A/N: Sorry this took so long guys. I re-wrote this several times to include more Teslen sexytimes (which wasn't originally in this chapter, just a little fluff), but my muse has run off, not to be found. Hopefully she's found herself a replica Tesla (since I claim the original for myself, he just doesn't know it yet), because otherwise I could not forgive her.
Dedicated to everyone who has harassed and poked me to death to get this up. Oh and FFnet… I kinda hate you at times because I have stayed up until 3 am when the kidletts get up by 6am trying to upload this thing, but would you work… noooooo.
…..
Ruined 2
"Magnus, I think you need to relax." Will stated as calmly as he could. Helen was in the middle of reaming her entire team a new ass for a mission gone sideways, and in all reality it was her screw up not theirs. She had been so on edge the last couple of months and they all had had enough. No one was dumb enough to say anything though, up until now. Will was the only one to ever push back when it came to Magnus, the others would give a grumbled opinion and then do as she asked with their tail between their legs. Not Will, not ever and certainly not now.
"Relax? Relax!" Helen fumed. "Kate's lucky to escape with a few scratches; you got thrown into a wall and Henry… Well he's alright because he turned HAP and was able to take the creature down, but his clothing was a total loss."
Henry just looked at the floor and tried not to think about the fact that he was clothed in only a wool blanket, a scratchy one at that, one that chaffed in all the wrong places, while getting chewed out by his boss/mom.
"Magnus, this type of thing happens all the time. It was a dangerous creature and we underestimated it. It's not the first time..."
"Well it bloody well better be the last!" She said cutting him off. "Little things, unexpected things can catch you off guard, throw you off your game and if you're not careful enough, can tear you to pieces."
"Why do I get the feeling you are no longer talking about the op?" Will asked stubbornly.
Helen took a deep breath and tried to throw a withering glare his way but she only succeeded in taking on an expression that told Will all he needed to know, he had struck a chord.
Helen turned on her heel and stormed off but not before muttering an audible exasperated "Children!" under her breath as he exited the room.
…
"Magnus, look… I'm sorry about earlier but you've been seriously on edge the last few months." Will said apologetically with his best puppy dog face.
Helen said nothing but continued to look out over the city. It was brutally cold, one of those days where it was too cold to snow and the whipping wind was like a million tiny teeth biting into the skin; yet, she stood there on the tower without so much as a coat on.
"I've been going through some records and you're overdue for that vacation at that Italian villa you told me about."
Still not a word or as much as a flinch from Helen.
"Anyway, I think it would do you some good to take that vacation. I figure there's a reason you go every seven years in the late fall. It's now winter and you need some time to unwind."
Will stood there for several long minutes shivering in the wind. "Ok then." He relented and turned to go.
Just as he was reaching for the door handle Helen finally spoke. "Think you can handle things here for a month or so?"
Her tone was as icy as the wind but he shook it off. He knew it didn't have anything to do with him or his team. She just needed something. Will knew she had had a few dalliances lately, men and women, human and abnormal alike. It wasn't like Magnus, but then again he had only known her for a handful of her 270something years. But if he knew anything, she had something she needed to get out of her system, and she couldn't do it here. Honestly, he didn't even care if she went to Italy or Timbucktwo, as long as she found the cure for whatever ailed her.
"You know very well I do. Go Magnus, before you change your mind."
…..
…..
Helen had actually chartered a plane rather than fly herself. She wanted the time to think. Not that she hadn't thought countless hours away already, but the last thing she needed was another crash landing Her record was starting to resemble that of Lt. Commander Rabb from that show Ashley used to watch, JAG, that was it. She seemed to always be crashing these last few years.
As she sat in the luxury car that was currently weaving its way up her long and winding drive, she sighed and prayed to no one in particular that she could finally get her mind off that Vampire with warm weather, good food, good wine and a good book in her Villa by the Sea.
…..
He heard the vehicle winding its way up the drive long before it came to a stop.
'Finally,' he sighed to himself. She had finally come to her senses and found him. But as she came barraging through the door and tossing her bags aside in a very unMagnus like manner, he started to wonder if she even knew he was here at all, so he kept out of sight.
She mumbled under her breath but his hearing being better than that of most in the animal kingdom, he clearly heard her mutter, "Bloody Vampire, get out of my thoughts, I'm on vacation."
His heart sank at the realization she had not indeed come for him, but rather, was on vacation from him, from even his memory. Shaking off the feeling of rejection and pulling up his usual reserve of arrogance, he quietly strode off to the library to wait.
…
Helen hung her light jacket on the rack, kicked her bags to the side and made her way to the kitchenette, grabbing a glass and a bottle from the small wine rack on the counter. She didn't even look at the vintage, content enough to know there was never anything cheap or cringe-worthy in any house she owned. She pulled out the cork and went to pour it.
'Screw it, my house, my rules. Besides, no one else here but me.' She took a swig straight from the bottle in a very unladylike manner as she made for the library.
…
The library was her favorite room in the villa. It wasn't spacious like the one at her Sanctuary. It was intimate, quiet and almost circular in shape. A veranda of sorts arched around it letting in the warm breezes from its perch out over the ocean waft in. The architecture was very Roman in design. Columns separated the indoors form the outdoors. Between each column was paneled glass that could be raised in much the same way as a garage door to let in the air, giving the room an almost outdoor feel.
Her heels clicked on the marble floor leading to the step down into the library. Before she took that downward step, she kicked her heels off and took another swig of wine as she took that step down, cursing how much just the simple taste of wine reminded her of him. She couldn't enjoy a lover's embrace or even a sip of bloody wine since their… encounter. And it pissed her off all the more that even here, in her private seaside villa she could find no peace. Even the way the warm breezes caressed her skin reminded her of the way his hands roamed over her body. The sensation made her shiver and flush at the same time. His sent even tantalized her senses and she felt his presence near.
God! She was losing it.
As another breeze ruffled her dress her eyes snapped open. She hadn't even realized she had closed them until that moment. The breeze, it shouldn't be there. Not yet. She hadn't sent the caretaker word of her arrival, preferring to have as little human contact as possible. She surely hadn't opened the windows. She quietly sat the bottle of wine on the small table near the library entrance and slid her hand up her thigh to the gun concealed there.
Her sensed prickled as she pulled the gun from its holster, switching the safety off as she did so.
If Nikola hadn't been so distracted by the way her hand slid so far up her creamy thigh he would have realized sooner that pure instinct alone had her whipping said gun in his direction. He barely dodged the first bullet.
"You bastard!" She screamed as another shot rang out, the bullet whizzing so close to his head he felt it disturb his hair.
'How did she do that?' he wondered. He had been standing behind a row of books, out of sight. She came so close to hitting him yet had not even grazed a book, bullets expertly flying inches over the tops of them to whiz by his head to impact the marble wall.
"Can you please stop shooting so we can talk?" Nikola shouted.
"Not a bloody chance in hell!" she responded hotly, punctuating the statement with a series of bullets firing in rapid succession.
He ducked just in time and counted seven impacts against the wall, a shard of one ricocheting off the wall and catching him in the neck. 'At least it didn't ruin another suit. She should be out now.' As if confirming his thought he heard the magazine clatter to the ground. He rounded the bookshelf just as she slapped another in its place.
Nikola rolled his eyes he should have known. Helen Magnus was never unarmed or lacking ammo. How she expertly hid it on that fabulous figure of hers in those form fitting outfits would never cease to amaze him. Tired of the game, he used his magnetic abilities to yank the gun from her hands. Before the gun was halfway across the span between them he saw another flash heading in his direction. He slowed the newest projectile's momentum with his abilities and caught the knife by the blade with his right hand. Risking a glance to the side he flicked it. The blade stuck in a wooden figurine of a cherub directly in the heart and lodged itself there.
Advancing on the gun now floating midway between he and Helen he locked his eyes with hers, never wavering form her icy stare. As the old adage goes, if looks could kill, he had never been happier to be an immortal Vampire, because that look surely would have done a mere mortal in.
The magazine of the nine mil slid out of the grip and eight unspent rounds popped one by one out of it.
Nikola grabbed it by the barrel and strode over to her handing the empty gun back.
Helen kept her eyes locked with his and her stare icy, donning her now mastered mask and not giving way that every clip held nine rounds, one automatically entering the chamber as the gun is readied.
As her fingers wrapped around the hilt the look in Nikolas eyes changed from one of determination to one of slight amusement and the slide of the gun slid back and the last round ejected from the chamber.
"I may not like guns, but I am aware of how they work." He said with a smirk.
She took the gun and looked at it a moment and side before risking a glance up into his steel blues and seeing mirth and arrogance there. She hefted the gun a couple times in her hand before belting him across the cheek with it.
"Seems as though you forgot a use, they can be very good blunt force weapons." Helen bit, though the blow did make her feel better, a lot better actually.
He snapped his jaw back into place and rolled his shoulders looking back to her with an ugly bruise that was already starting to heal reaching from his left temple to his jaw line, his expression was furious but he controled his tone well. "Feel better?"
Helen smirked. "Maybe, just a little. Now mind telling me just what the hell you are doing in my villa?"
"Mmmnnhh." He moaned as he touched his tender cheek feeling the sting fade as the moments ticked by. "Well I was waiting for you to come to your senses and join me for your seven year vacation."
"Come to my senses? I can't believe you'd be so arrogant as to think I'd want to be anywhere near you let alone on vacation with you."
"Hmmm." He hummed pensively. "Still mad I see. I figured you would have burned that off by now."
"Mad? Mad! No, I'm furious, and why shouldn't I be? You left leaving nothing but a bloody note!"
"Actually I left two." He abruptly took a giant step back at the flash of renewed anger in her eyes. "Don't hit, or shoot or anything else that is going to cause me bodily harm." He said pointing at her.
"Harm? You really think you have any right to demand that no harm to come to you after what you've done. You broke my heart, made me pine over you like a silly schoolgirl for months and yet you are worried about harm? You're a bloody Vampire I can't even kill you, let alone harm you properly."
His eyes darkened slightly and he scowled. "Helen you've brought me more harm over the last 140 years than you realize. You think you are the only one who's suffered a broken heart? Sticks and stones my dear, they may not break me, but your words, your actions, have often torn me in two."
"Nikola, what are you on about?" She was honestly confused, but still very much pissed. How dare he make this about him?
"You know very well. You have always known I've loved you. You draw me in, play with me for a while then leave. I loved you before 'The Five' you knew that. Yet you gave your heart to Jack and even after his true nature was revealed you pushed me away, at least until it was convenient to fall into my bedroll on a few of our adventures. I was willing to take what I could get at that time."
"It was a silly boyhood crush Nikola, often a development between good friends. The same story has been repeated countless times throughout history. You were much too focused on your inventions to take any relationship seriously." She said interrupting his monologue.
"Yes, and that's why I spent every free moment you had with you, working into the night on my projects and running on little to no sleep just to be with you when you had the time. Really Helen, a boyhood crush? One that's lasted 140 years? I think not, I have always loved you."
"Really? So why did you love me like… that" she couldn't directly refer to what happened, one because there wasn't any words for it and two because it was too painful for her to think about. "And then leave, make me fall hopelessly in love with you and then bloody leave?" Her voice rising as high as her anger. "You could have had me, could have stayed by my side, in my bed and yet you left me. To what end? Revenge?"
Nikola hung his head a moment before stepping close to her, too close for her comfort. His eyes were determined, hard and oh so sexy. Her insides were turned to goo but she held on to her tough exterior. She would not show him that no matter how badly he hurt her, all she still wanted was him.
"Not revenge Helen. A lesson."
"A lesson? Really" she said scoffing. "What lesson can be taught here? That you have the power to make me think of nothing but you, that you can ruin me. I've tried taking other loves, believe me I have tried, but none of them could come close to giving me what I needed, I can't even enjoy a bloody glass of wine. What lesson is that?"
"That you are mine as much as I have always been yours. I've waited for 140 years for you to learn that lesson and it seemed to me it was a lesson you just wouldn't learn on your own. So you had to be taught."
"I could have stayed, true." He continued. "But what would that have done? You would keep me around until I blew up another lab or God forbid hurt one of the children's feelings and then you would have kicked me out and we'd be right back to where we always were. Lovers in the heat of the moment, enemies at times, flirtatious friends at best? No, not anymore. You've ruined me Helen. It's gotten to the point that I can't even think of one single plan to take over the world without thinking how it would disappoint you. I'll admit, the chase of you trying to stop me is fun and all, but I need more Helen. Obviously the way to your heart isn't giving you the world."
"Obviously" she said rolling her eyes. "Took you long enough to figure that one out."
"Yes, well. You're not the only one that needs a lesson beat into them." He smiled at her. A genuine smile, no arrogant or sarcastic edge to it. He was as open to her now as he was to her that night.
Despite her better judgment she let go of all her anger and rose up enough to brush her lips against his lightly. She pulled back just enough to look up into his eyes. "No more games." It was a statement, an ultimatum rather than a question.
"If you'll love me as much as I do you Ljubav. No more games."
He kissed her soundly before she could say anymore and he felt her tremble slightly beneath him. He pulled back to see tears brimming in her eyes. "Don't ever leave me again Nikola." She whispered, her voice shaking.
"I am yours moj Jalena. And you are mine." He kissed her again before scooping her up in his arms and carrying her to the master bedroom.
…..
Six weeks later a refreshed Helen Magnus entered her Old City Sanctuary still smiling like a schoolgirl.
"Better I take it?" Will asked as he strode down the hall.
"Much, thank you. Just what I needed."
"Well, we all need a break every now and then. So what did you do while you were there?"
Images of countless hours spent in bed with Nikola flooded her mind as she pulled off her scarf and slipped off her coat despite the fact she had not yet closed the front door.
"You know, worked off my frustrations. Caught up on some rest. Read a good book or two, went shopping….."
At that moment Nikola strode in his arms full of suitcases and slightly out of breath, even for a Vampire that was a heavy load. "And she can shop let me tell you." He said in a huff. Helen just smiled brightly at him.
Will looked at Helen and said, "And I see you picked yourself up a Vampire to play bell hop."
"Very funny junior." Nikola said with a glare as he dropped the suitcases unceremoniously on the floor. "Can't we get the hairy one to take these from here?"
"Behave, Nikola." Helen said turning to look at him and the pile of suitcases on the floor knowing that half of those were his. He had several new Italian suits as well as several well packed bottles of wine.
"How about I just be good." He said leering at her.
"No... I don't think so. You still owe me." Helen said still smiling brightly.
"Helen, I think I've satisfied you in every way possible by now." His eyes smoldered.
While the comments were typical of the arrogant Vampire, Will sensed a drastic change between the two as Helen stopped closer to Nikola and he was forgotten.
"Not even close." She said huskily.
Will rolled his eyes, 'Dear God!' He was hoping they wouldn't act on their sexual tension this century, at least not if he was still alive.
"I'm just going to tell the others you're home."
Neither Helen nor Nikola even acknowledged he was even there as they suddenly enveloped each other in a tight embrace, lips locked.
"Maybe not" Will mumbled as he turned, leaving the couple kissing like teenagers in the foyer.
Fin.
…..
A/N: after many revisions I settled on this. Ended up a lot longer and less sexy than I wanted but it is what it is. Many thanks to Emmy1512 for finding a new nickname for me. I *wub* her!