These Are The Moments
One year, two hearts, three unspoken words and four different seasons.
This is definitely the result of listening to the 'Rent' soundtrack, not getting enough sleep, and reading too many Teslen fanfics...
I've had this idea in my head for a while, anyway. But I finally managed to put it down to words. I hope you like it. :) It is definitely angst-y. I do so love some good Helen/Nikola angst.
Also, I don't mean to ramble, but I'd just like to point out that I live in Australia and so our seasons are backwards here. But, I tried to keep as true as I could to English seasons (at least month-wise).
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Winter – December, 1880
It had been a particularly chilled winter, for Nikola anyhow. Perhaps it was just him feeling especially homesick at Christmastime. Either way, it would be his first Christmas spent properly with Helen. His Helen. She had invited, nay insisted – as if he would deny her anything her heart so desired – he join her and her father in their seasonal celebrations. It was her intention to drag him out of his otherwise inevitable self-imposed depression at the holiday; not having family at such a supposedly joyous time could do that to a person.
Nikola suspected Gregory Magnus was none too thrilled to be joined by the quirky foreigner, whose influence the good doctor suspected to have caused his daughter's more recent blithe inclinations. But – and here was a rare occurrence in which the two men were in parallel minds – Gregory could not deny Helen anything, not when she gave him that doe-eyed expression she had perfected in her youth.
So, Nikola was staying with father and daughter in the London Magnus home. It was a comfortable residence in London, nothing too fancy or ostentatious but nice regardless, located near an expansive park Helen had dragged him all around. This had been the home Helen had grown up in, and Nikola felt oddly honoured to have been invited there. Especially at Christmastime which was notoriously an occasion for family celebration. He could almost picture Helen as a little girl, with unruly golden curls and wide curious eyes. Her dresses had probably been torn in several places from when she would have slid down the banisters of the house, or when she climbed out of her bedroom window to the ledges below. Yes, he could definitely picture that.
It was a calm day when Helen dragged him out of the house to the park insisting they should go ice-skating. Nikola was happy with this plan, he had fond memories of ice-skating on the frozen over lakes as a boy back home. He didn't know where she'd procured the pair of ice-skates she'd handed to him, but he suspected they'd belonged to Gregory. She had her own pair of course.
She had flopped down unceremoniously on the ground near the large ice-covered lake in the park to put on her skates. There were already many people there, but not too many so that it was crowded and to his dislike. He had never been one for large crowds.
He sat beside her and put his own skates on, they were a little big, but fit for the most part. He wondered how she had known her father's (presumably) skates would fit him relatively well, wondering if she had looked at his shoes, but didn't say anything on the matter.
He extended a hand to help her up, which she took gratefully. It was much more cumbersome to move around in those many heavy layers English women wore. He had idea how she did it, and did not envy her for it.
It was mostly young couples skating, or children relishing the activity, but Nikola soon forgot himself, and the surrounding people. All he could see was her as they glided across the ice together. All he could see was her joyous smile, and the way the snowflakes clung to her blonde curls, the way her cheeks and nose were reddened from the cold. Though many, many years would pass them by (unbeknownst to them just how many), Nikola would always remember that day. He would always remember her laughter, so soft and carefree, and the way her gloved hand felt in his own.
Back then, he couldn't help but think that this was how he wanted to spend every Christmas. Here, with her, by her side.
He had wanted it to be their first of many shared Christmases. They had had all the time in the world, or so he had thought.
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Spring – March, 1881
Like winter was to ice-skating, so too were picnics to spring.
Those were the last times Nikola could clearly recall spending lazy afternoons with Helen before the Five, before everything. It was not uncommon for young, courting couples to go on picnics, especially in the spring. His heart had raced a bit at the thought back then. Not that they were courting, that would have been a dream too wonderful to come true.
Some of Nikola's fondest memories were of laying in the grass with Helen, lazily; talking, joking, laughing and reading poetry. Her laughter suited the springtime, he had decided. It was lively and soft, and made her eyes sparkle.
He could remember a particular picnic, one of their last before the Five. He had been toying absently with some daisies in the grass as she talked, eventually an idea springing to mind. He didn't know why particularly, but he had thought that her head was looking awfully bare. So he had made a daisy-chain crown for her, his queen... not knowing that soon enough everything would turn and she would no longer just be his queen. It had all seemed so simple then, and he wished more than anything he would have told her sooner how he felt. Before the Five, before John... if he had only had the courage. Then maybe he would have earned the right to give her flowers, like he had given her that daisy crown, and he would have made her smile over and over again.
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Summer – August, 1881
Summer almost made him miss the snow-filled freezing days of winter. Almost.
The sun would often leave them feeling lazy and drowsy. It also sometimes left Helen's pale English skin reddened, which she disliked intensely. So, of course, she did not particularly enjoy sitting out in the gardens on the grass with him as they so often did in the other less-harshly-lit days of the year. He missed sitting in the gardens with her.
They instead opted for the cooler confines of the library, where they would hole themselves in a corner and either talk or read their notes and studies. But, being Nikola and Helen, they would often end up being kicked out by the harsh librarian with the stern expression for their disruptive giggling. It became a sort of game, seeing how long it would take until the librarian tracked down the source of their laughter or chatter and throw them out on their hides.
This particular summer, the year of 1880, brought with it a new refuge for them to hide during the summer heat. It was one Nikola was not quite sure he liked.
August brought the beginnings of the Five. They were each undeniably bright and, yes, a tad arrogant. But it was inspiring to be part of such a group, even if his jealously did flair more often than he would like to admit.
But then he could remember when they'd meet, after spending hours conducting experiments that boggled the mind and played on their wildest dreams. Helen would be sitting fanning herself from the heat – it must have been horrendous for her in those layers, as bad as it was for them. Nearby, James and Nigel and John would sit, as Nikola always sat by Helen. Nigel would regale them with anecdotes of the most amusing kind, and smiles and laughter were abundant.
Despite whatever would happen to them later on, and Nikola's uncertainties, or how he felt about the others, these were the times when – for the first time – Nikola felt like he truly belonged. He had Helen by his side and he felt a part of something like never before. Everything in the world felt right with them and their little group, enjoying the summer sun.
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Autumn – November, 1881
The leaves weren't the only thing to have changed when autumn came around that year.
The Five were growing more experimental, their group taking on a darker side. They pushed the boundaries, that had been the intent, but sometimes Nikola worried for the glint in Helen's eyes. Her thirst for knowledge was something he had always known about her, admired even. But sometimes he had to remind her to curb her recklessness in pursuit of said knowledge else she get carried away.
But Nikola still looked back fondly on that autumn with his Helen. Even despite the lingering feeling in the air, the one he couldn't quite put his finger on. It had the promise of change, of things to come. This lingering feel in the air excited Helen, even if they had only realised it subconsciously then. It made him wary.
Still, they were still clinging to those two childlike people they had been.
He could remember walking through the corridors and archways at Oxford, Helen holding volumes of thick books to her chest as she walked along merrily. They would reach the exit of the buildings, and her eyes would light up. It wasn't that gleam of satisfying her thirst for knowledge, this gleam reminded him more of his Helen. He so liked to see her so carefree again, enjoying the autumn leaves.
Those days were all orange crusty leaves, and her childlike smile of wonder as she relished the crunching sound they made as she stomped on them with her heeled boot. Perhaps they were juvenile still, but he had always loved that part of them they could only be together. No one else understood the simple joys of running through a particularly abundant pile of the dried leaves and watching them fly all about you, not at their age anyway. It was something that they did together, for only him and her. Nigel, James and John didn't understand their innocent joy in such an activity.
But, regardless, Nikola remembered it became a tradition of theirs on the way to a meeting of the Five in the labs of Oxford. Instead of sticking to the stone pathways under the archways, they'd cut across the gardens, covered in a thick blanket of the leaves they so adored. James used to tell them, with a hint of exasperation and amusement in his tone, that they always knew when Helen and Nikola arrived as they could hear the giggling as they crossed the lawns.
It was worth it, whatever the other members of the Five would say or tease them about. It was worth it to see the smile light up Helen's face, so beautiful and so unguarded she was in those moments that it took his breath away.
If he had known of the dark days to come, perhaps he would have insisted they spent every last waking moment in those gardens just so he could see her like that.
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December, 1881
It had been a memorably chilling winter. Or perhaps Nikola was just feeling depressed.
A year ago, he had been thrilled at the idea of spending every Christmas with Helen just as they had then. They would sit in front of the fire and drink festive drinks (when her father was not about, of course) and read their favourite poetry to each other. Then in the days they'd go ice-skating on that frozen lake, and he would watch her twirl about with a smile on her face that would melt his heart. Then it would be back in front of the fire at night to warm their chilled bodies. It would have been bliss.
But it had all changed. What a difference a year could make.
This year, they were all in Oxford still. James and Helen wanted to get some good time in the labs leading up to Christmas, some experiment they'd been worked fixatedly on. Her father, too, had remained in their Oxford home.
But what really tore at Nikola was not this. No, he could have a wonderful Christmas with Helen no matter where they were. It was the fact that she was now courting with John Druitt. The knowledge had struck him as hard as if he had been hit by a tonne of stone, winding him, leaving him breathless. But she had seemed so happy, and the one thing Nikola could never do was to make Helen Magnus unhappy.
This year, Helen would be attending Christmas parties on the arm of John Druitt. Maybe, if they one day married (and it broke his heart and nauseated him to even think about it) she would spend every year with Druitt at Christmas.
Where would that leave Nikola?
There were 525, 600 minutes in a year. He knew. He had calculated it. He could have taken any of those moments to tell her, to let Helen know how he felt about her; to tell her it should have been him she had to spend every Christmas with. He could have told her last Christmastime, in the snow, when they'd been ice-skating. He could have told her in the spring as he presented her with her daisy-crown. He could have shown her his heart in the summer, as her face was flushed from the heat and they hid in a far dusty corner of the library. He could have said 'I love you' as she'd spun into his arms after dancing in a storm of dried orange leaves.
But he hadn't. He had remained silent, and now she was with someone else. She would spend her winters, her springs, her summers and her autumns in the arms of another.