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Not what I should be doing, by any stretch of the imagination, but I plan to get up early tomorrow to finish the essay, so ... You get this. Heh. Owes some inspiration to ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
dbalthasar's awesome vampire AU starting in Choices, though this one starts somewhere else.
Title: Blood Offering
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: Sanctuary
Characters/Pairings: Nikola, James, Helen, John, Will, Clara
Summary: An AU to Revelations. As James fails in front of them, Nikola proposes a solution that may have drastic ramifications
Wordcount: 1931
Warnings/Notes: AU to Revelations, as stated above.
Disclaimer: Not mine
dbalthasar's awesome vampire AU starting in Choices, though this one starts somewhere else.Title: Blood Offering
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: Sanctuary
Characters/Pairings: Nikola, James, Helen, John, Will, Clara
Summary: An AU to Revelations. As James fails in front of them, Nikola proposes a solution that may have drastic ramifications
Wordcount: 1931
Warnings/Notes: AU to Revelations, as stated above.
Disclaimer: Not mine
Blood Offering
He'd known, from the moment he saw them. Hadn't he known? He must have done. " My dear James. You're looking ... older." He'd been distracted, of course. Almost immediately. Helen. Johnny. Always sterling distractions, those two, always immediate, always there. James faded into the background, watching until the denouement, never forward, never present, until time came for the Detective to play his part. So easily missed, was James.
But Nikola had known. He had. Not consciously, not up front, where the thoughts of Johnny and Helen and the Blood danced. But he had known. Something abnormal in the ticking whirr of a machine he'd listened to for decades. Something wrong in the rush of blood and the beat of a heart he'd known for more than a century. He'd known. He knew it. Standing back, watching in stunned silence as James crumpled, he knew he'd known.
Because for all the blank horror of the moment, he felt not one jot of surprise. Not one whisper of disbelief. He'd known. He had known.
And in knowing, hadn't he, in some way, been ready ...?
"I can fix it."
They looked up at them. All of them, simultaneous, from their little huddle about his fallen form. About James. They looked up at him, away from James' exhausted smiles and claims of 'one last challenge'. Helen, bright and desperate and strong. Johnny, so desperately unshattered that it had to be a lie. Even the younglings.
And James, bright eyes fierce in the withered face, and with a vaguely bitter smile.
"I'm afraid the machine is quite unsalvageable," he murmured, thin and reedy and defiant. Accepting death with what bitter grace he could muster. Nikola would have none of it. There wasn't time.
"Not the machine," he shot back, a rapid and brittle snap. "James. Ask Helen. Ask Johnny. I can fix it."
Little flinches, in the wake of that. The others, recoiling back. Nikola ignored them. His eyes were on James, on the defiance in fading eyes, and all his focus on the subaudible ticking of a clock, the slowing beat of an unsupported heart. He stared right at him, met that glittering stare, and knew full well there was desperation in his eyes to match anything James could be feeling.
"I won't be a slave," James said, softly, at last. Fading, fading far too quickly. "I won't be your thrall, Nikola."
"You won't," he hissed. Moving now, with all a vampire's speed, dropping to his knees before James, almost between the sprawled legs that could no longer support their owner. "The others were normal, just humans. You're not like them, James. There's Source Blood in your veins, you've lasted more than a century, on will and Blood and ingenuity, you're not like them." He looked up, flashed a desperate look at Helen, at John. Begging them, to convince James to embrace something they'd both rejected. Hah. Oh yes, Nikola was desperate, wasn't he? But James' heart was beating an arrhythmic ultimatum, and there was no more time.
"I ... I won't ... Be a slave." Determined, with what little strength he had left, and despite it, Nikola almost admired him for it. Had to, even now.
"Then I'll kill you," he offered, fiercely, desperately. Holding up hands that suddenly had claws, not so much threat as promise. "You're dead anyway. If it's not you that comes back, if it's not you that looks at me when it works ... I swear, James, I will kill you. I'll rip you to so many pieces, nothing could come back." He flashed a desperate grin, looked to John. "Johnny will help me. You won't be a slave. No matter what happens, you won't be that. I promise. Just say yes!" Just let him. Just let him save something. "James. You've wanted this for more than fifty years. Immortality. Just say yes."
And even as he said it, even as he pleaded, he heard the fatal falter, heard muscle worn thin by centuries final sag to a halt, and felt his heart clench in despair. He couldn't, he couldn't ...
But there. On a final breath of air, a final exhalation ... "Yesssss ..."
Nikola whirled away from him. Whirled upright, blood thundering in his own ears, desperation evident in every panicked twitch of clawed hands. He spun away from the ... from the corpse, from James, and strode away, paced the room. Hands to his temples, thinking ...
"Nikola?" Helen. Of course. Helen. He waved a hand at her. He hadn't ... Well. No. He did have time. He had what he wanted, what he needed. He had some time, to find ...
Ah! Yes! Of course. Ancient machinery, legacy of his ancestors, there for thousands of years, blah-di-blah, not the point. The point was iron, and wire, a makeshift torus ... He'd experimented enough for the others to know he needed ... Yes!
They stared at him as he all but vaulted back across the floor, dropped to his knees. The younglings, the protege and Nigel's get, in macabre fascination, horror. Helen, with furious disapproval, with something he thought might be desperation, even grief, maybe hope. She hated him, he thought. She hated that he would ask for this. But she wanted it too much to deny him. And Johnny ... oh, the desperation in Johnny's eyes. The violence a hair from lashing out, the need, the thunderous promise that if Nikola should fail him now, should fail them, in this ...
Not the point. Still not the point. The point was the still and fragile chest beneath his hands, the point was the friend still visible beneath the sudden mask of age, of death. The point was the knife in his hand, and the blood dripped between James' lips, and the coursing of electricity from his hand, through copper and iron and muscle and bone and blood. Always. Always, blood. The point was the sudden scream, the thin rush of air through spasming lungs, the monstrous, beautiful youth that spread along wasted limbs in the wake of blood and electricity and pain. The point was the friend, recognisable once again, in perhaps more demonic but no less precious guise. The point, my dear ones, was James.
Hushed stillness reigned as James' spasming form grew still. Desperate hope, desperate fear, from all of them, every one, as black eyes opened and staring blindly past them. As a vampire's eyes opened in James' face, and stared at them blankly. No. No! Come on.
"James!" he snapped. Hard-edged with fury, with fear. He had promised, he had sworn, but he had hoped, too, had wanted not to have to ... "James! If you don't give me a sign, right now, you know what I'll have to do ..." He couldn't bear to wait. He couldn't bear not to, his desperation echoed on every face that surrounded them. The Source Blood had to make a difference. James' own abnormality, his own fierce, glittering intelligence, his will ... It had to matter. It had to make a difference. Please, please, let this not have been for nothing ...
And then ... James turned. Lifted his head, turned it to meet Nikola's eyes. Intelligence slowly seeping up from behind the darkness, that familiar gleam sliding forward beneath the hunger, and James' voice, rasping and guttural around a vampire's teeth:
"Is this ... How do you live with this? Every day? Are you always this hungry?"
And Nikola collapsed. Slumped sideways off his knees, sitting in a sudden heap, and watched the others near-fall after him. Helen, head suddenly bowed in insupportable relief. John, tipped against the pillar, head resting against ancient stone and looking down at a now-youthful head in undisguised, tremulous joy. The protege, hands fisted and uncertain, nonetheless reaching to touch a slumped shoulder, to feel the life in it and realise it was real. Nikola, almost absently, reached out to still that hopeful hand before it made contact, the warning implicit. Not yet. Not just yet. James saw. James blinked at him.
"The first while is the worst," Nikola told him, almost giddily, almost laughing. His grin back, there, once again, dropping the protege's hand to wave his own dismissively in the air. Grinning, teeth and triumph. "We'll get you some medicine, James, don't you worry. You'll get used to it, and it'll all be fine." It'll all be fine, because you're not dead, and you're you, and after a hundred years, and everything they'd just gone through, after surpassing the power of the earth itself and retrieving the Source Blood, a new vampire craving blood was nothing, absolutely nothing they couldn't handle.
"It'll be fine," he repeated, as if testing the phrase against his teeth, the darkness in his eyes matching the darkness in James, dark and giddy and triumphal, flushed with this first success, most precious, and James, after a moment, smiled back at him. Grinned, even, with a gleam of far from human teeth, and the glittering of knowing, defiant intelligence, and suddenly ... suddenly the future looked bright. Suddenly the Cabal looked so much smaller, and them, they Five, Four, so much bigger, and here in the dust of Bhalasaam, James smiled at him with a vampire's smile, and Nikola, in some part of him, thought he must have known. He must have known. All his life, he must have known, because here, now, nothing could have seemed more inevitable than this. Nothing could have seemed more right.
"We're coming back," he whispered, dark and gleeful, and watched Helen's head shoot up, watching the alarm flicker across her features, and the wariness, the defiance, flash through James. He watched. He saw. He didn't care. It didn't matter.
They were coming back. The Five, the vampires, all of them. Everything Nikola had ever held dear. They were coming back. And he'd be there. No matter what happened, he'd be there, and he'd have made it happen. With that, and the vial of Blood in Helen's hand, he counted this a victory. He counted this worth celebrating. Whatever happened next. He counted that worthwhile.
"Shall we, then?" he asked, bright and deadly, and they were looking at him with ripe suspicion, with stern reproof and uneasy defiance, and between Johnny and James as he was now, they could most certainly do him significant damage, and he knew it, and suddenly, for all the world, Nikola felt like laughing. He felt the rich, bubbling surge of joy as he leapt to his feet, and held out a hand to pull his fellow vampire after him. "World to save, antitoxin to develope, ringing any bells?"
"Nikola ..." James started, Helen echoed, and then ... They stopped. Looked at each other, with that softening in Helen's eyes, that wry acceptance that was so quintessentially James, that no vampire visage could disguise. And Johnny, hand suddenly heavy on James' shoulder, watching Nikola with warning, and that darkling humour, and a touch of what might be gratitude. They stopped, and looked at each other, and looked at him, and Nikola had no idea what the young ones saw, but he saw the Five. He saw them, and they saw him, and once more there was a world to save, and they were there, and they were powerful once more, and it was time to remind people of that. It was time to show the world, once again, what they had been, and would be again.
"A world to save," Helen murmured, contemplatively, and nodded. Quick, decisive, Helen. "You're right, Nikola. The rest can wait until later. We ... have work to do."
Oh yes. It was good to be him again, to be them again. It was good to be king.
He'd known, from the moment he saw them. Hadn't he known? He must have done. " My dear James. You're looking ... older." He'd been distracted, of course. Almost immediately. Helen. Johnny. Always sterling distractions, those two, always immediate, always there. James faded into the background, watching until the denouement, never forward, never present, until time came for the Detective to play his part. So easily missed, was James.
But Nikola had known. He had. Not consciously, not up front, where the thoughts of Johnny and Helen and the Blood danced. But he had known. Something abnormal in the ticking whirr of a machine he'd listened to for decades. Something wrong in the rush of blood and the beat of a heart he'd known for more than a century. He'd known. He knew it. Standing back, watching in stunned silence as James crumpled, he knew he'd known.
Because for all the blank horror of the moment, he felt not one jot of surprise. Not one whisper of disbelief. He'd known. He had known.
And in knowing, hadn't he, in some way, been ready ...?
"I can fix it."
They looked up at them. All of them, simultaneous, from their little huddle about his fallen form. About James. They looked up at him, away from James' exhausted smiles and claims of 'one last challenge'. Helen, bright and desperate and strong. Johnny, so desperately unshattered that it had to be a lie. Even the younglings.
And James, bright eyes fierce in the withered face, and with a vaguely bitter smile.
"I'm afraid the machine is quite unsalvageable," he murmured, thin and reedy and defiant. Accepting death with what bitter grace he could muster. Nikola would have none of it. There wasn't time.
"Not the machine," he shot back, a rapid and brittle snap. "James. Ask Helen. Ask Johnny. I can fix it."
Little flinches, in the wake of that. The others, recoiling back. Nikola ignored them. His eyes were on James, on the defiance in fading eyes, and all his focus on the subaudible ticking of a clock, the slowing beat of an unsupported heart. He stared right at him, met that glittering stare, and knew full well there was desperation in his eyes to match anything James could be feeling.
"I won't be a slave," James said, softly, at last. Fading, fading far too quickly. "I won't be your thrall, Nikola."
"You won't," he hissed. Moving now, with all a vampire's speed, dropping to his knees before James, almost between the sprawled legs that could no longer support their owner. "The others were normal, just humans. You're not like them, James. There's Source Blood in your veins, you've lasted more than a century, on will and Blood and ingenuity, you're not like them." He looked up, flashed a desperate look at Helen, at John. Begging them, to convince James to embrace something they'd both rejected. Hah. Oh yes, Nikola was desperate, wasn't he? But James' heart was beating an arrhythmic ultimatum, and there was no more time.
"I ... I won't ... Be a slave." Determined, with what little strength he had left, and despite it, Nikola almost admired him for it. Had to, even now.
"Then I'll kill you," he offered, fiercely, desperately. Holding up hands that suddenly had claws, not so much threat as promise. "You're dead anyway. If it's not you that comes back, if it's not you that looks at me when it works ... I swear, James, I will kill you. I'll rip you to so many pieces, nothing could come back." He flashed a desperate grin, looked to John. "Johnny will help me. You won't be a slave. No matter what happens, you won't be that. I promise. Just say yes!" Just let him. Just let him save something. "James. You've wanted this for more than fifty years. Immortality. Just say yes."
And even as he said it, even as he pleaded, he heard the fatal falter, heard muscle worn thin by centuries final sag to a halt, and felt his heart clench in despair. He couldn't, he couldn't ...
But there. On a final breath of air, a final exhalation ... "Yesssss ..."
Nikola whirled away from him. Whirled upright, blood thundering in his own ears, desperation evident in every panicked twitch of clawed hands. He spun away from the ... from the corpse, from James, and strode away, paced the room. Hands to his temples, thinking ...
"Nikola?" Helen. Of course. Helen. He waved a hand at her. He hadn't ... Well. No. He did have time. He had what he wanted, what he needed. He had some time, to find ...
Ah! Yes! Of course. Ancient machinery, legacy of his ancestors, there for thousands of years, blah-di-blah, not the point. The point was iron, and wire, a makeshift torus ... He'd experimented enough for the others to know he needed ... Yes!
They stared at him as he all but vaulted back across the floor, dropped to his knees. The younglings, the protege and Nigel's get, in macabre fascination, horror. Helen, with furious disapproval, with something he thought might be desperation, even grief, maybe hope. She hated him, he thought. She hated that he would ask for this. But she wanted it too much to deny him. And Johnny ... oh, the desperation in Johnny's eyes. The violence a hair from lashing out, the need, the thunderous promise that if Nikola should fail him now, should fail them, in this ...
Not the point. Still not the point. The point was the still and fragile chest beneath his hands, the point was the friend still visible beneath the sudden mask of age, of death. The point was the knife in his hand, and the blood dripped between James' lips, and the coursing of electricity from his hand, through copper and iron and muscle and bone and blood. Always. Always, blood. The point was the sudden scream, the thin rush of air through spasming lungs, the monstrous, beautiful youth that spread along wasted limbs in the wake of blood and electricity and pain. The point was the friend, recognisable once again, in perhaps more demonic but no less precious guise. The point, my dear ones, was James.
Hushed stillness reigned as James' spasming form grew still. Desperate hope, desperate fear, from all of them, every one, as black eyes opened and staring blindly past them. As a vampire's eyes opened in James' face, and stared at them blankly. No. No! Come on.
"James!" he snapped. Hard-edged with fury, with fear. He had promised, he had sworn, but he had hoped, too, had wanted not to have to ... "James! If you don't give me a sign, right now, you know what I'll have to do ..." He couldn't bear to wait. He couldn't bear not to, his desperation echoed on every face that surrounded them. The Source Blood had to make a difference. James' own abnormality, his own fierce, glittering intelligence, his will ... It had to matter. It had to make a difference. Please, please, let this not have been for nothing ...
And then ... James turned. Lifted his head, turned it to meet Nikola's eyes. Intelligence slowly seeping up from behind the darkness, that familiar gleam sliding forward beneath the hunger, and James' voice, rasping and guttural around a vampire's teeth:
"Is this ... How do you live with this? Every day? Are you always this hungry?"
And Nikola collapsed. Slumped sideways off his knees, sitting in a sudden heap, and watched the others near-fall after him. Helen, head suddenly bowed in insupportable relief. John, tipped against the pillar, head resting against ancient stone and looking down at a now-youthful head in undisguised, tremulous joy. The protege, hands fisted and uncertain, nonetheless reaching to touch a slumped shoulder, to feel the life in it and realise it was real. Nikola, almost absently, reached out to still that hopeful hand before it made contact, the warning implicit. Not yet. Not just yet. James saw. James blinked at him.
"The first while is the worst," Nikola told him, almost giddily, almost laughing. His grin back, there, once again, dropping the protege's hand to wave his own dismissively in the air. Grinning, teeth and triumph. "We'll get you some medicine, James, don't you worry. You'll get used to it, and it'll all be fine." It'll all be fine, because you're not dead, and you're you, and after a hundred years, and everything they'd just gone through, after surpassing the power of the earth itself and retrieving the Source Blood, a new vampire craving blood was nothing, absolutely nothing they couldn't handle.
"It'll be fine," he repeated, as if testing the phrase against his teeth, the darkness in his eyes matching the darkness in James, dark and giddy and triumphal, flushed with this first success, most precious, and James, after a moment, smiled back at him. Grinned, even, with a gleam of far from human teeth, and the glittering of knowing, defiant intelligence, and suddenly ... suddenly the future looked bright. Suddenly the Cabal looked so much smaller, and them, they Five, Four, so much bigger, and here in the dust of Bhalasaam, James smiled at him with a vampire's smile, and Nikola, in some part of him, thought he must have known. He must have known. All his life, he must have known, because here, now, nothing could have seemed more inevitable than this. Nothing could have seemed more right.
"We're coming back," he whispered, dark and gleeful, and watched Helen's head shoot up, watching the alarm flicker across her features, and the wariness, the defiance, flash through James. He watched. He saw. He didn't care. It didn't matter.
They were coming back. The Five, the vampires, all of them. Everything Nikola had ever held dear. They were coming back. And he'd be there. No matter what happened, he'd be there, and he'd have made it happen. With that, and the vial of Blood in Helen's hand, he counted this a victory. He counted this worth celebrating. Whatever happened next. He counted that worthwhile.
"Shall we, then?" he asked, bright and deadly, and they were looking at him with ripe suspicion, with stern reproof and uneasy defiance, and between Johnny and James as he was now, they could most certainly do him significant damage, and he knew it, and suddenly, for all the world, Nikola felt like laughing. He felt the rich, bubbling surge of joy as he leapt to his feet, and held out a hand to pull his fellow vampire after him. "World to save, antitoxin to develope, ringing any bells?"
"Nikola ..." James started, Helen echoed, and then ... They stopped. Looked at each other, with that softening in Helen's eyes, that wry acceptance that was so quintessentially James, that no vampire visage could disguise. And Johnny, hand suddenly heavy on James' shoulder, watching Nikola with warning, and that darkling humour, and a touch of what might be gratitude. They stopped, and looked at each other, and looked at him, and Nikola had no idea what the young ones saw, but he saw the Five. He saw them, and they saw him, and once more there was a world to save, and they were there, and they were powerful once more, and it was time to remind people of that. It was time to show the world, once again, what they had been, and would be again.
"A world to save," Helen murmured, contemplatively, and nodded. Quick, decisive, Helen. "You're right, Nikola. The rest can wait until later. We ... have work to do."
Oh yes. It was good to be him again, to be them again. It was good to be king.
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