This fic is insisting on making itself longer and angstier than I expected but at least I made progress today????? Chapter 1 here
He’s inching down the wall now, trembling like an animal caught in a trap. Helen forces down the guilt now roiling inside her. He wouldn’t be like this if it wasn’t for her, and it’s her responsibility to fix it. “Nikola,” she says softly, tiptoeing towards him. “Just give me your hand. I can prove to you I’m real.”
Nikola just shakes his head and continues backing away from her. “No,” he hisses. “All this proves is that hell is real and that you’ve been sent here to torture me.”
Helen takes another tentative step. “Nikola, you’re not in hell. You’re at Byrnison Outpost, like I told you, and you’re very much alive.”
He seems to consider this for a moment. “Then you’re a hallucination,” he says at last, his jaw tightening. “Just like all the others.”
It’s Helen’s turn to shake her head. “No,” she murmurs, swallowing back the lump in her throat. “This isn’t like Dane.”
She immediately regrets her words. The minute Nikola hears his brother’s name, his eyes flash with a wild, untamed rage. “See this is how I know you’re here to torture me,” he growls, jabbing a finger at her. “It isn’t enough for you to haunt me on your own, you have to go dredging up the past too!”
He then presses his body into a nearby corner, wedging himself in between the wall and the bookcase standing beside it.
Helen blinks back tears. She hates seeing him like this, so terrified and vulnerable, lashing out in a desperate effort to defend himself. “Nikola,” she tries again, still stepping towards him but leaving him an opening just in case he starts to feel cornered and in need of an escape. “I just meant that you’re not hallucinating. I’m really here. I promise.”
He shakes his head once more and wraps his arms around himself. “I don’t believe you.”
She takes a breath. “How can I prove it to you, then?”
His lip curls. “You can’t.”
”But what if I could? Hypothetically speaking?”
”Don’t think I don’t know what you’re doing,” he spits. “If you think weaponizing the scientific method against me is going to work, you’re sorely mistaken.”
Helen bites back a groan of frustration. If only he’d let her touch him again, she’s certain she could convince him. But he isn’t going to give in that easily. “What if I tell you something,” she suggests, her voice gentle. “Something only the real Helen Magnus would know.”
(@tinknevertalks no worries, I seriously don't mind at all 💖 And thank you. Sorry for the wait, but I hope the little fic is fun enough to make up for it.)
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ao3
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"A bit ironic, isn't it?" Nikola whispered, his characteristically sharp smile pulled tight by a grimace of pain. "Me, the last remnant of the glorious race of Sanguine vampiris, immortal and nigh unkillable, and yet you've watched me nearly succumb to the eternal finality of mortality far more often than I have you."
"Shut up, Nikola," Helen ground out, trying to stem the flow of the blood that was poring out of the wound from his chest with worrying speed. Her heart squeezed her throat nearly closed and only stubborn anger kept the tears from her eyes.
She couldn't believe she was here again. With Nikola's vampire gene active again she'd thought she'd be safe from this horror. Helen squeezed shut her eyes only to be immediately bombarded with the memory of the last time, -- when his eyes had closed and all that stood between her and a way to save him had been dwindling seconds and the amber prison encasing the sleeping queen.
But there was nothing here for Helen to smash through this time. Nothing she could batter against with all her desperate terror until the purple crystal cracked.
What she needed was to convince the one responsible to undo whatever it was they had done.
"I don't understand," came the very young voice of the rumored phoenix they'd come here to invite to the safety of the Underground Sanctuary. Their appearance was that of a child. Utterly ordinary in all senses except that the golden ringlets of their hair were encircling a face that was shockingly, -- though somewhat hazily, -- familiar to Helen. "I did good, why are you sad?"
Helen swallowed and looked at the abnormal who seemed to have taken on the appearance of a six or seven-year-old version of Helen herself. The abnormal who afterward had taken one look at Nikola, flashed with golden-red light and made him fall to his knees with a hole through his rib cage that wasn't closing the way it should be.
She swallowed, mind racing to find the best words. The abnormal's outer appearance might be a lie but something about the innocence she could see in their eyes made Helen sure that the childish confusion wasn't an act. And she knew how dangerous a juvenile abnormal with truly immeasurable power could be.
She made her voice as gentle as she could, keeping any trace of accusation off its tone. "You... hurt my friend, I--"
"Just friend? Will your cruelty know no end, dear? Your words pierce my heart, I shall henceforth know no joy--" Helen pressed her hands tighter against Nikola's bleeding wound. "--ow. That was uncalled for."
'When we get out of here I'm going to murder you myself,' Helen mouthed without sound and with a less than amused glare, letting Nikola read her lips.
She knew what it was he was trying to do, hoping that flirting obnoxiously would distract her from her worry and fool her into thinking that it wasn't as bad as all this blood was making it look. It didn't work, Nikola visibly couldn't quite keep his head up anymore, and even for a vampire, the pale grayness was getting a bit extreme.
"But he's one of the monsters," the child insisted "I'm supposed to hurt the monsters. I remember that."
"Rude," Nikola muttered.
But Helen barely heard him, her scrambling thoughts had already halted, catching the words of the phoenix as they echoed around them.
"You're supposed to?" she asked, as her mind for a moment finally put aside her fear for Nikola and started working on the mystery of the newest abnormal. "Of course, the phoenix is associated with sunlight, maybe not all the myths were inspired by the vampires spreading false rumors to protect themselves from the humans looking for and maybe finding their true vulnerability. It just wasn't literal sunlight that could harm them."
"Fascinating. But can we please stay on point and get the very nice Tiny Magnus from doing the world the great tragedy of snuffing out the life of Nikola Tesla just as things were starting to look up in his century-long plan to court the heart of one Helen Magnus? I expect great things from this millennia, you know."
The child took a few cautious steps closer to the two of them, suddenly visibly fascinated.
"He's a very weird monster. Usually, the monsters just say that they're going to squish my head or drink all of my blood or--"
"Usually?" Helen caught. "When exactly was the last time you met someone like my friend?"
"I don't know," they rolled their eyes in the exaggerated manner of kids who had only recently learned the power it gave them. "I'm too young to remember time. That's for my Olds. But I think it was lots and lots of Youngs ago."
She exchanged a silent look with Nikola. Apparently, the part of the myth speaking of a phoenix's constant death and rebirth had some grains of truth in it too.
"I see," Helen started out the sentence carefully, hand constricting against Nikola's chest and making him wince again. "Well, this is my friend Nikola. He's an irritating thorn in my side but he isn't here to hurt you or to hurt me; we just came here to ask you if you wanted to come with us to a safe Sanctuary. The... monsters you remember have been gone for a very long time, Nikola is the last one and he's not exactly the same as them. But there are other threats--"
"You're the very last monster?" The child's voice turned pained and Helen saw their eyes filling up with the kind of all-consuming loss that was eternally older than their borrowed face. "I'm the very last one too. It- hurts."
"Yes, well mine turned out to be--"
"Language, Nikola," she interrupted what was sure to be a string of words not meant for the ears of a child, even a very, very ancient one. And Helen couldn't help the way something sharp poked into a raw corner of her heart, -- which she knew would never truly heal, -- because Helen's younger face wasn't that different from what Ashley had looked like as a child and so it was difficult to stay objective in the face of the phoenix's apparent grief.
She opened her mouth to answer when Nikola coughed, blood spraying in a splatter with droplets hitting Helen's face, and she felt the breath freeze in her lungs.
He choked, eyes rolling behind the top of his eyelids and slipping closed as he slumped unconscious.
"No, Nikola!" she gasped in denial, hand flying to his neck, looking for a pulse. She couldn't- couldn't quite find--
Panic hit Helen like a colossal wave, shaking something vital off its axis. She couldn't do this, -- he couldn't do this to her; he couldn't leave her as the last of the Five, to face centuries by herself with no Nikola Tesla there to show up like a bad penny every few decades and drink her wine cellar empty again; or to get her caught up in one of his insane schemes of world domination; or to use that brilliant mind of his to help her with the latest catastrophe; or to tell her he loved her with a quick quip but nothing but the truth behind his eyes.
The last time she'd kissed him Helen thought she was about to die. After, she'd neatly sidestepped it when Nikola had tried to bring it up. Frozen by the same fear that had once, centuries back -- or she supposed it would be more accurate to say, two versions of the same century back -- made her choose John as the safer option.
Because Nikola had always been full of frantic energy, swinging between ideas on wings that never landed from flight. She had misjudged both men so badly back then, blind to both the unhinged possessiveness in John and the true softness Nikola was capable of when not under threat of mockery or cruelty -- the softness he hid behind ego and careless humor.
He was waiting for her the way he'd once waited on those bloody pigeons, completely still, so as not to startle them into flight. Just proving that he was safe. That he could be trusted. That he would not twist their wings or bind their feet.
Of course, the birds didn't have to deal with the smug, self-satisfied heel-face turns that could leave Helen ready to strangle him at any given point in a day. But then, Helen knew herself well enough to know that without them she'd have grown bored in their friendship inside a single decade.
His unpredictability was what made him interesting.
She had kissed him because she'd known she'd regret not doing it. But if he died, Helen would regret--
"Please," she turned to the phoenix "please just let him heal. Whatever you did to him, take it back."
"But--"
"I know you were trying to help, that you saw someone from a species that once enslaved millions and did what you did in self-defense. I do understand. But--"
The child bent their head, something terribly old and alien briefly flickering to awareness in the depths of their eyes.
"Your heart, is that what it looks like when it breaks? I had forgotten."
"Please," she begged again, voice hitching.
The child said nothing but they walked over, dropping on their knees and leaning over to hover with their small palm over the place where Helen's bloodstained hands still tried to press the blood back into Nikola's chest. Reluctantly, Helen withdrew.
There was a surge of something that was a mix of that golden-red light from before and Nikola's own power of electricity.
The child giggled. "Tickles." And pulled back.
At once, Helen took back her spot, feeling something heavy within her straining under threat of crumbling to dust in her arms. She felt one set of her heartbeats pulsing against her eardrum, then another, then--
Nikola gasped in a deep breath of oxygen as the torn skin above his heart knit back together, his eyes and nails growing pitch black as an instinctive growl was let loose from his throat. In her periphery, the phoenix didn't so much as flinch, and some buried corner of Helen's mind wondered if here there was finally the answer to how the combined power of humanity and the abnormals had managed to destroy the terrible empire of Nikola's ancestors.
"Nikola," she said calmly, trying to get him back into the present, and to jar his rational mind back into place.
"Helen," he blinked until his teeth lost most of their sharpness and his eyes regained their stormy blue, a smug grin already sliding into place. "Are those tears for me? I'm touch--"
Dopamine was flooding her system full of relief. And Helen knew she could use it as an excuse for grabbing him by the collar and pulling him forward to smash his lips against hers. For kissing him. Even for the tears that kept running down her cheeks now.
But the truth was she didn't know if she wanted to use an excuse anymore. All that those excuses had ever given her was yet another notch in her list of regrets.
And Helen Magnus already had so many of those.
"I hate you, Nikola Tesla," she ground out as soon as they finally parted. "You are reckless and selfish and I need to change the hiding place for my Cheval Blanc 1947 bottle every other day when you're around, and--"
An exhilarated smile began to rise across Nikola's face with her every word.
"--and if you do that to me again I am going to--"
"Do something absolutely horrid to me. You know I have every faith in you, dear," Nikola interrupted her, softly wiping something from her face -- tears, or the splattering of blood that had come when he'd collapsed, she didn't care, -- his face turned serious as his touch lingered over the side of her face. "I love you too, Doctor Helen Magnus."
The glittering lights sparkled on the iridescent beads of Helen’s dress and Nikola’s tie pin as they twirled around the dance floor, Nikola leading them like a shadow at sunset. “The singer’s no Sammy,” he murmured into her hair, “but this, the lights - you in that dress - more than makes up for it.”
She hummed appreciatively, her fingers gently squeezing his arm as they moved, enjoying the sensation of the material keeping her skin from his. “It is a nice way to spend the evening, I must say, but please be quiet whilst she sings.”
The laughter that bubbled from her chest at his expression - faux hurt but quickly mutating to mirth - fizzed like the champagne they drank earlier in celebration, and in the lights of glitterball, they danced the night away.
So I started the "Nikola has a death wish after he thinks Helen died in the finale" fic and honestly this part is kind of giving me a laugh despite it being depressing
”Nikola,” she repeats, giving him a little shake. “Nikola, you have to stay with me.”
This isn’t real. It can’t be. Helen is dead. He’s sure of it. This has to be a hallucination concocted by his dying mind to help him cope with his final moments. Or perhaps he’s already dead, and this is an unholy mirage sent by the devil himself to torture him for all eternity. The woman he couldn’t save, now failing to save him - a moment doomed to repeat itself time and time again until he descends into madness. It’s a fitting punishment, honestly. He couldn’t have picked a better sentence for himself.
”Nikola, don’t you dare close your eyes!”
Nikola’s eyelids start to droop again. What would it matter if he takes a little nap? He’s probably dead anyway. When he wakes up, he’ll just relive this same scene again on an endless loop. This is the end. This is his fate.
”Nikola, you bastard, I swear if you die on me like this I will find you in the afterlife and kill you again myself - “
Helen sets to work washing while Nikola takes on the drying. They work in silence for a few minutes, Helen handing off clean items to Nikola, who wipes them with a towel before placing them down on the counter. She’s on her second plate before she decides to speak.
”I’ve never taken you for the menial labor type,” she quips.
Nikola grins, taking the next plate from her. “Helen, do you really not recall my thankfully brief career as a ditch-digger? You know, after Edison so rudely scorned my genius and turned me out on the street?”
Helen laughs. “You mean the ‘career’ I saved you from by sending George Westinghouse your way?”
Nikola pauses to frown at her. “What do you mean you sent him?”
At that, Helen blushes scarlet. “That’s right,” she mumbles, more to herself than to him. “I never told you.”
Nikola blinks in confusion. “No, you didn’t,” he says. “I would’ve remembered if you had.”
Helen hands him another plate, taking care to avoid his gaze. For a moment it seems as if she wants to avoid the subject, but then she changes her mind. “It was the year after John,” she starts. “And Whitechapel.”
Nikola runs his eyes over her face, taking note of the slight tremble in her lip. He waits for her to continue.
After a brief pause, Helen takes a breath and presses on. “You’d sent me letters,” she says, “inviting me to stay with you in America, at least until I could sort myself out. I thought about it quite a lot, actually, but I was so lost and unsure of what to do. So I just…did nothing for awhile. Then your letters stopped coming. I got worried that something had happened to you, and I was about to finally hop on a boat to New York when I read some newspaper article about the ditch-digging thing.”
She swallows before speaking again. “I was so heartbroken that you’d fallen on hard times, and I felt like I needed to do something to help. I remembered that my father had once been good friends with Westinghouse, so I reached out to him on whim and told him about you.”
Nikola stares at her, the pieces clicking into place. “That’s how he knew where to find me.”
Helen nods, still refusing to look at him. “I told him not to tell you it was me,” she murmurs. “I knew you wouldn’t want to accept charity, so I decided to keep it quiet. I wanted you to feel like it was all your doing. And in a way, it still was. Westinghouse was genuinely impressed by your work and he truly did want to partner with you.”
A lump begins to form in Nikola’s throat. “That partnership saved me,” he says softly. “I would’ve gone broke, maybe even died in those ditches if it hadn’t.”
”I know,” Helen replies. “I was thrilled when I learned that you’d finally bounced back.”
Nikola’s eyes start to burn. All this time, she was the key to his success, and she let him take all the credit for it. “Why?” he asks, his voice breaking.
At last, Helen turns to him, her own eyes glassy with tears. “Because I cared about you,” she whispers. “And you deserved so much more than Edison’s bullshit.”
That does him in. Nikola drops the towel on the counter and reaches for Helen, cradling her face as his lips meet hers in a gentle but impassioned kiss. Helen’s hands come to rest on his chest, the dishes now forgotten.
