Wow, two uploads in two days? Go me. Except, I have this lingering suspicion that my other most recent piece didn't show up in the feed. Maybe it's just me and I'm utterly blind, but for some reason I don't see it. Could I therefore trouble you brave souls out there to direct your attention, at your leisure, to a story of mine titled Echoes? Self-promotion never hurt anyone, right? Right?
Anyway, this one is fairly self-explanatory and set pre-4x13. I thought it would be cute to give an outside perspective to Nikola and Helen's crazy relationship, so, here you are. It'll be in three parts-each for a different perspective. Enjoy, and please let me know what you think. You guys are awesome, and I can't thank you enough.
Oh, and on a side-note, if anyone out there in the wide world feels that they can make a decent MMV and the like, I'd be delighted if you'd consider using the song Genius by Duncan Sheik for a Teslen vid. (Even if you can't, or if you don't have a clue what any of this means and I'm now speaking Greek to you, you can still check out the song. It fits, in my opinion.)
Disclaimer: I don't own Sanctuary.
1. Will
Try as he might, it was a difficult endeavor to avoid the prospect of clocks when he had devoted himself to routinely checking his phone for signs of contact from Abby. It was on the verge of habit at this point, as any normal person including his girlfriend would have gone to bed well before the little numbers on the screen of his phone transformed themselves to denote that it was 3:00 a.m.
3:00 a.m. …and what he wouldn't give for a decent cup of coffee. Unfortunately, such a thing did not exist within the confines of a Sanctuary run by the world's oldest Brit. She could spend thousands in all sorts of currencies tracking down obscure items by the ton for the needs of abnormal residents, but when it came to coffee her staff was left to suffer.
Praying that tonight was not the night that the sharp-toothed, flesh-eating, invisible teleportation beast (he was sure he'd seen something following that description on file somewhere, and if not it was only a matter of time) decided to come knocking, Will skulked out from his office in the hopes of a fruitful foray into the kitchen. Although it was unlikely he would find Kate's stash of instant coffee she so relentlessly held over his head, he could at least console himself with a cold soda—maybe a Mountain Dew, if Henry hadn't gone through the entire pack yet.
He pitched a hand through his ragged hair, mussing it lengthwise as he surveyed the contents of the walk-in. What he saw was scanty at best, and too late he remembered that tomorrow was restocking day.
As he pushed past a badly-wrapped package of leftover takeout, he made a mental note of a few items to add to the list that Biggie would take grocery shopping. Edible flavors of jello, for instance.
Out of the left side of his peripheral vision, something flickered.
On instinct, he stilled, and without making a move, he waited. Although it was likely nothing—a dangerous combo of a graveyard shift and lack of caffeine—he'd been at his job long enough to know that "nothing" could quickly turn into sharp-toothed, flesh-eating, invisible teleportation beast.
The light in the pantry was on. …how had he not noticed that, before?
Slowly, without letting on that he suspected anything in case whoever—or whatever, his brain cheerily warned him—wasn't the friendly type, Will shut the door to the walk-in and sidled his way to the stove-top, where he tentatively reached out a hand to grasp the firm handle to a wide-brimmed skillet hanging on the wall.
With baited breath, he held his weapon of choice lofted over his head, poised for skull-smashing action when the door to the pantry began to crawl its way open.
On Sanctuary turf, "nothing" was rarely the imagination. A nosebleed could mean brain parasites, a missing person could mean the next vampire outbreak, and a simple sore throat could turn out to mean he was transforming into an overgrown lizard creature. In this case, "nothing" was about to get the snot smacked out of it.
Well, until it sauntered out of the pantry with a wide grin of satisfaction, waved a box of spiced tea under his nose, and brushed past him with the cavalier attitude of the undaunted.
"Ah, Wilhelm. Good thing you're here. I couldn't find the hairy butler, or else I wouldn't bother being down here in this filth-trap myself." Without glancing his way, Tesla proceeded to dump a kettle into Will's free hand and usher him towards the sink. "Water. Fetch."
He could only gape unintelligibly, skillet still dangling limply in the air.
"Planning on singlehandedly wiping out the last of the vampiris race with a saucepan, are we? Go on. Fetch."
Momentum returning, he had sense enough to be irritated by the vampire's saucy comment. With a clang, he slung the skillet back onto the counter and begrudgingly shoved the kettle under the running faucet. While he waited and Tesla busied himself at the other end of the kitchen, Will pinched the bridge of his nose and squeezed shut his eyes, sincerely hoping that he'd fallen asleep on his desk and that this was a dream.
"Tesla," he sighed explosively. "I…it worked in Tangled."
"Well, it does seem to have a sense of shrewish housewife written over it, doesn't it? Fitting for you, I think. Although, if I was a boring, unenhanced homosapien such as yourself, I would have gone for whipping up a bit of hot oil first, just in case my plain and puny DNA ensured that I threw a punch like a pixie."
If he hadn't seen Tesla in action, he would have diagnosed him with a case of narcissistic personality disorder on the spot. As it was, his egomaniac remarks were about as much as he could stand.
"Listen," he said dismissively, shaking his head in affirmation of a lost cause as he handed over the kettle, "just…why are you here?"
"My, it seems I've been the butt of a merry joke. They told me you were like Watson. In case you missed the memo, Huggybear, I'm making a pot of tea."
He groaned, rethinking his decision to hunt for soda in the kitchen. "Does Magnus know you're here?"
"Although I admit I do have what it takes to break through what Heinrich likes to call security protocols, I must ask you what use is it to me to drop in unannounced on the most well-equipped, influential, and world-renown woman in this half of the globe? She's your boss, kiddo, and you'd best know now that making her angry—it doesn't go down well."
Although Will seriously doubted he had any such capability to make Magnus angry enough to even scrape the surface of how livid a state Tesla could put her in, he dutifully ignored the scientist before him with what he liked to think was a growing tolerance.
"Okay, so she knows you're here."
"Bravo, William! Well done indeed. Now, what would your deductive reasoning make if I told you that the great vampiris race thirsts for something—" here, a pointed glance, "a little thicker than tea?"
"Alright, you're making her the tea, I get it."
"Correct again."
"Yeah, uh…right. So, if you don't mind, I'm still on the clock, and—" With a mind to leave, Will started shuffling towards the door.
"Oh, no, no, don't let me get in your way," Tesla waved him off. "Go, read and sign your little heart out."
"…right." He backed his way out of the door as if retreating from a dangerous predator, which, in all honesty, was a perfect description of the way in which Tesla had always struck him. On his way out, however, the behavior analyst in him kicked in enough to zero in on the way the vampire was handling himself. In the short glimpse he slipped before he swept himself back down the hallway, he made note of the fact that Tesla took peculiarly great care in preparing something that he himself was not all that fond of.
A precise devotion to the amount of sugar, down to each granule.
Three stirs clockwise, three counterclockwise, then a napkin to wipe the lingering moisture from the spoon.
A carefully placed garnish, crisp mint leaves to drift at the amber liquid's surface.
A finger to his lips in thought, and then a dash to the pantry and back with shortbread, placed delicately at the lip of the saucer.
Loath as he was to admit it, Will couldn't deny that Dr. Vlad was a man taken in heart. Perhaps a good bit of OCD, too. Of course, he made his enamorment difficult to believe through a rather ingenious method of reverse psychology—proclamations of the most ostentatious manner and enough inopportune flirtation to give Kate a run for her money—but in the end, as much as he wanted to believe it wasn't all for show, it took a lot more than a couple calculated remarks and carefully placed gestures to fool a trained psychiatrist.
Plus, he had to give the guy props for having consistency. From what he heard, Tesla had been at it for over a century.
He tried to imagine a life like that—having to chase after Abbey for years on end, never with any true confirmation that he was even getting anywhere. It scared him to think that he didn't know whether or not he could do it. Would he have given up by now, 100-some years later, if it was his heart on the line?
His own self-doubt lent him a certain respect for the man who had made a career of making himself despicable, because he honestly didn't have an answer for the question of what he might have done. Would he be willing to give up such a large part of himself, to dedicate himself body and mind for an eternity, to a woman he'd seen marry another man, a woman who had cried on every shoulder but his own?
He knew, then, why Tesla kept his distance—why he disappeared every so often.
Hell, if he'd had that sort of thing weighing him down, he'd probably spend every waking moment trying to find a way beyond reason to get himself impossibly drunk, too.
So much for a lack of caffeine.
And so much for I recognize the emotion for what it is—an irrational, self-destructive impulse which is disguised as joy, because honestly, it was no wonder which aspect of his emotion had been talking in that moment.