Title: Memory
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Some Van Helsing/Dracula, if you squint and look at it sideways.
Disclaimer: Not mine, don't sue. Also not really Sommers', except for Dracula's ring, and Van Helsing at Masada.
Notes: Apologies for any historical inaccuracies, and slight skewing of the Dracula story.
Summary: What Van Helsing remembers.
He remembers Masada.
The Romans were building a ramp to the town on the mesa, sending Jewish slaves to do the work in their place, knowing that the people of Masada would not throw down rocks to kill them. They knew that soon the ramp would be finished and the Romans would come; they would besiege their home, take from them what Rome saw as Roman but they knew was theirs. They knew what must be done.
First they burned the buildings, set them on fire and watched them crumble down into the bright, fierce riot of flames; they fired the town completely, except for the storehouses that they left standing - those they left to show the Roman soldiers who were bound to take their home that they had not been driven to it by hunger. What they did then was of their own free will, though a choice to which they had been driven by their one alternative, which their faith would not allow them accept.
There were ten of them, chosen by their leader for the duty. This they accepted, understanding what was asked of them, knowing that this was what had to be done. The people were waiting; the ten chosen drew their knives and set to work.
It was a dark and bloody night, those ten men stained red right to their bones by their deed. Nine hundred died, quietly, stoic, Jewish Zealots unwilling to accede to the rule of pagan Rome and her false gods. And when the streets ran red with blood, when those ten men were all that were left standing, breathing, in the city - nine sheathed their knives and one wiped clean his blade on the sleeve of his robes, preparing. His eyes were darker than the skies that night when he plunged his knife into his comrades' chests, but he knew then, as always, that heaven would thank him for it. One day.
His name then was Ibrahim. When the others were dead, to the last man, the last woman and child, he turned his knife on his own heart. Ibrahim died that night, knowing he would return.
He carried a sword and rode on horseback through the lands of Europe, to the home of the Moors and the Saracens. The Pope and the priests had declared it a Holy War, a Holy Crusade; they would convert the heathen East to the worship of their Christian God, or they would die in the attempt. Strange how those on the side of God knew that they might still lose, but no one questioned why God did not intervene on their behalf. They called it a test of faith, though Louis knew different, knew the truth. He told no one - no one would have believed.
They slaughtered whole villages, put them under the knife or the sword that flashed bright and cruel in the sunlight, and then stole their possessions. They sacked the towns and the cities, burned them, killed their people and left their corpses to rot under the scorching eastern sun. Louis' armour was dented and cracked from the fight, the whole army rank with the smell of blood; he himself was soaked with it, riding aching and tired on the back of his tired horse, the blood of a man who was not quite an enemy dripping from his clothes and his long, sodden hair. How he wished he were not promised to the Church, for good or for ill. How he wished that the Frankish men, that the men of the west, had not gone off to war. How he wished. How he wished.
The Crusaders left Antioch and came then to Jerusalem. The city had been fortified and Louis could see what was to come - soon they breached the city walls and the massacre began. They said it was for God they took Jerusalem; the blood of those people flowed in the name of nothing but self- interest and intolerance, and Louis was ashamed to be a part of it. The relics they recovered would be lost to time, but their deeds would be remembered, he had no doubt of that.
He was to ride back to Normandy with the newly-rich men of the armies; instead he died three days from the date that they took Jerusalem. Those who knew him buried him there, to rest until his return. He remembers the Crusades.
His name when he woke up in Holland was Abraham - he was twenty-three years old when the church took him in, an orphan that they gave the name of Abraham Van Helsing. He studied; this was a new time with new evils, but it seemed that the church had no job for him. He was sent on to Rome. He thought about priesthood; he decided against.
He spent whole days and nights in the libraries, forgetting to eat as he stared at the books and the papers. Years passed; he became a doctor, a professor, a teacher, grew older and wondered why he'd been brought back this time. It seemed odd that he should be left to himself, to live his life when that life belonged to the Church, had done since... forever. Every day came the question, why was he there?
Jack Seward called. Jack had been his student once - quite brilliant, quite devoted - and Abraham knew with the flutter and the sinking in his heart that he must go; when he came at last to England, when he first set his eyes on the girl, Lucy, and the marks upon her neck, he knew his calling at last. No great battles, no great armies or innocent men to fall to his sword or a pistol-shot. Vlad Dracula, his very old friend, had done as he had promised and had risen from the grave - it was now his job to kill him, to bring him to an end.
He remembered all those nights and weeks and months, almost years, that he had spent in the far east of Europe, as they defended all of Christendom from the Turks. He had been Gabriel then, yes, Gabriel Van Helsing, of the Order of the Dragon. By his side had been Vladislaus Dracula, such a warrior and such a man, who would stand on the field before a battle and pray to God that He guide his sword, that the battle be won in the glory of His name. It had been years - centuries, perhaps - since Gabriel had known a friend; he knew one then. They fought side by side, shared their lives and their battles. Barely ever were the two apart.
But then the day came that had torn them apart. News came to their camp that Dracula's wife was dead, that malicious rumours of his death had reached her and she, on hearing she had lost her husband, had thrown herself from the walls of their great castle home into the Arges river. The water was deep and cold, flowing through from the snowy heights of the Carpathian Mountains with an unholy swiftness; Dracula's wife drowned that day for the love of him, because she could not live without him.
To the Church this was a mortal sin - the Countess would be consigned to the very depths of hell for that last act. Van Helsing saw his friend stricken by grief, stricken by anger - anger at a God who would use His most loyal servant so, and let his dear, beloved wife spend eternity in fiery damnation. He swore that he would be immortal, and that in his immortality he would wreak a plague on all the earth, against the Church and all things holy. Van Helsing stood by and watched him swear it, and then he stabbed him through the heart. Dracula died in his arms, his cold steel thrust through his yielding flesh. Van Helsing had not known the extent of his friend's treachery, his pact, his promised unholy resurrection. The Devil had given him wings.
He smiled briefly as he opened the book on Dracula's picture, and then he picked up his crucifix. Now was his time to put things to rights.
He died three days after he was sure that his old friend was dead, and he didn't want to remember.
He woke with a start.
It was cold; he was lying on his back, shivering in the close, oppressive dark. Tentatively, he stretched out his hands; inches from his body they pressed on something, hard and rough, and with a sick lurch down deep in his stomach he understood. It was unexpected; never before had he returned in the place from which he had left. He was in a coffin, six feet under, in the grave of Abraham Van Helsing.
He had to claw his way out of the ground, coughing, spluttering with the earth that spilled down into his mouth, tasting of damp and of death. Great mounds of it caved in through the coffin it took him a week to split open, pressing down on his chest until he was sure that he'd die before he reached the surface. He panicked; bile rose in his throat more times than he could count and he wanted to scream, would have but for the lack of air that was burning at his lungs. He clawed through six feet of earth. When he broke through and took that first huge gasp of cool, wet air, it was midnight. And everything he knew was gone.
He staggered from the cemetery in his tattered, dirty clothes, the heavy rain pounding down around him on the cobbled streets, shining like tiny slivers of glass in the moonlight. The earth washed from his hair and streaked his face; he raked the wet tresses back and shuddered, bone-deep. He was lost, as was his memory. He was weak and exhausted, hugging his dirty black jacket around him though it provided him no warmth at all. He had nowhere to go, except for the church. There were candles burning inside. He collapsed on the steps, and the priests took him in.
This time the Catholic Church knew him already, by the mark on his ring, by his face, by his fervour. He need not have told them his name was Van Helsing, which he'd read on the gravestone, because the priests new his name. They called him Gabriel, let him believe it was chosen for him arbitrarily by the brothers of that church. Then, when he was strong enough, had fed and slept and tried to forget about nine days clawing his way out of his grave, they sent him to Rome.
There they knew that they could put him to work at any purpose they pleased, and soon they did. They gave him a long leather coat and two silver blades, God and a handful of coins with the promise that if he rid Notre Dame cathedral of its troublesome gargoyles, there would be more money to come. He had little choice. He set out for France, with only a ring and a name he wasn't sure was his as clues to who he was. Those things, and his dreams.
Dreams of Masada, Jerusalem, of Egypt and Colonial America. Wallachia, Transylvania, London, Paris... he dreamed of all the places that he'd been and all the things he'd done, bloody things in the name of God and the Church, the Jewish and then the Christian. He was thirty-four years old and he knew he couldn't have been there, then. He thought his nightmares of blood and death a curse.
Ten years on and he still remembers nothing, though Dracula did try to make him understand. At least be doesn't think that he remembers, but in his dreams he sees. And then he wakes, in a different city almost night to night, almost every day a new assignment suited to his most particular of skills, to find he's forgotten it over again.
He turns up his collar and buckles down his coat against the biting winter wind; he's back in Paris, and it's that quiet time of night when despite the cold and the spatter of bitter rain, his mind won't stop turning; he twists Dracula's ring on his finger as he strides down the street - he's kept that ring and wears it always, just the sight of it tugging at the tattered edges of a past that he's forgotten. He thinks that one day he'll remember, and perhaps in time he will.