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Yes, I'm on a kick again. *shrugs sheepishly* I can't help it? Plus, that little scene in 3x08 got me all curious ...
Title: Demons
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: Sanctuary
Characters/Pairings: John Druitt, Nikola Tesla.
Summary: Tesla attempts to help John with his problem, and ends up making a promise
Wordcount: 2286
Warnings/Spoilers: For 3x08. Um. These two are not friendly people
Disclaimer: Not mine
Title: Demons
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: Sanctuary
Characters/Pairings: John Druitt, Nikola Tesla.
Summary: Tesla attempts to help John with his problem, and ends up making a promise
Wordcount: 2286
Warnings/Spoilers: For 3x08. Um. These two are not friendly people
Disclaimer: Not mine
Demons
"... I can't do it."
The statement was almost shocked, ripe with surprise as Tesla let him go, fell back away from him and fetched up against the table, and John's head shot up, jerking him out of the daze as the creature inside him expanded once more, as he felt the clawing against his mind once again.
Tesla didn't look at him. The ex-vampire stayed right where he was, arms braced against the edge of the table as he slumped in frustration, his hair still eddying lazily as electricity swirled through the air. John stared at him, bored a hole into his skull with the force of it, and Tesla didn't look up.
"What did you say?" He straightened, slow, so slow, feeling things creak dangerously inside him. Feeling old, familiar dams take up strain. Feeling danger pool in his voice as he gained his feet and moved, soft as a cat, towards the other man.
Tesla flinched. Minutely. Just a bare tremor, hardly noticable. But John noticed. Oh, he noticed.
"I said I can't do it," the ex-vampire repeated, raising his head at last to face John, angry and stilted. And afraid. Underneath that smooth, arrogant facade. So very afraid. Tesla was vulnerable, now. Tesla was breakable, now. John had known that, when he came. John had used that.
John would keep using that. This was ... this was his best chance, perhaps his last chance, and there was nothing he wouldn't do.
"Really, Tesla?" he murmured, ghosting close, leaning in to the other man, tasting the tremble in the air as Tesla glared at him, as Tesla shook. "Giving up already? I did make it clear to you why that would be ... unwise ... did I not?"
The look Tesla shot him for that, the slow, sullen slide of fury and fear, the shine in his eyes of helpless rage, hit John right below the breastbone. Sparked that deep, terrible thing inside him. It always had. Even before ... perhaps even before the Source Blood, before the elemental. There was something about this man, something about the arrogance, the ego, the charm, that made John want to slip something beneath it, to slip some word or action under it like a knife beneath the skin, and twist the scientist's frailties up into the light. Show the world the coward that lived in the heart of Nikola Tesla.
He'd rarely managed. Back in the good old days, before they'd become what they'd become, Tesla had been easy to taunt, easy to anger, easy to humiliate in a hundred little ways. But never easy to drive away. Never easy to break down. No matter what was said to him, no matter what little tricks one cared to play, the man had always been back the next day with that same, smug little grin, and that sparkle of discovery in his eyes that made Helen's light up in turn, and John's spark with rage.
And later ... later, Tesla had been a vampire, and indestructible, and more dangerous than any of them, and even eviscerating him hadn't stopped that little grin, even super vampires and the end of the world, even the death of a friend and the grief of Helen Magnus, hadn't dented that same cocksure little smile.
But now ... Oh, but now. Now Tesla was human once more. Now he was weak, and breakable, and standing in a room with John Druitt, with Jack the Ripper, and Tesla was afraid. It was unmistakable, in the stilted motions of his hands, in the stiffness of his spine, in the little tiny tremors that rolled through him when John moved a little too close. Yes, oh yes. He was afraid.
But right now, there was more than fear in him. More than the rage at where John had put him. Tesla turned his head to glare up at John, turned to snap furiously into his face, and the crack in his voice wasn't terror. It was frustration. Sheer, seething frustration, and anyone who'd ever worked with Nikola Tesla knew exactly what that meant.
John felt his hope turn to ice in his chest. Felt it drop like a stone into his stomach, before the scientist ever said a word, felt the being inside him curl around it and laugh as if feathered its slick, hungry touch across his heart.
"Wow. Let me think. Did I miss the part where the murderous psychopath intimated that he might get even more acquainted with my insides than he already is, if I didn't do this for him?" Tesla growled, shoving against him until John backed up a step. "Yes, thank you, I did catch that, John."
He stopped, breath hitching a little as he fought to calm himself. John stepped back, frozen, watching him. Watching the flicker in his eyes that was more than fear. Watching the anger that pointed inwards, as he looked over their failed experiment, watching the barest twinge of something that looked like shame. Because Nikola Tesla didn't like to lose. Because Nikola Tesla hated when something was beyond him.
"I can't do this," the scientist said again, voice quivering softly. The quiver of something held in check, of something powerful ruthlessly shuttered down. "This is trying to cage raw energy, sentient energy, sentient energy that's even more dangerous than you, and it doesn't want to go. I can't destroy it. I can't lure it into something because you already tried that and it knows, and the only reason it might like to go is if it sees an advantage in it that I can't afford to give it. And short of staying glued to your side and battling it for the rest of my life, there's not a lot else I can think of!"
He looked up, a quick flash of warning that that was not going to happen, and a more personal fury, that vast mind ticking visibly through options and coming up with nothing. He looked up, and John could see that there was nothing Tesla hated more than this moment, than standing before his old rival with his life and his safety on the line, and having to admit that something was beyond him. Having to admit that there was something he couldn't do.
The monster in John's chest was too much for him. The thing inside John was too much for Nikola Tesla, too much for the man glaring at him not in fear for his life, but in fury for his pride, and for a second, through the swarming despair, there was something in John that had to laugh at that, had to crow in a kind of black, bitter triumph. That he wasn't the only one to lose. That he wasn't the only one this thing could destroy. That even Nikola Tesla, much vaunted genius, could be laid low by the sheer, cold efficiency of John Druitt's monster.
Even as Tesla stared at him, visibly unnerved, John couldn't help the bubbling chuckle that spilled out. Even if he could see the man's fears for John's slipping sanity, he couldn't help the laugh, black and bitter and genuinely amused.
Because if there was only to be one upside to this failure, only one perk to this loss ... then the defeat of Nikola Tesla, the shaming of his arrogance, was a little victory that John could well be content to savour.
"Not to argue with the killer in the room, or anything," Tesla said at last, obviously stung, "but exactly what part of my failing to free you of your demons do you find funny, Druitt?" The tone was scathing, contemptuous, and it sat so wonderfully against the fear still in his eyes, the savage frustration at himself, that John had to delight in it. Had to enjoy it, for all the creeping cold that settled in his chest. For all the pain that he would only indulge later, where Tesla's contemptuous gaze couldn't follow.
"Oh, just a thought," he demurred, smiling the thin little smile that he knew made Tesla nervous, that he knew shone like a knife-blade and made people afraid. The ex-vampire simply narrowed his eyes, more suspicion and anger than anything else, the frustration of failure still too fresh for Tesla to really entertain fear just yet.
Well. John would have to fix that. As the understanding that his hope really was gone settled in on him, as the recognition that he could never escape fell heavily over him, John realised that. Even if this experiment had failed, even if it was over and Tesla's dubious help was no longer required, he still needed the scientist to fear him. He still needed Tesla to understand his threat, and be silent.
Because this attempt ... this had been his last hope, the last chance to save himself from the thing that had taken over his life and his mind, and if it was to fail ... Helen could never know. Helen must never know. Because Helen would blame herself, for the Blood that had brought him to it in the first place, for being the person he had been willing to embrace it all over again to save. Helen would blame herself. So Helen couldn't know. Helen could never know.
"You will tell no-one of this," he said, very quietly, reaching out to slip one hand through the shoulder of Tesla's waistcoat and tug him close. Nikola looked down at it, stared down at the hand against his shoulder as if it were a spider, and when he looked back up, there, there, was the fear John had been looking for. Beneath the contempt, beneath the flash-fire of bravado. There was his fear.
"Yes, because obviously what I'd planned to do was tell the world that a teleporting serial killer had kidnapped me and used me for his own nefarious ends," Tesla snapped back, and then paused, that sly, calculating thing slipping back into his eyes. "Though, when you put it that way ..."
And John could see the thought, see him wonder what he could get from Helen with that little admission. John could see it, and something cold and hard crept into his chest, into his eyes and his voice, and the ex-vampire blanched when he saw it. John pulled him slowly in, and Tesla went white.
"No-one," he said again, soft as soft, almost calm. "Tesla. You will tell no-one. Especially not ..." His voice cracked, all his hope and his loss for a second in his voice, and then he had it back under control. "Especially not Helen. If you should tell her, or anyone ..."
"I won't," Nikola said, quickly. Quickly, but not in fear, suddenly. He had the strangest expression on his face, some strange combination of contempt and consideration, and what might almost have been a distant kind of pity. "I promise, John. I won't tell her."
John felt his mouth twitch, felt it curl into something between a smile and a grimace. "And I'm supposed to trust that, am I?" he asked, putting Tesla almost gently back on his feet, straightening his waistcoat with a casual intimacy he knew could be nothing but threatening. "I'm supposed to take your word, Tesla?"
The scientist glared at him, huffing as he batted John's hand away and straightened his clothing himself, but there was still that almost-gentle something in his eyes, that almost-pity that John felt sure he should hate, but didn't understand enough to try.
"Firstly," Tesla growled, "as I am no longer as strong as I used to be, and you've made it abundantly clear why that will be a grave disadvantage should I cross you, it's obviously in my best interests to do as you say. Secondly," and he really did glare, here, "no matter what you may think of my interest in Helen, the fact remains that I would never want to hurt her, and mentioning you, in any capacity, has always been the best way to do that. So I won't."
John couldn't contain his flinch, there, couldn't hide the truth of that statement, and a little flicker of triumph curled briefly across the ex-vampire's features, before slipping back into that same contemplative look. That same softness.
"And thirdly," Tesla said, very quietly. "I always keep those promises that count."
And there was nothing in his expression to say why it counted, why a promise to John Druitt, the oldest of his enemies left alive, might be something that mattered to Nikola Tesla, but John, who had always seen clearest of them into the human condition, who had known every possible darkness of the human soul and could recognise them on sight ... John could see he told the truth. John could see that, for whatever reason, this was indeed a promise Nikola intended to keep, as best he could.
"... Look after her?" he asked softly, against the coldness in his chest, against the crushing knowledge that he would never again be free to do it himself. Against the knowledge that they had failed, and he could never again trust himself with Helen. Against the rising tide of determination within him, that he should never put her in danger again, never let her fall to the monster within him, that could bring even Nikola Tesla to his knees.
"Look after her?" he asked, of his oldest rival, and Tesla nodded, cold pity from the man who'd once been a monster, to the man who still was. Nikola nodded, this strange pact between demons, and there, for a moment, John thought he understood. Thought he saw why promises between they two should matter.
And then he stepped back, a laughing fall into darkness as the once-vampire watched him go, and let the rush of teleportation take him away from the last remnant of his world.
"... I can't do it."
The statement was almost shocked, ripe with surprise as Tesla let him go, fell back away from him and fetched up against the table, and John's head shot up, jerking him out of the daze as the creature inside him expanded once more, as he felt the clawing against his mind once again.
Tesla didn't look at him. The ex-vampire stayed right where he was, arms braced against the edge of the table as he slumped in frustration, his hair still eddying lazily as electricity swirled through the air. John stared at him, bored a hole into his skull with the force of it, and Tesla didn't look up.
"What did you say?" He straightened, slow, so slow, feeling things creak dangerously inside him. Feeling old, familiar dams take up strain. Feeling danger pool in his voice as he gained his feet and moved, soft as a cat, towards the other man.
Tesla flinched. Minutely. Just a bare tremor, hardly noticable. But John noticed. Oh, he noticed.
"I said I can't do it," the ex-vampire repeated, raising his head at last to face John, angry and stilted. And afraid. Underneath that smooth, arrogant facade. So very afraid. Tesla was vulnerable, now. Tesla was breakable, now. John had known that, when he came. John had used that.
John would keep using that. This was ... this was his best chance, perhaps his last chance, and there was nothing he wouldn't do.
"Really, Tesla?" he murmured, ghosting close, leaning in to the other man, tasting the tremble in the air as Tesla glared at him, as Tesla shook. "Giving up already? I did make it clear to you why that would be ... unwise ... did I not?"
The look Tesla shot him for that, the slow, sullen slide of fury and fear, the shine in his eyes of helpless rage, hit John right below the breastbone. Sparked that deep, terrible thing inside him. It always had. Even before ... perhaps even before the Source Blood, before the elemental. There was something about this man, something about the arrogance, the ego, the charm, that made John want to slip something beneath it, to slip some word or action under it like a knife beneath the skin, and twist the scientist's frailties up into the light. Show the world the coward that lived in the heart of Nikola Tesla.
He'd rarely managed. Back in the good old days, before they'd become what they'd become, Tesla had been easy to taunt, easy to anger, easy to humiliate in a hundred little ways. But never easy to drive away. Never easy to break down. No matter what was said to him, no matter what little tricks one cared to play, the man had always been back the next day with that same, smug little grin, and that sparkle of discovery in his eyes that made Helen's light up in turn, and John's spark with rage.
And later ... later, Tesla had been a vampire, and indestructible, and more dangerous than any of them, and even eviscerating him hadn't stopped that little grin, even super vampires and the end of the world, even the death of a friend and the grief of Helen Magnus, hadn't dented that same cocksure little smile.
But now ... Oh, but now. Now Tesla was human once more. Now he was weak, and breakable, and standing in a room with John Druitt, with Jack the Ripper, and Tesla was afraid. It was unmistakable, in the stilted motions of his hands, in the stiffness of his spine, in the little tiny tremors that rolled through him when John moved a little too close. Yes, oh yes. He was afraid.
But right now, there was more than fear in him. More than the rage at where John had put him. Tesla turned his head to glare up at John, turned to snap furiously into his face, and the crack in his voice wasn't terror. It was frustration. Sheer, seething frustration, and anyone who'd ever worked with Nikola Tesla knew exactly what that meant.
John felt his hope turn to ice in his chest. Felt it drop like a stone into his stomach, before the scientist ever said a word, felt the being inside him curl around it and laugh as if feathered its slick, hungry touch across his heart.
"Wow. Let me think. Did I miss the part where the murderous psychopath intimated that he might get even more acquainted with my insides than he already is, if I didn't do this for him?" Tesla growled, shoving against him until John backed up a step. "Yes, thank you, I did catch that, John."
He stopped, breath hitching a little as he fought to calm himself. John stepped back, frozen, watching him. Watching the flicker in his eyes that was more than fear. Watching the anger that pointed inwards, as he looked over their failed experiment, watching the barest twinge of something that looked like shame. Because Nikola Tesla didn't like to lose. Because Nikola Tesla hated when something was beyond him.
"I can't do this," the scientist said again, voice quivering softly. The quiver of something held in check, of something powerful ruthlessly shuttered down. "This is trying to cage raw energy, sentient energy, sentient energy that's even more dangerous than you, and it doesn't want to go. I can't destroy it. I can't lure it into something because you already tried that and it knows, and the only reason it might like to go is if it sees an advantage in it that I can't afford to give it. And short of staying glued to your side and battling it for the rest of my life, there's not a lot else I can think of!"
He looked up, a quick flash of warning that that was not going to happen, and a more personal fury, that vast mind ticking visibly through options and coming up with nothing. He looked up, and John could see that there was nothing Tesla hated more than this moment, than standing before his old rival with his life and his safety on the line, and having to admit that something was beyond him. Having to admit that there was something he couldn't do.
The monster in John's chest was too much for him. The thing inside John was too much for Nikola Tesla, too much for the man glaring at him not in fear for his life, but in fury for his pride, and for a second, through the swarming despair, there was something in John that had to laugh at that, had to crow in a kind of black, bitter triumph. That he wasn't the only one to lose. That he wasn't the only one this thing could destroy. That even Nikola Tesla, much vaunted genius, could be laid low by the sheer, cold efficiency of John Druitt's monster.
Even as Tesla stared at him, visibly unnerved, John couldn't help the bubbling chuckle that spilled out. Even if he could see the man's fears for John's slipping sanity, he couldn't help the laugh, black and bitter and genuinely amused.
Because if there was only to be one upside to this failure, only one perk to this loss ... then the defeat of Nikola Tesla, the shaming of his arrogance, was a little victory that John could well be content to savour.
"Not to argue with the killer in the room, or anything," Tesla said at last, obviously stung, "but exactly what part of my failing to free you of your demons do you find funny, Druitt?" The tone was scathing, contemptuous, and it sat so wonderfully against the fear still in his eyes, the savage frustration at himself, that John had to delight in it. Had to enjoy it, for all the creeping cold that settled in his chest. For all the pain that he would only indulge later, where Tesla's contemptuous gaze couldn't follow.
"Oh, just a thought," he demurred, smiling the thin little smile that he knew made Tesla nervous, that he knew shone like a knife-blade and made people afraid. The ex-vampire simply narrowed his eyes, more suspicion and anger than anything else, the frustration of failure still too fresh for Tesla to really entertain fear just yet.
Well. John would have to fix that. As the understanding that his hope really was gone settled in on him, as the recognition that he could never escape fell heavily over him, John realised that. Even if this experiment had failed, even if it was over and Tesla's dubious help was no longer required, he still needed the scientist to fear him. He still needed Tesla to understand his threat, and be silent.
Because this attempt ... this had been his last hope, the last chance to save himself from the thing that had taken over his life and his mind, and if it was to fail ... Helen could never know. Helen must never know. Because Helen would blame herself, for the Blood that had brought him to it in the first place, for being the person he had been willing to embrace it all over again to save. Helen would blame herself. So Helen couldn't know. Helen could never know.
"You will tell no-one of this," he said, very quietly, reaching out to slip one hand through the shoulder of Tesla's waistcoat and tug him close. Nikola looked down at it, stared down at the hand against his shoulder as if it were a spider, and when he looked back up, there, there, was the fear John had been looking for. Beneath the contempt, beneath the flash-fire of bravado. There was his fear.
"Yes, because obviously what I'd planned to do was tell the world that a teleporting serial killer had kidnapped me and used me for his own nefarious ends," Tesla snapped back, and then paused, that sly, calculating thing slipping back into his eyes. "Though, when you put it that way ..."
And John could see the thought, see him wonder what he could get from Helen with that little admission. John could see it, and something cold and hard crept into his chest, into his eyes and his voice, and the ex-vampire blanched when he saw it. John pulled him slowly in, and Tesla went white.
"No-one," he said again, soft as soft, almost calm. "Tesla. You will tell no-one. Especially not ..." His voice cracked, all his hope and his loss for a second in his voice, and then he had it back under control. "Especially not Helen. If you should tell her, or anyone ..."
"I won't," Nikola said, quickly. Quickly, but not in fear, suddenly. He had the strangest expression on his face, some strange combination of contempt and consideration, and what might almost have been a distant kind of pity. "I promise, John. I won't tell her."
John felt his mouth twitch, felt it curl into something between a smile and a grimace. "And I'm supposed to trust that, am I?" he asked, putting Tesla almost gently back on his feet, straightening his waistcoat with a casual intimacy he knew could be nothing but threatening. "I'm supposed to take your word, Tesla?"
The scientist glared at him, huffing as he batted John's hand away and straightened his clothing himself, but there was still that almost-gentle something in his eyes, that almost-pity that John felt sure he should hate, but didn't understand enough to try.
"Firstly," Tesla growled, "as I am no longer as strong as I used to be, and you've made it abundantly clear why that will be a grave disadvantage should I cross you, it's obviously in my best interests to do as you say. Secondly," and he really did glare, here, "no matter what you may think of my interest in Helen, the fact remains that I would never want to hurt her, and mentioning you, in any capacity, has always been the best way to do that. So I won't."
John couldn't contain his flinch, there, couldn't hide the truth of that statement, and a little flicker of triumph curled briefly across the ex-vampire's features, before slipping back into that same contemplative look. That same softness.
"And thirdly," Tesla said, very quietly. "I always keep those promises that count."
And there was nothing in his expression to say why it counted, why a promise to John Druitt, the oldest of his enemies left alive, might be something that mattered to Nikola Tesla, but John, who had always seen clearest of them into the human condition, who had known every possible darkness of the human soul and could recognise them on sight ... John could see he told the truth. John could see that, for whatever reason, this was indeed a promise Nikola intended to keep, as best he could.
"... Look after her?" he asked softly, against the coldness in his chest, against the crushing knowledge that he would never again be free to do it himself. Against the knowledge that they had failed, and he could never again trust himself with Helen. Against the rising tide of determination within him, that he should never put her in danger again, never let her fall to the monster within him, that could bring even Nikola Tesla to his knees.
"Look after her?" he asked, of his oldest rival, and Tesla nodded, cold pity from the man who'd once been a monster, to the man who still was. Nikola nodded, this strange pact between demons, and there, for a moment, John thought he understood. Thought he saw why promises between they two should matter.
And then he stepped back, a laughing fall into darkness as the once-vampire watched him go, and let the rush of teleportation take him away from the last remnant of his world.
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