AN: again, a non-linear fic from me! Of the three I've done now, this is my least favourite, but it could just be because of the pairing! And also the fact that I've spent the entire day doing revision, and started writing this at 11pm, so...
I don't own anything.
written for Flying Penguinz
also: everyone must go and read the new fic by Flying Penguinz, titled Insanity's Finest, because it definitely deserves masses of reviews.
June how're you gonna do without me?
Soon you're gonna have to move around me
It's never what you wanted but its been a-while a-coming
Oh June what'cha gonna do?
-June, Tyler Hilton
It ends with her physical destruction, and his mental decline, because that's the way that Ada and Myrnin were always going to part ways, wasn't it? Neither would be pried away from the other – only self-destruction would manage to get them to part ways.
And it has.
/
She's a young, female scientist when she walks into the vampire's laboratory in the mid-1800s, and she catches his eye more than a human ought to. She's just food in the long run, remember? He tries to stress the point to himself, trying to stop himself forming one of those ridiculous attachments again (like with Amelie) because he only ends up getting hurt in the end.
But he's gone as soon as she smiles and opens her mouth to say, "I'm Ada. Ada Lovelace. And I feel that it would be mutually beneficial for us to work together."
/
Her hands tighten in his hair, his lips pressing to hers, and it's strange to think that she started off hating him, because look at them now: she's irrevocably in love with her 'teacher' and there's nothing that could change that.
And she's the first woman Myrnin's ever fell for – or, rather, the first one he's ever had a chance with.
"I love you," she whispers the words against his lips, and feels a spark of heat from the man in front of her that shouldn't be issuing from a vampire.
(But he doesn't say the words back.)
/
His fangs rip into her throat and he gulps the thick, dark liquid down: he should know that it's a vampire's blood so it's wrong (unnatural) to be drinking it, that it's Ada in his arms, so she should be kissing him right now, but that isn't happening.
But he doesn't.
The disease is taking control.
And Myrnin doesn't get the chance to save the girl he loves.
/
"Come with me, to America." He's sudden and rash, as per usual, with his sudden request of Ada, one that is asked over investigating Pasteur's conclusions into the Germ Theory.
"Why are you going to America? I, for one, am perfectly happy here," Ada replies, frowning ever so slightly. "Also, I'm a young vampire; I don't want to risk death on the open seas."
"Amelie has asked me to go; she needs me," he replies instantly, his face furrowing into a deep and pensive expression (all his mind games, to make her agree) as he looks at her. "She's going to do something irrational, and I, as her oldest and wisest friend, ought to stop it, or at least ensure that the damage is limited."
"But…but aren't I more important?" Ada wonders whether a hissy-fit will get her anywhere, but deep down, she know it won't. Myrnin has already made up his mind, and she's never managed to change it, not in forty years together.
And anyway, the look in his eyes tells her she couldn't make him stay, not even if she wanted to.
"Amelie needs me," he repeats softly, taking one of Ada's hands in his. "And I would very much like it if you accompanied me."
/
"Make me a vampire," she whispers into his ear, about six months after she joined him in the lab. He's been impressed by her brain, and yet wondered whether she has been limited by her human body, and so the shock that she wants to become a vampire surprises him.
He hasn't forgotten the way that she confirmed he was a vampire: a crude stake through the heart, something that almost ended with her life over – but she's a scientist, and therefore she'll do anything to prove herself right or wrong.
Myrnin doesn't reply, merely looks into Ada's eyes and sees the desire to eternally learn, the desire he had (has, really) and so finds his hand going to her shoulder quite of its own accord, brushing the shoulder of her dress away.
"This…this shall hurt," he tells her honestly, but she doesn't care, merely levels him off with one of her looks, the one that has him rushing to do whatever she wants.
/
Her dead body is in his arms, and it's only now that he realises he's never said the words 'I love you' to her; he's thought them, hundreds of thousands of times, but he's never dared to say them to her, for fear of…well…he doesn't know, to be honest. He's never been the most rational of beings, but now, with his mind twisted and confused beyond anywhere it has ever been, he has come to realise the most menial of things.
So he scrapes back the hair from her face and makes her look as beautiful as she ever could, before pressing his lips to her icy cold forehead and whispering, "you look ravishing, my darling. I love you."
/
Ada finds herself setting sail into the orange sunset, aboard a boat with many hundreds of other pioneers to the land called the United States of America, though she's not sure why.
All she knows is that Myrnin asked her to come with him, and no matter his lack of verbal confirmation of their eternal, irrevocable love, she'll go wherever he goes.
(Though she's still waiting to hear the magic words that she said within six months.)
/
Amelie walks through the portal to Myrnin's lab at an inopportune time – inopportune for him, given that he's midway through completing his brilliant new idea for how to control the town.
"Myrnin, have you, oh—!" she begins to ask him whether he knows how to keep the residents of Morganville in (he does, now) but finds Ada's dead body on the table next to him. "You killed her? Oh, Myrnin…" Amelie finds herself lost for words as her one time closest friend turns to face her, his eyes wide and manic.
Dangerous.
"I know how to control the town," he tells her feverishly, gesturing towards the plans behind him with a flourish – though all Amelie's eyes notice is the knife in his hand. "She can help us, Amelie, in death. If we have the town, then I can conduct further research into what is destroying us. I can do this!"
But all Amelie can think is that if he's hurt the one woman he has eternally adored, will he be able to control himself as he deteriorates?
Will he hurt me?
/
Ada frowns into the microscope, the human device that doesn't particularly aid her near perfect eyesight, and sighs. "I don't understand what we're looking for, Myrnin!"
Already, the slight manic edge is creeping into his demeanour – more manic than his usual self – and she finds herself shrinking back from him automatically, a movement she finds ridiculous: he's Myrnin, for Christ's sake! They've worked together for almost fifty seven years now, and if they were human, they would be an old couple by now, one whose passion for the sciences would have been passed on through the generations.
As it is, they're preserved beautifully, though frozen so unable to pass on their genes, and Ada is sure that the cost of giving up her human life has been met by Myrnin.
"Do not speak to me in such a tone!" he snaps, and she knows instantly that it's not him, it's the disease talking.
Just how does she stop him from hurting her?
(This time, she manages it.)
/
"Is it complete?" Amelie's voice startles Myrnin from the completion of the machine in the far corner of the cavernous room beneath his laboratory. "Will the town be controlled by us, Myrnin, through these many scientific ventures you have completed?"
"Yes." He's short and curt, because he's still mad, so mad, about the way that he's killed Ada, and that she's the only reason he's able to think completely and utterly logically. As soon as this project is over, as soon as he can see her again (a secret he hasn't shared with Amelie), he's well aware that he'll break down into the broken man he'll be for the rest of his life, but the drive of the moment keeps him focused on the end goal: Ada.
(Aiding the town is only to keep Amelie from nattering, and to ensure that she doesn't find him becoming expendable.
The main reason is to be able to say those words, I love you, to at least a version of Ada.)
/
They arrive in Morganville amidst a flurry of activity: humans seem to be carrying large mounds of building materials, and Myrnin can already see half of the main buildings of the town are already part-way constructed.
"She's done it," he whispers, and his voice is filled with agony. "She's acted out of fear, of all things scientific and natural."
All Ada needs to do is take his hand – her presence is enough to alleviate some of the fear and tension in his face, enough to make him remember that he has a chance to turn Amelie's mind back to the good of their kind, because he knows her. Ada can calm him down.
He doesn't know what he'd do if she left him.
/
The night after he takes his first episode, Ada's on tenterhooks for another one, though he seems relatively sane, taking her hand, pressing soft kisses along her collarbone in order to distract her from her task, and she finally allows herself to relax.
In fact, he remains calm for another six weeks.
Unfortunately, by now, he doesn't recognise her.
/
Kisses rain down as fast as chemicals are spilled in Myrnin and Ada's lab (something she takes great relish in saying, that the lab is the property of both Myrnin and herself) and sometimes, Ada struggles to remember that they have a task to complete: they need to save Myrnin, save their race from ultimate doom.
And even though he hasn't told her he loves her still, she knows he does, because he would stop science for nobody but her: if she asks him to come, he comes. If she wants assistance, he abandons his experiments to aid her.
When she wants to talk, he listens…and Ada is sure that there's nobody else he would ever do this for, listening and behaving with the utmost respect and interest, because love comes around only once like this, right?
After all, soulmates never hear that they can gain a second one, if they grow tired of the first, do they?
/
A light flickers on in the masses of metal and wood, and Myrnin knows that it's worked: his crazy, ridiculous plan has worked, and Ada is alive! She's confined to a box, but she's able to speak and see him and—she's here!
A two dimensional image of her floats out, her body covered in what she wore last, and he finds his breath being taken away, because he's never truly realised how beautiful she is: she's the epitome of beauty for him, and it saddens him more than anything that he's only realised it now he cannot see her face every day.
"I'm sorry," he whispers, his voice cracked with the pain of what he's done. "I can only hope that you can, one day, forgive me."
His face is bleak, save for a glimmer of a self-hating glint in his eyes, as he says, "after all, we are now together for eternity, as you wanted, my sweet."
(Little does he know that she's going to end up being his saving grace once again, and that he's going to have to break this promise to always be with her.)
AN2: I'd appreciate it if you didn't favourite without reviewing, thanks!
-Vicky xx