sanctuary fic: only the chosen
Title: Only The Chosen
Summary: I wrote Five fic! After "Normandy," I just couldn't resist. This doesn't take place after "Normandy" though, it takes place right after they injected the Source Blood.
Words: 2,078
Disclaimer: It all belongs to Damian.
Notes: I LOVE THE FIVE.
Nikola hums a mindless little tune none of them can identify for days on end.
Low and quiet, head lolling back against the headrest of the chair to which they've strapped him, he hums the same few notes over and over and over. When they knock him out every few hours, when the hunger gets too bad and they can't watch him buck against the restraints any longer, the unconscious silence is a welcome respite from his melody.
"What do you think it is?" Nigel asks, bent close to Nikola's face, as though the answer may be written in the tense crease across the bridge of his nose.
"Watch yourself, Nigel," John warns, and pulls Nigel away with a firm grip on the back of his vest. Nikola may be sedated but his teeth were still bared in a snarl when he went under and his features haven't righted themselves yet. Nigel shrugs out of John's grip and straightens his vest, but his eyes never leave Nikola's face.
"Do you recognize the song?" He addresses the room, questioning them all, but none of them answer. "Maybe it's something from when he was a boy; what does the Serbian anthem sound like?"
"Ask him when he wakes," James grunts. He's just as curious as Nigel, but there are other things to think about (so many things) and while he's finding it easier and easier to manage his thoughts (so many thoughts), the name of Nikola's new favorite song is decidedly towards the bottom of the list.
Nigel bristles at James' tone and Helen, ever the mediator, rests her hand on his arm and softens James' words: "He should be fine in a few hours, we'll ask him then." She smiles tightly. "You know if it's something from Serbia he'll be thrilled to tell us all about it."
* * *
When they realize just exactly what they've done by injecting the Source Blood, they can't hide their experiment from Gregory any longer. Their recklessness and his disappointment is evident in his frown as he ushers them into an unused room in the Sanctuary's cellar. He watches them wheel in Nikola, strapped to a gurney, and his eyes flash on Helen's: "You put this right." Helen can't remember the last time her father spoke to her as if she were a child, but the admonishment drives home and she bows her head in acknowledgment.
* * *
They hypothesize that his appetite is so great because the cow's blood they are feeding him isn't providing the right nutrients. James volunteers a pint to test the theory, but rather than satiate him, his friend's blood only makes Nikola wilder, hungrier, stronger.
Even after they've put him back on cow's blood, James can't go near him for a week without Nikola crying in ecstasy and want.
* * *
They've managed to synthesize a few supplements that they hope will help when animal blood can't quite satisfy Nikola's hunger. The only problem is that he can't stomach the stuff; when he's hungry enough to need it, he tears at his restraints and screams himself hoarse trying to free himself. When it gets that bad, they knock him out with horse tranquilizers (on the worst days, two doses) and feed him the supplements intravenously.
In a moment of frustration late one night, Nigel wonders why aloud. "We're keeping him alive just so he can live chained in a cellar?" The question hangs in the stagnant air for a full minute as they all digest the uncomfortable truth in Nigel's words.
"We'll figure out something else; until then, we're buying time," Helen insists and no one argues with her because this whole thing was her idea to begin with.
* * *
They need another sample of Nikola's blood. No one likes doing it: if he's unconscious, it feels like stealing; if he's awake, it feels like betrayal. They take turns. John took it last so Helen grabs the syringe.
For someone just waking from rather heavy sedation, Nikola's eyes are disturbingly clear. He must see it in her face, the way she recognizes that he shouldn't be this lucid this soon. He grins wickedly and lisps, "A vampire's metabolism is a glorious thing, is it not?" (For as stoic as she can be, she has never been able to hide anything from these men, her men.) For the first time that day, Helen wonders whether they made a mistake injecting the Source Blood. It won't be the last time.
He watches her with those clear eyes while she takes another sample of his blood. It's a testament to how hungry he is that even the sight of his own blood makes him salivate. She turns to walk away but she had been standing too close and his hand snaps around her wrist, holding her in place. "Nikola," she warns, low. Any louder and the rest of them will come running. Maybe she can talk him down.
"Let me do it," he begs, just as quiet, but with that devil's gleam in his eye. She squints in confusion. "Let me turn you," he clarifies. "We can be brilliant together forever."
Helen pries his fingers off her wrist slowly, one by one, never breaking eye contact: "I'll be there with you forever anyway, Nikola." And as it's the first time she has even mentioned what she gained from the Source Blood, he lets her slip from his grasp.
* * *
One night, when Helen's asleep, John promises James and Nigel that if Nikola ever gets loose before they have found a solution to his insatiable hunger, he'll take Nikola someplace far, far away and leave him there. James points out that Helen would never forgive him; John knows it's true but he's also seen the way Nikola looks at Helen and he knows that if any harm were to come to her, he would never forgive himself. Nikola escaping is a lose-lose situation for him. Nigel nods gravely and checks Nikola's restraints for the third time that night; James grips John's shoulder and promises to work harder on the supplements.
* * *
When his eyes go bleary and the pounding in his head is too intense and he just can't look at his microscope any longer, James curls up in the corner with Helen's shawl over his knees and watches John teleport from one end of the room to the other. Gregory had brought down some paint and there are two white squares on the stone floor, one at each end of the cellar, and John practices teleporting to a specific place. It takes some practice, more practice than James would have thought, but John gets better, day by day. The first few days, he would miss the boxes by a foot or two, slamming his shoulder into the cinderblock walls when he landed off-balance. (Helen couldn't bear to watch, bent over their lab table, terrified that he would rematerialize inside the wall itself.) Now John can teleport directly into the white painted boxes more often than not. When he hasn't slept in three days, James imagines he can actually see John race across the room in his pure energy form.
Sometimes John and Nigel have races: can John get from one side of the cellar and back before Nigel disappears and reappears again? James serves as judge (although Nikola shouts his opinion of who's won when he's lucid) and their playful bickering dissolves into raucous laughter.
Helen calls them "children" and sighs loudly to let them know how silly she thinks they're acting, but James doesn't miss the way her mouth quirks or her eyes crinkle when John howls joyously in victory.
* * *
They work around the clock and take turns dozing on the cots Gregory brought them, but every few days their sleep cycles coincide. They don't want to leave Nikola alone (out of solidarity, guilt, scientific curiosity) so they curl up together on the cots, exhausted. It's improper bordering on wildly inappropriate for Helen to sleep in the company of four men, but they're bonded now more than ever before and she's never been one to care about such things.
She dreams of the experiment, her own injection and then each of them in turn, becoming more than they ever were. She wakes, gasping, and waves off John's sleepy concern.
"Just a nightmare, go back to sleep." It's an easy lie, easier than explaining the way her blood hums and how much she enjoys it.
In the low light of the gas lamp they left burning on the lab table, she inspects the room, making sure everything is still and safe before she succumbs to her exhaustion again. Nikola is quiet, thankfully, just a few feet away. They've moved the two cots her father provided together to form an admittedly small bed, but the four of them fit when they sleep on their sides, back to front. John is on the end facing Nikola, his hand reaching behind him to rest protectively and boldly on her hip. James is behind her, his fingers tangled in her hair. When she stirs, he tightens his hold on her curls, not enough to hurt but enough for Helen to realize that John and James have ensured she can't wake without them knowing. She turns her head just enough to look for Nigel over James' shoulder but she finds only an empty but breathing pair of trousers and a work shirt. She smiles and vows to tease him about his lack of control in the morning.
John twitches in his sleep and his fingers press into her hip, like he's making sure she's still there. She covers his hand with hers and closes her eyes.
* * *
Nikola watches them sleep from his chair, clenching his jaw as Helen settles back down between the others. He can smell them; he recognizes each of them individually, like he's known their scents for years without ever realizing it. But there is something else, among the dirt and the kerosene and the blood, a smell that is unique to the five of them as a whole, as though all this time spent together has created a heady mix that is not just a combination of their individual scents, but something altogether different.
He breathes it in.
For the first time since he inherited his birthright he misses them.
* * *
It's nearly five weeks since their experiment before they perfect the nutrient supplements that satisfy Nikola. One last test batch, mixed in with the plasma from a pint of cow's blood they purchased at the butchershop two blocks away (the butcher doesn't bother asking why anymore), and he's barely swallowed two mouthfuls before they can see his muscles relax. By the time he's finished the whole pint, he's calmer and completely lucid. They wait a few hours to make sure it holds, but when he doesn't get hungry again by the end of the night, they untie his restraints and let him take a walk around the room.
Two days later they feel comfortable calling the supplements a success. James goes upstairs and talks two bottles of wine out of Gregory and they sit on the cots drinking straight from the bottle.
"To the brightest people in England," John toasts, and wipes the mouth of the bottle clean with his shirt cuff before handing it to James.
"Oh!" Nigel turns and claps Nikola on the shoulder; neither of them flinches at the contact and Helen silently thrills at the fact that the results of her experiment haven't permanently damaged their relationships. "You! You were humming!"
"I was what?" Nikola steals the wine from James (Hey!) and finishes off the bottle.
"A few weeks ago, you were humming this song over and over and over again. It was driving us crazy, what was it?"
"Oh yes, that." Nikola blushes and John touches Helen's elbow, making sure she sees it. "In my bloodthirsty stupor, I wrote a little song about us."
They all start to laugh at him and John struggles to open the second bottle of wine. Nikola swipes the bottle and growls but rather than attack, as he would have a few days ago, he uses his long fingernails to pry the cork free.
"Only the chosen left alive," he sings and takes a swig of wine, "immortals all the holy five."
Summary: I wrote Five fic! After "Normandy," I just couldn't resist. This doesn't take place after "Normandy" though, it takes place right after they injected the Source Blood.
Words: 2,078
Disclaimer: It all belongs to Damian.
Notes: I LOVE THE FIVE.
Nikola hums a mindless little tune none of them can identify for days on end.
Low and quiet, head lolling back against the headrest of the chair to which they've strapped him, he hums the same few notes over and over and over. When they knock him out every few hours, when the hunger gets too bad and they can't watch him buck against the restraints any longer, the unconscious silence is a welcome respite from his melody.
"What do you think it is?" Nigel asks, bent close to Nikola's face, as though the answer may be written in the tense crease across the bridge of his nose.
"Watch yourself, Nigel," John warns, and pulls Nigel away with a firm grip on the back of his vest. Nikola may be sedated but his teeth were still bared in a snarl when he went under and his features haven't righted themselves yet. Nigel shrugs out of John's grip and straightens his vest, but his eyes never leave Nikola's face.
"Do you recognize the song?" He addresses the room, questioning them all, but none of them answer. "Maybe it's something from when he was a boy; what does the Serbian anthem sound like?"
"Ask him when he wakes," James grunts. He's just as curious as Nigel, but there are other things to think about (so many things) and while he's finding it easier and easier to manage his thoughts (so many thoughts), the name of Nikola's new favorite song is decidedly towards the bottom of the list.
Nigel bristles at James' tone and Helen, ever the mediator, rests her hand on his arm and softens James' words: "He should be fine in a few hours, we'll ask him then." She smiles tightly. "You know if it's something from Serbia he'll be thrilled to tell us all about it."
* * *
When they realize just exactly what they've done by injecting the Source Blood, they can't hide their experiment from Gregory any longer. Their recklessness and his disappointment is evident in his frown as he ushers them into an unused room in the Sanctuary's cellar. He watches them wheel in Nikola, strapped to a gurney, and his eyes flash on Helen's: "You put this right." Helen can't remember the last time her father spoke to her as if she were a child, but the admonishment drives home and she bows her head in acknowledgment.
* * *
They hypothesize that his appetite is so great because the cow's blood they are feeding him isn't providing the right nutrients. James volunteers a pint to test the theory, but rather than satiate him, his friend's blood only makes Nikola wilder, hungrier, stronger.
Even after they've put him back on cow's blood, James can't go near him for a week without Nikola crying in ecstasy and want.
* * *
They've managed to synthesize a few supplements that they hope will help when animal blood can't quite satisfy Nikola's hunger. The only problem is that he can't stomach the stuff; when he's hungry enough to need it, he tears at his restraints and screams himself hoarse trying to free himself. When it gets that bad, they knock him out with horse tranquilizers (on the worst days, two doses) and feed him the supplements intravenously.
In a moment of frustration late one night, Nigel wonders why aloud. "We're keeping him alive just so he can live chained in a cellar?" The question hangs in the stagnant air for a full minute as they all digest the uncomfortable truth in Nigel's words.
"We'll figure out something else; until then, we're buying time," Helen insists and no one argues with her because this whole thing was her idea to begin with.
* * *
They need another sample of Nikola's blood. No one likes doing it: if he's unconscious, it feels like stealing; if he's awake, it feels like betrayal. They take turns. John took it last so Helen grabs the syringe.
For someone just waking from rather heavy sedation, Nikola's eyes are disturbingly clear. He must see it in her face, the way she recognizes that he shouldn't be this lucid this soon. He grins wickedly and lisps, "A vampire's metabolism is a glorious thing, is it not?" (For as stoic as she can be, she has never been able to hide anything from these men, her men.) For the first time that day, Helen wonders whether they made a mistake injecting the Source Blood. It won't be the last time.
He watches her with those clear eyes while she takes another sample of his blood. It's a testament to how hungry he is that even the sight of his own blood makes him salivate. She turns to walk away but she had been standing too close and his hand snaps around her wrist, holding her in place. "Nikola," she warns, low. Any louder and the rest of them will come running. Maybe she can talk him down.
"Let me do it," he begs, just as quiet, but with that devil's gleam in his eye. She squints in confusion. "Let me turn you," he clarifies. "We can be brilliant together forever."
Helen pries his fingers off her wrist slowly, one by one, never breaking eye contact: "I'll be there with you forever anyway, Nikola." And as it's the first time she has even mentioned what she gained from the Source Blood, he lets her slip from his grasp.
* * *
One night, when Helen's asleep, John promises James and Nigel that if Nikola ever gets loose before they have found a solution to his insatiable hunger, he'll take Nikola someplace far, far away and leave him there. James points out that Helen would never forgive him; John knows it's true but he's also seen the way Nikola looks at Helen and he knows that if any harm were to come to her, he would never forgive himself. Nikola escaping is a lose-lose situation for him. Nigel nods gravely and checks Nikola's restraints for the third time that night; James grips John's shoulder and promises to work harder on the supplements.
* * *
When his eyes go bleary and the pounding in his head is too intense and he just can't look at his microscope any longer, James curls up in the corner with Helen's shawl over his knees and watches John teleport from one end of the room to the other. Gregory had brought down some paint and there are two white squares on the stone floor, one at each end of the cellar, and John practices teleporting to a specific place. It takes some practice, more practice than James would have thought, but John gets better, day by day. The first few days, he would miss the boxes by a foot or two, slamming his shoulder into the cinderblock walls when he landed off-balance. (Helen couldn't bear to watch, bent over their lab table, terrified that he would rematerialize inside the wall itself.) Now John can teleport directly into the white painted boxes more often than not. When he hasn't slept in three days, James imagines he can actually see John race across the room in his pure energy form.
Sometimes John and Nigel have races: can John get from one side of the cellar and back before Nigel disappears and reappears again? James serves as judge (although Nikola shouts his opinion of who's won when he's lucid) and their playful bickering dissolves into raucous laughter.
Helen calls them "children" and sighs loudly to let them know how silly she thinks they're acting, but James doesn't miss the way her mouth quirks or her eyes crinkle when John howls joyously in victory.
* * *
They work around the clock and take turns dozing on the cots Gregory brought them, but every few days their sleep cycles coincide. They don't want to leave Nikola alone (out of solidarity, guilt, scientific curiosity) so they curl up together on the cots, exhausted. It's improper bordering on wildly inappropriate for Helen to sleep in the company of four men, but they're bonded now more than ever before and she's never been one to care about such things.
She dreams of the experiment, her own injection and then each of them in turn, becoming more than they ever were. She wakes, gasping, and waves off John's sleepy concern.
"Just a nightmare, go back to sleep." It's an easy lie, easier than explaining the way her blood hums and how much she enjoys it.
In the low light of the gas lamp they left burning on the lab table, she inspects the room, making sure everything is still and safe before she succumbs to her exhaustion again. Nikola is quiet, thankfully, just a few feet away. They've moved the two cots her father provided together to form an admittedly small bed, but the four of them fit when they sleep on their sides, back to front. John is on the end facing Nikola, his hand reaching behind him to rest protectively and boldly on her hip. James is behind her, his fingers tangled in her hair. When she stirs, he tightens his hold on her curls, not enough to hurt but enough for Helen to realize that John and James have ensured she can't wake without them knowing. She turns her head just enough to look for Nigel over James' shoulder but she finds only an empty but breathing pair of trousers and a work shirt. She smiles and vows to tease him about his lack of control in the morning.
John twitches in his sleep and his fingers press into her hip, like he's making sure she's still there. She covers his hand with hers and closes her eyes.
* * *
Nikola watches them sleep from his chair, clenching his jaw as Helen settles back down between the others. He can smell them; he recognizes each of them individually, like he's known their scents for years without ever realizing it. But there is something else, among the dirt and the kerosene and the blood, a smell that is unique to the five of them as a whole, as though all this time spent together has created a heady mix that is not just a combination of their individual scents, but something altogether different.
He breathes it in.
For the first time since he inherited his birthright he misses them.
* * *
It's nearly five weeks since their experiment before they perfect the nutrient supplements that satisfy Nikola. One last test batch, mixed in with the plasma from a pint of cow's blood they purchased at the butchershop two blocks away (the butcher doesn't bother asking why anymore), and he's barely swallowed two mouthfuls before they can see his muscles relax. By the time he's finished the whole pint, he's calmer and completely lucid. They wait a few hours to make sure it holds, but when he doesn't get hungry again by the end of the night, they untie his restraints and let him take a walk around the room.
Two days later they feel comfortable calling the supplements a success. James goes upstairs and talks two bottles of wine out of Gregory and they sit on the cots drinking straight from the bottle.
"To the brightest people in England," John toasts, and wipes the mouth of the bottle clean with his shirt cuff before handing it to James.
"Oh!" Nigel turns and claps Nikola on the shoulder; neither of them flinches at the contact and Helen silently thrills at the fact that the results of her experiment haven't permanently damaged their relationships. "You! You were humming!"
"I was what?" Nikola steals the wine from James (Hey!) and finishes off the bottle.
"A few weeks ago, you were humming this song over and over and over again. It was driving us crazy, what was it?"
"Oh yes, that." Nikola blushes and John touches Helen's elbow, making sure she sees it. "In my bloodthirsty stupor, I wrote a little song about us."
They all start to laugh at him and John struggles to open the second bottle of wine. Nikola swipes the bottle and growls but rather than attack, as he would have a few days ago, he uses his long fingernails to pry the cork free.
"Only the chosen left alive," he sings and takes a swig of wine, "immortals all the holy five."