AN: Written for the sfa_history battle, for the prompt Helen Magnus, Nikola Tesla. The infamous Orson Welles War of the Worlds radio broadcast.

Spoilers: Um…everyone knows War of the Worlds, right?

Rating: Teen

Disclaimer: Not mine. Not mine at all.

Characters: Nikola Tesla, Helen Magnus

Summary: Nikola is still bitter about the radio.

Making Waves

Nikola is still bitter about the radio, what happened and what didn't happen, but he owns one anyway, and listens to it when the ideas aren't flowing as readily as he'd like them to. It's almost like the machine taunts him and spurs him on. It's possible he gives it too much credit. Marconi is dead, after all, and too early at that, and Nikola decided a long time ago that a person in his condition probably shouldn't hold too many grudges. If nothing else, it would prove exhausting.

It hasn't been his best week, all things considered. He's stuck on everything and the FBI has stepped up its surveillance and he's probably going to get kicked out of the hotel for being too lazy to actually pay his bills. The Americans don't want to pay him for the Death Ray, not yet, but they're keeping an eye on him just in case. He spent most of 1937 pretending to be ill, and he was hoping to stop that in '38, but so far things weren't looking up and the last time he checked, it was October, which made any improvements seem unlikely.

So he sits in his room and listens to the radio. It's the weather, which always makes him laugh, and then music, which he thinks is really the point of radio anyway, and then there's a knock on his door, and he is annoyed. He is not to be disturbed, and left explicit instructions thereto. The knock repeats, and he has half a mind to answer the door as a vampire before he recognizes the pattern and realizes that it's Helen Magnus. Mostly, he's just glad that he doesn't have to don the make-up that makes him look old and gaunt.

"Are you listening to the radio?" she says by way of greeting. She pushes right past him into the room, and takes his seat.

"I was," he says. "Before I was interrupted."

"Oh good," she replies. "You're not going to want to miss this."

Her hand is on the dial, and she turns the volume up just as the music is replaced by a serious voice announcing that there have been a number of strange explosions seen in the sky, which appear to come from Mars. He straightens, recognizing something about the words.

"Orson warned me last week," Helen says, her smile wide and positively fiendish. "He didn't tell me what, exactly, but he said I shouldn't miss it."

"Shush," Nikola says, even though his hearing is good enough that he could probably still hear the broadcast if he had a marching band in the room with them. He flops gracefully onto the floor and sits with his head just close enough to her knee that she cannot mistake that he's done it on purpose.

"Nikola," she chides.

"You took my seat," he reminds her. "Please, we're missing the news."

As they listen, the situation worsens immensely. Martians invade. New York is overrun. Thousands perish in the slaughter. Helen cannot stop laughing. It would be horribly distracting if only she wasn't she wasn't so exquisite.

"I can't believe they did this," Nikola says, during the intermission. "There will be a panic."

"Come now, Nikola," Helen says. "They've said it's a fiction. And it's a book."

"Do you really think anyone is listening that closely?" Nikola asks. "And as for the book, I highly doubt there are many people in New York who have read it."

"I suppose with the rumours of war it might be a bit much," Helen admits, but the smile is still on her face. "I cannot believe how much that actor sounds like Franklin."

"It should make the paper interesting tomorrow, in any case," Nikola says. "I wish you'd given me some warning. I could have got some champagne for the occasion."

"What ever is handy will be fine," Helen says, even though he hadn't exactly been offering. "But hurry, it's about to start again."

The sit with a bottle of Chateau Petrus between them, and toast to the fall of Earth, and then to the fall of the Martians at the hands of common bacteria.

"I think that'll be what ends it," Nikola says, once Welles has gone silent with yet another reminder that the whole piece has been a work of fiction.

"Martians?" Helen says, draining her class. He empties the bottle refilling her cup, moving too quickly for her to wave him off.

"No, germs," he says. "It won't be fire or some huge concussive explosion. It will be germs."

"That's cheerful," Helen says, quite subdued. For a moment, he's sorry he said anything at all, but now that he's started, he can't seem to stop.

"We make messes, Helen." He turns the glass in his hands, not to look at the wine at all, just to fidget. "We pick and we pick at the world, and then we're surprised when it unleashes some fresh hell on us."

"You mean like the time I turned one of my dearest friends into a vampire?" Helen asks, her eyes firmly on the floor next to where he's sitting instead of on his face.

"Of course not," he says. "Never that. I volunteered, knowing full well it would be unpredictable."

She looks at him and smiles sadly, and he knows it's not his transformation she was asking about.

"We all volunteered," he says. He takes her hand, the one that's not holding the wineglass, and she lets him rest against her knee while the radio goes back to music. He turns the volume down.

"Does it scare you?" Helen asks.

"Not really," he says. " You?"

"A part of me looks forward to it," she admits. He doesn't need to see her face to know exactly what she looks like. He could describe that expression in his sleep, if he needed to. It is Helen Magnus, as she was born, as she was made, and as she'll die, if she dies at all. She hasn't outlived her lifespan yet, not quite, but she hasn't aged either, and it looks less and less like she's going to.

"Are you staying?" he asks.

"Yes," she says. "As long as there aren't any pigeon droppings in your bed."

"Please, Helen, that would be unhygienic."

"I suppose," she says, and the grin is back on her face. "But if the Martians came, you might be safer."

He laughs, takes her hand to lead her into the bedroom, and hopes that the morning paper lives up to the evening's promise.

fin

Gravity_Not_Included, March 3, 2011