A/N:This was a monster in disguise that had to re-written six or seven times that I actually just want to post it and not look at it anymore. Spoilers up to 'Sleepers'. Song belongs to Brooke Fraser - Love is Waiting. Read, review, enjoy!
Love is Waiting
It hurt.
To see Helen fall so completely apart, crumpled on the floor, bleeding and uncaring of the pain as her body wracked with sobs. To know that the pain she was feeling inside made her numb to anything outside.
It hurt. For a man who'd defined his life purely on his own selfishness, to see her like that caused his feet to walk back to his room, pack his meager belongings, and leave.
Away from the cloud of emotions threatening to envelop this place. He needed air, needed to be away from this place, away from her and what the broken sight of her did to his insides. Nikola couldn't even look at her.
He'd not met anyone on his quick strides toward the front door; his legs speeding up their pace trying to outrun the silence of mourning swamping the corridors like a solid heavy weight. He couldn't be here. He could feel his insides twisting with something, something he didn't want to name that had his heart pounding and hardening the lump in his throat making it almost impossible to swallow.
"Leaving so soon?"
The softly-spoken question jerked him out of whatever had a hold on him and Nikola stuttered to a stop, at the soft, empty voice and his eyes shuttered at the sight confronting him. He was mere steps from freedom, from the chance to cast off this invisible feeling crushing him inside.
Sitting on the cold marble steps, with her legs curled up, Helen sat - beautiful in her sorrow, barefoot, and broken.
She made no move to get up, just stared at him with bleak blue eyes. Her black dress blended in perfectly with the shadows of the unlit foyer and it was no wonder he hadn't seen her. Nikola wondered if she was even breathing.
His free hand, the one not gripping his valise with a deathly vise, twitched nervously, unsure of what to say, how to act in this unwanted confrontation.
He took a hesitant step forward, wanting, perhaps needing to comfort her in some pitiful way, but his arms remained limp by his sides. It wasn't in his nature to do such a thing, despite that gnawing urge to do just that. To cast off that arrogant loner persona he'd placed himself into. But he couldn't, instead remaining silent. How could he tell her that he had to leave? That he was suffocating under all the sudden emotion here? Her emotions.
His mouth refused to offer any words and instead tracked the graceless movements as Helen stumbled shakily to her feet. Her bare feet made no noise on the cold stairs, but her steps were slow. Helen's eyes were glassy with unshed tears that made her vision blurry and distorted.
The silence continued as she closed the distance between them and still he said nothing, even staring with hooded eyes in the face of her misery. There was nothing he could say and nothing that she wanted to hear. Knowing each other for over a hundred years had them attuned to each other in so obvious a way that complete strangers could see. The way they so perfectly fit together; silent conversations and instinctively knowing how the other would react - it forged a bond that few knew existed.
Nikola swayed a little as Helen stepped closer and rested her forehead against his shoulder. Heard her tiny breaths for composure, for control, for dignity.
He swallowed, hard, when those breaths failed and a sob hitched in her chest. With his face averted, eyes unblinking, staring resolutely at the shiny gold doorknob, Nikola's jaw clenched as his nostrils flared, smelling the salty tears, almost flinching as they exploded, one by one, on the floor.
Nikola kept his face averted when Helen raised her head. If he were a lesser man, he would've shut his eyes against the sight of a tearful Helen.
She raised a hand and Nikola was startled and instantly wary. Helen never touched him, if the situation didn't call for it. Eyes frozen in a locked stare, fighting against the tide of bleak wretchedness, Nikola's jaw ticked visibly as Helen skimmed it with her cold fingertips. She had never touched him like this; slow, deliberate, forlorn. It was as unwelcome as the message he read in her opaque, red-rimmed eyes.
I need you.
Not like she needed the others, of course. The difference of how Helen needed him lay in her eyes. She wanted, needed to be comforted in a way no one here could give. The comfort of forgetting the pain.
Nikola read it for what it was; knew what she was asking, and he stepped back, but not out of reach. His heart wouldn't allow that. But that distance and direction in which he went gave his answer.
"You said you loved me."
I do. Nikola swallowed convulsively. I do.
"You need to deal with this first." It was the first words he'd spoken aloud in their dark encounter. They stared at each other, silently.
Hesitantly, with his heart pounding out a staccato beat, Nikola lifted a hand and touched Helen's cheek with the barest of caresses. His fingers swept over her skin, wiping away the tears like some part of him wanted to do from the start. "I...I'll be here..."
When you really need me. When the time is right. When there's nothing left between us, but us.
Nikola left it hanging.
Helen looked as if she hadn't heard anything, but for a moment, her eyes flickered, silently asking in the darkness.
You love me?
Always, Nikola's eyes affirmed. He slowly took his hand back, not wanting to cease the physical connection that was so rare between them and stepped toward the door.
She understood. Even in that moment of the blackest grief, she understood. He wasn't abandoning her; he was giving her time.
She had lost her daughter, one half of her world, one half of her heart. She needed to grieve. It was enough for him, now, to have her know that he had not been lying in the catacombs underneath Rome. To have her know he loved her.
It was enough, for now.
Musing lazily on love
Pondering you
I'll give it time, give it space and be still for a spell
When it's time to walk that way, we wanna walk it well
I'll be waiting for you, baby
I'll be holding back the darkest night
Love is waiting til we're ready, til it's right
Love is waiting
o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o
It hurt.
The revelation that the Five, the handful of individuals she'd gathered were slowly disappearing and dying. Her friends, each who held a small piece inside of her, were being destroyed before her eyes; Nikola's vampirism just being the latest of blows. Granted, it had been his fault, irrevocably, completely, but...it hurt. To see that lost look on his face.
Where was he to go from here? She didn't need to ask his thoughts; they were the same as hers. What was he going to do? How do you live when what you were, what you'd always been, was ripped from you in a matter of seconds?
The childlike fascination with this new magnetic power had worn off rather quickly, in light of the fact that no matter what Nikola had now, being part-vampire had never been about the cool powers, but his heritage, it was about who he was. Was.
Among that, was Nikola's immortality. Helen blinked back sudden tears. How short a time would it be before she lost him too? A mere thirty years? Forty? With Nikola's natural arrogance and recklessness, the latter of which she had as well, she might lose him sooner than that.
"Come to see me off?" His voice was light, and if he had been facing her, Nikola's face would have shown no sign of fear as he paused at the front door. As it was, Helen saw the tautness of his back, the tenseness in his muscles, and knew he was struggling to keep it together.
Descending the stairs quietly where she had been lying in wait fro him to sneak out in the middle of the night, Helen said nothing.
He didn't deign to turn and face her; unafraid of any confrontation save against her, because Helen had always seen through him. And right now, she knew he was scared, an occurence she could count on one hand and still have fingers left over.
She wasn't looking for a fight. She was offering something else.
Less than a year ago, a confession of love accidentally-on-purpose slipped from his lips. Nikola never said anything by accident, never did anything without design. Less than five months ago, he had confirmed it while stepping back to give her more time. Unbeknowest to him, that simple 'and I love you' said matter-of-factly in his voice stayed with her, replayed in Helen's mind whenever she was alone. It forced her mind to think and imagine things, situations differently, thinking about Nikola in that way.
And it gave her shivers.
She wanted him to stay, here, with her, but she knew he wouldn't and she could never force him.
Just as he had walked away to give her time, it was now her turn.
Unconsciously a hand reached out to touch him, but curled and dropped before reaching his stiff shoulders. He'd only see the gesture as pity. Instead, Helen stepped around to see him, his face.
A snarky remark preyed upon his lips, but it died when he saw the soft understanding on her face. No pity, no malicious 'I told you so'.
His face was shadowed, but despite that he made a valiant attempt to lift his lips in a patented smirk that quickly faded as Helen's hands rose to cradle his face between her palms. They stayed that way as Helen revealed her thoughts, her emotions, her unspoken questions. Her fingers trailed over his cheeks, innocently traced his parted lips, fluttered down his neck to lay flat against his chest, his heart.
His eyes flitted about, searching hers, the fear now naked in his eyes. His vulnerability laid out bare in front of her, that he would not permit anyone else to witness, to see. His heart pounded underneath her hand, racing as if he had run a mile in a minute. She pressed her hands harder against his chest, trying to give him warmth, reassurance, to quell that controlled fear rising in his eyes.
This despair would pass, dull with time. It had for her. It would for him.
But right now, it was too raw. That he was no longer a vampire so suddenly left him bereft, flailing helplessly in the dark.
He had to go. He couldn't stay. What he needed, couldn't be found here, in this place, but...
You'll be here? If I need...?
Always, her eyes affirmed. Helen nodded silently. I'll wait here.
Giving a jerky nod, Nikola stepped back, clutching his small valise tightly and her hands slowly dropped from his chest. Nikola gave her a shaky smirk; both of them reasserting their usual outward personas, but leaving their emotions clear in their eyes.
Her eyes tracked his squared shoulders, his sure stride toward the door, but it was in the pause of his step, that last glance back towards her, that caused Helen to smile softly.
Go. I love you. Go.
Her reward was Nikola's smile, just as soft, unguarded, before he vanished out the door and out of her life.
For now.
I could write a million songs about the way you say my name
I could live a lifetime with you and then do it all again
and like I can't force the sun to rise or hasten summer's start
Neither should I rush my way into your heart
I'll be waiting for you, baby
I'll be holding back the darkest night
Love is waiting til we're ready, til it's right
Love is waiting
Fin.