#(ok snork mimimimimimimi time gn)

[snakeningel]

prompt: "could you imagine?" w/ helward

never let it b said that im not a man of the people. ficlet under readmore.

"Could you imagine? I'm certainly neither hero nor god." Jack Seward is not normally a man oft taken by flights of fancy, after all, he sees himself as too much of a rationalist to be carried away on the buoyant forces of fantasy and hope. Yet the presence of his dearest professor always seems to untether him from those steady rocks of reality, sending the two of them adrift on the wild waves of outlandish theories that he cannot help but be swept along by. Still, this hypothesis may be a bridge too far, even for a pet student otherwise unshakable in his loyalty. So with something of a scoff, Jack cannot help but question the object put before him.

If medical school had taught Jack anything at all, it was that Doctor van Helsing is nothing short of a hurricane of personality, and attempting to resist the man's charms is an exercise in futility. If Jack were to think of it, he could not have explained how a halfhearted slip of the tongue led to him here, half-bent over his professor's desk and peering down at a book too weathered to even be called ancient. All he had admitted to was the vaguest curiosity regarding his own quirks and mannerisms; even as astute a student as he is, Jack could not understand the relationship between that and this book of scrawled tales. Even the greatest of charms and smartest of men cannot convince a doctor of stories written millennia ago.

A heavy hand comes down on his back, and it takes every muscle in his scrawny body to not crumple onto this doubtlessly priceless manuscript. (Really, Jack should be proud that his elbows only buckled a little under the unexpected gesture; as great a man as Van Helsing is, regulation of strength does not count among his many skills).

"Of course, Friend Jack," Yet as always, Van Helsing's voice is full of nothing if not confidence, the rumble of his sharp consonants traveling down to purr against Jack's bones. "There are many things men write not because they are true, but they are mirror of a mirror of what they see in the world. We are doctors, so maybe we see only what is in front of our hands and what we know what we can call real in touch and hold and smell, but if you see a reflection of a tree from pond to mirror to your eyes, you will not say that the tree does not exist, no? Maybe witch and monster and hero do not exist, maybe they do. But you are no more strange than flower that do not grow in the soil of your homeland or mine, if only we see it in the ink-stroke of the other do we know it exist, and you are not the only one to ever be, ja?"

Perhaps a normal man would stumble over the words that fall from Van Helsing's mouth, but Jack has been a scholar of his master long enough to understand it just as he does Latin or Greek. The warmth of his mentor's hand burns like a coal against his back, the heat radiating through the layers of fine fabric, yet Jack could not find it within himself to pull away. His professor is a hurricane that is not easily denied or swayed, but those wild winds always lead him to a steadier shore than ever before. How many men who claimed marriage to the sea ever match that tender devotion and wholehearted trust?

"I —" The words neatly printed on yellowed paper seems heavier with meaning and ink under Jack's gaze now. Brotherhood, devotion, a soul split in two. Something within him settles like a beast soothed, its desperate howls finally answered by echoes of those who had once held the same animal bound beneath human skin. But in that moment, Jack knows that even those words pale in comparison to the devotion he holds for his mentor; how could one love a man in the same way one would worship a force of nature?

"Thank you, professor." And how rare is it to be cherished by someone far larger than life? Too many gods in the world require sacrifices of bone and flesh, yet when Van Helsing's eyes crinkle with joy, Jack knows that his god needs only gratitude from a lone disciple.