tamingthemuse | Prompt 202 – Now hatred is by far the longest pleasure – Constant

Title: Constant
Fandom: Sanctuary
Prompt: Now hatred is by far the longest pleasure
Warnings: A bit of an angsty look into John’s mind. Spoilers for End of Nights and Haunted
Rating: Teenager
Summary: In John’s mind love is fleeting, but hate is an overpowering constant.

~*~*~*~*~

Now hatred is by far the longest pleasure;
men love in haste but they detest at leisure.

- Lord Byron, Don Juan Canto XIII (1823)

~*~*~*~*~

Kneeling in one of the Sanctuary’s cells, Helen pointing a gun at him, John reflected on the silence, the peace in his soul. Something had changed. Ripping the violence, fear, insanity, hatred out of his being and throwing it to the wind. In brief seconds his mind wander to examine every detail of his life in detail, from his time as Jack the Ripper to his systematic destruction of the Cabal and could only conclude it was not him. His actions had not been his own, at least not entirely. Yes, John had once viewed the streetwalkers he would slaughter as lesser beings, but he never hated them as he one day would. Yes, he had sought revenge for his daughter’s death, but before injecting himself with the source blood he would not have reveled in feeling the blood of those responsible on his hands.

The first time John had truly hated was when he was twelve. A pair of thieves had stolen his mother’s purse, slitting her throat when she cried out. Again he felt hatred when he realized Tesla’s intention of wooing Helen. The knowledge in his mind that she was not so fickle, or easily swayed, did little to temper the rage in his heart at the thought of Tesla touching her or laughing with her as he did. Before Helen had procured the vial of vampire blood he had hated, but not so strongly or as often as he had after.

He hated almost everyone after that. The jealous rage that Tesla had sparked earlier became an inferno every time he saw them together and it took all his self control, and the idea of loosing Helen, not to teleport him somewhere very unpleasant. Nigel’s joking nature no longer amused him as it once did, and every time Helen laughed, or told a joke of her own in response, he couldn’t quell the sense of ownership: Helen’s smile should be for him and him alone. Helen’s eager discussions and debates with James took a great deal of her time, time she could be spending with him. A deep dark part of his mind could not help but whisper that she regarded him as the intellectual John would never be. After this he gained a perverse amusement from misleading him in his thoughts of the Ripper case. Reveling in the fact that Watson was asking the advice of the very man who he hunted: his best friend.

For all the hatred in his life, he had only loved once. Malevolence to almost every life form he encountered only opposed by his utter devotion to one woman, whom he could not harm if his life depended on it. The only person he had never hated, but perhaps the one who had given him the most reason to do so. Even now, as she leveled the gun at his head John Druitt could not bring himself to place any blame on Helen Magnus. Still it was unfair: their love had sparked so bright in Oxford, their relationship so meaningful for both that they did not wait for the wedding to consummate it, yet the torch had burned so fast it was extinguished within a year. The darkness and hatred that had followed had never been so potent, but it had been much more persistent. His hatred had been as constant as Helen, but it had been closer for so much longer. Men love in haste but they detest at leisure.