A Random Act of Violence a Day will keep the Insufferable Sexy Genius away
Disclaimer: I do not own anything in Sanctuary. Oh but if I did...
Author Note: I would like to thank my Beta-reader Evelyn Sanders. You are a miracle worker deary. Also, reviews are welcome, but if you read this I will be sooo happy. Enjoy.
Helen threw her door open, slamming it harder than necessary. She had never been so angry in her life. Scratch that-she had been this angry and upset when John had turned out to be Jack. This was worse. She hated, hated the man! Not John, no He Who Must Not Be Named. Good God! She had resorted to Harry Bloody Potter! She didn't care; she refused to even think his stupid name.
Her office appeared silent, quite in its solitude. It needed to change, now. She grabbed the closest breakable object and chucked it at her stained glass window. Luckily she had made it so no one would ever break the window in her Sanctuary after Henry's jumping stunt two years ago. How, she had sworn herself to secrecy?
Screaming helped, it did. Throwing a tantrum as she pulled out her hair, yes that would help also. But she would never, ever succumb to the urge.
Young William would surely lock her up like Declan had wanted to do when she had ratted out the stupid snitch. He would most definitely have a reason to do so now. She found no anger in her bones for Will.
Only him, she thought, as she threw a random snow globe at the wall, shattering it in to a million pieces. It made her sad to think that she had no pencils to break; just pens, on top of pens, and more pens.
She realized, suddenly, as she looked at the glass haphazardly lying on the floor, that she wished that she had more things to throw.
She looked down at her feet and realized in her anger she had kicked off her boots. It mattered not, a little glass to bloody up her carpet sounded lovely.
She found one more picture frame, and when it broke she crumpled to the ground and let the tears fall, the glass easing into her knees. The pain was not instant, but when it came she wished she could feel absolutely nothing, or indulge in some mind-numbing paraphernalia. Unfortunately, James had taken her last stash of cocaine. Bloody man! It made her tears fall more when she realized she had no right to be angry with a dead man.
Yes, it had been years since Helen had allowed herself to be completely out of her mind mad, or let someone get to her as he had done. But the man had found a way. She chalked it up to too much alcohol consumption or the man becoming impossibly more intelligent.
Helen knew he could die now, but she still dared him to come into the room just so she'd have a reason to shoot him. The only down-side to that would be that she would feel guiltier than she all ready did. Not for ruining her office, but for hating her best friend; her only friend left in the bloody f-ing world.
It sounded a bit too dramatic and she could not deny that it oozed awkward cynicism.
She needed a drink. Vodka, whiskey, rum, it didn't matter, everything except wine, she could not handle wine. She took out all the drinks in her cabinet and six of her favorite red shot glasses and started to pour. She wanted to forget to the need to feel sorry for herself.
Getting wasted only sounded desirable in thought. She did not want to be intoxicated, she just wanted her revenge...or to give him a piece of her mind.
She took seven shots of the strongest Vodka she could find in rapid succession, and left her office in search of the stupid insufferable, sexy genius.
The alcohol worked wonders for her knees, she no longer cared that they had glass sticking out of them or that her dress was ruined. It did not do wonders for her mood; in fact as she stomped through her hallway on the way to his lab, she became even angrier.
She supposed she looked stark raving mad: the glass in her knees, her blue dress ruined, her tear stained cheeks, and the wavering of her steps. She knew there was a reason she had hired a psychologist, she had simply forgotten how to talk to one. William seemed so young. He could not possibly understand. He, he would never dare say she was certifiably crazy-again-for he had no room to talk.
She began to limp, the alcohol wearing off much too fast.
"Damn it, he's never going to understand. I knew I should have stayed in my office and drank till I passed out. This, this is ridiculous, I should have just stayed in London." Helen slurred randomly as she tripped over her feet. Any screaming she had done before had not been as loud or as frightening as the one she expressed when she landed on her knees.
Pain shot through her body, with the tears it was getting harder to scream. She could barely breathe. All she wanted to do was...
Sleep.
"Helen, why? Now you will get my new suit all bloody, oh well at least it's better than getting your expensive carpet replaced. I suppose I better take you to the infirmary." He looked down at her body and realized why she had passed out. He sighed at the disarray of her dress.
"Well at least now I know you're a screamer." He said coyly. Nikola kissed her forehead, picked her up gently, and walked briskly to the infirmary to patch her up.
The glass took ten minutes to get out. Nikola was no surgeon, but he was exceptional with his hands. With a couple more little surgeries to make sure the all the glass was out and infection wouldn't occur, Helen would be running to and from the bad guys in heels in a matter of weeks.
He moved his hand through his hair in exasperation. Nikola knew he had pissed her off. That's what happens when he tried too hard to explain things to her. His damned temper, yes he had one, got in the way when arguing how he still had the right to find a way to become a vampire again. Of course Helen had the right to be angry. The Cabal had taken her daughter and basically been the cause of her death. Losing his identity was not the same as the loss of a daughter, he knew that. Or, on second thought, it could have been that time of month for her, if 159 year old women still...he digressed.
It was really the screaming that caught his attention. When he found her passed out and bleeding he thanked whatever deity who would care to listen that it had been just her knees.
When Helen had found out that John was really Jack, she had not taken it well. James and Nigel had kept him away from the mess and Helen for a whole month. She had told him it was an accident. Nikola knew otherwise.
James could still call John a friend when he was alive, but Nikola never forgot or forgave him for the nervous wreck he had turned Helen into.
Nikola had experienced many emotional breakdowns, but Helen, she gave the term a different definition entirely. If James had not been a prominent, common sense Doctor, Helen would have died.
This occurrence was obviously not as severe as her bath tub filled with copious amounts of blood.
He wondered, as he sat down on the chair next to her bed if it had been something as painful, other than their argument that had made her act so rashly and out of character. The whole thing boggled his otherwise massively brilliant, mind.
He just wished he wasn't so tired. The couple bottles of wine had kicked his ass into a sort of retribution. The wine he had appropriated from Helen's cellar had been the reason why he only heard Helen when her screams had crescendo-ed and grated at his last nerve. Truth be told, he had marginally ignored her because he did not think it was Helen; maybe one of the children, or one of the pesky abnormals she let roam around, but never his Helen.
He had only gone out of his lab to get some snacks, (yes drinking gave him the munchies now); and to shut whoever up because they were giving him a colossal migraine.
Nikola was shocked back into his senses when he realized who it was. No other thing had shocked him quicker into soberness. It felt as though she had slapped him, instead of punching him as she did an hour ago. His eye still burned to the point of tears. He realized then, that the wine had made him quite emotional. He wondered if the Nubbins or something akin to them had escaped and had begun to wreak havoc in the Sanctuary.
No woman had ever made him cry-scratch that-Helen had-once; but he demanded his body not to do so again on account of one measly black eye and a bruised-probably broken jaw. Oh…he wished he had more wine. After the Bordeaux incident, Helen had replaced all the wine in her cellar with cheap, nonsensical wine. He had dared not touch the now vile, tasteless drink, but desperation was a bitch.
It hurt his once dead heart that even cheap wine could still get him intoxicated. Nothing in his life had ever scared him more, until he saw what she had done to herself and how she must have destroyed her office.
He remained glad Henry and especially young William had not found her. They would not have understood. He barely understood. Oh, he wanted to, but as all the Five were complex, Helen was normal comparatively. She was not invisible, a vampire genius, or a cold blooded killer. Oh, she could act invisible and silent, she was knowledgeable-being an immortal Doctor had to count for something, and he was sure she did have a cruel bone in her body. Once in a great while had metaphorically and actually killed someone who deserved to die. It was a shame she could not kill John.
She had only shot Nikola out of irritation, not out of the pure hatred she harbored for John. Now, he was sure if he had not pilfered her gun away from her body, she would surely have done so when she woke up. She could still stab him with a needle in order to off him, so he had taken all the unnecessary needles and breakable items away from her reach. There was no more need to pointlessly harm him or her tonight.
He had given her enough morphine to keep an addict like James had been happy and sleepy for days. But Helen always had a certain amount of resistance to any type or form of drugs. Having a cold for her was a pain in the ass.
He recalled in 1920 that she had been sick for three months with a terrible case of the sniffles. It was not pretty, but he still thought she was beautiful, no matter that she was covered in snot. James had tried everything-short of a miracle-and acted as if Helen were on her death bed. Nikola stayed by her side while James did the grunt work. James untimely failed. Nikola had never let him live it down.
Helen had been miserable only one other time, but he had not been around. Getting the wolf-boy wasted had been an enlightening experience, and one he would be re-enacting soon, just to get more information out of him that Helen refused to divulge.
While he was thinking his random thoughts, he saw that Helen had started to stir. He prayed once more that she would not wake up. He doubted anything she may say would be coherent. Hell, she may find a way to kill him.
When she calmed down, he went to her cabinet to take some Tylenol for his head and Vicodin for her knees when the morphine wore off. He didn't care if Vodka mixed with morphine and Vicodin was not a good idea, but he refused to see her in pain.
Before he came back, the small movement turned into a full on convulsion. She started to shake and with her eyes still closed, tears started to fall.
"Please, please Nikola forgive me. I never meant to hurt you. I am so sorry." Her face contorted, her body almost falling off the bed.
His hands held onto her arms, tight enough to leave inexcusable bruises, as he placed her back on the bed.
Her eyes flew open, and for the first time in 150 years Nikola saw fear in her eyes.
"Helen it's okay. Please do not strain yourself, your knees..." She calmed down, enough for him to feel comfortable sitting down again and catch his breath.
"Would you like to me read you a story Miss Magnus?" Her lips curled in an almost crooked smile.
"Acting coy is not the way to get on my good side again, but it's a good start."
If she wanted coy, he would give her coy, just to see the smile on her face again.
Throughout the years Nikola had learned many languages, but his accent almost always turned its back on him. He could almost never pull of a Southern accent.
When Helen had visited him in America, he had turned the cold, distant Helen Magnus into a girl on the metaphorical floor in a fit of giggles just by trying out his horrible accent.
He decided it would be best to pull of the best Rhett Butler impersonation. He knew how much she had enjoyed watching Gone with the Wind. He had never seen the tears in her eyes in the darkly lit theater, but he guessed later at the puffiness.
"My, Helen, why you are in fine appearance tonight; I dare say your actions earlier were not of your nature. Would you care to tell the man you injured if you are possessed or not? I do so miss the real you my dear."
Helen would have laughed at his atrocious southern accent if laughing would not have caused her an exuberant amount of pain. If lying motionless flat on her back hurt this much, she was sure that she would be bedridden for months. Then she remembered why her knees were the way they were and her anger amplified once more.
"I don't like you right now. If you want to stay can you at least get me some more morphine or if we're all out, the bottle of Vodka." After glaring at him for ten minutes, she closed her eyes with a huff and willed herself to sleep.
Nikola held her hand. A sniffle caught his attention.
He got up and leaned over her to give her kiss her forehead. He realized soon enough that she was still awake and crying.
"Helen would you like to tell the class why you are giving up?" Nikola asked as he searched her face for some semblance of the strong woman he knew two hours ago.
Helen's tore her eyes open to glare at him some more, but found she could only pull off looking sad.
"Why should the 'class' care if they told me they loved me and then rescinded their love an hour later? I don't even know if the 'class' still considers me a friend; but after the stunt the 'class' pulled I highly doubt they do." Nikola shot a hateful look at the floor that she did not see. Did she not listen anymore? And she had called him selfish…
"Don't you know Niko that the greatest thing in the world is to be loved and to love someone in return?" Helen rolled her eyes, excepting him to not understand what her comment really meant.
Nikola shook his head no. "Helen I never liked the Beatles. Music in general makes my head ache. You should know this, but you do seem awfully forgetful as of late." He smirked, but she caught the truth in his eyes.
"Whether or not you actually listened to them, The Beatles obviously never taught you that lesson." Nikola waved his hand in her general direction as if to say, 'continue.'
"Everyone I ever loved is gone or dead and then you pull something so conceited and cruel it made-makes me feel worthless." Nikola's eyebrows shot up at that comment.
Nikola shot up from his chair, pointing his jagged finger at her and shaking, all the while trying not to show her how outrageously angry she had made him.
"And you think I'm not as lonely as you? I've lost countless friends and lovers. I only was conceited and cruel enough to make sure you would never have to lose me. But you know, our friendship may not be what it used to be, but that doesn't mean I don't love you! I HAVE ALWAYS LOVED YOU! Perhaps you don't and you want me to die an old impoverished man."
"I don't understand why you would be so selfish and hurt me when I know you still love me. I don't know why you are pretending to care now if you don't." Helen felt better getting that off her chest. Halfway through she had started glaring at him, but she kept her eyes open and on him so he would understand that everything she was telling him was true.
"Oh Helen, I do care. I just thought..." Helen shifted her hand slightly to move herself up, but the movement made Nikola flinch.
God he felt like giving up too. Her words hurt him in a way he could not kill.
"What did you think? That I could possibly not love you? Oh Nikola you are so blind. You have no idea what it was in the years you were gone. I never wanted you to go, but you did not have a choice. I was so lonely without you Niko."
"Helen..."
"Why do you think I would want to have a child of a murderer? I loved him once yes, but I loved you more. I slept with him once and out of the love I had for the man and not the monster, I kept Ashley until I could stand the loneliness no longer."
"Is that what you told little Wilhelm?"
"Yes, and he believed me as much as you do now. I only ever wanted you Nikola."
Nikola looked at her, shooting her a distasteful confused look. "Helen you have always had me. If you wanted me so much why did you turn down every advance?" Nikola only sort of wanted to cry now. They had missed so many chances to be happy. He needed a reason why if she had loved him...why she had let him leave.
"I suppose I felt guilty. I never could be sure if you were sincere. Especially after you changed so much after taking the Source Blood. You slipped away from me and it seemed as if you did not care. So I turned to John. I wish now I had waited."
For the first time in quite a while Nikola gave her a kind smile. "We were never very good at normal conversation were we?"
"No I suppose we weren't."
"Do you love me Helen? Because I've loved you since the moment I laid eyes on you."
"I do love you Niko, and believe me it's not the drugs talking."
"Why were you so angry then? It was more than me wanting to be a vampire again right? I just wanted to find some way to spend eternity with you, even if you just wanted to be my friend."
"I wanted to be angry with you, but I was really angry with myself. I've made so many mistakes Nikola, which I can never take back. I wanted to blame someone else, but I am to blame."
"You take too much on yourself Helen; you do not have to save the world, just yourself. I could not bear losing you." Nikola kissed her and gave her more morphine so she could sleep. In their fifteen minute intense conversation he had realized her tears were not because her feelings were hurt, mostly he thought, it was because of her god damned knees.
She fought sleep for a few moments, but succumbed to the exorbitant amount of morphine Nikola gave her.
"Sleep well my love. In the morning we'll talk some more. Don't you worry your pretty little head; I'll be here when you wake up."
He barely caught her, "You'd better," before he too fell asleep. Stupid wine! He had wanted to watch Helen sleep. He could not be happier though, knowing that Helen loved him. He knew that everything would be all right. Now, if only her knees would heal up a bit faster...