Disclaimer: I don't own Van Helsing
When one is a monster hunter sleep is not something that comes naturally. Gabriel Van Helsing knew this to be a fact because it was something he struggled with nightly.
It was not that he didn't want to sleep but that he often felt unable to. At night all kinds of creatures roamed, creatures he had sworn to rid the world of. Demons, warlocks, gargoyles, vampires, and werewolves all had one thing in common, they loved night time. Experience had taught Van Helsing that sleeping while these creatures were at their most active was not a good idea as there were no assurances that one of them wouldn't simply devour him before he had a moment to react. This was a dangerous profession, and he knew just how fast a hunter could become hunted.
And then of course there were the nightmares. The nightmares that he woke from with beads of icy perspiration clinging to his skin. The ones that made him feel as if his life were being wasted.
Evil needed human life to survive, and so it would attach itself onto a person and feed off of them, that is how the monsters were made. That's all they were really, just plain ordinary people with Evil slowly eating away at them. Sometimes it was possible for him to capture the creature and take it back to the Vatican with him where the priests would pull the evil off of the person then destroy the evil once and for all, they had the easy job. More often it was up to Van Helsing to hunt the creature down and kill it. However when the Evil felt its human host dying it would leave the person to die and go off to create more mischief elsewhere. This gave the people being controlled just enough time to look up and see him standing over him and stare at him with hurt and confusion before they died. These brief glances held enough pain to fuel the nightmares he had every time he slept.
The Death of Anna Valerious had only made the visions worse. Now he was fighting monster that he knew was himself, and the monster was winning. These dreams were the only time in his life that he ever felt helpless. He had never told anyone about these dreams telling himself that they were simply another battle for him to overcome.
Tonight however was different, tonight he hoped that he could finally sleep without worry. Four days hunting a gargoyle took something out of you, and in his current state he hoped that he would completely shut down leaving only blackness to comfort himself in. He had to kill the creature in the end, and he mourned the boy who had died for it, but at least he knew that it wouldn't try to attack him in the night.
He collapsed onto the hard lumpy mattress of the Inn he was staying in and sighed. Blissful oblivion crept into his mind and a slight smile tugged at his lips as he remembered a children's prayer he had learned somewhere. Now I lay me down to sleep, he murmured as his eyes closed.
AN: This is just a short character study that I did based on the childrens prayer 'now I lay me down to sleep' I hope to do three more of these for three other characters but I need all of you to review it because I need that motivation or it will never get done.