Recovering from wounds as critical as those Nikola had sustained was no easy task. It did, however, afford him plenty of time to consider what had gone wrong. If there was one thing he had learned in over a century of friendship with Helen Magnus it was that, where she went, trouble surely followed. He supposed he should have known as soon as he saw her –had it really only been three hours since they had been reunited?- that something interesting was bound to happen. He had been so distracted, so overwhelmed by a rush of old, half-buried emotions, that he had been unable to devote all of his concentration to avoiding the Cabal. As it stood, his tenuous grasp on any reality that did not revolve around Helen had faltered and then failed entirely, leaving him, once again, gravely injured and alone.
He had slipped, almost too easily for his comfort, back into old habits, goading Helen into his flirtatious embrace only to have her ripped cruelly away. He had seen the way she looked at him when he entered the lecture hall upstairs. Those who did not know her as well as he might not have seen the hint of a smile in her slightly flustered expression. She still cared about him, as much as she had when she had faked his death.
Unprepared as he was for the sudden onslaught of resurfacing emotions upon seeing her again, he could not bear to stay in the lecture hall for more than a few seconds. It had been long enough, however, to hear the unnecessarily long pause in her lecture and to see the slightest tinge of pink color her cheeks. He left the room hoping to compose himself but was left breathless yet again at the sight of her striding quickly through the double doors into the corridor. He had panicked, true to form, hiding his sincerity with glib jokes and falsely sarcastic overtures just as he had done at Oxford so many years before. He had, of course, not been lying after all when he said he loved her.
He could still vividly remember, as if it were yesterday, how she had looked the day he first saw her in the dimly lit, cavernous classroom at Oxford: her long, fair hair, pinned back almost haphazardly; the low, scooping neckline of her dress; the tight-fitting bodice, accentuating her feminine figure; the unsystematically laced ribbons pulling too tightly here and coming untied there. She seemed altogether unconcerned with appearance, her subtle, striking beauty entirely natural. He had been stuck by her little, entirely unselfconscious gestures. Whenever she wrote, she would purse her lips in thought after licking the nib of her pen. He remembered, almost foolishly, hoping that one day that tiny scratch of nib on parchment would be directed toward him, that he would feel the glorious softness of her hand on his as she passed him a note in her delicate scrawl.
She had been so young, so naïve, and yet so headstrong. He had hoped things would have been different this time, that she would have listened to him, but she was still as obstinate as ever, firm in her resolve. Just as it had been, it was so irritating and yet so incredibly sexy.
Though Nikola was an extraordinary being, he had always found himself overshadowed, lost in the crowd. Even among The Five, he was too subdued, too quiet to take the lead on any pressing matters. He was smart, remarkably so, and he knew it. The few friends he managed to attract were almost always driven away by his arrogance and his self-importance. Helen, however, had always been different.
Helen had managed to see what no one else had, that behind his egocentric façade was a gentle, caring young man. She was particularly drawn to the way his elegant hands would lovingly ghost over all he handled, his touch as soft and tender as if he were delicately stroking a baby bird. Some say that animals are a better judge of character than humans and, even if people were not naturally attracted to him, animals certainly were. It was rare to see him around the grounds without some type of creature shadowing him. Flocks of birds would alight on the bench he occupied, staying perched alongside him for hours on end. Once Helen swore she saw him affectionately whispering to a fox, but, when she looked again, he was completely alone.
While inwardly gentle, Nikola had always had a problem forming meaningful connections with others. When he would begin to get close to someone, he would, without fail, push them away. He was outwardly impetuous and almost cruel, a fact that The Five- excluding Helen- had exploited regularly.
John Druitt had undoubtedly been the worst of the lot. His own affection for Helen had driven him to a kind of subconscious loathing of Nikola which manifested itself in typically juvenile ways. Teasing, taunting, and the occasional practical joke were among his rather limited repertoire, though he always played the angel as soon as Helen directed her attention to him.
Nikola, equally jealous of John, ignored the teasing, pretended it did not bother him when, inside he was quietly shaking with rage. It wasn't that he cared what the tall, lanky man thought, it was that he worried that Helen would gradually start to agree with John, abandoning Nikola just as so many others had before.
But Helen mostly ignored their feud, only involving herself when there seemed to be no alternative. It wasn't in her to pick sides, and she didn't want to lose either of them.
Her indecision almost made it harder for Nikola. How was he supposed to share her with a petty fool like Druitt? He had felt that it might have been better if she had just chosen John and left him alone for good. It was only recently that he had begun to realize how wrong he had been.
It was Helen who had saved him a lifetime ago at Oxford, and she had unwittingly saved him now. Seeing her with John had only solidified his resolve, giving him the strength to do what he now knew had to be done.