.

Michaels the youngest of the group added, "to do that we first have to get out of here which might be easier said than done. Have any of you recently looked at the door through which we came in?"

"It's closed, we locked it, kid," Harry said, What did you expect?"

"We can just unlock it again and be on our way," The fourth man said, the one who had asked if the members of the other group were dead.

"Easier said than done. We locked the door, but now, it's more than just locked Someone sealed it off while we were wool gathering. Do you see that grey foam spilling through the seams? And to make things worse, it's starting to get awfully warm in here, "Michaels insisted.

"Where's your problem? A bit of C4 will pave us a path out of here. Piece of cake."

"Not that easy, after all. If we blast our way out, it might dislodge that other door and set free whatever killed the others," the leader cautioned. "That's a risk I'm not willing to take. And it will not get us one step closer to the fulfilment of our mission."

"That sure does not sound like the fearless leader you are supposed to be."

"I was chosen for the job because I know how to use my head, brains and brawns, old man. Now, let's have a closer look at that door."

He walked over and got down on his right knee. "You're right, Michaels. Someone or some thing sealed off that door."

"Now, for the other exit." He said and got up to examine the door to the holding cell part of the habitat, where he found the same isolating foam."

"This door has also been shut off, but by whom and how? I hate to say it, but the C-4 might be our only option," He said.

-x-x-x-

"That course of action is not advisable, gentlemen. Your colleagues already paid the price for having been too careless. Trying to blow up that door would only result in using up all the oxygen in this place. And yes, I am well aware, that C-4 does not tend to burst into flames, but you are running out of oxygen anyway," Helen's voice seemed to come from all sides at once.

The men turned all around and looked into different corners of the small ante-room and had drawn their weapons.

"What's going on here?" Harry and Michaels asked simultaneously.

"I advise against using your weapons the ricochet alone is likely going to kill you."

"Lady, you do not know who you are dealing with our organisation has resources that would make your entire annual budget look like pocket money. We have fought against your precious monsters for Centuries, You might think that you have some influence with the governments of this world, but that's nothing against the clout and power we have at our beck and call. You bargain, we give orders," the leader said.

"Big words for an expendable foot soldier."

"What are you going to do, Magnus, let us suffocate…, I heard that that's not how the Sanctuary Network usually does business."

"Usually my Sanctuaries do not get invaded by foul- mouthed, ill-mannered men and creatures hell-bent on tearing us limb from limb, trying to destroy my home and take away my guests against their will," Helen said calmly through the speaker system, the sound of her voice in harsh contrast to her forceful words. "You and your creatures have done enough damage to my property."

"Those evil witches do not have the right to have a will of their own. They were created for one purpose and for one only, to kill. They can't be left to their own devices. They are too dangerous, you do not know what you are getting yourself into," Harry said belligerently. "Better hand them over now."

"You are in no position to make any demands. The Keepers are no longer there to do the dirty work for you. Danu and her sisters are now making their own decisions. There still is a lot to learn about our world, but I have no doubt that they will succeed, " Will said.

"And the first decision they made was to do your bidding. They killed for you," the leader said defensively.

"The Keepers are dead because they refused to listen to Doctor Magnus and Doctor Zimmermann. They did not make any promises. They only offered us a chance to become what Morgan, Le Fay wanted us to be in the first place. Before Merlin changed us to become pawns in his fight against the old religion and her. At first we did not want to listen, but now we know better," Danu said.

"You belong to the Cabal, and we will find you, regardless of where the three of you try to hide. The Keepers were not the only monsters, capable to track the three of you," Harry said. "And that still leaves the problem of what to do with us? Killing us now, would be cold blooded murder. Quite the problem, isn't it?"

"Do you really think that steel and glass can protect you against us?" Tathu asked.

"The four of you should really get some sleep, Your time of giving orders is over," Caird added sweetly.

All four men raised one hand up to their throat, grabbing their weapons tighter with the other. Caird and Tathu were holding hands, an enigmatic le smile on their faces, "It would be so easy to kill them and end their suffering. We are not that kind," Danu said.

Their leader opened his mouth to protest, but only a gasp left his mouth while he sank to his knees together with his team mates. Moments later he stretched out on the floor, fast asleep.

Will had his mouth half open, his expression torn between pride and awe.

"Henry would you be a dear, and unseal the outer door?" Helen managed to make her order sound like a polite request.

"Sure thing, Doc, poor old me only has to reroute the whole security system of the Sanctuary, the part those guys and our lovely witch friends have not yet vandalized," Henry complained.

"I hate to throw a wrench in your whining, Henry, but did you by chance forget that high security habitats like this one run on a completely autonomous system?"

"It might have slipped my mind in the excitement, and by the way, I repaired most of the damage the Morrigan did earlier but it will take longer than a day to clean up the mess the Keepers made, tearing through here, not to speak of getting rid of the corpses."

"Henry, you know the Sanctuary is equipped for most eventualities, even for this. Though we have not had any need to use it since you're here."

"What are you talking about, Doc?"

"The Catholic church of which I bought the abandoned Abbey had it fitted with fully functional crematories for their own reasons. Judging from the history of the Roman Church nothing too humanitarian, I presume."

"Mom, what do we do with them?" Ashley asked.

"They are expendable. Killing them might be a kindness, from what we just heard the people in charge do not tolerate failure, and it's them who have to learn that the Sanctuary network can not that easily be defeated."

"And the Morrigan?"

"Danu and her sisters have been used for the interest of others for far too long, we will give them a chance to live their own lives, teach them about the 21st Century. And everything that has happened since they first have been used by Merlin and Arthur."

"And yes, Henry, I'm well aware of the risks. Their talents are bound not to remain undetected. It's a risk well worth taking, in my opinion, I trust Will in this."

-x-x-x-x-x-

Ten weeks later:

"The Police and FBI have finally given up their investigation of the unexplained fires and explosions that have broken out over the last three months in many of the major cities in the world," Will said. "From what my contacts tell me they can find no connection between the corporations suddenly afflicted with such bad luck. We dealt the Cabal a heavy blow but, I fear, it has not been a death blow just yet. The woman in charge and the upper echelons of her people are still at large."

"I wanted to teach them a lesson. I never intended to destroy them, I'm not that naive. The last 150 years and seeing what Human beings left to their own devices are wont to do to each other I have left very little in the way of illusions," Helen said calmly.

"Kicking their asses was fun, Mom. I really wish we could spare someone to look through all the documents and files we took from their facilities."

"Do we have news from Uncle James and the Morrigan?" Ashley asked.

"According to James, all three are adapting well to life in the 21st Century. He is cautiously optimistic that they will not create a serious problem, as long as the Cabal have no idea about their whereabouts."

The END