A/n: Just so we're clear, I'll probably only update once every billion years. Just gonna put that out there. That said, I'm really thankful to anyone willing to stick that out for the sake of the story. For all who are Magnitt shippers, I can't hide the fact that I lean toward Teslen, but I promise all that there there will be a fair share of both as far as I can help it, because the story centers on a larger idea. If that makes anyone feel like screaming, that's probably normal. Let's just rely on some common ground-we all like Magnus, right? (Yes we do!) Anyway, thanks for reading, guys. It'll be a fun ride. :)

I own nothing, by the way.

Time is a very tricky and misleading sort of character: an entity which we both hold dear and despise. It is a fine line on which we are born and on which we perish, both the invisible noose around our necks and the rope that holds us suspended. But I'll let you in on a secret: time isn't perfect. With man as its creator, how then can it grow to be less twisted and cracked, or less easily manipulated, than the mind of humanity?

One:

Helen entered the lift as would a prisoner led to her untimely execution. It was with resignation that she returned the suspiciously casual greeting of the man already inside.

"Morning," said Will, and she didn't miss the accompanying sidelong glance. It left no doubt in her mind.

"Don't bother," she told him.

"What?" The look he wore was one of innocence.

She sighed. "You know."

For a minute, the psychiatrist only raised his eyebrows and pointed to himself in question. His smirk was what spoiled the act.

"Ok, so—163." He drummed his fingers on the side paneling.

She shook her head. "Time flies."

"Or, wait—is that 276?"

"I prefer not to keep track, thank you."

"So why do you?"

"I don't, but every year someone like you is there with cake and noisemakers to remind me."

"I don't have cake or noisemakers."

"Not yet," she said pointedly. It was only a matter of time.

The power flickered. "Nikola's arrived, I take it?"

Will nodded sheepishly and motioned as if to shoot himself. "His sociable and compassionate self, as usual. And, uh…something else."

She was immediately on the alert by the way he said it. His tone of voice, though she wasn't sure exactly why, was enough to make her stomach churn just the slightest bit. She folded her arms to ward it off. "What?"

For some unknowable reason, he looked sympathetic. "I wouldn't say what so much as, uh…who."

Her demand and his subsequent relinquishment went unspoken—all she had to do was glare, and he bowed his head to choke out the name.

"Druitt."

Her next staggered cough was drowned by broken song and streamers as the doors to the lift slid open to reveal a group of four, joined by Will, that chanted Happy Birthday. She smiled placidly back at them, but her heart was still in her throat.

She was less surprised by his having found her here in this underground fortress than at his being alive and well, but if she thought about it, she probably shouldn't have been surprised at all. He had a penchant for turning up alive when she least expected it, and the annual celebration of her birth seemed to be no exception.

In fact, it seemed to be the occasion.

"Where is he?" she tried to request, but she seemed to have taken a step too forward. Something was wrong. Helen stumbled back into the elevator just as Will rushed in, hauling with him a gurney occupied by a noisily weeping woman. The change was so sudden and dramatic that she found her head spinning in coming to grips with it.

"Where's who?" he asked breathlessly, jamming an elbow into the button panel.

Something was unquestionably wrong.

She looked on with a reasonable amount of bewilderment and wondered if she'd blacked out—but no, it didn't coincide with the fact that she was still standing in the lift. The air seemed different, too—less crisp. Recirculated.

"John…" she replied, absently. Even as he tried to pump oxygen into the woman beneath him, Will fixed her with a look she knew well to mean 'you're nuts.' She found it didn't bode well.

"John who?" he shot back, sounding concerned. The question alone transformed her blood to ice-water.

She tried to focus on locating a logical explanation, thinking back to past encounters with abnormals capable of altering reality, but it was difficult with the now-screaming woman. There were three long stains stretching the length of her abdomen that were bleeding through an impromptu bandaging job, and Helen recognized them as claw marks. There was also a jagged puncture on her neck. Both wounds looked fresh.

"These are the work of a vampire," she breathed. Will looked more worried than startled by her discovery.

"Magnus, uh…are you feeling alright?"

They reached the medical wing, and she followed him through to where she helped lift the injured woman swiftly onto a bed. It all seemed like business as usual for the scanty staff there, not a one looking surprised at their entrance. Someone she didn't recognize began pouring over the patient, and as Will led her out by the arm she came to the realization that she was not wearing the same outfit she'd chosen for herself less than an hour before.

He stopped her by the next corner, rounding on her almost urgently. Up close, she noticed the rough edges of his face and decided he couldn't have touched a razor for over a couple days. "Ok, care to explain why you're acting so bizarre?"

'You first,' she wanted to say, but it did seem that she was the only one nonplussed by what was transpiring. This was all strangely reminiscent of the time she'd spent in Honduras searching for a cure to immortality, but she had yet to see anything in her lifetime for which she could not produce an explanation.

Squinting across at her, Will seemed to judge by her expression that his question wasn't going to award him any answers. She couldn't agree more.

"Look," he said, gentler. "I think…I think we ought to get you checked out."

At this point, she wasn't so sure she didn't believe him. "Fair enough, but I'd like to see John first, if you don't mind."

"Who the…" he stopped himself. "Magnus, you're concussed."

"Is he here?"

"Listen to me. You need medical attention. You have—"

"Will, I'm fine," she interrupted, none too sure of her diagnosis. True, she hadn't the slightest clue as to what she'd gotten herself into, but she was willing to bet real money that it was not as simple as a knock on the head. She had enough experience under her belt to know that, as with all things, this would unravel in time—nor did she consider this the strangest thing to have happened to her.

Experience was also what pointed her in one of two directions, because it was a slim chance that the only mind-boggling thing she'd had the misfortune of dealing with in a week didn't come in on the heels of one of her two oldest—and most trying—friends.

Assuming John was inexplicably out of the question, she had only one other option left to her.

"Magnus, you're not fine," Will continued indignantly, but she interrupted him once again, changing tactics.

"I'll need to see Nikola, then. I assume you know who that is?"

The psychiatrist fixed her with a look somewhere between bothered and amused, taking a break from his attempts to drag her back towards medical. "Believe me, I wish I didn't."

That permitted a small amount of relief. "He's here, I trust?"

When he realized she truly intended to pay a visit to the man in question, Will started to look doubtful. "I, uh…" He paused. "I don't think that's such a great idea."

Her suspicion flared, and she thought back to the woman in the lift. "Why is that?"

He began to look uncomfortable. "This is Tesla we're talking about."

"Will, I've known him for longer than you've been alive. Trust me, I know." There wasn't anyone alive who could stir up trouble faster, but right now she needed his mind.

"Look, if you think you can handle it then be my guest, but if it were me I'd give it some time for this to blow over."

"For what to blow over?" Here was yet another of those troublesome inconsistencies. It reminded her of their labors to capture the Praxian nanite in the computer network—then, much like now, things had been eerily same and different.

"The Boston affair. He's still holding it against you."

She contemplated this, but it frustratingly held no meaning for her. Still, she couldn't risk further estranging herself before she had the chance to talk with him. "I'm sure he'll come around."

"Thank God if he does. I think he's attracting every storm on the east coast."

"I can't make any promises." Helen gave his shoulder a friendly pat as she brushed past, but every step away from him brought her closer to confusion.

"Good luck," she thought she heard him call after her, but she was already winding her way down towards where, under normal circumstances, she might find the man of her search. Just beneath the cavern housing the infrastructure of her magnum opus there was a reserve that fed into a lake. It was this that had singled out the ideal location when she had nothing but frugality and self-sufficiency in mind for a service she meant to take—both figuratively and literally—underground.

Within the first week of arriving he had anointed this his favorite spot, mostly because it provided the greatest seclusion. Everyone but a few brave souls—namely, she and Tesla—was careful to avoid the area on account of the resident naga.

Her instincts proved correct when she found him sitting on a rock near the edge of the water, his form given a slight glow by the luminescence of the indigenous moss. He was busy flicking pebbles at the abyss, and didn't turn when she approached.

"I thought I might find you here," she said quietly, erring on the cautious side. He said nothing, but his next throw had a bit more force behind it. "Mind if I sit down?"

She took his silence as an affirmative and seated herself next to him. "You know you'll upset the naga if you keep at it."

"Spit it out, Helen." He said it with so much venom she nearly jumped, and hurtled the rest of his entire fistful out to where it splashed with a series of echoes.

"Excuse me?"

"You wouldn't be down here talking to me if you didn't need my help. So spit it out. What ails the immaculate world today?"

Will had been right—he was seething.

It was with a sensible amount of guilt that she realized Tesla was right, too; she was only down here to request his help, even if she had yet to ascertain how she'd upset him in the first place. A sense of pique rose at the back of her mind, demanding that the situation was absurd, but she swallowed it.

"Nikola…" she struggled how to start. Any attempts to explain to him how the world was suddenly upside-down ran the risk of his coming to the same conclusion as Will.

"You may stop right there if you're trying to make me feel better. It won't happen."

"Nikola, honestly. You wouldn't even be down here if you didn't want me to come and find you."

He picked at the moss underfoot, caught-out. "You may have a point. I'm listening."

"Good. Something isn't right, here."

"To what are you referring?"

"Everything. Nothing seems right. I don't know, it's like everything is all the same as it was before, but things have…changed."

For reasons she couldn't begin to fathom, he looked as if her words offended him. Certainly, it did not take much to offend the sensibilities of Nikola Tesla, but she had thought she'd been rather polite up to this point.

"Things have changed," he deadpanned, for all the world like it was some sick joke. He stood. "You'll miss me, you know."

Following him as he started to stalk impudently away from her, she had a creeping suspicion that she'd been horribly misunderstood. "Nikola, what the hell are you on about? Calm down. I'm trying to tell you something."

He whirled on her, eyes flashing black for an instant too long. "I think you've made it rather clear. I also think you'll find I know when I'm not wanted."

"For heaven's sake, when did I… Listen, there was a woman this morning, human, who came through fairly heavily wounded at the hands of a vampire. Now, to my knowledge, the event was out of place. I have a handful of medical personnel I barely recognize, and Will acts as if he doesn't have the foggiest notion who John is. Please tell me this means something to you."

She needn't have been surprised that this served to make Tesla livid, considering that this seemed to be the ongoing state of things. He raised a finger at her, and she noticed with a hint of concern that he was trembling.

"I knew it. Oh, Helen Magnus, you are one to talk. All the time spent following the yellow brick road to forgiveness, but the truth is, you still blame me, don't you? No, no—don't even try to deny it now. You do, and I'll tell you why: because you can't forgive me for starting this war if you cannot forgive yourself for John." Before she could begin to work out who should be forgiving whom for what, he added, "John is dead, Helen. He died in 1888. That's one hundred and twenty four years ago. He's hit the big dead-end, a real dead-beat, dead silence, nevermore! But you and I—we're still alive. And while I live, I will fight."

Whether he meant he'd fight in this 'war' or fight for her forgiveness, she didn't know, but she didn't pretend to understand any of what he'd said to her. It made the very muscle of her heart ache to hear that John was dead, but her mind didn't believe a word of it. John had no business being dead when she had it on good authority that he'd been right here in this Sanctuary on her birthday—which was to the best of her knowledge still today.

As if on cue, Tesla turned as he stormed out to spit over his shoulder, "Happy Birthday, by the way."