Hi, all. I apologize for my long periods of absence due to the fun-filled experience of university education, but the good news is, I have not given up on Teslen. Thanks to all of you readers that stick with me, and to any new explorers. You guys are great. xoxo
Disclaimer: I do not own Sanctuary. Not even slightly.
To practice on loved ones is a well-known taboo amongst those who have established themselves in the medical field, and yet Helen Magnus has never been one to confine herself to the boundaries of polite society. It's becoming more and more of a bad habit with age, so she's been told.
Of course, hiring on another doctor to the team might not be such a bad idea, except she knows she doesn't play well with others. Medicine is her territory, a place she is not apt to share with a centuries-younger professional with whom she will invariably butt heads. She's used to cleaning up after herself, after all—has done so for years—and it doesn't strike her as appealing to do the same for someone else's malpractice.
She isn't entirely sure whether Nikola falls under the category of family, friend, or foe—but Helen knows well enough that all of the above are dangerous ground.
After the de-vamping debacle, he's taken up residence in her Sanctuary for, she imagines, the same reasons Kate did so months before. Already, he's laid waste to her reserves of wine and patience.
It unnerves her, though, how little she's seen of him since that first night. She keeps waiting to see him burst through her door with a long-suffering speech on the demoralization of society, or to walk into her office to find him already occupying her chair. Instead, he seems to have holed himself up somewhere unbeknownst even to Helen, slinked away like a dog with its tail between its legs, but she knows he hasn't left yet because she's still finding the bottles.
Judging by their number, she's sure that wherever he's been hiding, he certainly isn't sober, and for a moment she worries for his liver.
Because Tesla makes a point to draw as much attention to his presence as possible—and she is convinced that he'll spiral into an existential crisis without an audience—his lack of appearances is disturbing in a way she cannot ignore.
It is days later before she finally runs into him, drunk off Grenache and sitting, fully clothed, in an empty bath tub adjoining one of the guest suites. Her heels are sharp on the tile, announcing her in a chorus of echoes.
"Helen!" he exclaims on sight of her, putting his whole body into the word. His voice sounds hoarse.
"What do you think you're doing?" she demands, a bit harsher than intended. There are a number of used tissues littering the floor, and she has to kick one off that's sticking to the point of her shoe. "Dear God, you haven't been crying?"
He looks almost giddy. "You feel bad for me, don't you?"
"Nikola," she goads, trying not to think of why that should excite him.
"Oh, Helen, don't be ridiculous. Of course, I can see why you might think that, seeing as I've been robbed of my heritage and ruthlessly tossed into the squalid sea of humanity to fend for myself…" When he looks up to her, he quickly backtracks. "…but, you're clean!"
"I presume you're working your way towards a good explanation?"
"Right—you're absolutely right. There's absolutely an explanation, and it's that the universe has finally decided to rid itself of me, for which I promise it will be very,very…very…very sorry. Après moi, la déluge."
"And without the melodrama…?"
"It's more mundane than you think," he grouses, put-out. "I've caught something indecent."
She has to run that phrase through her mind a few times before it finally registers. When it does, she still doesn't quite understand. "You're ill?"
"By all means, make fun."
"I'm asking, Nikola."
Slouching downwards, he moves to rest his cheek on the edge of the porcelain tub and blinks wanly up at her. Most definitely sloshed. "You know, I haven't been sick since October of…of 1876."
When the full reality of what this means hits her, she isn't quite ready for it. Helen rocks back on her heels with the force of the realization that, no, they are not invincible. He isn't a vampire anymore, and he probably hasn't had a vaccination in over a century.
Alarm settles itself like a weight on her stomach, and with a calm she doesn't feel, she crosses the distance between herself and the mortal Tesla to sit on the edge of the bathtub. She lifts a gentle hand to press to his forehead, and she withdraws as if singed when it becomes apparent that he is radiating a distressing heat. The weight in her stomach twists.
"Nikola, when did this start?"
"You had a front-row seat to my devolution," he mumbles argumentatively.
"When did you start feeling out of sorts?" she tries again.
Tesla groans, thinks for a moment, and then shifts so that his fingertips scrape the edge of her thigh. "The morning after."
Dear Lord. He's been hiding this from her for at least a week. As if to punctuate the realization, he coughs, and the discordant noise seems to jar both of them.
The need to act quickly stirs her to motion. She stands, almost slipping on the tissue-eclipsed floor, and then bends to tug at his collar. "I need you to get up." As soon as she says it, her mind lurches to why, exactly, she needs him to do this, and she looks at him anew.
"All the powers of heaven and earth cannot move me from this spot," Tesla announces, oblivious to her questioning gaze.
"Nikola, why are you sitting in a bathtub?" It certainly isn't for comfort reasons.
"Why not?" he quips, proud of himself for the ingeniousness of this reply.
"Really?" She knows him better than to think he'd willingly subject himself to this sort of depravity, even when smashed beyond reason.
Sheepish now, he lifts a finger for justification. "I…may or may not be a victim of the bilious gallbladder."
Because she isn't sure whether he's contracted something nastier than she thought or if he's gotten himself so piss-drunk his body is rejecting itself, she decides to leave this alone. Instead, she hunts down a clean cloth, runs it under lukewarm water, and sticks it to his forehead as she tells him to wait. Her next move is to prepare a strong cocktail of antibiotics and hope this heads off anything worse.
So stupid. Why hasn't she predicted this? Of course his regression into mortality would cause these types of complications; his immune system hasn't needed to function on its own in lifetimes. She shouldn't be surprised if he's dead by morning, she thinks, but then quickly discards the idea—she can't think about that right now.
Unfortunately, the maladjustment of his immune system makes it entirely too risky to vaccinate. What he needs most is a sterile environment, and after she's sure he's swallowed the antibiotics, she half-drags him to the medical wing, where she assigns him to a diligent job of bed-rest. He's still inebriated, incoherently attempting to bumble through what she takes to be innuendo, and he doesn't have the strength to resist her when she plunges him into bed.
By the time she's drawing blood for tests, he's pulled the sheets up over his nose and is glaring blearily across at her, feigning resentment.
For a while, it looks like he's getting better. Helen is glad to see his fever breaking, and hopeful when he's able to request and choke down a plate of ratatouille. She decides much later that it's hope, and not any disease or infection, that's the real killer.
Even if she faces death on an almost daily basis, it still shocks her. Its quickness, its versatility, and its finality all have a way of penetrating her defenses, even when she's prepared for it. With Nikola, she could not have the luxury of preparation. His death is as unimaginable to her as the day the sun burns cold.
Nigel and Watson had given her years to come to terms with their aging—a slow death, not less painful but perhaps less chaotic. The irrevocability of age leaves no room for hope. Druitt's dissolution into something less than human has placed him among the dead, or at best the barely living, for years, and she's had years to remove herself from the hurt yielded by his almost-existence.
But Nikola… His gift was always the ability to be taken for granted. He has been impossible to kill for almost as long as Helen has known him, and she's even shot a few rounds into him herself on occasion. He's the only one left, the last living person who knows her top from bottom, and they were supposed to be sticking out the apocalypse together.
Now, near the end of the third week monitoring his condition, she can't quite bring herself to believe it when he suddenly nosedives into a wreck of complication. Her mind doesn't allow itself to wrap around the infections, the complaint of his kidneys, or the increasing hollowness in his cheeks. She works harder than she remembers, ignoring anything that isn't related to keeping Nikola Tesla alive. For a time, this small room of the medical wing is the only world she knows—and she knows that Will can handle that.
As his health drains away with the time, she practices deep breathing. She starts talking, to Nikola and to herself, to keep herself awake and to keep him with her in the world. Sometimes he hears her, and sometimes he can't.
Sometimes, he replies.
It's three cups of tea after two in the morning, and she hasn't realized she's stopped mid-sentence until his hand reaches out to catch on her arm. She starts fiercely, having thought he was asleep.
"You're so tall," he whispers, and she's momentarily possessed by the idea that he's hallucinating. "Much taller than I am."
His eyes trace down to her heels, pausing there, and she stops what she's doing, trying to make sense of him. It's likely he has a good three inches on her without shoes.
"Elevated," he continues, "above the world. …the magnus animus…magnanimitus."
She kicks her heels off into the corner and stands barefoot at his bedside. "Don't be absurd. Look at what you've done for the world." It's strange, having to remind him of this.
"Yes, yes," he dismisses, "but I've had my time in the limelight. Shame I never received that Nobel…" A flash of a smile. "But look at you, Helen…the world should be bowing down and kissing your feet, and instead it doesn't even know you exist."
"Probably for the best, don't you think?" She's wary, because she's never heard praise of the like from his lips, and it worries her. As a rule, Tesla only provides lip-service for Tesla.
He motions for her to sit, and when she hesitates to come forward he holds out a hand to receive her. Though she almost doesn't, the look on his face shames her, and she lowers herself to the mattress cautiously, ready to dart to her feet if necessary.
"I dare you to come closer," he grins, and the expression is shocking to her. It's too out of place, too cheery in a world of twisted ruin, and he's too pale and gaunt. The sickness has taken its toll. She shakes her head demurely, but the spark never leaves his eyes. "You're afraid."
It's supposed to be a challenge, but it hangs in the air like a death sentence. He's right. She's very afraid.
When he realizes the effect of what he's said, he lightens the admonishment. "Helen Magnus, a pansy. Think of the children. What will they say?"
"That you're stubborn to the last." It's strange, but somehow, if she pretends it's all a joke, it seems less real. Like he cannot possibly be dying if she can still find a way to make light of it.
"Call it a dying man's wish, then."
"You've already used one of those." 1876. That time, all he had asked her to do was lock the door. It was almost disappointing…as if he had no regrets, no wishes…nothing at all to say to her. Helen looked away from him, to the tiled floor.
"I've lived three lifetimes—I'm allowed more than one. This works like a genie, right?"
That makes her smile in spite of herself, and that little bit of defeat taps into the wealth of her emotion. When he shifts over invitingly, she slides down parallel to him, and she doesn't realize she's crying until he tugs down her surgical mask and dabs at her cheek with his end of the thin sheet. She lets him because she's too occupied with her deep breathing, trying to relax the tightness in her throat, and she's sure if she moves to look at him then all her progress will be lost.
She hates to see him this way. She hates feeling powerless; she's not good at it. She hates how stubborn he is, and how he won't oblige to stop dying after all she's done for him.
"I'd be flattered," rasped Tesla in her ear, "except, there's the nagging problem of deserving…"
"I—pardon?"
"You heard me." Although it's likely she's imagined it, she thinks there's a trace of feeling in those words, and she begins to wonder about the analgesics he's been taking. Somehow, he's gotten an arm under her neck. "I'm not pandering, Helen."
"I don't understand what you mean."
"Don't waste my time. We are a folie à deux. Let's not pretend that I was never a thorn in your side—the worm in your apple—the knife in your back."
"Oh, Nikola…" Will might say that he's right, but Helen knows there's more to it than that. It's true: Tesla has made himself a life-long career out of driving her to wit's end, but each misstep has been followed by a gesture of equal value. Even then, however, she doesn't forgive him because he asks to be forgiven—as if he would so blatantly debase himself; she does so because, in all likelihood, she needs it more than he does.
It gives her an odd feeling to think it, but Helen knows that, in order to reach the heart, one must first make an incision. They've cut each other down for decades, but in-between the verbal sparring and the battle of wits, they have reached straight to each other's hearts more plainly than any person of polite company.
She wants to tell him this, but she doesn't have the words. Instead, he beats her to the chase.
"Don't," he says, perhaps harsher than intended. "Don't look at me like that."
"Like what?"
"Like you're trying to come up with a way to contradict me but can't."
Helen brushes him off with a stiff shake of the head, seeking out his frozen fingers to curl them through hers. "Well, we all hurt the ones we love."
The corners of his lips twitch upwards in recognition. His eyes don't leave hers for an instant. "You know, normally when people quote me to prove a point, they're talking about electricity."
She tries to laugh, but the sound is transformed in her throat, exiting in a sharp, almost hysterical noise, and she clamps her mouth shut. Helen prides herself on the notion that she hasn't burst into tears in front of anyone except her father in all her life; now is not the exception.
"Hey, at least you aren't the one dying," he tells her. From her end, she isn't sure which is worse.
She's already been to one of his funerals, and she isn't too keen on a second.
"Neither are you, if I have anything to say about it."
Before she can stand, Tesla is already attempting weakly to hold her back, shifting to face her. "Helen." When she pauses, he moves to press a hesitant kiss to the lower half of her jaw, nearest the corner of her mouth. "You're in denial."
His lips are dry and scrape across her skin like peeling leather rather than flesh. For a moment, she's frozen in place, and she isn't sure if it's his words or his conduct that's shocked her. The fact that he's still able to surprise her at all is in itself surprising.
Even if she knows he's probably right, two hours' time finds her hard at work, hunched over a microscope and already through pages of text and almost-legible calculations. If she can bypass the lock on his DNA or activate some remnant of his former self with the mysteries contained in her own blood, it may not be too late.
Tesla is sleeping, a harrowed and irregular sleep with disjointed and shuttering breaths, and she watches him out of the corner of her eye. The battle for his life rages on. She continues to fight, even when the fight turns in on herself and she's combatting an exhaustion that settles like a weight on her body, after her age begins to ache and she struggles to focus on the words she's reading.
In the end, death is not courteous. It does not wait to claim its victims until after they have said their goodbyes, or paid their taxes. Sometimes, it doesn't even allow for final thoughts, or even the realization that one is dying. It is a silent thief, a pickpocket that waits until no one's looking before stealing your soul from straight out of your pockets. At least, that is how Helen pictures it.
Though she'd like to think that death is one more discovery on the horizon, the end to life's one great mystery, she knows better than to think that Tesla isn't just as afraid as she is. He is frustrated by the condition that traps his working mind in a weary container, and Helen hates to see him so alone in that.
She doesn't miss the irony of how natural the thing is that's separating them, when what brought them together in the beginning was the quintessence of unnatural.
It is three days more before she limps out of the medical wing, stone-faced and trembling. She can't make it all the way to her room, perseverance having made room for nothingness, and she collapses onto a hard bench in silence. Henry finds her here some time later, and it only takes one glimpse of her face for his expression to fall.
"Oh, geez," he fumbles, because nothing can truly be said to cross the barrier into importance. "Aw, man. I'm so sorry, Doc."
She doesn't acknowledge him, but he sits with her anyway, an arm encircling her shoulders as she closes her eyes and omits all but the electric beat of her heart, squeezing the last remnant of Nikola Tesla through her veins.