Day 12: Gift-Giving

Nikola wasn't quite sure how he had first gotten roped into helping Helen wrap gifts every Christmas Eve at midnight, but it had happened, and he didn't regret it. After all, it gave him a chance to sit next to her, arms bumping, and talk for a few hours. And according to Helen, one of his claws was better at neat paper slicing than any pair of scissors she'd ever owned.

They had just put the finishing touches on the last package, and Nikola was about to propose they go to bed but not to sleep for a few hours before the kiddies all woke up and demanded their gifts, but Helen was gazing pensively off into the distance, looking almost… nervous.

A pang of worry shot through his chest, and he quickly racked his brains for anything that might be going on to trouble her, or whether he had screwed anything really important up lately. But he couldn't come up with anything. Apparently his efforts to be slightly more responsible were paying off.

"Helen?" he ventured, taking her hands in his and stroking them. "Are you, uh, are you alright?"

Helen shook herself and seemed to return to the present, smiling at him. "Yes, of course. Thank you, Nikola." She squeezed his hands. "But I have a present for you this year I'd prefer to give you before the others wake up."

"Oh?" Nikola kissed her hands. "My dear, simply being in your presence is the only gift I could ever desire."

She snorted. "You didn't say no to the lab upgrade I gave you last year."

"Well…" He grinned. "It's nice to be appreciated. But since we're giving gifts early, I have one for you too. Might as well keep it out of the grubby hands of the children." He rose and went over to the tree, drawing out a meticulously-wrapped package from underneath it, then went back to Helen and held it out.

"Merry Christmas," he said rather awkwardly. It was his turn to feel nervous, because usually he gave her things like books and gadgets and promises not to make sarcastic remarks about Junior for such and such a period of time. Open sentimentality was very seldom Helen's style.

Helen unwrapped it just as neatly as it had been wrapped, partly because it wasn't in her nature to tear gifts open, and partly to indulge him. There was a smooth wooden box inside, and she slid the lid off. Her eyes widened and she looked at him suddenly.

"Nikola," she whispered, and lifted out a small, perfect model of the Old City Sanctuary. Nikola had made it almost entirely from memory, although he'd had to scavenge a set of blueprints to fill in the few sections he had never been in. He'd started it the Christmas he'd arrived in Hollow Earth, and it had taken him several years of working on it between his other projects to finish it.

He smiled at her tentatively. "Open it," he said. Helen carefully lifted off one section of roof and her eyes widened even more.

Nikola did nothing by half. Inside the little Sanctuary were replicas of every room in the building, with tiny pieces of furniture and painted on carpets and wallpaper. There was Helen's office, with her desk and a miniscule bottle of wine on it (Nikola had to leave his signature somewhere), and the library they'd discovered the map to Hollow Earth in, and the laboratories, and the butler's kitchen, and the old chapel. Every place she'd known and loved for over half a century was present.

Then the worry came back, because Nikola could see tears in her eyes and he thought he'd gone too far, until she set it down gently and threw her arms around him, nearly crushing him against her.

"Nikola," she said again, voice muffled in his chest but definitely uneven, and squeezed him so hard Nikola felt like his ribs were in a vise.

"Ow," he said faintly, but made no move to lighten her grip. "So do you like it? If you don't, if it, you know, brings back bad memories or anything, then you can throw it out – "

"No," was the firm answer, accompanied by another bruising hug. "No, Nikola, it's – it's perfect."

The vise was lifted as one of Helen's arms moved up, across his shoulders, and she cradled his head, stroking his hair. "Thank you, Nikola," she murmured. "My dear Nikola."

Nikola felt rather warm and dizzy for a few minutes following this, though he wasn't sure if it was the endearment or the oxygen deprivation. Either way, he folded his arms around Helen and nuzzled her hair until she finally released him, her eyes bright.

"Now for your gift," she said, and pulled out a small box from the pile of wrapping paper and other gifts. He thought her hand shook infinitesimally when she handed it to him, but then he blinked and she was steady once more.

The box was plain black, and Nikola took off the lid, his curiosity mounting. What on earth could Helen possibly be unsure of giving him?

When he saw what lay within, he was even more confused. It was only a pocket watch – a lovely one, bright silver with a beautiful engraving of a single old-fashioned street lamp and scrollwork all around it, and the ancient vampiric rune for "light" hidden amongst the patterns, a dramatic touch worthy of Nikola himself. But nothing more than a watch.

Normally, Nikola never even carried one, since he could already tell to the second what time it was at any given moment. Helen knew that, which meant she had another purpose in giving this to him.

He looked up to see the nervous expression back on her face before she wiped it away. "Open it," she told him, her lips quirking at the echo of his own words.

So Nikola opened it, and felt the breath rush out of him again.

It wouldn't have meant much to anyone else, though something about it felt so intensely private that he understood why she had given it to him early.

Inside, opposite the elaborate clock face, was a picture of Helen, taken in the last few years. In fact, Nikola had been present when Henry took it, trying out a new camera he was going to use to make yet another album for his (at that time) unborn daughter.

Helen was looking somewhere off to the side, where Nikola would have been. He hadn't been looking at her when this picture was taken, though, because he would have remembered seeing this expression on her face: open, almost tender affection, mixed in with a sort of quiet joy.

Just being able to see Helen looking at him like that whenever he wanted would have been enough to take Nikola's breath away, but then he realized that it was even more than that: the last time she had given someone a token like this, it hadn't ended well, to say the least. To Nikola, this was her way of saying she had faith in their relationship, and in him.

"Helen…" His voice broke a little in the middle, but since her lips were nearly on his by then, it didn't seem like she cared. Keeping the pocket watch clasped in one hand, he wound both arms around her and held on tight.

Neither of them let go until Christmas morning.