I don't own any MCU characters, they belong to Marvel/Disney, as well as any other element of any other work, creation that appears, credits to whomever it may be.
"Thoughts"
"Speaking"
"{Other Language}"
A thank you to "alcimines" for letting me use "Down Through the Years"
"Relax, kid," Clint told Parker, seeing that he was still affected to hear that his other self was apparently buried alive "Just breathe, slow"
As soon as the youngest in the room tried what Clint told him, while the others wondered about who Kraven was, along with being attentive to what might happen to the boy, and some asked about how 'relaxed or calm' the boy's counterpart seemed to be when talking about it, wondering if he was really okay.
But everyone's attention was drawn to the screen again, which had darkened and lit up again, to show what looked like an ancient workshop or forge, occupied by a few men in clothes from hundreds of years ago.
"Howlett," Barnes said as he saw the acquaintance he and Rogers have in common, at least until a text appeared in one of the bottom corners of the screen
Van Helsing, 1888 - the Vatican
"Van Helsing..." several of the spectators said incredulously as they read the famous name on the screen.
"This must be a joke," remarked a surprised Rhodey, with the others agreeing with his opinion, it seemed ridiculous or absurd.
"You know what he is, don't you?" Carl said hesitantly. His words were half-way between being a statement and a question.
The Cardinal seemed to examine Carl closely before replying in accented English. "What have you learned?"
They were in the Vatican workshop of the Knights of the Holy Order. It was a comforting place for Carl, filled with a dull cacophony of sounds and voices, and permeated with the familiar odors of coal-fires, bitter chemicals, ozone, gunpowder, and hot metal. Carl had spent most of his adult life in the workshop, crafting tools and weapons to be used by the Knights in their unceasing war against the Darkness. Carl would have been perfectly happy to never leave, but the Cardinal had recently insisted that he accompany Van Helsing on a mission to Transylvania. Carl and Van Helsing had just returned from that mission.
"Dracula... really?" Wanda said, not believing what she heard from the story.
"Vampires, it's playing a prank on us now," Tony commented, being skeptical of such beings
"Well, it's another universe, maybe they're real there," Lang commented on a possibility, which Tony was about to counter, but he thought about it, having to grudgingly admit it.
As far as Carl was concerned, he had seen enough field-work to last him for a lifetime.
Carl frowned thoughtfully. "He's at least 400 years old. In the fifteenth century, he was the man who killed Dracula for the first time."
"Who are they talking about?" the Parker asked aloud
"Howlet, maybe," Rogers remarked, as what he heard made some sense considering that the man he and Barnes know should be about 100 years old today, and if he still looked the same he could be a lot older than they know.
"But was he Van Helsing?" The Winter Soldier commented as a question, finding it hard to believe.
The Cardinal said nothing. He just looked at Carl expectantly.
Carl took a deep breath before continuing. "There are accounts from that time that refer to him as the Left Hand of God."
The Cardinal actually flinched, but still said nothing.
"If this is real, and I repeat, IF it is real, I will start to worry about what is not real in legends and myths," Clint said in a resigned tone.
Both men were making a point of not looking in the direction of Van Helsing. At the moment, the Knight was at a nearby work table, frowning as he discussed a new form of exotic ammunition with a French armorer. Van Helsing didn't have a problem with the silver jacketing of the bullets, but he was skeptical about the claim that the silver was actually wrapped around cylindrical slugs of carved dragon bone.
"Yes, it's 1888... it seems that the church had more advanced things than any other place," Lang remarked of the things they could see, although he was not an expert in history, but that was what it seemed to him.
"I don't know whether to feel offended as a scientist or not" Tony commented
"Your Eminence, what does it mean?" Carl asked helplessly.
The Cardinal gave Carl a sharp look. "It means that - as always - God has given us the weapons we need to fight Satan and his works. How could we expect otherwise?"
Some frowned at the cardinal's words, as some doubted the gods (cough cough, Shuri cough cough), and others doubted that if God existed, he would really expect that.
The Cardinal didn't miss the stir of resentment that appeared in Carl's eyes. It appeared that Van Helsing had made a friend.
Good.
"He is not just a weapon, your Eminence," Carl said carefully.
The Cardinal shrugged expressively. "I do not discount Van Helsing's humanity. However, all of his kind are weapons. It is in their nature."
"his kind," Fury repeated as he stared at the screen, not needing to tell Hill to take aim at the tablet
Carl blinked in surprise. "All of his kind?" he repeated.
This time, the Cardinal couldn't help but glance at Van Helsing. "He is not the only one of his breed, Carl. There is a lineage that the Order has been familiar with for many centuries. They are powerful and potentially quite long-lived. Van Helsing has sons, grandsons, great-grandsons - and more. The breed are born fighting and they die fighting. And they hate the Darkness. That hatred is a part of them."
"Dracula called him Gabriel," Carl said quietly.
"Shuri" T'Challa said to his sister who was very quiet, but shaking her head from time to time, as well as muttering "nonsense", "crap" and more
As for the others, they wondered if If Van Helsing was the Gabriel of the Christian religion, if that was what they had understood.
The Cardinal locked eyes with Carl. "Do not call him that in my presence."
Carl bowed his head obediently. But it seemed to him that Cardinal wasn't angry. It was more as if he simply couldn't bring himself to face something that he found to be... too much.
The screen changed location to show the man that the two men of World War II met, about a being that was not human, although what was said about descent had raised doubts about him.
Logan, 1888 - Quebec
Two weeks ago, Logan would have sworn that vampires were just a story told by old men around the campfire.
Now Logan knew better. And he hated everything about vampires. It was a hate that seemed to go right to the very core of his being.
"So... "the man you know," Tony said as he turned to Barnes and Rogers, "is a descendant of Van Helsing, who may or may not be the angel who visited Mary..."
Everyone could hear the lack of any emotion in Tony's voice, Rhodes patted him on the shoulder in solidarity and acceptance/resignation to the strangeness that the world and their perception of it was altering more and more.
The vampire crawling through the gutter had been shot to pieces - its arms and legs shredded by buckshot. Once, the vampire had been a pretty half-Indian girl named Alice Standing Bear. But now it was just a bloodsucker that had spent a weeks worth of Quebec's long winter nights leaving behind a trail of bloodless bodies.
Although everyone could tell that the creature was a female, they also noticed that it was no longer human.
Logan slung the shotgun over his back and put his foot on the vampire's back, pinning it into place. The vampire hissed and scrabbled, trying to claw at Logan, but it couldn't find purchase.
Then Logan began pouring kerosene over the vampire.
In the background, two priests - one Russian Orthodox and the other Catholic - were softly chanting ancient words. Alice Standing Bear was gone, but they hoped her soul was not beyond the reach of Heaven.
Logan still wasn't sure why the two priests had come to him, but they hadn't hesitated. The morning after the first blood-drained body was found, they pulled Logan right out of his favorite whorehouse. It had been quite the sight. Father Lachat had calmed the furious madam and kept the curious working girls at bay as Father Sokolov literally dragged Logan out of the arms of an outraged Swedish prostitute.
"The church knows about him," Fury, Natasha, Rogers and Barnes said quietly, considering it a possible option to find him, when the screen changed to show the narrated moment. Although also some of them felt it as a disappointment with themselves as Fury and Natasha were, since they are supposed to work in the best intelligence 'agency'.
Besides, the younger ones in the room blushed a little, being Peter, Wanda and Shuri, mainly the first, also some adults like Steve or Lang, at the state of the curious females on the screen
"We need your help," Father Sokolov said as he used one arm to fend off the completely naked and wildly cursing whore. With his other hand, he tossed Logan a roll of cash.
At the nakedness shown, Peter was so red that he would be envious of a tomato.
Logan snatched the wad of bills out of the air, and then blinked in surprise. It was more than enough money to get him through the next year.
"Who do I have to kill?" Logan said with a wide grin as he reached for his pants.
Perhaps he should have noticed that the priest didn't smile.
The screen returned with Logan and the two priests as the vampire was burned.
His eyes cold as the frozen center of hell, Logan stepped away from the blazing fire of the vampire. Within the flames, the creature writhed and screamed, but Logan couldn't find any pity within him.
The last week had taught him everything he needed to know about vampires.
He hated them.
It was like he'd been put on this earth just to hate vampires.
"I need a drink," Tony remarked at what they were seeing, of a being of the night being eliminated from the mortal world
"You're not the only one," his best friend told him, as well as others, and seconds later the image changed again
Van Helsing, 1888 - London
In a Whitechapel pub, Van Helsing and Carl were having a pint.
Nobody knew it, but Jack the Ripper was dead. Even for two Knights of the Holy Order, this particular case had been unnerving. Nothing seemed to make sense.
"Oh, come on!" cried Tony in a complaint. being followed by others
"Wasn't he human either?!"
"Was he a monster too?!"
"Demonic possession?" Carl suggested.
Van Helsing shook his head. "He didn't react to holy symbols."
"First stage lycanthropy?" Carl tried again.
"Vis," Tony's resigned voice could barely be heard
"It's recorded, Mr. Stark."
"No," replied Van Helsing briefly as he gazed thoughtfully into his glass. "The killings spanned several months. He would have become a full werewolf during the first full moon."
Carl paused to consider additional possibilities. "A weak-blooded partial vampire? Like the ones we ran into in Florence?"
"They turned to dust after we killed them," Van Helsing reminded Carl. "Jack simply became a corpse."
"Jekyll and Hyde serum?" Carl tried again.
Fury was massaging his forehead at what he was hearing, that it seemed that the famous stories in books about legends were real all this time, but the world didn't know it.
He wasn't the only one who was thinking that
"Keep an open mind, Shuri," said the brother of the aforementioned
"This can't be real!" replied Shuri
"He was normal shape and size. And not particularly strong or fast. That was the reason he hunted women. A full-grown man might have been too dangerous for him."
Carl fell silent for a long time.
"You're suggesting that Jack was just a man?" Carl finally said slowly. "But that's not possible - he could turn invisible."
Van Helsing finished his pint and shrugged his shoulders.
Carl's eyes wandered over the crowd of seemingly ordinary people who filled the pub. It had been a bad year. First the mission in Transylvania - and the death of Anna and Velkan Valerious. And now this.
The names of Anna and Velkan Valerious were noted by Hill, engraved by Vision and Shuri's necklace.
"This is something new," Carl said quietly.
Van Helsing nodded again.
Logan, 1916 - Somewhere in France
"The First World War," Rhodes commented on the state of the place, which was a war field, as well as the soldiers, living or dead, shown on the screen
"Thanks for stating the obvious, Rhodey," Tony said.
"There's something out there," the sobbing soldier moaned.
It was night and they were between shellings. The muck of the trenches was pooled around their ankles and everyone was nervously counting their ammunition and hoping that they would be resupplied soon. The German's had just tried yet another trench raid just after nightfall and repulsing it had been a long and bloody affair. You'd think the Germans would have noticed by now that they never seemed to catch the Canadians unawares in this particular part of the line.
Somewhere out beyond the wire, a wounded German was screaming.
"He's asking for help," Peter said
"It was the first war, boy," Clint reminded the youngest of those present, but he and others thought there was more than they would see, and with what one of the soldiers said it was even more possible.
"It's just a dying Hun, you damned idiot!" growled a voice from the darkness further down the trench.
The crying soldier shook his head wildly. "No. No! I saw something in the flares! Just before the Huns fell back! They were picking through the bodies!"
"Several things then," Wanda said
"More vampires?" asked Peter, nervous and uncomfortable about the war zone he was seeing, with the victims of war scattered across the battlefield
"Maybe"
"So some German medics with more guts than brains were searching for wounded men! So what?"
"They weren't medics! They weren't Huns! They weren't human!" sobbed the soldier.
Logan shifted off to the side and stepped up to an observation gap on the edge of the trench. Then he peered out into the darkness. The other men had long since stopped wondering why Logan was able to see, hear, and smell things that nobody else could. The reason didn't matter. The fact that Logan's odd talents helped keep them alive was what mattered.
"Hill," Fury said at mentions of Logan's abilities, without being the only ones to pay attention to them.
Logan squinted into the darkness. There was no moon. Clouds obscured the stars. Neither side had flares up at the moment.
But...
But he could tell that something was moving out beyond the wire.
Given the state of the place, they could consider it as an endorsement of the words narrated above about Logan's abilities, because it was a place that made it difficult to distinguish anything, even for those who weren't normal humans.
"Wait here," Logan said. Then he slipped over the top of the trench and underneath a carefully concealed gap in the wire.
"Logan! Come back here you bloody fool!" somebody hissed. One of the soldiers grabbed his ankle and tried to drag Logan back, but he kicked himself loose.
"Well, it seems like his attitude was always the same," Bucky said at Logan's kick to get him released, before he realized anything "It is a trap"
Others like Fury or Natasha agreed with the winter soldier, it was too convenient
Cradling his bayoneted rifle in his arms, Logan began to slowly crawl towards the screaming German. He only had a few tens of yards to go when the screams suddenly stopped.
Logan froze. It was a trap. They'd let the German live, hoping his screaming would draw someone out.
He could sense them right in front of him. And to either side. And the soldier back in the trench was right - they weren't human.
"Where are they?" asked Falcon, he wasn't the only one who couldn't see the creatures.
He could sense them right in front of him. And to either side. And the soldier back in the trench was right - they weren't human.
Moving almost soundlessly, they came at Logan from all sides. He blew a gaping hole in the first one's chest with the round in his rifle and it tumbled backwards. After that, it came down to his bayonet and rifle butt against the fangs and gore-encrusted claws of the ghouls.
Viewers could see how they suddenly appeared, coming out of the darkness, before launching into the attack, leaving the attack and Logan's fight against them etched in their heads while, although this time their claws were not made of metal but seemed to be made of bone.
If you are interested in reading more chapters of this fanfic or the other fanfics, before they are published here on fanfiction, AO3 and Wattpad
You can do it on P treon: Xifos&Gladius
Thanks to Ken Harris, Ravunz, Stefan Gottlieb, joshua scroggins, Benji, Rocket22, Luis, Chronicle Clock, God of Wind 200, Raj, James Cavazos,United Federation, Daniel bridges, XVenomX159, Voidful 911, Malignance, luis a. v. r., Henry, Daniel R. and OettamLass for their support on P treon
A thank you to "alcimines" for letting me use "Down Through the Years"
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