The waves were many miles away but the wind carried the sound of them across the open heath regardless. It battered harmlessly against Helen's bedroom window, rattling its ancient frame with the same regularity as the clock, ticking on the mantelpiece, as she settled down to sleep. There was a superstitious air about the building once the lights were off, the sort of feeling Helen usually ascribed to some misunderstood abnormal presence, but she had been keeping an eye out for those. No, in this instance, she rather suspected it was the presence of a more psychological kind. Her own ghosts come to haunt her.

Perhaps it was the cold temperature of the room. Just like how they always used to be in the night, before they were properly heated, and the windows properly fitted. Maybe it was the scent of dried oak, of damp granite, the carbonised flavours of smoke that had passed through from cigarettes and cigars, the damp coals on the fire. It smelt of the past. As if the electrics here were just a passing fancy, the accoutrements of 20th century living rude outsiders, in a place that had stood for centuries before indoor bathrooms and radios were considered necessities.

She half-expected to turn against her pillow and open her eye to a pale white projection of her friend, ominously pointing towards the window as if he were Hamlet's father, come to urge her vengeance. Griffin would have laughed at her for that. As if he would ever be so mordant, even in death. The dramatics, he would've reminded her, were Tesla's department.

In fact, Nigel had always been the most humble out of all of them. There had been times when she had hated the thought of trudging through the decades, perhaps centuries to come, but by and large she had revelled in her apparent immortality – at the opportunities it presented, at the fact that she could still perish and therefore, still had reason to fight for survival, to live. She certainly did not regret surviving her first century. The world, for all its flaws, was still changing, and she always wanted to see what would come next.

Tesla, well, he had all-but flaunted the fact that he could live forever youthful, at any opportunity. Just another claim to support his own sense of superiority. Another blessing from his ancestors, towards whom he looked with such absurd reverence.

James had clawed and fought for it, his own artificial longevity. It was after his brush with an unusual tropical disease during an investigation in Mumbai. He'd made a full recovery, but the feeling of mortality, of age creeping up on him had lingered. As had the revelation that the dose of Helen's blood, which had helped in stabilising his abnormality in the immediate aftermath of their sanguine vampiris experiment, and extended his middle-age, was starting to wear off.

They'd tried injecting him again with her extraordinary vitae but his body had rejected it like some kind of infection. She'd spent weeks helping him, searching for an answer. All the while he'd grown more fixated, more focused, until he wasn't even getting dressed in the mornings, barely remembering to shave, or eat, or bathe. She hadn't had the courage to ask him why he was so afraid, to get him to talk. It's not like she didn't already know what he was thinking – that they would all live on. That she would live on, without him. That they would watch him grow old, and infirm, and miserable. Worse still, the horrific prospect of his brilliant mind falling prey to dementia and senility.

So she had given him all her silent support, bringing him tea and sympathy, knowing he would be impossible to dissuade and yet just as concerned that he make peace with what seemed, medically speaking, unattainable now. Then, one day, he'd finally left the house for a case, and when he'd come back, exhilarated by the subtlety of the criminal's mechanical technique, he'd been like a man possessed. James later described it to her as seeing all the parts come together before his eyes: the formulae, the cogs and wheels and switches, written out as if on a screen. So the contraption now strapped permanently to his chest, his life-support, had been born.

John, meanwhile, had never asked for eternity, though Helen was sure he enjoyed the fact that he could continue his vendettas, their dance, over the decades. He probably thought it romantic, that time had been unable to kill their connection, their attraction to one another. If he hadn't become the source of such shame, such grief, she would have agreed – but time hadn't stopped him from killing, hadn't saved either of them from the guilt. Logically she knew she had been foolish to give him her blood again, but it had been at a time when there was still hope. She had been so sure that a larger, more compact dose of what had first alleviated his symptoms might abate his demons forever.

As before, it had proved only a temporary solution. It wasn't long before his madness had returned… and broke her heart anew.

She had often speculated on how long that dose might last him. How long it might be before he beat upon her door again, drawn in the face like a cancer patient and suffering continual cramps, only able to relieve the nauseating noise within his mind in the kill, in the shedding of innocent blood. That he would seek her out for that reprieve, that life-extension, she had no doubt… and she had given what she would do that day a great deal of thought.

No, Nigel had been the only one to entirely eschew it, to wean himself from the possibility of eternity and pass up the chance to live forever – and she would never forget the day, the evening he had.

0 0

"Helen?"

Nigel appeared around her office door and she smiled instantly, trying to relieve the concerned look on his face – to raise that bottom lip of his from where it hung, perplexed.

"James said you were lookin' for me?"

"Yes."

He closed the door and started for her desk.

"Oh, no. Please… take a seat by the fire Nigel," She stopped what she was doing, pointing to the two chairs at the hearth. Different upholstery – same seats as had been there since King Edward sat on the throne. He looked at them gingerly, choosing the one furthest from the desk – sensing that the nearer one would be hers.

He didn't look comfortable there, in the rigid seat. He never did. It was too much of a cross between a College Warden's office and a doctor's surgery – neither places he much cared for. Sometimes Helen wondered if she shouldn't invest in something more comfortable, like a sofa, because he always looked like he was half-way out of the chair before she'd so much as offered him a drink. Even so, time after time he would take the proffered libation, and eventually the alcoholic tonic would ease him into forgetting his surroundings. But this was certainly not Nigel's natural habitat.

Really, she should have had this conversation in the lab, or the library, or even the pub, where he might've felt more at ease, but… she supposed she had leaned towards her own safe place, for a conversation which would be far from easy.

She passed him his accepted brandy, settling beside him and leaning back into the taste of her own glass. She took a moment, enjoying the warmth from the flames in the grate before she said her piece.

"Mmm, that's good stuff Helen. Where you been hidin' it?"

She returned his cheek with a smirk, "My secret stash, of course."

He chuckled, taking another sip. "Go on then, what's so important that you've rolled out the royal treatment?" he emphasised the glass in his hand as he spoke, eying her plainly so that she knew not to play this down.

She sighed, "Nigel… you know the blood work we ran the other day?"

"W'at the 'routine check-up' you insisted on?"

From the expression on his face he had seen right through her attempt at subtlety.

"Yes, I must admit I really had only one purpose in mind at the time. A theory, really."

Griffin made an ungracious sound through his smile, "Doctor Magnus with an ulterior motive?" He ribbed her sarcastically, "Never would've guessed love."

Her lips pressed together reflexively as she smiled cautiously back, her hands meeting closer to her lap as she searched his eyes. "You remember the effect my blood had on you, and John, and James?"

"Not likely to forget it… why?" he asked, even though he suspected he already knew. He needed to hear her say it.

"It's starting to wear off on you Nigel," she held his gaze with complete honesty, stating the fact clean and simple, as if it were a terminal diagnosis. "Like it did on James. Slowly but surely."

Griff wasn't sure how to react to that. He looked away from her – what did that really mean to him anyway? Death had to come for them all sometime, didn't it? He could be run over by a bus tomorrow – made no bloody difference really.

"We can, try the serum I gave John… the stronger one. It might work on you. You might not even need James'-" she stopped there, realising he was holding up a hand to stop her… and maybe she already understood the reason why. "That is… if you want to."

He was shaking his head. So grave. So unlike his usual sunny disposition. Nigel's expressions were like a barometer, one could always tell just how serious something was by how grimly his mouth was set. Then came the familiar half-smile, as if he could tell his sincerity was starting to unnerve her, "Nah. I'm alright Helen. Honest."

"Are you sure?" she asked with concern. Slightly surprised, in all honesty. The thought of one of them not living as long as the rest surprisingly alien, surprisingly shocking to her.

"I was alright with it when it was an accident, a side effect, but really…" he sighed, looking her straight in the eye, "who are we to live forever?"

It had been a long, long time since she and Nigel Griffin had sat and chatted about the deep questions of the universe. Once they'd all started down their own paths he'd reverted to the safety of humour when he was around them, and a careful scepticism. Ever keen to avoid becoming drawn into another situation where he'd be exploited for unethical ends. Really though, his relationship with her had changed much sooner than that, when she and John had gotten serious – when she was no longer just a friend, but soon to be someone's wife. It had been an unconscious change, one borne of the norms of the time rather than unrequited feelings. She hadn't realised at the time, but she missed the batting back and forth of ideas, of philosophies: Nigel's had always sounded so fair, so even handed. He'd never failed to point out the flaws in Nikola's grandiose suggestions, or the limitations of her own, more subtle ones, seeing all the sides to the matter with unnerving perception. James did that too, but he was so much more focused on the practical, on the facts – Nigel's creativity, his intuition allowed you to see the answers for yourself, rather than be lectured to on the dots, and how they all connected together.

He was right, of course. They had not been born this way. It was… unnatural.

"Seems a bit greedy really." He continued, "I mean, we should be satisfied with the one life God gave us right? What is there worth doing in ten lives that you couldn't do in one?"

She listened, hearing the truth in it with a wistful smile. That to desire more, to seek out eternity showed only a lack of faith in life, in what one could achieve within it.

"I mean, not that you can help it or anythin' but… if you could? Helen, would you? Would you choose to see everyone you love grow old and die around you?"

Her eyes gave her away – no. No she would not. And until the blood had started to shorten on them, until they'd all started to drift from her life, until she had come to meet, and share so much with colleagues decades younger… she had never thought that she would. The Five had been the ones: the one surety against her having to watch all the world grow old and die. No matter how many she had to bury, she had always been so sure that she'd have them and now… Nikola had walked out on them without a word, John was God knows where, probably still killing, possibly dead himself – and in that Nazi bunker a simple flick of the switch, a turn of the dial, had forced her to watch James age before her eyes. Truth was, The Five was a tentative myth she'd been clinging to; a crutch to avoid staring into the reality of her future – a loneliness she had been putting off for decades.

"Tesla wouldn't get it," Nigel continued, smirking broadly at the thought of Nikola's bombastic rebuttal of the idea that living forever was a bad idea, "but he's not like us Helen. He's always kept everyone at arm's length. Manages just fine being on his own."

Helen watched the fire crackle, not entirely sure Griffin was right on that account. There was a madness, a desperation, about Nikola's determination to be independent of his emotions that belied a greater humanity than most would credit him with. Conversely, she had always found herself much more able to cope with isolation than anyone who'd known her in her young adulthood might've imagined. She had, after all, been a lonely only child.

"And James..." he threw her a look, thinking better of what he was about to say. That Watson was doing it for her benefit was only partially true. He had unfinished business with Druitt, and a stubborn streak a mile long... "He does a pretty good job of keeping people at arm's length too," he settled on, exhaling in a heavy breath. "I've had a good run. Christ I've lived ninety years ain't I? Another ten and I'll be getting a Birthday Card from His Majesty."

She scoffed at that, as he gulped a large sip of brandy.

"Mm, and," he added, "how many people get to their ninetieth birthday with a fit an' able body? Not bad going really."

She smiled – Nigel Griffin, ever a glass half-full, "And you're certain?" she felt the need to double check, though why, she wasn't sure: "I can't be certain how this will pan out," she warned, "you might catch up with your actual age sooner than you think."

He shrugged, looking at his feet as if to avoid her candour, "I'll risk it." He looked up to her, "Didn't much fancy watching Jeanette get old without me anyway."

Ah, Helen thought to herself, now it all became clear. Usually she'd have shown some kind of concern as to Nigel taking such a big decision on the basis of a girl he liked – but Jeanette Anaise was different.

They'd lost contact after the war; Nigel had been caught up in a situation involving die-hard Nazis who wouldn't accept the surrender, a traitorous Resistance leader, and the so-called Monuments Men. Frankly Jeanette would've been forgiven for thinking he'd died. He'd needed her to believe it anyway, to get the upper hand on the enemy, and the thought had cut right through him, plagued him to this day. The way he'd spoken just now, however… something had changed.

"You've found her?" Magnus queried, intrigued.

He positively beamed, the light in his eyes unmistakable as he nodded.

"Nigel, that's fantastic news!"

Within the month, he'd been on the continent with Jeanette. Within the year they were married, and Nigel Griffin had never looked back.

Author's Note: AConstanceC – you know what they say with fan-fic/art. If you don't see it, write/draw it! :) I always thought it a disservice that Helen and James kinda mention Griffin's death in a throwaway line, but we've seen Helen do that before – make something pretty close to her past, her emotions, sound so distant and official (I'm recalling her reaction to the SOS signal coming through in Trail of Blood. I love how her reaction wasn't – OMG Nikola's sending us a message, it was 'My, my, my – blast from the past. Here's a long-wded story that totally avoids showing you how I feel about the fact that this is probably a message from Tesla'. Maybe she thought it would be a love note and wanted to make sure she could brush it off as 'that inventor guy' without having to explain to them it was Tesla? Anyway… I digress :D Tesla and Druitt will certainly be in this fic and have a pretty key role to play too, have no fear, but I want to build up to it properly so it has more impact. Trust me. It'll be worth it. :D The way those two play off each other is always fun. Thank you so much for being my only comment on this fic so far! It keeps me going.

Thanks also to our new faves and follows! :) Hope you keep enjoying it. Next time… Helen and Watson go cluing for looks.