A/N
Just want to say first off - wow! Thank you all for the lovely response this fic is getting. Thanks again and again for the reviews.
THREE
Helen was leaning against the rails of a ship, the smell of salt water in the air. She looked about her, admiring the sun rippling off the water's surface, and enjoying the feeling of the sea breeze teasing her hair.
She felt a pair of arms circle around her waist and started, bumping the top of her head against someone's chin.
"Ow."
She squirmed around and saw Nikola ruefully wrinkling his nose. "Oh god, another dream."
"You can do better than that," he said. "Hello is always a good start."
She looked away from him, biting her lip as she trained her eyes to the ocean. She didn't want him to see the tears that had suddenly pricked in the corners of her eyes. He didn't let go of her waist, and instead settled his chin into her hair, holding her more closely.
"I guess you're popping up because I haven't had a chance to properly say goodbye to you."
"Trying to get rid of me so soon?" He mumbled into her hair.
She shuddered, wracked with guilt. "Nikola, it was my fault. I shouldn't have asked you to come with me … we should have been more careful—"
He shushed her, having none of it. "When were we ever careful? Besides, think of it as payback. I got you electrocuted a few times when you assisted me with my experiments at Oxford."
"You didn't kill me," She whispered unhappily.
"But am I really dead? Can a dead man dance with you?" He grasped her arm lightly and twirled her on the spot, a light grin still adorning his lips. The sudden movement elicited a giddy thrill inside of her, but she felt too ashamed to laugh.
He saw the look of guilt and despair on her face, too stubborn to leave, and pouted disappointedly. "Helen, don't try to be rid of me so soon. One moment you'll blink and I'll be gone before you know it. Let me stay for at least this."
"Nikola, I'm sorry—"
The skies suddenly darkened and a rumble of thunder clapped in the air. Helen looked to the heavens, alarmed, and then saw an enormous iceberg in the distance. She looked to Nikola. "What ship is this?"
He looked at her a little sadly, and whispered, "Seculo seculorum…"
"Nikola, where—"
The ship suddenly jerked, throwing her off balance and she fell to the floor and skidded across the deck. She heard an awful groaning and screams as the ship's hull was breached. The mournful cry of the alarm reverberated in her ears, and she desperately looked around her.
She saw Nikola in the distance, too far away for her to reach out, swallowed up by the splintered wood of the ship. Her nose and eyes filled with briny seawater and her vision turned to black.
"How long do I set this for?"
Helen looked over briefly at Henry and then back to her work. "Set it for three hundred cycles at sixteen rotations per minute. If the machine starts making a whining noise, then lower it to fourteen."
"Oookay…" Henry frowned with concentration as he programmed in her specifications, watching with fascination as the various test tubes they had set up began whirring in a clockwise motion. While he was a quick study with almost any piece of technology, the medical field was still daunting to him and he followed all her instructions to the letter like a schoolboy afraid to sabotage his assignment. She found it rather endearing and despite his protests, insisted he assist her in the lab.
She needed something to do so she wouldn't drive herself insane, and decided the best thing was to pick up her work from where she had left off. It was easier now to read over Nikola's notes without falling into another cycle of guilt and regret, and a part of her thought he would have liked for her to finish the experiment they had started.
"So, can this stuff actually bring people back from the dead?"
"It's a rather hit or miss scenario. I don't believe anyone who has truly passed on can be revived with the venom, but it has incredible powers of rejuvenation. The venom in its raw form, however, can also overwhelm the system and kill you instantly."
Henry looked up at her nervously for a second, realizing he had perhaps opened a sensitive topic of conversation in poor taste, but Helen pretended as if she hadn't seen his reticence. She didn't need him dissolving into a bundle of nerves and apologies again, she was sick of condolences.
This was medicine. She was a doctor. She saw death all the time. It wasn't anything new to her.
"The serum we're creating," She continued to fill the awkward silence, "should be a more stable compound than the raw venom. Once we start testing we'll see what its effects will be on cancer cells, viruses, failed immune systems … and hopefully it will do a lot of good."
"Awesome…" Henry was still staring hypnotized by the whirling test tubes, now rotating in alternating patterns of clockwise and counter-clockwise. Helen looked over and laughed. "Don't make yourself sick staring at that."
He beamed up at her. "Four time rollercoaster marathon participant. Nothing can make me sick."
Nikola lay prostate on the cold, metal table with the sheet pulled back just to his navel. His eyes were closed and his skin looked like wax paper.
Helen looked down at her hands and saw they were already encased in latex gloves. She was wearing a smock. She walked over to the table hesitantly and saw a tray of tools. She picked up the scalpel and with a deep breath, began to make her 'Y' incision.
She pulled his skin apart, it was much less resistant than it would normally be in real life, and realized she must be dreaming. She looked down and saw his ribcage with a little Shepherd frog chirping inside.
"What are you doing in there?"
The frog croaked at her cheerfully, hopping about where Nikola's heart should have been.
His lips parted slightly, and as if the last breath was escaping from his lungs she heard the low whisper of "lubjav".
"Lubjav…"
Helen looked up, startled. "What did you say?"
Kate looked back slightly bewildered, and then pointed an accusing finger to the Big Guy. "Lutefisk. He's been trying to make the stuff in the basement. I told him he's crazy—"
"It's a delicacy," he huffed.
"It's fish in lye. You'll get us all killed! And it smells."
Helen zoned out the daily bickering over the breakfast table and took another sip of her tea. She flexed the fingers of her right hand experimentally; it was still sore. She felt a hot, deep stinging in the crease of her palm and turned her hand over to see the 'T' on her hand had opened and was bleeding lightly.
She grabbed a napkin to blot the small cuts and watched as the white cloth stained red, the 'T' surfacing through the material like a ghostly photograph developing, and branching off into a tiny red network of veins.
"What happened to you, old friend, when you took the Shepherd's venom?"
Helen was sitting with the Big Guy on her favourite bench in the garden. He was the only one who didn't patronize her or fuss over her, content to treat her just the same as he always had. She appreciated it more than she could say. He paused to collect his thoughts, scratching his head.
"It was when I was younger. Every one of my people have to do the Drop when they are ready, to prove they are an adult. I jumped, but I was too close to the cliff edge and hit my head." She watched as he unconsciously brought a hand to the side of his head where he had been hit, reliving the sensation. "I fell a great distance and they found me at the bottom of the mountain, dead. They gave me the venom and after many nights of prayer they found my soul again."
She marveled at the quaint choice of words, still unable to find the answer she was looking for. "Were you truly dead when they found you?"
"I don't know," He answered truthfully. "I don't remember any of it."
"I wonder what the degree of death must be for the venom to still be effective … your heart can stop and you can be legally dead, but there is always the chance of revival within a certain timeframe…"
He looked at her sternly, a small grunt hiccoughing in his throat. "You're thinking too much about this. You need to stop blaming yourself. You can find all the answers you want now, but what's done is done. And you don't need to lose sleep over it."
Helen looked away guiltily. It was true, she had to find some rationalization, some way to compartmentalize and detach herself from what had happened in order to think of it at any length. If she approached death as Helen the scientist, as a mere phenomenon, she would not have to linger over what she had lost.
"I haven't even seen his grave…" She whispered quietly to herself.
Helen sat up suddenly, jolted by the sudden movement of the carriage. She looked down at her hands and saw they were encased in thin, lace gloves. She looked out and realized she was in London … a London from a very long time ago.
"I promise to make you happy for all eternity…" She felt the whisper of breath beside her ear, those familiar words that had haunted her for a long time, and saw the small ring box presented in front of her. It snapped open and she saw a small glass vial inside with a clear serum.
Surprised, she looked to the man holding the box and saw Nikola winking back. He looked like he did back at their Oxford days, his hair slicked back and a dark moustache adorning his lip. The devilish sparkle in his eyes, though, was something he had picked up much later.
"This wasn't you," She blurted out. "John said that to me."
He closed the box and pressed it into her hand. "In America they have a saying, don't look a gift horse in the mouth. Manners, my dear."
Helen clutched the tiny box in her hand, looking out the window as she watched familiar streets roll by. This had been the day she and John had gone to see Twelfth Night. The day she had promised to be someone's wife.
"The day a small part of me died," He said matter-of-factly and without a hint of bitterness or regret. She looked at him, startled.
"You've never been so frank about that before."
He leant an arm against the back of the carriage, playing with the edges of his moustache. He was in a well-worn suit, cheap as she used to tease him about, with a familiar cloth square tucked in his pocket. "You can ask me anything about it if you'd like."
"I wouldn't know what to ask…"
His eyes turned black and she saw the points of his teeth lengthen momentarily, before he grinned and his vampiric features had vanished again. "Why do you think I agreed to participate in the source blood experiment, Helen? Apart from an insane drive for intellectual curiosity, it was something that truly frightened me. Genetics and mutations were a field of science utterly alien to me, whereas electricity was like a second skin."
Stunned at the open admission, Helen stammered, "Why did you do it then?"
"You made a promise. And this time, this era was one where a promise is not lightly made. You would never be able to be mine after giving your hand to Druitt. I fancied this was something we could all have together, that no one could take away. We would both have the same blood in our veins."
"But that would go for the same as Nigel, James … even John."
He winced slightly at John's name, but shrugged. A curious smile, one that was a touch melancholic, played around his mouth. "I can always compromise or make for allowances when it comes to you."
She looked down into her lap, feeling a hot rush of shame. She had always known in the back of her mind how wounded Nikola had been of her engagement to John … but he had never approached her, had never declared any intentions for her. And at the time, she had viewed him as her dearest friend and hadn't wanted any more than that. To hear this outpouring of his true feelings…
"Why have you given me this?" She asked, holding up the box with the serum inside. "It's the venom, isn't it?"
He leant over, delicately taking the box from her hands and opening it. "One sip for waking…" He whispered, uncorking the small vial and holding it to her lips.
"Wake up, Helen…"
Helen bolted upright, her chest heaving as she shook off the remnants of sleep. There were tears painting her cheeks, and she looked about the darkness of her room.
She realized one of her hands was clenched tight, and shaking, she slowly uncurled her fingers. A small glass vial of the venom sample was in her hand. She stared at it in wonder, a frisson of fear making her shudder.
The Big Guy was setting down a tray of tea, and came over to her bedside, worried. When he asked her in his comforting, gruff voice if she had a bad dream, she curled up against his arm and sobbed freely.
"I miss him…