"Absolutely not. I won't hear of it!" She was irate.

"Helen," her opponent sighed, gently applying the antiseptic to her bruised face, causing her to flinch.

"No."

"Just let me…"

"No!" She interrupted. "Enough. How many more people have to die?"

His hand stoked her hair back behind her ear as the other cleansed yet another scrape. "You could have gotten yourself killed. What were you thinking?"

"I was thinking I had to stop you."

"It was dark. I could have killed you."

"You didn't."

"No. But I did manage to get in a few good blows before I realized it was you."

"I'm no shrinking violet."

He laughed. "I have known you for more than one hundred years, and never in my wildest dreams would I call you anything of the sort. But really, Helen, I am more than a head taller and at least three stone heavier than you. And while you are an extraordinary fighter, you are no match for me."

She shook her head at his arrogance. Some things never changed. "I have beaten you more than once, John Druitt."

"With a firearm, yes, but not hand-to-hand." He applied a butterfly to her cheek. "How quickly we forget."

Helen conceded the point with a shrug, getting unsteadily to her feet.

"Whoa." John tried to steady her.

"No." She pushed his hand aside. "Don't touch me."

"Helen…"

"You hit me." Her anger blossomed.

"You hit me first!" he countered.

Helen raised an eyebrow.

"It was dark and you were wearing black. I was only defending myself." He paused. "Why were you there to begin with?"

"I couldn't let you kill her."

"She was responsible for Ashley's death!"

"She was not the one ultimately responsible. Why not go after her?"

"Oh, I intend to, believe me."

"John…"

"Tonight, if you wish."

"No! Good God. Is your blood-lust never quenched?"

He stepped closer, the back of his hand brushing her uninjured cheek. "No. It never is," he admitted softly. "Though something about your presence calms it." He bent his head closer to hers.

Helen instinctively turned her face to his allowing their breaths to mingle briefly before shaking her head and looking down. "I can't."

"Why not?" The disappointment in his stance was palpable.

"I just lost my daughter. I'm not thinking clearly."

"Our daughter, Helen. We lost our daughter."

She choked out a bitter laugh. "You've known about Ashley for a year, John. You weren't there when I gave birth to her. You didn't sew up her cuts and bandage her scrapes. And you most certainly are not responsible for the choices I made in her upbringing that led to this."

"That may be." He continued to stroke her cheek before tangling his hand in her hair, rooting her to the spot. "But my loss is no less. I hurt for the daughter I never had. That you kept from me all of these years." His fingers tightened in her hair.

She brought her hands to his chest, trying to push him away but succeeding only in bringing them closer. "Don't you dare play the aggrieved father! I couldn't let you near her. She was a child. You are a madman."

"I can control it around you."

"No you can't."

"I can. Mostly."

She couldn't tell from his expression whether he was being earnest or simply preying on her feelings. "John, you have proven again and again that your madness controls you. The finality of the EM shield's protection against you is not an accident."

"I deserved to know."

"You deserved nothing of the sort!"

He tilted his head down, his breath warming first her ear and then her neck. His lips traced up her neck back to her ear, barely skimming the surface, sending unwanted shivers of awareness through her. "She was a part of me."

Helen gasped as his lips closed around the shell of her ear. "She wasn't," she ground out, trying to turn her head away from the unwanted arousal.

He refused to relent, kissing a line down her face and throat, pulling her close enough so that their lips nearly touched. "She was. You may have felt justified keeping her from me, and I am completely justified doing away with those who made it so I could never know her."

"Including me?" she queried softly, fisting the lapels of the smooth leather duster he wore.

"Especially you," he confirmed, the look in his eyes softening, "and never you. You are the one person on this Earth I want to hurt beyond repair, and yet the one person I never could. It's a constant battle."

He kissed her.

Helen resisted only briefly, the strange familiarity of his lips on hers was too much for her to resist. Her grief was clawing at her, and she was losing the will to fight. She had lost too much. One hundred years of loss combined with the unnamable anguish of the death of her only child brought her arms around him to lock him into the embrace.

The kiss was hot and full of so many things left unspoken between them. Their tongues warred against the betrayal they each felt. Their lips and teeth sang a lamentation of heartache and loss, and the myriad of uncounted things that could never be forgiven.

John backed her up against the wall with slightly more force than was necessary, but Helen just moaned in response, trying to pull him even closer to her. He tore his mouth from hers, touching his nose to hers. "We can't."

Helen was on the verge of madness herself. "Yes, we can."

"This is insanity."

"I don't care." She hitched her hips closer to his.

"You will."

"No."

"Yes, you will. I know you better than you know yourself, Helen. And this I know to be true: if we do this now, it will be a hundred more years before we do it again, and I don't want that."

Helen shuddered, back against the wall, still holding on to him for dear life. "What…"

He interrupted her by pressing a firm kiss to her lips. "We will find a way, I promise you." And he was gone. A flash in the ether, and Helen was left alone, sagging against the wall of the infirmary. She felt her legs give out and her bottom connect with the floor. She was frozen to the spot. She had to be strong, but in that moment, she couldn't find the will to fight her own weakness anymore, so she tilted her head back against the support of the wall and closed her eyes.