A/N: I have no beta, so blame my many errors on me. I would like to thank the few, the awesome, the folks who still read and review in this fandom! I would especially like to thank ladyro7, whose requests for additions to the world of "Nine Times Nikola Tesla..." got me thinking about this story.
6 chapters are planned, but it may extend to 7 if I jump to future events as well.
On with the show!
Betws-y-Coed train station, Wales, UK, March 27, 1946
James Watson looked down at the slushy mud on his handmade Seville row shoes and sighed softly. That's what he got for trying to walk through a tiny Welsh town on the cusp of Spring. Mud covered up with the faintest dusting of the snow. Morning snow, which had fallen just as he was exiting his early train. A subtle canvassing of the town revealed absolutely nothing of interest except that there had been a couple of "odd ducks" who had arrived in Betws-y-Coed in the past week, but they'd all been trundled up to Snowdonia Park, quick as you please. Anything else about the town was not particularly unique to any small town in Britain, Scotland or Wales. There was still rationing to complain about but the menfolk were back, and the war was finally, finally over.
He paced the platform at the train station, trying to stay active. His machine didn't particular like the cold, though heat was by far more troublesome. But truly, he felt more alive than he had in months. Helen had contacted him, was likely hereabouts even now. Perhaps she had forgiven him his descent into depression and indulgence with cocaine and vice. Perhaps he could make amends, though they would likely never have the easy companionship they once had. To continue their relationship was not fair to Helen, who of all people deserved real love! Something he himself was never likely to find, not with his proclivities. Not with John so lost to every gentler feeling.
James had been caught up in a descending circle of negative thoughts, so he was startled when he noticed the unremarkable man standing at the opposite end of the platform. He turned his lips upward in vague amusement as he read the small chalk board he carried which read, "Sherlock".
Now, either Helen was still very much upset him, or she was in a teasing mood the likes of which he hadn't seen in decades, or this wasn't Helen at all. In fact, it sounded much more like Nigel, or even Nikola. But Nigel was happily on an extended honeymoon with his little French wife, and Tesla had completely disappeared after his prison at Bletchley park had imploded.
He walked up to the man with the sign. "I believe, good man, that you are looking for me."
The man grinned tightly, revealing only a little of teeth that were quite an odd shade of yellow. "Hello guvnor. the Lady said ya'd be early like and she's rarely wrong about time." Watson noticed the odd reverence within the term "Lady", and assumed that somehow Helen had quite won this fellow over. Had she somehow completely lied to him about setting out for America, after the horrors she'd seen in Eastern Europe? She'd been so haunted, not even his desertion seemed to evoke a response. It had been hell on Earth, and he'd took the coward's way out, escaping back to London and his books and his medicine and his comfortable study. She had wanted a fresh start, had wanted to leave Europe far behind.
But had she instead remained in England, toiling away at some odd project without his knowledge? His head throbbed suddenly with the makings of a ripping headache, and his normally exquisitely organized thought seemed to run over in a chaotic cascade. Something in his mind was blocked, faulty. Something was afoot.
"Please, my good fellow, we mustn't keep your Lady waiting."
The irreverent driver chuckled thickly and blinked, his second set of vertical eyelids revealing him to be an Abnormal, of course. "Oh, she's not mine, and don't go sayin' that around too loud like. Certain toffs'll get jealous, 'specially today!"
The man spun around, and Watson picked up the small valise he'd brought with him in case he'd be staying for more than an afternoon. And he followed, his mind turning over what was revealed and not revealed by this man's words. What was special about today?
The truck was new once, back at the end of the last War. It was once black and it was fairly clean, a few crates in the back holding some kind of libation in quantity. He wondered if that was what they truly contained or if there was something more mysterious they were carrying in the flatbed. The radio played a droning version of some kind of jazz...nothing he could care to name. The bumpy road up into the mountains set his teeth clacking but he'd endured worse for Helen. There was one moment that the radio screamed with static and an odd buzz seemed to wash over his skin...it almost felt like Tesla's EM sheild on the London Sanctuary, but that seemed impossible. The driver turned off the radio and began to hum an old tune with an odd resonance. He didn't speak again, just smiling every so often with those sharp yellow teeth.
They stopped at a cottage high in the foothills before reaching the peaks, whose single window overlooked a deep blue lake. It was a tiny thatched hut, and Watson couldn't imagine Helen living in such a place, but the driver killed the engine and hopped out of the truck, bustling toward the back where the crates were stored. Watson himself got out slowly taking in the dusting of snow, the a white glaze over the brown grass that stretched for miles over the rolling hills, and the odd nature of a number of muddy footprints in the frost.
"Well, in wit ya now. Lady's busy an' no doubt runnin' late. "
Watson nodded and grabbed his valise, striding into the cottage as another, stronger buzz hummed over his skin. For all that this place appeared entirely mundane and unassuming, it apparently boasted some remarkable security.
He bent to enter the low threshold, straightening up upon entry to see the whitewashed walls and a simple wooden table, with little else but a linen curtain blocking off a corner of the room. The curtain twitched back, and then Helen appeared, a wide smile on her face that actually reached her eyes. He could take in nothing else for a long moment. He had not seen that smile on Helen's face in more decades than he cared to count. He had forgotten how utterly captivating she truly was. She advanced toward him, arms outstretched, and he noticed her odd ensemble, blue silk slippers and a deep green silk robe, and a thin white scarf covering her hair.
He held open his arms and wrapped her in a heartfelt hug, reveling in her apparent forgiveness for abandoning her to the horrors of the East and for drowning himself in the vices that were his oldest friends. But even as he held the woman he had called his own for two decades in his arms, his partner and friend, he noted the pins in her hair under the kerchief, the scent of orange blossoms on her skin, the fact that her hips were wider then they had been just a few months ago, the lines in her face were different, her posture more assured. His head throbbed, the pain growing as his mind spun.
She drew back, and the look in her eyes, the wistful nostalgia...he spoke sharply, suddenly on high alert. "I would say that was quite a greeting for a man you deservedly walked out on two months ago for the wonders of America. But I am quite certain that it has been far far longer that two months. I don't know how, or why, but I know you are not the same Helen Magnus."
She smiled softly, obviously completely unthreatened by his declaration. He grit his teeth and dropped the valise, his hands pressing against his temples as pain flared.
She spoke softly, as though she knew every word send a lance of pain through his skull. "It's been forty eight years I've been deprived of your company. You are far far too clever for me, James." She paused and swallowed, a pained look on her face as she spoke deliberately, carefully. "You really are a walking medical miracle."
The pain soared and then dissolved, leaving him with weeks' worth of memories that he'd locked away long ago. A dark Helen in 1898, trapped in the wrong time. Destroying the mad Adam Worth and sending her off to live a life in quiet solitude, then having her return not a week later, her face practically green and desperation in her eyes. A mad rush to cross the ocean in the fastest ship, a train from New York to the wilds of Colorado. A clever telegram to Tesla about a lucrative contract for a stasis box for living tissue. And an insane raid to steal secrets and a prototype from one of their oldest friends. And surgery in a primitive medical school in a rocky-strewn town actually called Boulder! All of it meant to rescue a child from being born into the wrong time. This was the much older, much wiser Helen, who had once been so very sad, underneath all the confidence and purpose. Yet here she was, now gloriously happy. Why?
He captured her left hand and it revealed a ring, as he suspected. A metal with an odd sheen that suggested electrum, and a smooth round blue stone the same shade as her eyes...a pale blue star sapphire, remarkably rare except for certain mountains in India, mere steps aware from the last stronghold of the vampire race. He looked at the side of her neck, the same place he'd seen the deep scar on that dark, hard Helen of long ago. It was still there, along with marks that indicated it had been opened and healed again. Frequently.
Finally.
"Oh Helen! It truly did take several lifetimes for you to be willing to put the man out of his misery!"
She smiled up at him, a twinkle in her eye and a wry grin on her lips. "I had almost forgotten just how impossible it is to conceal anything from you, James. But yes, I couldn't quite stay in the shadows as much as you counciled I should. And I'm afriad that I couldn't do it alone."
Watson smiled at her, a mixture of pain and happiness gripping his heart. He wished he'd been the one to make her this happy. He wished that she could have brought this kind of light to his life. He wondered if he would ever be able to find this, or if the intricacies of the human puzzle would always make him immune to the inevitable fall that passionate love requires.
"And I know I should not bring out your memories. You've been very good so far not to chastise me, James. But I needed you. We both needed you. We're getting married today." She smiled, tears in the corner of her eyes that seemed to shock both of them into silence.
Another, even more cheerful voice echoed in the small space, "So, what do you say, old man? Will you be one of our best men?"
A smug sounding Nikola Tesla emerged from behind the curtain, hands in his pockets and a wide grin on his face, his eyes covered with a dramatic slash of black silk.
He was followed by a humanoid with dark green scales and bright blue eyes that were filled to the brim with irritation, her voice was deep and sultry even as she boiled with anger, "I'm sorry Helen. I just couldn't keep him occupied and he insisted on following you here. He's like a child searching for a sweet!"
Nikola leered at Helen despite the impediment of the blindfold. "What a perfect metaphor for you, moja dragi. You are definitely sweet."
He strode forward and with unerring accuracy stuck out his hand in a very American fashion, one that was surprising for a man who was once so adverse to touch. James seized his hand in a firm grip and Nikola smiled widely, his face full of the same genuine glee that seemed to make both Helen and he light up like one of Edison's lightbulbs.
"It's good to see you, or at least hear you, Watson. Sorry I was so insufferable the last time we met. You had something of mine, you know."
Helen elbowed him in the ribs. "May I remind you that for me that was more than a century in the past. And what are you doing here, Nikola? You aren't supposed to..."
"...see the bride until the ceremony. Well, why do you think I'm wearing a blindfold? Silly British superstition doesn't say anything about hearing, smelling," he grinned lasciviously and wrapped his arm around her waist, dipping his head down to press a kiss against her neck, "or even tasting the bride before the ceremony, now does it?"
Helen rolled her eyes and let out a huff of annoyance, but she didn't push him away either. James was more than a little shocked by the easy intimacy between these two. If he wasn't so concerned about the stability of the time stream, he'd want to spend more time with these oldest of friends, more time to try and unlock the secret to their contentment.
"Time flies, honored ones." The repilian woman tapped her foot on the dirt floor, the cream silk of her gown rippling with her impatience. "All of O Dan y Ddinas awaits this day. To be late would be inauspicious."
Nikola let go of his bride to be and smiled again, "What do you say, James? Come see our little projects and tell us what you think. Just a few minutes at a little ceremony, and then a grand party. I've even got that brandy you like."
Helen smiled at him, holding her right hand out to beckon him in. "Please James. Say you will?"
How could he deny her? How could he deny either of them?
When he got to the other side of the curtain, and saw the glowing bubble of a railcar sitting practically in midair upon a rail as thin as a good book, he knew he had to see just what kind of trouble these two had managed to create. That really had been not one, but two EM sheilds he had passed through to reach this place. Tesla had disappeared so often in the past fifty years, just what mischief had they been getting up to?