Fanfic100-Dracula .084-"He"

Title: A Cruel Affair
Fandom: Dracula: General Novel
Characters: Jonathan Harker, Mina Harker, Arthur Holmwood, Jack Seward
Prompt: 084. He
Word Count: 1577
Rating: PG-13
Author's Notes: LDT here. Rather on the dark side of what could have happened after the novel.


Dear Mina,

The news brought by your last letter was indeed distressing, and I pray you accept my apologies. Nevertheless, I urge you to continue with your daily life as though nothing is amiss. The least that Jonathan needs is to learn of this now, after he has already been through so much. Don’t fret, dear, I will help, if you wish, make all the necessary arrangements and soon, God willing, it can be as though this never happened.

The rest of the letter, including the signature, was torn away, and God pity the man who wrote it when I find him, thought Jonathan. He had stumbled upon it accidentally, trying to find the pen which Mina had told him was in her nightstand drawer. Certainly this was not something his wife had planned for him to see. As he sat, staring at the paper in his hands, his fears of the last few weeks had been confirmed. Mina was having and affair.

The thought had crossed his mind at times. She had been acting strangely for three weeks now. She had been so distracted, keeping odd hours, even going to lengths to avoid him and their year-old son. He had tried to ignore the thought. What kind of husband would jump to conclusions like that so suddenly? But she was so distant, so unlike herself, and now this.

He sat on the edge of her bed, seething with anger and fighting back tears. Even after everything they had been through together, she could do this to him. Who was he? Jonathan crumpled the letter in his hand. He would find out who, if it took every last breath he had in him.

Something tense had finally snapped.

Mina came home about an hour later, finished with the errands she had gone out for. She removed her hat and gloves on her way up the stairs, but paused outside her bedroom door. It was open, which she was sure was not the way she had left it. Then she remembered, Jonathan’s pen. Shrugging it off, she went in and laid the hat and gloves on the bed.

“Who is he?”

Mina jumped, then turned around to see her husband. There was a look in his eye, familiar to her somehow, but certainly not because she had seen it in Jonathan before. He thrust a crumpled piece of paper at her. Gingerly she took it. When she smoothed it out and looked at it, her eyes widened slightly.

“Jonathan, it…it really doesn’t matter. You weren’t supposed to see this,” she said, a little shakily. He laughed with a voice foreign to him, but still unnervingly familiar.

“I rather figured that out. But I have seen it, and I want to know who wrote it. I think I have a right to know if my wife is carrying on correspondence with some mysterious fellow. Is he a stranger? No, no, I think he must be someone I know, or you wouldn’t go to such great lengths to hide it.”

The look in his eye, the sound in his voice, like a madman’s…like a madman’s as he had tried to warn them of the coming of the Master those years ago. Mina didn’t answer, she merely tried to push past her husband and flee the room.

*******

Jonathan was unshaven, his clothes and his house were in disarray, and he didn’t care. His mind was bent to a single task, and nothing else mattered until he had resolved the matter at hand. He’d been alone in the house for a week now, ever since the morning he work up to find Mina and little Quincey gone.

There was a knock on the front door. He ignored it. It came again. The third time, the knocker opened the door and came in, finding Jonathan in the dining room with papers and empty bottle strewn about. Jonathan cast his wild mocking gaze up to see the solemn face of Arthur Holmwood.

“You hit her?” said his friend in disbelief. “I wanted to think it was some mistake, but seeing at you like this, I’d believe you could do it. Bloody hell, Johnny, what’s the matter with you?”

Jonathan laughed. “Well, obviously you’ve heard plenty about me, surely you know what’s the matter. And when I find my dear, loving wife I can ask her the same question.”

“I don’t like the way you’re talking about her Johnny,” said Arthur, a warning note in his voice. “She hasn’t done a thing wrong, and you’re acting like a madman and accusing her of all sorts of unfounded things.”

“If you know where she went, tell me, otherwise, get out,” Jonathan shot at him.

Arthur looked at him steadily. “I know where she is, and your son too, but I am not going to tell you until you calm down with all this affair nonsense and start acting rational again.”

Arthur turned but stopped as Jonathan said, “Oh come off it, Art. We both know you would have done the same thing when you found out Lucy was having an affair. Who would you have suspected first? Would it have been Quincey or Jack who betrayed you first, hm?” It was all Arthur could do not to turn around and punch his friend in the jaw.

Jonathan peered out the window as Arthur left. He couldn’t see much in the dark carriage, but the gloved and skirt hem he caught sight of were enough. He watched as Arthur gave the driver their destination. Maniacally, he formed the same shapes with his mouth, then grinned as he spoke aloud the words which he knew they formed.

“Carfax Asylum for the lady, then home.”

*******

It would have been easier to climb the wall without his jacket, of course, but he wanted to remain as invisible as possible in the darkness. The heavy object in his pocket thudded against his leg as he dropped off the wall and ran across the grounds. However eerie the asylum was during the day, it was ten times that at night, and this night would be no exception.

He slipped in through a back way that Jack had shown him once. It led to what had once been a servant’s hallway, which led to the servant’s staircase, which led directly to the third floor rooms which served as Jack apartment. He forced himself to take the step slowly and quietly.

He pushed the door at the top open only a crack and peered through. It was Jack’s bedroom, as he had suspected. However, it was certainly not the doctor occupying the bed there at this moment. He slipped into the room and closed the door with a quiet click. He had the answer to his question, and now he would resolve the matter once and for all. He crept to the foot of the bed. Watching his sleeping wife, he reached into his pocket.

He was facedown on the ground with someone on top of him before he’d managed to get the pistol out of his pocket. He rolled, tossing the figure off, and scrambled to his feet. He was immediately knocked down again by a hard punch to the gut, but this time he landed on his back and could see his attacker. His surprise must have been obvious in his face.

“You’re not the fist madman I’ve wrestled down,” said Jack as he came down on top of him, “and you’ll not be the last.” The doctor wrested the gun out of Jonathan’s pocket and slid it across the floor to a now wide awake Mina.

“You bastard,” Jonathan shouted. “You hold your doctor’s oath so dear, but you’re still not above screwing your friend’s wife!”

“You are mad,” said Jack, who despite the fervor in his voce was still pinning Jonathan to the floor with surprising calmness. “Your wife has never been unfaithful to you.”

“I read your damn letter!” Jonathan shouted, finally regaining enough breath to throw Jack off of him. Seward leapt to his feet and planted himself firmly between husband and wife.

“Your wife had a miscarriage, Jonathan. A rather painful one which you were too blind to notice, and since she hadn’t even told you she was pregnant, she couldn’t bear to tell you she’d lost the baby. I offered her help as a doctor, nothing more.”

Jonathan froze. Jack was so infuriatingly calm as he spoke, and behind him Mina was crying, clutching the gun she had picked up. A miscarriage…but the letter…his thoughts were suddenly disjointed as he tried to make sense of what he had been told. He didn’t realize that Jack had moved closer until he felt the needle in his arm.

Jonathan slumped to the floor within seconds, unconscious. Mina rushed forward and grabbed Jack’s arm. “What did you do?” she asked.

“I gave him a heavy dose of chloral. It will knock him out for the rest of the night, and hopefully in to morning when we’re all rested we can settle this.” Jack took the gun and steered Mina out of the bedroom into the “sitting room”, where despite the commotion little Quincey still slept soundly. Jack settled Mina under some blankets on the settee and locked the bedroom door.

“Nevertheless,” he said as he left, “considering all that’s happened, I think perhaps it might be wise not to mention that the baby you lost was Arthur’s.”