"Oh, hey Tesla."

He didn't respond, only the faintest, slowest, most disparaging glance out of the corner of his eye. Henry instantly recognised this as his pissy-mood-face, and thought to give the vampire a wide berth as he moved to pick up his pad. Then he noticed the look had morphed into something else, and paused a moment. It wasn't that bitter concentration on a pressing scientific problem, nor the despondent depression of failure, or the knotted frustration of humility… it was something altogether new. If he had to guess, Henry would've pegged it as confusion.

Instantly the HAP's brow knotted with unbidden concern, and because this was friendly, caring, Henry, he couldn't not ask… "Hey, er… are you okay?"

An accusing glare flashed irritably, "No I am not okay. Not after an entire night of tortuous wailing echoing out of the vocal chords of your spawn." He threw the metallic object he'd been fiddling with disdainfully onto the side and started to pace.

Henry's expression hardened at the barb, feeling instantly defensive over little Alistair – the only thing stopping him complaining was the fact that Tesla hadn't finished his tirade.

"I mean really Heinrich, did you have to subject us all to the parental experience?"

"Oh I'm sorry," Henry jumped in flatly, "did he interrupt your little love nest - or maybe your beauty sleep?"

The vamp didn't react with the knee-jerk glare and a snarl he'd expected. In fact, he could've sworn Tesla had sighed as he looked away, one hand on a hip and his shoulders slumped. Only then did his hard stare land on Henry - pointedly silent until the werewolf almost felt guilty for having said anything. Almost, mind: this was Tesla after all. All the crap he'd put up with in the few years he'd known him, the least Vlad could do was take it in return.

"You and the doc…" fight? They were always fighting; it was part of the game. How else could he put it? They'd been in and out of each other's beds for over a year now. Never on a regular footing, but everyone knew what was going on… or at least thought that they did. They might not have been particularly subtle, but nor were they very talkative about private matters, and Tesla, well gee, the man lived and breathed for secret motives. So curious, now, that his distress was so apparent.

"This is serious isn't it?" Henry asked. No jokes now, only offering to lend an ear, "What did you do?"

"Oh sure, because it always has to be my fault."

Henry pulled a face, before realising how pointlessly pedantic it would sound and redressing the point, "Look, dude, I'm not getting at you… just, trying to help."

He hissed a sigh, hand running nervously through his hair as he prepared to admit something intensely personal. Why, exactly, he was going to do so to Henry he still wasn't quite sure, and didn't really want to consider… "It's not what I've done… it's what I can't do."

The vulnerable look in his eyes was bizarre to the younger man, to say the least.

"Which is…" he prompted.

Tesla flopped down into a chair, finally bringing all movement to a halt, head leaning on his arm as his fingers rubbed temples. The look on his face was grim, with a hint of despair, and a modicum of sheepishness to boot. For the longest while Henry didn't think he was going to say anything, and when he did it was pretty quiet.

"Tell her how much I love her."

Henry's jaw nearly dropped off its hinges, but there wasn't a hint of irony in Tesla's voice. He'd pretty much shied away from the entire admission, which just left the HAP even more gobsmacked. Ever since they'd met, the young werewolf had always wondered, honestly, truly, whether he really cared and now… from his own mouth. It was hard for Henry to reconcile the man in front of him to the one who always seemed to put a desire for one-up-man-ship ahead of any humane emotion known to man. He crossed his arms, leaning back against a table and considering the predicament Tesla had just proposed.

"So… what's the problem? Why can't you just say it?"

"I just can't, okay?" Tesla gestured angrily, hands splayed, "You live over a hundred years – you know someone for over a hundred years – and things get a little complicated." Or you get shot at, Nikola added mentally; feeling no desire to clue junior in on details about Rome which Magnus herself had clearly neglected to share with the class.

"How?" Henry argued, and Tesla instantly rolled his eyes. "Way I see it, things couldn't be any simpler."

"And what if she doesn't feel the same Henri?" he stared defiantly at him, "What then?"

He shrugged, "You go back to where you were?"

He shook his head with the most severe expression, "Trust me, I couldn't, even if Helen could."

Again, Henry's eyebrows shot up.

"Oh don't look so surprised," Tesla groused bitterly, "is it really so hard for you to imagine?"

"What, you giving a crap? Yeah, colour me surprised Tesla, you haven't exactly fostered a reputation for being particularly sensitive to anyone-"

"Well I'm not, but this isn't just anyone – is it?"

Henry let out a long breath, "Dude, what can I say? If things don't go the way you want them to, the only person cutting you off will be yourself."

That, of course, was the problem. Tesla didn't know if he could handle the disappointment, the pity, or whatever else might lay in her response. Always, except for that one time in Rome, (and let's face it, that wasn't exactly the most rational period of his existence,) he had held back from admitting the depths of his feelings for her. Knowing, somehow, that once he did so everything would change – and maybe not for the better. Or worse, nothing would change at all.

He had only to remember the wrench her look of shock had taken to his heart when he'd said it in the catacombs. When she'd given her reply in a bullet and he'd fought against the sudden pang of rejection with irony and bravado. It had only served to hide the surprisingly overwhelming sense of genuine disappointment which – after sixty years – he had been unprepared for. He'd expected her to baulk at the notion, but what he hadn't anticipated was how much he still cared.

It taught him to fear, once again, the admission of his deepest, most intense emotions. Reminding him, as it did, that it was never wise to let on just how important someone was to you, lest it tear them away.

"Seriously, if I were you, I'd just tell her already. The doc's never once written you off, even after all the crap you put her through." He didn't seem to like the assertion but Henry was unapologetic, "What? It's true and you know it is." He started counting on his hand, "The Cabal, creating college-brat vamps, working for SCIU-"

"Yeah okay buster, I got the picture."

"You really think actually telling her you care for her, finally showing your appreciation for all she's done for you, is what's going to send Magnus running for the hills?"

He sighed disparagingly, but not because he didn't see Wolfgang's point, he just didn't entirely agree. Helen was an incredibly loyal person, always trying to do right by people, put them on the right path. She'd have done the same for anyone at the Sanctuary, wouldn't she? Admitting his true affections, however, was a different ballgame to all of that. Helen's heart was the most guarded part of her, the most vulnerable. Ever since 1888 she had preferred to sidestep anything close to romantic love, before it sidestepped her first – with lies, or metamorphosis, or knives against the throats of East End whores.

"She even re-vamped you," Henry continued, making his strongest case, before double checking the electronic note-pad in his hand and retreating from the field. Playing agony aunt to a man about five times his age wasn't the most comfortable of situations, "That's gotta count for something."

An unwillingness to let go of the past, Tesla snarked internally – though the words Henry had left him to chew on had struck a chord. It wasn't so much the fact that she had re-vamped him, than the way she'd done it. Even whilst bleeding into his internal organs that wild desperation on her face had registered deep in his psyche, returning to him long after he'd been healed. The way she'd clutched to the first possibility, determined that it would solve everything – the undertone of actual fear in her voice as she commanded him to stick with her, not to leave her alone. Nikola could never forget it, and had spent a goodly long while mulling it over on the edge of sleep, in those solitary weeks that had followed. He'd been slow to realise, distracted by his own metamorphosis as much as the myriad of signals she kept sending. More times than he could count with Helen Magnus he could've slapped himself for missing his chances – not for the odd leer or flirty banter, somehow he never seemed to miss those, but to comfort her, to be honest about how he felt, to actually make a difference.

In the quiet of the lab, as the sediment of his insecurities settled, he was left with the same unavoidable fact. He had two options – the third he had no desire to repeat. He could leave, like he always did, and avoid facing up to his own agonising ineffectiveness, putting him back to square one whenever their paths inevitably crossed again, or speak up, as Wolfie had suggested. His stomach grew leaden, knowing now what he hadn't in '29 or '45 – that their immortality wasn't quite as assured, their meeting again not as inevitable as they had once thought.

God damn it. He cricked his neck, trying to unwind his tightened muscles; this was precisely why he'd spent a lifetime avoiding love and every expression of it.

0 0

The New Sanctuary Library was state of the art, replete with touch-screen computers imbedded into tables and moveable shelf-stacks. Every surface was sleek, bar the portrait of Gregory which hung above the modern zen-style fireplace. It was the books which kept it from feeling too much like a government lobby, and the long windows at the far end, which filled the place with light and all the green from outside. Being high up, it was a stunning view of the grounds, and one Nikola had often found himself gazing out of. For all its modern fixtures, the library still seemed to him one of the most comfortable places in the entire complex.

Which wasn't a great surprise considering how much time Helen spent in here; refreshing her over-burdened memory from books which still hadn't made it onto the computer system. Books which were often older than them both.

She was in her favourite spot – positioned in the middle, so that her father was looking down protectively over her shoulder, and she could look up out the window in a glance. He knew she'd heard him come in but she was ignoring him, trying to reach the end of the paragraph before she opened her mouth. For once he didn't disturb her, letting her get to a convenient spot and slide in a bookmark.

From the looks of the matted, yellowing page it was Gregory's notes on the Pleskidara… whatever one of those were. Her father's field-study sketch resembled something that might've stumbled out of a bad alien b movie.

"Brushing up on the local fauna?"

She nodded happily, "Will, Maga and I are heading out to Upper Mongolia in… 4 hours."

"Trying to get out of the house Helen?" he teased, "All you need do was ask – I could've taken you somewhere so much nicer. Paris, perhaps?"

He knew as well as she did that being up on the surface at all, for any reason, risked blowing her genius deception in the water, and nullifying the sacrifice of her friends. So she ignored the comment, and focused on elaborating upon her news, "There've been reports that Pleskidara have been sighted far beyond their Siberian heartland."

"And they're starting to argue with the locals over who gets the nicest view?"

"Something like that," she half-smiled, brushing a loose strand of hair out of her face and standing from her chair, "though what's really interesting is that the Cordyceps Siberienses doesn't extend into the areas they're being reported in,"

Tesla had zoned out before she was stood upright. Fixed on another mission entirely, he came closer until she could've reached out and touched him, openly ogling her as he did so – particularly the length of her legs that were on show, and the black high heels that had his mind drop into the gutter almost instantly.

If it showed on his face Magnus gave no indication that she'd noticed, still caught up in the intellectual curiosity she was relaying, "so they should be able to come to some kind of harmonious balance with the local ecological system – namely humans."

"Admit it, you're just sick of tripping over children's toys and having to listen to it squeal."

She laughed, finally feeling his prolonged and lustful stare, "You're not coming, if that's what you're after."

He pouted momentarily, though mostly because it was expected – he didn't really have any desire to traipse through Mongolian steppe after little green men… not with Wilheim and the feathered friend in tow at any rate.

She put a hand to his chest eying him with mock discernment, her smile undiminishing as his hand automatically went for her hip, "Oh what's the matter Niki – can't handle one little baby?"

He stared at her for a moment, as though he couldn't quite decide on the several lines that had instantly sprung to mind – his smile caught in the cross-fire half-way between grin and smirk, disbelief, and determination to be devious. "Says the woman leaving for Asia," he murmured closely.

She chuckled, far more turned on by the low tones of his voice than she would've anticipated. Maybe it had something to do with their shrinking proximity… or that look in his eyes. Their noses were almost touching now, they were so close, and he was gazing at her in an open way that made her skin come alive. As though she were something special, sacred almost – she sort of felt as though she shouldn't have caught him looking at her like that, with his heart scrawled so close to the surface.

He should just say it, he thought to himself, right now, whilst she was happy, and predisposed to hear him. It wasn't hard, just three words. I. Love. You. His leer had quickly dissipated into something more genuine as the clamour inside his skull grew to a dull roar – just tell her!

"In four hours," She whispered seductively, her head tilting to one side, lips pursed as she leaned in.

If she kissed him he would never find the strength to say it.

"Helen," he moved his head before it could land, pulling away just enough that he could look her in the eye, his hands clutching her arms and holding her in place. He could feel his will slipping, as she searched silently for his motivation, as her mouth hovered close by – offering the less complicated, physical expression of something which had never been uttered, but always understood.

"Nikola?" she questioned softly, sensing he was at the precipice of saying something important, and not necessarily beneficial to himself. Potentially something she wasn't going to want to hear.

"I…" now he just felt silly. Grand declarations – who was he kidding, he wasn't a sixteen year old, and he wasn't some lothario smoothly seducing her with that over used phrase. There she was, looking all sexy, and ruffled, and all he wanted to do was taste her inviting, half-parted lips, mould their bodies together until he could touch every inch of her. He darted into her mouth, catching her by surprise, and insistently nudging it open to accept his own searching tongue.

She moaned; more than just a little turned on by the hunger of it, the way his hands roamed across the fabric of her grey dress as though it were not there at all. They didn't often make love two nights in a row – he wouldn't let her get up in the mornings, she hogged the duvet, he would be engrossed in the lab until late at night, she would be knee-deep in some abnormal crisis – life, and their own temperaments, made it unusual. Yet her skin grew heavy at the thought of it, at the taste of him, at the memory of last night, and this morning. She felt herself craving him, eager to spend her last few hours before deployment entwined rather than engrossed in some dry tome.

Breathlessly she pulled away for air, smiling naughtily as she snapped the book on the table shut without taking her eyes off of him, and took his hand. He looked at her with that typically Tesla mix of unconcealed want and timorous uncertainty which, even now, with all but an open invitation to her bed, he could never quite shake. It was absolutely adorable in someone as egocentric as Nikola.

"Let's… move this to the bedroom," she murmured near his cheek.

She could feel him smile, that toothy, wolfish grin, "Well, if the lady insists."

Shaking her head she tugged gently on his tie towards the door, "I certainly do. Especially for what I've got in mind," eyebrow quirked she let his tie slip through her fingers and led them through the hall.

Author's Note: Only one more chapter after this my friends, it tis but a short and sweet foray into the post-Season-4-Sanctuary. Hope you enjoyed Mr Foss' little moment. :) Made me wish I wrote Henry in more often, I miss him. Thank you to you lovely folks following this story! Bonus points for anyone eagle-brained enough to remember the species Helen's going after in Upper Mongolia from the show.