Kiss Me And I'll Save Your Life
AN: I don't own the characters, though I wish those who did would find their brains and bring us a season five with lots of Teslen… Mild spoilers if you haven't seen the deleted scenes from Sanctuary For None. Major spoilers if you haven't actually seen Sanctuary for None… ;) This chapter is heavily SFN recap to set the mood. It's mostly a prologue to the story itself.
Summary: He'd made her a deal, and he'd saved her in Rome. He'd nearly sacrificed himself for her in Columbia. Now she was ready to sacrifice all for all; but not before she kissed him and saved his life.
Helen half-ran, half-limped into the main lab of the Old City Sanctuary. She, Henry and Nikola had been keeping Caleb and his minions at bay and trying to lead them into the main lab, shutting off access to other wards of the mansion. Despite Henry's assertion that this was "of all the very bad ideas," he had obeyed her request and helped guide them in this direction.
Now, she saw neither Henry nor Caleb, and as she entered the lab Nikola turned from looking over the array on the table. "Helen!"
"I'm fine," she started as she moved toward him. "Are they coming?"
"I noticed all the residents are gone," Nikola started to question. Damn him. Damn Nikola and his complete inability to focus! She waved her arm a bit to get his attention, "Caleb! Is he close?"
"He's on his way; he's not alone." Helen nodded, "Where's Henry?" "He's securing the last sector."
She nodded. Everything was weighing down on her about what she was about to do. "Go, Nikola…" She leaned in, a hand coming to his arm as she pressed a brief but firm kiss to his lips. "Go, quickly."
The look they exchanged said it all. He nodded, knowing she had something up her sleeve. He hoped whatever it was would protect her the way he truly believed she believed it would.
He turned and took a few long strides to the door, turning to use the tablet to hit the switch to close it. He stood there until it was closed, never letting his eyes move from hers. This might be the last time he would ever see her, and he wanted to make it count. He hoped she could see in his eyes what his lips could not say.
Helen watched with hopeful but pained eyes as the door shut and left her alone in the lab. She hadn't had a chance to say goodbye to Henry, and now Nikola was out of her sight. The HAP was like a son to her, and the vampire… Good Lord, what could she say about Nikola? He was the last. The last with her, of The Five. Nigel had been dead for over 50 years, James for three. John had been last known to be in an area that had exploded and had never been heard from since. He was believed to be dead. Even her father, while not one of The Five, had gained his own longevity from the Source Blood after they had… and they had no evidence he had survived the destruction of Praxis. And now even Bigfoot. Her heart had broken finding his body in the front pathway, but Caleb and his goons had interrupted her before she could respond fully.
She didn't have but a split second to process these fleeting thoughts before Caleb and his followers came walking through the other door. "You seem mentally unstable, facing us alone." So Caleb had seen her send Nikola away.
"I'm a chronic micromanager," she replied, hitting several controls to fire from the lasers at Caleb's crew. They fell, but Caleb was on her before she could shoot him down as well, punching her with his abnormal superhuman strength. She flew across the table, scattering beakers and components everywhere and falling with a thud onto the hard floor.
Caleb began crossing the room toward her. "It's a shame Helen, we could have been friends. Standing shoulder to shoulder, watching the dawn of a new age. It's too bad, you're gonna miss all the fun." Caleb stood over her with a sly smirk.
"So will you," Helen replied, a nod indicating the computer countdown to Self Destruct in 44 seconds. Caleb's eyes widened and he turned to her, "Make it stop!"
"My house, my rules." She tapped another control on the tablet and a large drilling device came down and impaled Caleb.
Once Caleb's body hung lifeless from the device, Helen got to her feet and hurried over to the tech shield jacket Henry had been working so hard on. He had only had time and resources to make one, and thankfully with Nikola leaving when she told him to, there was only need of one. She pulled it on as quickly as possible, the timer was down to six seconds.
"Dear God…" Helen said in a startled voice as the enormity of what she was about to do hit her at the literal last second.
Perhaps none of them had fully figured it out. She had been secretive for 113 years, after all. But now Will was working for Addison and SCIU, and had taken Kate and Abby on some sort of hail-Mary attempt to get the abnormal from the Homeland District out of harm's way before the "death nodes" could fry them. His guilt over designing the thing had been eating at him all day.
"That's not what it was meant for!" Nikola had shouted at Henry upon his realization that they could be modified to become death weapons rather than simple containment devices. An ultimate invisible dog fence.
Henry had been distracted working on that tech shield jacket. It was pointless and would never work, he had started to tell him. But when his frustration and depression over the whole SCIU situation had driven him to find a way to alter the wine so that for the first time in his vampiric life, he could get drunk, he had finally shifted his focus and curiosity after the fact to whatever Helen had been working on.
He'd entered her office and waited for her to return. He took a seat nonchalantly at her desk as he heard her walking down the hall, finishing a phone call. She'd questioned him about why he wasn't working, and he said he was finding it hard to work with the distractions. Her lies. After they went back and forth a little he had grown impatient.
"You can hide it from the kids, Helen, but from me? I know you too well, Mrs. Robinson."
"Go back to work, Nikola!"
"I will, once you tell me what's going on." He flashed her that charmer's grin.
Helen kept her cool. She had an excellent poker face. "I've no idea what you're blathering on about."
"Yeah I've been trying to figure it out. Ever since I sobered up. And it all seems to come back to New York, 1901. The same year that fascist J.P. Morgan ran me off Long Island…" Nikola started, but Helen couldn't contain her amusement anymore. Ducking her face for a few seconds to hide her grin, she composed herself and answered him in a matter-of-fact tone: "You took him for three million dollars and built a radio tower to talk to aliens!"
"Which worked, thank you!" Nikola snapped back, but turned to approach her again. "But my point is, when you came to me, asking about the controlled use of nitroglycerin, our target was a Peruvian underwater cave. I thought I was helping you capture some useless multi-headed shark."
"And?" Helen played clueless. "And you lied to me. According to the Praxian database, that cave leads to an arterial passageway to Hollow Earth."
"That's impossible. We only discovered Hollow Earth last year."
"The rest of us, yes. But you've known about it for 113 years. So I want to know if the Helen Magnus who wined and dined me at the Hotel Mira-Florez in 1902 was you, or the other you?"
Helen smiled and reached up to pat his cheek fondly. "Ah, Nikola. You're the genius. You figure it out." And she had gotten up and left the room.
Now, Nikola was leaving the main lab. As he turned away finally when the door shut, Henry was standing there. He had just enough time to grab the HAP by the arm and turn him to follow him out the next door. Once it was secured, they managed to turn and take a few steps before the explosions began to rock the building.
It was over in seconds. A series of explosions had gone off and Henry and Nikola were left at the gate, watching in horror was the building crumbled down. Henry's home, Nikola's refuge.
Will, Kate and Abby stood and watched as the flames erupted down the road. "Kate, get these people off the streets, find a safe house." Will knew there was no time to waste, tragedy or not.
"On it," Kate stated through teary eyes.
"Will, I'm sure Magnus…" Abby started, but Will shook his head, eyes never leaving the flames. "No, she's not."
And still inside the building was the one woman who meant so much to them all.