A few days later as Helen took her morning meal, she was starting to wonder if Nikola was avoiding her. Avoiding wasn't the right word though. They still spent time in each other's company. He was there, but he wasn't entirely present.

Nikola usually preferred to dominate the conversation at the breakfast table, considering his own wit to be the most enjoyable and entertaining. But now he smoothly deflected the conversation to others. Even asking the occasional question to prompt them to say more, though he didn't deign to pretend to be listening to their response. Mostly he lounged back in his chair; toying with his meal, brooding, and trying not to be too aware of Helen seated next to him.

Will had taken to joining them in recent mornings. He lingered over his coffee until Helen was finished so they could walk to his office together. No longer did Nikola escort her after breakfast and rarely did he join her when she was alone.

Helen had no chance to speak to him about his avoidance, whether it had anything to do with what had almost occurred in his lab. Even if that conversation wouldn't be a minefield due to the fact that she couldn't remember anything, nothing had actually happened that day. What was there to say? If he was pulling away, there must be a reason.

It seemed Nikola had plenty of unwitting assistance in putting distance between them. Her appointments with Will seemed to drag longer each day. She found more of her time being occupied with learning Sanctuary tasks. Since she was mostly caught up on her personal life, they were focusing on reintegrating her into her professional life, in all aspects of the Sanctuary. Apparently starting with tasks in the wing farthest away from Tesla's lab.

William needn't have worried about Helen growing too close to Nikola without her memories to barricade the walls between them. The truth had a way of coming out.

While working her way through her most recent personal journals Helen discovered an entry she couldn't credit at first. She didn't want to believe Nikola had done something so terrible. But why would she lie in her own diary? Everything else had been factual, and now the vague tingle of familiarity her amnesia left her with had her skin crawling. She rushed to confront him in his lab.

"How could you?" she cried as soon as she cleared the door.

"Helen..?" his face, at first alight at the sight of her, fell in confusion.

"HOW COULD YOU? There are no answers written here; apparently I didn't get the chance to ask the question then so I ask it now. How could you do that to me, Nikola?" she demanded. "And to conveniently leave it out of all your stories about our 'adventures', not even warning me what I was about to read!"

She was clutching the book to her chest. Nikola could tell it was another leather-bound journal, one of many in a set as Helen had lived long and had many adventures to record. His heart clenched when he deduced a written memory had upset her. Then dropped into his stomach as he realized he couldn't begin to guess which incident she was referring to. He had done many despicable things in his extended life and Helen had fallen under the blow of far too many of them. Not always unintentionally.

To be honest he suppressed the memories where he could, full of gratitude that Helen had always chosen to do the same, more or less forgiving his past transgressions and not entirely withdrawing her friendship.

But this Helen wouldn't remember why she had forgiven him. And Nikola couldn't tell her because he had never understood why himself. Every time they parted ways, he assumed his bridges well and truly burnt, mere ashes on the wind. But inevitably he came back, crawling back or dragged back (on the rarest and most revered occasions, even invited) it mattered not, and she would forgive him. Perhaps not immediately and perhaps not in words. But their friendship endured. They bantered, they reminisced, they flirted - well, he flirted; they faced dangers untold and hardships unnumbered together.

She was the nexus of his life. Like all roads once led to Rome, all his paths seemed to lead to Helen.

Who stood before him with betrayal on her face.

Nikola's posture of defeat was all the confirmation she needed that the man she had come to trust was not the innocently caring friend he had been presenting himself as. Suddenly she changed her mind, she couldn't bear to hear the explanation she had asked for. Whatever it was, it was probably awful and either way, she couldn't trust a thing he said now.

So Helen turned and left. The fact that he didn't chase after her, demanding to know what she was talking about, asking for a chance to explain himself, was more damning than the entry in her journal.

Nikola would never forget the disappointment, the disgust, manifest in Helen before she spun around and ran from the room. He had always assumed when he well and truly put Helen off him, it would be from saying too much of the wrong thing. But now everything was falling apart and he hadn't managed one word to say in it.