Disclaimer I just realized. I killed everything I owned. Except Carl the Stuffed Purple Dog, who is ((unfortunately)) still alive. I don't own Van Helsing, nor do I own the Shakespearean Sonnet in this chapter, and I am currently broke cuz I just bought a Game Cube. So don't sue me! Unless you really want my stuffed purple dog....

A/N I should apologize for the very senseless and cruel joke I just played on all of you in that last chapter. I think my evilness as one Dracula's Brides is kicking in... cuz I had too much fun reading all your reviews!!!

Doris()- Heh, actually, I DID just kill everyone. I'm glad you think this is convincing, and you weren't confusing at all. That chapter was meant to leave everyone in a state of shock.:-)
HyperCaz()- Okay, I just wanted to make sure... Carl the Stuffed Purple Dog made me kill Carl!!!!!! It wasn't me!!!!! And who says Carl needs GABRIEL to bring him back...?
Irish Anor- Van Helsing, I really feel for you man. First she snuggles you incessantly, and then she says you should die!!! And no, that chapter wasn't Sauron's idea (he ticked me off a while ago and we haven't talked since) it was all Carl the Stuffed Purple Dog. Dracula helped too, against his will....
Anthem82- Thank you so much! I'm glad you like it!
Gabrielle Dragulia- Thanks for your review, and here's the update! (I update pretty much every day, but I usually wait for at least three reviews.)
Anna()- Don't worry, once you start reviewing and reading other peoples reviews, you learn 'how' to review and critique. It takes practice. Me, I don't mind being flattered, so I loved your review!

Chapter 12:
My Immortal

He took them to the cliff. The same cliff, with its waving grasses and breathtaking view of the sea, that he had burned Anna on. The sea was stretched out, grey and restless, far below him, the sea that she had always yearned to catch a glimpse of. It was not yet dawn, perhaps forty-five minutes before it. Van Helsing had only taken time to bind his wound, clean himself up and clean up Carl and Analiese before leaving the now silent castle. One other act had been preformed; as soon as he could collect himself and lay down the cold bodies of Analiese and Carl, he had gone to Dracula's. Guilt and sorrow had knifed through him for one brief instant. That man had been his best friend, and he had killed him. No amount of rationalization could justify that. As an odd sort of remembrance, he had tried to take the ring he wore, but rigor mortis had made that impossible. So, taking the same knife he had been stabbed with, he cut off Vlad's finger and managed to at last work the ring off. Then he had brought Analiese and Carl here. Here, to this beautiful place, so full of memories. It was the same, exactly the same, as he remembered it. Some places, and some pains, are ageless.
He stumbled about, half-dead, building two pyres. Much blood had been lost from the wound Dracula had given him; the knife had gone all the way through his upper arm, only narrowly missing the bone, and even nicked his ribs on the other side. But the fact that he should be resting, and the knowledge that the work of riding, carrying bodies, and building pyres was probably agitating the wound, didn't matter to him at all. People had suffered far worse injuries than he that night. People had lost their lives.
His work was done within twenty minutes, and he lifted first Carl into his arms and lay him down. Tears that he had sworn he wouldn't cry began to nip aggravatingly at his eyes, and he shook them away viciously as he lifted Analiese onto her pyre. But as he looked into her face, realizing that there was no one to read holy words over her, he began to shake with the force of his tears. He could no longer even tell that they were sliding down his face; he had grown numb to such things from crying so much that night.
Now Van Helsing was crying because he had realized how hopeless all of this was. This wasn't some holy crusade he was on, this was senseless murder. Every time he embarked on another mission for God, more good people were lost to the world. He hoped he could change that. He hoped that he could bring light to this dark and frigid place. Maybe some faint part had hoped that by loving Analiese he could save Anna. Well I was wrong! He mentally screamed at himself, his throat too tired to actually form the words. My love killed her all over again!
Anna.... Four hundred years from then, he would be standing on the cliff once more, burning her. What was the point? He defeated evil, went through all this pain, recovered, only to find that a new and greater evil had arrived with new and greater suffering. If he was truly the Left Hand of God, he was going to pray for an amputation.
Then something else new settled over him. Analiese. Anna's ancestor. She was dead. What if that wasn't how it had happened before? What if that meant that Anna would now never even exist? He began to breathe harshly, looking to the sky. It felt as if the whole world was pulling in around him, like his soul was shrinking down. He was beginning to panic. What had he done...? But then he calmed. The morning before he had spoken to Analiese. Asked casually, and without thinking, about a sister and a brother. That meant that Anna was not Analiese's direct descendent. As long as those two siblings lived, Anna would exist. He began to take deep and steadying breaths, preserving himself for an existence he no longer wanted.
Van Helsing stood and went to his horse, taking the torch he had brought with him out of the saddlebag. With the implements he had also brought, he lit it and moved first to Carl's pyre. I have to let go now... let those fires consume his body and hers, and maybe some of my sorrow with it... He coughed as he inhaled the smoke slightly, then slowly lowered the tip of the flame to Carl's robes.
"Ouch! No! Ah! Stop it! I swear I didn't do it Van Helsing! Don't kill me!" The 'dead' Friar shrieked, leaping off of his pyre and furiously patting down the flames on his robes. Needless to say Van Helsing was currently standing there, torch in hand, swollen eyes wide, and staring. "What?" Carl asked in his innocent way. "Have I got ash on my face or something?" He crossed his eyes in an attempt to see his nose.
On a complete whim, Van Helsing flung the torch onto the empty pyre and wrapped Carl in the world's biggest known bear hug.
"You're alive! Thank God, you're alive Carl!" He cried joyously, holding his best friend tightly.
"I... won't be.... for... much... longer.... if.... you... don't.... stop....hugging.... me...." He rasped out feebly.
"Oh... woops." Van Helsing said sheepishly, dropping the Friar six inches to the ground.
"Thank you." He coughed, rubbing his neck.
"But... how...?" asked the Monster Slayer in disbelief. "You were dead. You had no pulse. I saw Daniel shoot you..."
"I was napping. Getting shot in the chest does take it out of one." Van Helsing rolled his eyes.
"But how?" He reiterated.
"Well, I suppose my theory was correct." Carl shrugged.
"Which theory? Martin Luther has nothing on you for those things." Van Helsing said dryly.
"For one thing, Martin Luther wrote theses. For another thing, I'm shocked that you actually have the slightest inkling as to who he is and what he did. You don't look to me like the bookish or the religious type." Van Helsing glowered at him momentarily. "Anyway, I'm talking about the one in which I told you we couldn't die before we were born."
"Yes, but you only said that that applied to old age. And you said that we could still be harmed." Van Helsing frowned.
"True, I didn't even consider that we would completely immortal. It just... seemed out of the question to me." Carl said earnestly, shaking his head.
"You didn't stop to consider a lot of things when coming on this mission. First the clothes, now this!" Van Helsing shook his head. "Honestly Carl, you're losing your touch."
"And gaining some of yours, I suppose. I actually partook of violence while you were dueling Dracula." Carl said, looking at Van Helsing in the way a puppy eager for praise does. (A/N Think of Smeagol in the Two Towers!)
"You were fighting with the others in the hall? And how many people did you kill?" Van Helsing asked skeptically.
"Well, um, technically, 1/2. You see, John was overwhelmed by David, so I snuck up behind him and hit him over the head with my short sword, causing him to fall unconscious and giving John a chance to stab him." He puffed up with pride.
"And after that?" Van Helsing asked in a similar voice.
"Uhh, I don't remember. I fell prey to a similar technique and fell on top of David."
"So that's how your hair came to be matted with blood..... Wait, on top of David?" Van Helsing looked aghast. "You cheated on me, Carl!" The Friar had a look of indescribable shock on his face, before it faded.
"Well, this discovery of our immortality just makes matters so much better." Carl said bitterly, crossing his arms.
"What?" came his friend's muddled reply.
"Now, no matter how damn annoying you get over the next four hundred years, I'm stuck with you!" He beamed. Van Helsing smiled softly and put his hand on Carl's shoulder.
"Thank you, Carl." He whispered. In a comfortable silence, they turned to Analiese, on her pyre. "She won't be leaping up anytime soon, will she?" He asked quietly.
"I don't suppose so." Carl admitted.
Van Helsing brushed a few strands of her hair, displaced by the wind, out of her pale face. Death could never mar her beauty, as it could not mar Anna's. Unbidden, a poem Carl had once recited to him came to mind:

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed,
And every fair from fair sometime declines;
By chance, or nature's changing course untrimmed:
But thy eternal summer shall not face
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st
Nor shall death brag thou wandr'st in his shade
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee...

He remembered sitting in the library with Carl, just a day or two after they returned from Transylvania. He had been wandering the Order's headquarters aimlessly; even as he grieved for Anna, the evil powers of the world seemed to be grieving for Dracula and there was nothing for him to pursue. Carl had sidled into the library shortly after him and sat down nearby, reading. Then he began to read that sonnet aloud; Van Helsing immediately had connected it with Anna, and a gesture on the Friar's part to console him. Later, not willing to admit that he had liked it to Carl, he had gone back and found the book and committed it to memory. Every time he thought of it or recited it, he felt like the poem was indeed making Anna immortal.
"Would you like me to read over Analiese?" Carl asked gently after a few moments.
"Yes." Van Helsing whispered.
"I'll see what I can do from memory." Carl moved to the side of the pyre as Van Helsing produced another torch and lit it on what would've been Carl's pyre. He seemed to hesitate for a moment, then slowly let the flame touch Analiese.
Almost immediately, Carl began to speak in Latin. While he didn't understand a thing the Friar said, the low, constant hum of his voice soothed Van Helsing. He watched the cremation, not really seeing the flickering flames. The lull of his friend's voice and the similarity between Analiese and Anna made him feel closer to his dead beloved than anything else could've. He savored those moments, feeling as those she was very near to him. Her soft yet fiery and strong presence, even the scent that he connected with her, was borne on the sea breeze and blowing all about him...
I miss you... It seemed to whisper.
I miss you too... He whispered back.
Carl noticed that Van Helsing didn't even seem to realize that he had stopped speaking. He was lost in thought, and realizing how rare and precious a moment like that was for the Vampire Hunter, Carl decided to leave him be. But as the fire died and he still showed no sign of moving, he came to the conclusion that Van Helsing was indeed LOST in his thoughts (how anyone could lost in a mind so small he was at a loss to explain) and he should probably snap him out of it.
"Van Helsing...?" He asked quietly, touching the motionless man's shoulder.
"Anna..." He said faintly, sadly, then starting and looking owlishly at the Friar.
Carl instantly felt bad for his mental bashing of Van Helsing's intelligence; he had a different kind. It wasn't the upfront genius of his (if he said so himself) but a deeper, more mellow kind. Most other people saw him as a mindless murderer, but a select few (probably just Anna and himself) knew that he could not afford the think in battle, it would mean death. But he had a huge mind, much of it blank from amnesia, the rest running too deep to be accurately perceived. The fact that he hid his thoughts from all around him probably didn't help much either.
"You... do know what this means, right?" He asked.
"Yes." Van Helsing sighed bitterly. "We have to live through 400 years and kill Dracula all over again because everything happened the same as last time."
"Don't worry, Gabriel, we did it once. We can do it again." Carl said kindly.
"Yes. We can do it again." Van Helsing murmured.
He looked up. He realized that these were the same heavens he had watched Anna disappear into what felt like ages ago, when it was really four hundred years in the future. As the rising sun, the first of thousands for him, began to paint those heavens, something that had been hovering in his mind began to dawn in full over him.
Gabriel Van Helsing smiled.

A/n 'Smile, it makes people wonder...' Anyways, 'Part One' of this story is now finished! Here we hit bedrock... I now have to go back into the movie for a brief but pivotal three chapters. I am having issues remembering all of it. Expect a little delay.

--I COULD USE YOUR HELP WITH THE NEXT CHAPTER--

If you can remember, could you tell me in your review the schematics of the battle in the village with the Brides? Like, who does what, who says what, any important pieces of action that happen ((especially pertaining to Anna and what she does)) cuz all I remember is kinda how it started and how it ended

And one thing about the movie... I've realized that most of us are confused as to how Anna died. I didn't get it either, but after some thinking and another go at watching the movie, I think that Gabriel's weight crushed her sternum and caused her lungs to collapse, since there was no visible puncture wound. Anyways, enough of my rambling. REVIEW!