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—Thoughts—
—Speaking—
—{Other Language}—
A thank you to "alcimines" for letting me use "Down Through the Years"
"The God's work," Lang said jokingly, given how convenient it was for Logan to find the soldiers, as he left the place where he met Van Helsing, and that it was an attempt to lighten the atmosphere because of how shocking the visions of both men had been.
However, even though it was said as a joke, some of the other viewers were left thinking about it, while others preferred to ignore it
Van Helsing, 1955 - East Berlin
The Holy Order rated Communists somewhere between vampires and witches in its hierarchy of enemies. Van Helsing had been more than a little uncomfortable with that - he didn't consider himself to be an instrument of modern politics. But in the 1930s he eventually saw what Stalin and Beria had done to Russia. That was when Van Helsing was forced to admit that the Holy Order just might have a point.
Steve felt some empathy for the man as he had to deal with politics, but he wasn't the only one, though it was strange to know that a man of faith was involved in such events
In any case, the Holy Order completely lost its mind when it found out that a vampire witch was working for the KGB.
"Have you ever heard of any of that?" Clint asked Natasha, since she was in the KGB for a while
"No, although there were some fanatics about the existence of supernatural and superior powers," replied the redhead
"I think you can find people like that anywhere, especially in the last few years," Hill added, as she and the others paid more attention to vampires in Russia
Helga Gorbat got her start in the evil business as a handmaiden for Countess Elizabeth Bathory.
"The Countess of Blood" some, like Tony, commented or thought when they recognized the name
Helga preserved her own miserable life by helping the Countess torture and murder the peasant girls in whose blood the Countess bathed. The Countess thought she was preserving her youth and beauty. Actually, she was transforming herself into a particularly potent form of vampire. Helga became one of the newly transformed Bathory's first meals, and in the process became a vampire herself.
"It can't be possible, it doesn't make sense!" exclaimed Shuri between annoyed and frustrated to hear such a way of transforming into a vampire, since to begin with scientifically becoming a being that does not exist according to science, it does not make sense, so are the peculiar ways of being transformed.
"Keep an open mind," her brother commented, earning him a glance from her sister
With the Holy Order's help, the King of Hungary eventually dispatched agents and troops to deal with the Blood Countess. And in the maelström of carnage, horror, and brutality that followed, Helga Gorbat somehow managed to simply walk away. Then she vanished until the early twentieth century, when she (perhaps literally) rematerialized in the service of the NKVD. But in addition to being a vampire, Helga was now also a talented magical practitioner.
"Magic isn't real," Shuri commented, her voice somewhere between denial and resignation as she shook her head, while the screen showed everything narrated.
The role Helga Gorbat played in perpetuating Stalin's rule probably resulted in millions of deaths. It took the Holy Order decades to discover what was going on. And when they finally figured it out, they sent Van Helsing to deal with the situation.
Which was how Van Helsing found himself in trouble. A lot of trouble.
"It looks like he'd fit in with us," Clint commented, given his life as an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. and an Avenger, with others agreeing with him to some extent, as the screen showed what was left of the vampire
The KGB safehouse was a wreck and Helga Gorbat's body was now in several merrily burning pieces, but her magic had been quite deadly and her KGB bodyguards were both numerous and well-armed. Van Helsing was laying in a puddle of his own blood, riddled with a half-dozen bullet wounds and burned by strange energies.
The most uncomfortable of all those present about what they were seeing was Peter, followed by Shuri and Lang
Any other man would have been long dead, but Van Helsing wasn't just any man. So he stubbornly clung to life even as a Anna's smile beckoned to him from the other side.
Through the gathering darkness, Van Helsing could hear the frightened KGB bodyguards talking.
"What do we do?" one of the bodyguards moaned in Russian.
"We report back and tell them that the demoness is dead," another Russian voice answered tensely.
"They'll kill us for losing her!"
"We have to report! We have no choice!"
Van Helsing felt a boot thud into his side, but that wasn't particularly painful compared to his other injuries. And besides, Anna was kneeling next to him and caressing his cheek...
"Is it his imagination or...?" Scott left the question in the air, a question asked when they could see the woman next to the dying Van Helsing
"At another time I'd say he's delirious, because he's dying, but now... I don't know," Falcon replied, not sure if it was delirium or if it was the woman's soul receiving the man who was about to die
"We have this one," a third voice said thoughtfully. "He's the Vatican's assassin. Moscow Central has wanted him for years."
"Yes, that's true, how come we haven't heard of him?" asked Barton aloud
"Well, it's 1955," Tony began to make a guess, "he's dying, so... He died... or..."
"Or?" said Rhodey, encouraging his friend to continue
"It's different with us, maybe he died before old age or something" Stark finished, but he wasn't just thinking about that answer "On the other hand there may be an unknown number of worlds, so there are an unknown number of possibilities as to how the history of these developed..." I leave the thought in the air, with the rest understanding most of the explanation after a moment for some of them
Someone let out a bark of tired laughter. "So what? They won't let us live just because we gave them a corpse. Look at him. He won't last much longer. "
Van Helsing knew that the last man was right. It wouldn't be long now. He closed his eyes as he felt a pair of warm lips kiss him on the temple.
That was when the firefight erupted again. Van Helsing decided he wasn't particularly interested in what was going on and let everything go blank.
The image changed, but the last thing viewers saw was Russian soldiers responding to an unknown attacker
Later on, Van Helsing opened his eyes again and wondered how it was possible that he was still alive.
He was in what looked like the back of a panel truck. He was laying on the floor and had been roughly, but efficiently bandaged. A medic was working at giving him a field transfusion. And there was a group of armed men all around him, sitting on benches...
They weren't Russians. Van Helsing could tell by their arms and equipment. And they were quietly speaking to one another in English. The accents varied quite a bit. A distant, analytical part of Van Helsing's mind suggested that he was in the hands of some sort of CIA-NATO black-ops team.
"It looks like they were left behind," Tony jokingly remarked to the former S.H.I.E.L.D. members, who just stared at him, rolled their eyes, or ignored them, while listening to accents from various countries.
One of the gunmen noticed that Van Helsing was awake and knelt next to him.
"Hello, again," Logan said. "Your bosses called in a favor from our bosses. You're on your way home."
Van Helsing didn't have the strength to respond. But he knew that he really had to talk to this man someday. So much of the past was still a mystery to Van Helsing, but he was certain that the man talking to him was one of his descendants.
"I wonder if we'll see others?" said Wanda at the last narration
"If they've both been alive for a long time, it's likely that each had more descendants," Barnes added, before the picture shifted to another year and place
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Logan, 1978 - Saskatchewan
For Logan, life had become an empty blur of wandering.
Logan didn't know who or what he was. All he had was a pair of dog-tags, some fragmented and horrible nightmares, and the sure knowledge that he wasn't like other men.
"Ahhhh... what happened?" asked Lang after hearing that Logan didn't remember, as he was shown traveling across Canada from one place to another
"Amnesia?" Peter offered an answer
"Or brainwashing," Falcon added, though he caused Bucky to grimace after hearing him, without either of them noticing that the Prince of Wakanda looked at the two of them
All that was left for Logan was to continue searching for something that might not even exist - a hint about his past. He somehow knew that whatever he was looking for was in the far north. And he simply couldn't bring himself to leave until he found it.
Years passed with no luck. But Logan kept looking.
Then one day, an elderly priest came up to him and said, "Thank God you are here. We need your help."
"Other vampire?" Stark said in a dry voice.
"With what we've seen so far, probably," Rhodey said to Tony, based on the creatures they saw the most with these visions
A week of utterly epic confusion resulted. It ended with a dead thing that the local Indians called a wendigo.
"the wendigo, too?!" Tony was the most vocal, of those who raised their voices after hearing that one of the Native American beings was real and the fight against the creature was shown on the screen, followed by when they were disposing of the creature's body
Peter felt that he couldn't contain much longer the urge to vomit that he had felt a couple of times when he saw Van Helsing and Logan killing monsters, so in an attempt to do so he kept his mouth closed, while covering it with his hands. If Shuri wasn't so clinging to her skepticism of the supernatural, she'd probably be in a similar state. Lang, on the other hand, closed his eyes and took a couple of long breaths to calm himself.
"You're not who I thought you were," the priest confessed later on as they shared a simple meal in the tiny house behind the priest's small church.
"Who did you think I was?" Logan asked. He looked like he'd been run over by a truck, but by now he was mostly healed.
The priest poured Logan some more wine. "There is a man named Van Helsing. He works for the church and he hunts... things like the creature you just killed."
"Monsters," Logan clarified.
"Yes," the priest said with a thoughtful nod. "You and he have a strong resemblance. You must be related."
"Thanks for stating the obvious," Tony commented.
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Van Helsing, 1993 - Detroit
"Your doppelganger was here a few days ago," the Holy Order agent told Van Helsing.
Van Helsing didn't ask who the agent was talking about. He didn't have to.
"What was he up to this time?" Van Helsing asked curiously.
"When he first showed up, it was the usual... he was looking for a mutant. Apparently that school he works for is still providing a home to unwanted children with powers."
"Mutant?" Several repeated the word in confusion or in the form of a question
Fury, for his part, like Hill, Clint and Natasha, remembered some files about people with powers, but none confirmed. Although they were now wondering if there was no confirmation because Hydra came to them, it was worrying.
Others thought something similar, as was the case with Roger and Bucky, or Tony, when remembering the information about the Hydra experiments that Wanda and Pietro survived. The same could be said of the Sokovia native
But everyone also had questions and concerns about the school mentioned.
"That's good work," Van Helsing pointed out.
The agent nodded. "Yes, it is, and God bless them. But right after he sent a mutant boy back east, he hunted down that pair of skinwalkers we called you here to deal with."
There was a trace of a smile on Van Helsing's face. "Are you telling me that I'm not needed?"
"I'm afraid so. I have no clue how he tracked them down so quickly."
"He has a talent for that sort of thing," Van Helsing said.
"Oh, really?" anyone could hear the sarcasm in Falcon's voice.
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Logan, 2004 - Los Angeles
"His full name is Gabriel Van Helsing."
Logan stared at the Russian agent. She was a beautiful redhead named Natasha Romanoff. She was a bright and rising new star in the Russian intelligence service, known for her talents as a seductress and an assassin. Rumor had it that she was in line for some sort of secret Soviet program that was intended to produce agents with abilities that bordered on the superhuman.
"Did you meet him?!" Tony, Steve and others couldn't help but ask Natasha, after hearing her voice and seeing her on the screen with Logan
"No," replied the woman questioned
"Different world, different story," T'Challa said after a moment of silence, in which he thought about it
At the moment, Natasha was trying her formidable best to conceal her emotions under a veneer of cold professional detachment. Against a normal man, she would have succeeded, but Logan could sense that she was barely managing to keep herself under control. He was very good at smelling fear.
What was mentioned about the Russian's counterpart made them ask about two things, number 1: What could put Natasha in such a way? and 2, about the extent of Logan's apparent sense of smell
They were sitting at a table in a seedy, but quiet, bar. An array of eight by ten photographs was spread out on the table between Logan and Natasha. A casual observer would have assumed that they were photos of Logan. He would have been wrong.
Picking up a photograph more or less at random, Logan examined it closely. It showed a man in a long leather jacket standing on a street corner. Except for longer hair, less enthusiastic sideburns, and a slightly more youthful appearance, his resemblance to Logan was uncanny.
"Does de age slower?" it was Steve who asked the question
"Or he doesn't," Bucky added at the difference in their physical appearances
"He is an agent of a specialized group within the Vatican that is known as the Knights of the Holy Order," Natasaha continued. "They track down and destroy supernatural threats. Van Helsing has supposedly been an operative for them since the 1870s. He is considered to be their most effective assassin."
Logan looked up from the photograph and met Natasha's eyes, but didn't say anything.
Natasha continued. "Almost nothing is known about Van Helsing before he began working for the Holy Order. However, he is believed to be hundreds of years old, and there are possible references to him that date back as far as the First Crusade. He has no known friends, family, or associates outside of the Holy Order."
"The First Crusade," said Hill and others when they heard that Van Helsing was alive in it
Then Natasha hesitated for a moment before continuing. "However, there is some evidence that he has living descendants."
Logan smiled briefly.
"Van Helsing was responsible for the death of a high-level KGB supernatural resource. Moscow Central made several attempts to eliminate him in response, but all such efforts were expensive failures. Current orders are that any agent who encounters Van Helsing is to immediately break contact with him and report his presence to their superiors."
Hill, Bucky, and others wondered at Russia's change of orders from pursuit to avoidance, how badly the attacks on Helsing had ended, as to call for such a change in orders
Reaching into a briefcase, Natasha pulled out a bundle of manila file folders and slid them across the table to Logan. "This is a copy of the old KGB records of Van Helsing's operational history. It used to be considerably more detailed, but in 1957 a Vatican operative managed to destroy the original. All information from before that time is a reconstruction and should be considered questionable. Due to budgetary restrictions, the FSB hasn't done a very good job of keeping it up to date since the fall of the Soviet Union."
"Was it the Pope's order?"
"Tony/Stark"
Logan stacked up the photographs and put them on top of the folders.
"Anything else?" Logan asked.
Natasha had long since figured out that lying or otherwise trying to conceal something from Logan was a losing game. "There is something that keeps appearing and reappearing in the historical record. For some reason - even before his association with the Holy Order - Van Helsing was sometimes called the Left Hand of God."
Seeming to consider what Natasha had said, Logan nodded slowly.
After taking a deep breath, Natasha said, "I've given you what you wanted."
"An exchange," Natasha said as she recognized her counterpart's behavior, but wondered what he was exchanging from the information he gave the Logan
Logan got to his feet, tucking the files and photographs under his arm. Then he tossed a ten-dollar bill onto the table.
"C'mon," Logan said.
Natasha followed Logan out of the bar. It was a hot summer night and the neighborhood wasn't a very good one. A variety of human predators and parasites seemed to consider their options as Logan and Natasha walked down the cracked and litter-strewn sidewalk. However, nobody managed to work up the nerve to try anything. Logan and Natasha just didn't have the air about them of easy targets.
"Well... they has a sense of self-preservation," Wilson said to the individuals who avoided messing with Logan and Natasha, though he was scrunching his face at them
Peter, on the other hand, being someone who lived ordinary life in New York, couldn't help but think about those who hang around his hometown, although according to his aunt it wasn't as bad as it was a few years ago.
They entered a rundown parking garage, and Logan led Natasha to a dark, elderly sedan that was parked on the top - and most isolated - floor. Then Logan opened the trunk of the car.
Inside the trunk was a human form wrapped in thick chains. His feet and hands had been cut off and then crudely tourniqueted with baling wire. Oddly pale blood oozed from the stumps. A hood made of thick leather and canvas covered the prisoner's head.
Steve almost complained/complained when the image showed that there was a "person" inside the car, especially in such a state, but as he saw and heard the peculiar sounds of the captive, he looked more carefully at him, and he was not the only one, like Peter or Lang, who were about to do it too.
Slowly and carefully, Logan stripped off the hood. The vampire hissed and snapped viciously at Logan with its fangs, but didn't connect.
Natasha's self-control finally slipped. She let out a long and relieved breath and then put her hands over her mouth, her eyes wide she stared into the car's trunk.
From where he stood, Logan could see the black and purple bite mark on Natasha's neck.
"So that's why," the Russian quietly commented, as she wondered how her other self ended up bitten by the vampire, a question that Clint and others also asked her
"Thank God," Natasha whispered to herself in Russian. "Thank God. Thank God. Thank God."
Logan tossed Natasha the keys to the car. "You've got maybe a day, but I wouldn't wait if I were you. Stake him, cut his head off, and then burn the body. That should keep you from turning into a vampire. Everything you need is in the back seat."
Natasha composed herself as best she could and began pulling a hammer, a stake, a bloodied hacksaw, and a container of gasoline out of the car.
"Oh, my God" Rhodey, Tony, Sam, and Steve couldn't help but blurt out in different tones of voice each, as Romanoff's counterpart would be the one who would use such things in the creature of the night
"Boy, don't look," Tony said, turning to look at Peter
As Logan walked down the parking garage's stairs, there was the sound of repetitive pounding, and the vampire began to shriek.
It occurred to Logan that Natasha wouldn't last too long with Russian intelligence.
She'd already shown that she wasn't willing to lose her humanity.
Fortunately for Peter, Lang, and Shuri, the image followed Logan, but that didn't stop them from reacting to the vampire's screams at the mercy of Black Widow, while Romanoff didn't like to hear that Russia seemed to be responsible for his counterpart almost turning into a vampire.
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A thank you to "alcimines" for letting me use "Down Through the Years"
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