Fic: Apocalypse Aftermath (4b/8)

[goldarrow]

Title: Apocalypse Aftermath 4b/8
Author: goldarrow
Rating: PG13 for violence plus 1 NC17 Scene which is separate and clearly marked

Summary: Van Helsing disappears, and it’s up to Willow and the Scoobies to find him.

Crossover: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Van Helsing

Pairing: Van Helsing / Willow

Disclaimer: All the BtVS characters belong to Joss Whedon, ME; Van Helsing belongs to Universal, Steven Sommers, and lots of other high-powered people.  I mean no harm, and get no money from this, just loads of fun.

Spoilers: Buffy Season 7

PRESENT DAY

“Oh, it’s good to see you.”  Willow clung to Giles, as she’d never been able to cling to her mostly absent father.  This one man, with his trust and confidence in her, had managed to become the only person in the world that she never wanted to disappoint.  She still cringed when she thought of how horrible she’d been to him when Rack’s brand of addictive Power had turned her into someone she hated to think about now.

Giles held her close.  If he’d been lucky enough to have sired daughters, he’d’ve wanted them to be like Buffy and Willow.  Buffy, for her strength and spunk, her refusal to ever give in or give up, and Willow, for her caring and clear-eyed intelligence, and her insistence on always doing what was Right.

“We’ll find him,” he whispered, for her ear only.  “You know we’ll never stop looking until he’s back with us.”

“Thank you.”  Her voice shook and her eyes teared.  “I’m just a little on edge right now.”  She pulled back to give him a slightly watery smile.

“I understand.”  He spoke the next words aloud.  “Now that we’re all here, perhaps we should hear the entire story, from the beginning to the end.”

He looked around, seeing Buffy working her way towards an Oscar as she congratulated an ecstatic Dawn on her examinatory success, with Xander off at the side talking to Jacob.  At Giles’s words, he immediately broke from his commentary on how airport security was beginning to get nervous about how often his brand new passport was being used.  They sat, Xander as close to Willow as he could get, holding her hand.  She gripped hard.  Giles sat in the biggest chair, Jacob took the other, and Dawn and Buffy squeezed in beside the Witch.

Buffy looked over at Willow, who nodded.  “Okay, here’s the scoop,” Buffy started.  She ran through the story again, telling everything she knew.  Willow added a few comments, and Jacob tacked on the coda.

When he finished, there was a silence as everyone digested the information.  Giles spoke first, very soberly.  “So, we know that Van Helsing has been missing for 10 days, and that’s about all, am I c-correct?”

“Yeah,” Willow said dully.  “Ten days.  And no one even noticed.”

* * * * *

2 DAYS AGO

Van Helsing had never before wished that he were telepathic.  The thought of being able to read others’ thoughts, or to have them reading his, had always made him feel slightly nauseated.  But now, dear God now, he wished harder than he ever had in his life that his Willow would hear him calling her.  Never before had he felt such pain, such abject terror.  Curled up on the floor in his cell, he knew, without the shadow of a doubt, that he wouldn’t be able to hold on any longer. 

For five nights now, they had been working on him.  Five nights.  Blessed Lord.  Five decades, more like; five centuries it might as well have been.  They were learning him, what he could ignore, what made him sneer, and what made him scream. 

The beatings on the first night he laughed off; they couldn’t cause enough damage with their fists to make him do any more than spit in their faces.  When they brought out the knives on the second night, it gave him pause; but he discovered depths of strength he’d either not known or forgotten about.  When they cut him, he sneered.  And since they didn’t want him dead, their only rewards for stabbings were groans of pain and strings of curses. 

When they ran out of ideas on the third night, they looked to the Pack Leader for inspiration.  Cesare reached into his pocket and pulled out a cigarette lighter which Angelo grabbed with glee.  The body-builder loved the fire; arson was his favorite pastime. He clicked the little wheel and stared raptly at the dancing flame as the others pulled back to let the master of the inferno work in peace.  Van Helsing screamed.  And again.  Over and over until he passed out and they threw him back in his cell, congratulating Angelo on his prowess.  Surely the Great Van Helsing had learned his place.

The fourth night, when they pulled him back out again, they realized that they’d made a mistake.  The quiet and peace of the day had renewed his strength and determination.  He didn’t speak, he simply glared, and they knew they were still a long way from success.  He had discovered that the cold was his friend, slowing the bleeding and putting his body into a state close to hibernation where healing occurred rapidly.  And the moisture from the walls kept him alive.  Perhaps licking the mold to calm his thirst had helped, after all.  Luckily he had never been allergic to penicillin… He laughed slightly hysterically. 

They backed away; leaving him tied to a chair in the middle of a dark, bare room.  He looked around, his eyes widened to their limits to pick out the details he could see only dimly.  Then he cried out as an incredibly bright light seared into his retinas, burning an image as harsh as the sun itself into the nerves.  He was blind; there was nothing in front of him but a blanket of white.  Blinking as rapidly as he could to try to clear the image, he was concentrating so hard on his lack of vision that when the 95-decibel squeal slashed across his eardrums, he was taken completely by surprise and screamed with the agony of it.  That night, he called upon God, and they clapped their hands together.  By the early morning, he was shivering, blind and deaf.  They touched him, and he cringed away.  They laughed and put him back in his cell.  It was time for them to hunt, before the day came, and they knew they were close this time.  They could afford to let him rest and recuperate.  After all, they needed him to be able to walk the next evening.  Their piece de resistance was awaiting his pleasure – or rather theirs.

On the fifth night, his body had recovered somewhat, but his mind was wandering.  Lack of sustenance, dehydration, and mild hypothermia were doing as much to tear at him as was the Pack’s more brutal torture.  They tied his arms close to his body, and then blindfolded him completely when they removed him from his cell and led him down the corridor, to turn away from the rooms where he had already suffered as they reached the first junction. 

His mind steadied.  A new place meant that he could trust nothing, that he must be very careful.  He reached deep within to find something, anything to cling to, and he found it:  In the memory of Anna Valerious, in the love of his redheaded Witch, and the loyalty of his friend Jacob.

They pushed him through the door and then left him there, alone.  He waited.  If he did nothing, then sooner or later they would have to make a move.  He remained still.  Finally, the patience of the Hunter was rewarded; he felt the warmth of a body behind him, and a voice spoke in his ear.

“You are in the main antechamber,” it said, in the tones of the Pack Leader.  “If you can make your way across this room, you can leave.  The door is directly in front of you.  All you have to do is get to it.”  The warmth dissipated.  Cesare had gone.

Van Helsing flogged his weakened mind.  If he could leave by simply crossing the room, then he should cross the room.  That thought seemed to be logical.  He started walking.  He had only made two steps when he touched something that hit his shoulder with a shock like touching a live wire. He jerked back involuntarily, and ran into another electrified protuberance.  Cursing, he stepped sideways, away from it, only to have something as pointed as a honed ice pick stab through his arm.  He felt it grate on the bone, and pulled sharply away.  After quickly running into two more electric shocks and another ice pick, which left his mouth dry and his stomach jumping as it missed his eye by less than an inch, he stopped dead.  Having found a small area that was clear of anything painful, he wasn’t about to move again.  He wondered dully what they would do if he simply waited here until he passed out from hunger and thirst.  As an experiment, that certainly attracted him more than moving did.  When he had remained still for more than half an hour, he heard a rustling behind him.  He ignored it, figuring that anything they could do to him would be less painful than the shocks.  He was wrong.

When the hot poker hit his back, he gasped and stumbled forward.  Again, he struck an electrical knob, but this time he pulled back only far enough that it couldn’t hurt him.  He was learning – learning that to move quickly was to court pain:  That it would take cunning rather than strength to make it through this.  He stepped slowly to the left, and felt the point of another piercing tool.  He moved back to the center again, and then shifted right.  It seemed clear, so he took a pace that direction.  It remained comfortable, so he continued along that way, step by step.  Repetition, along with the pain of the wounds he had already suffered, was teaching the atavistic remnants of his mind how to navigate the maze they’d dropped him in. 

When he made it past four corners with only a few mild shocks, and no blood drawn, his captors became impatient.  He automatically ducked when the same horrible squeal as yesterday assaulted his hearing.  He impaled his shoulder on an awl, and it took most of his remaining strength to yank away.  Stumbling from the sudden release, he slipped on the drops of blood that were sliding down his arm, and went to his knees.  After a few minutes, he managed to force himself back to his feet, and teeth gritted, started off again.

Four hours of faltering steps and sudden, shocking pains later, he was swaying on his feet, gasping for air and trembling with fatigue and horror.  He knew the room wasn’t that big.  It couldn’t be.  He could hear the echoes of their laughter and his moans bouncing off the walls.  He knew now what they’d done:  They’d set up the maze in a circle.  He’d been going around and around the very same area since they’d put him in here.  There might be a door on the other side of the room, but he would never reach it; they’d made sure of that.  When the realization hit fully, he fainted, and they laughed gleefully as they finished the job and then dumped him back in his cell along with a small cup of slightly brackish water.

TBC