AN: Why must it be so easy to write Nikola's dialogue and SO FREAKING HARD to write his hands? *sighs*
For shadadukal, my winning bidder at helpthesouth. Who requested "Nikola talking to Clara about Nigel in between Revelations and End of Nights, maybe that's what prompts her to leave for London and learn to control her gift better."
Spoilers: Revelations
Disclaimer: Can I keep them over the hiatus, maybe? No? Okay, then: not mine.
Rating: Teen
Characters: Nikola Tesla, Clara Griffin, Nigel Griffin
Summary: "The radio, huh? I always thought that was Marconi."
Learning To See
"So the radio, huh?" Clara says, twisting aimlessly on a stool. They're going to need all the Source Blood they can get, after Ashley's departure, and since this is hardly the time to go after Magnus or Druitt with anything sharp, Clara ended up in the lab with a vampire, and if that wasn't the most twisted game of Clue ever, she didn't know what was. "I always thought that was Marconi."
Nikola's only response to that is a faint snarl, which makes her very glad she waited until after he'd drawn her blood to say it. There's something a little bit off about him, has been since she saw him for the first time in the caves. Yes, he tries to be disparaging, and he's dismissed Will out of hand, but she keeps catching him watching her when he thinks she's not paying attention. For a Creature of the Night, he's remarkably unsubtle, and she's starting to wonder if anything is true.
"Okay, I give up," she says, coming to a halt and waiting for a moment while the room reorients itself. She fixes him with the glare she used to use to get her way when the other kids in the shelter tried to steal her stuff. It's probably not enough to really throw him, but it's the best she's got. "What is your problem with me?"
He's in the middle of putting a single drop of her blood on to a slide when she asks it, and so she's not surprised when it takes him a few moments to answer. He's quite still when he's working, something that's probably necessary in this lab. Clara stuck out high school just long enough to have a real chemistry course in a lab where, conceivably, she could have made something explode, but now that she's here, she's very well aware of how in another class altogether the Sanctuary facilities are.
Nikola turns to face her, all the attention that had been on the slide a few moments ago focused on her. She grips the underside of the bench a bit harder. It's easy to forget that he's a vampire when he's not looking straight at you with that too-human smile on his face. She wonders if he can smell her blood.
"You don't look a thing like him," he says after a moment.
"Like Nigel?" she asks. She hasn't quite got around to thinking of a man she's never met nor even really heard of as grandpa yet.
"No, like Druitt." Nikola turns back the bench, but he but he shoots a look over his shoulder and she knows he's not done. "You don't look like him and you don't sound like him and you have no idea how much you could accomplish with your power."
"Mr. Druitt said the same thing," Clara says quietly. She draws invisible designs on the work bench, and when she looks up, he's looking at her hands.
"I suppose you're something of an expert at sneaking into the boys' locker room," he sneers, mouth curling in distate.
"That's disgusting," Clara says. "Have you ever smelled a boys' locker room? Why the hell would I want to go in there?"
He twitches his head at her, as though he might smile if he didn't find her so disappointing. "Well that's something anyway."
"I stole money," she says. "From stores. Not a lot at once, obviously. And never coins."
"Why not coins?" He's doing it again, that thing where he looks at her like he's seeing someone else. At least he doesn't look at her like she's subhuman.
"I don't mind putting bills in my mouth," she says. "Coins would be gross."
He's smiling at her now, and she thinks that might be his actual genuine smile. It's still a bit terrifying, but there's a warmth in his eyes that's not bloodlust, and she thinks that maybe it's understandable that this man could have friends who don't always want to run him through with their fists.
"Maybe you do have something in common with Nigel after all," he says. He leans back against the bench and looks at her as though he's seeing her for the first time. "He was a notorious bank robber."
"Mr. Druitt said that – " Clara begins, but he cuts her off with a wave of his hand.
"Oh, you can never trust Johnny on things like that," Nikola says, his tone airy and so carefree that for a moment, Clara forgets they're talking about Jack the freaking Ripper. "He's all 'queen and country', and 'don't speak ill of the dead'. He's such a bore."
"So," Clara says, suddenly more curious than she thought she would be. "My grandfather was a bank robber?"
"A very good one." She wonders if he's always been this precise in his facial ticks, or if that's a Source Blood thing too. "And a war hero, three times over."
"And a spy?" she asks, because she figures that much is probably inevitable.
"Yes, naturally," Nikola says. "We all dabbled a bit in our ways."
There's a darkness in his face and she knows not to ask what his way might have been.
"Not much call for an invisible girl nowadays, though, is there?" she says instead. "I mean, I can't fool heat sensors or motion detection. I can't exactly rob a bank or steal secrets for the government."
"No, probably not," he allows. "The world changes as it will."
"I should probably practice though," she says. She looks at him, and he stares back, seeing her and not a ghost. "For the first time, I wish I'd known him."
"You can, after a fashion," Nikola says. "Helen and Johnny aren't going to be good for story telling for a while yet, but I know all the best ones anyway. And there's also the novel, if you're really bored."
"It's not good?" she says.
"It's not accurate," Nikola says. "Nigel never turned into a homicidal maniac."
There isn't really anything Clara can say about that that isn't awkward or painful. The Five are a mystery and, possibly, a horror story, but they're also the closest thing to a family she's got. She's going to have to learn to live with them.
"You know," Nikola says thoughtfully, absently scratching the back of his neck with a pipette, "after the disaster with the Philadelphia experiment, James had all the equipment moved to the London Sanctuary. Considering how difficult it was to extricate my life's work from the American government, I was rather surprised he managed it, but I suppose the Americans were trying to put as much space between themselves and that ridiculous debacle as they could. Anyway, the best technology for understanding invisibility is there, and I'm sure James – I'm sure whoever took over for James wouldn't mind you poking around."
He covers the slip by turning away from her again, as though the mass spectrometer requires his immediate attention even though it isn't currently turned on. He slouches, and his hands splaying out on the work bench, and for a moment, he looks impossibly old.
"There certainly isn't a lot I can do here," she says carefully. "I'll ask Will to make the arrangements."
"Helen and Druitt should be back soon," Nikola says, still fiddling with the spectrometer. "That might be faster."
"I'd say I have to pack, but I kind of ended up here with nothing," Clara says.
"Johnny does tend to be abrupt," Nikola says. When he turns around, he's grinning again, like he hasn't just witnessed the death of an old friend and the disappearance of another friend's daughter. His smile turns salacious. "Just steal young William's credit card. You probably won't even have to be invisible for that."
She laughs outright, and slides down off the stool. When she reaches the door, one last thought occurs to her, and she turns.
"Do you think he would have liked me?" she asks. "My grandfather, I mean?"
She asks Nikola because he won't lie. Druitt will paint the happiest picture he can and Magnus will evade the question if she doesn't like the answer, but Nikola will be brutally honest.
"I don't know what he'd say of your taste in men," Nikola says. "But I think he'd appreciate your independence and your willingness to flout the system."
"Thank you, Dr. Tesla," she says. "And, for what it's worth, you're probably a lot cooler than Marconi."
"Oh, you have no idea," he says, and they both set about their work.
finis
Gravity_Not_Included, May 26, 2011