The funeral had been two days ago, apparently. The earth was still freshly turned beneath the simple head stone. Bright white flowers slowly wilting in sympathy: 'In Memory of Nigel Griffin. Beloved father, husband, friend'. All things Nikola Tesla could never have claimed to be… except, perhaps, that last – once upon a time.
The epitaph annoyed him. Irrationally so, he supposed, it wasn't inaccurate. It was how Nigel would rather be remembered – as someone who was loved. Yet it seemed so disgustingly mundane, so trivial, so unanswerable to the life he had led. There wasn't a sign, a whisper, not even a mention of Nigel's many accomplishments, his contributions to the world… his service in the wars. As if all of that was of no consequence. As if he should be allowed to fade into obscurity, to disappear from history. Just like everybody else. It was a fiction of sorts, a lie, an omitted truth – and it set Nikola's teeth on edge.
Even so, he acknowledged with a begrudging sigh, it was precisely Griffin's way. Understated, modest – the joy with Nigel had always been that he was not as he appeared. Even before he could actually disappear he'd been a constant source of surprise, of hidden talents, quick wits and perception lurking beneath the rather common place, rather boring-looking cover. And now he was gone. Completely.
Nikola hadn't believed it, couldn't, until he'd seen the irrefutable proof.
He'd been in Paris when he'd heard the news; just a hop, skip, and jump across that slate sea, still shimmering like it was made of silver fish in the dappled winter light. One of his month-long sojourns to a world-city, one with a proper research library and respected university – outside of the United States or Great Britain of course, he couldn't risk getting caught out by the only people who knew he still existed. Even so, Nikola could never go without a city for long. Not since New York had found its way into his veins.
It had become a routine in this self-imposed exile, to check-in to the most expensive hotel in town, catch up on what the world managed without his help – keep abreast of events, the latest scientific research – all whilst replenishing his supplies of fine wine, and enjoying the novelty of modern conveniences. The sort rarely found in the out-of-the-way locations he'd chosen for his laboratories since '45.
This time, however, he'd been surprised to find himself recognised by the concierge – a middle-aged man with dark eyes, and dark hair that pegged him as more Mediterranean in origin than Parisian. The Frenchman – Jean-Paul, or Pierre, or something – wasn't about to be blown off by the whole "I'm a relative" excuse either: turned out they'd crossed paths before.
After Tesla had left the Sanctuary on VE Day, ran from the American government and the Allies, he'd come through Paris. Promptly getting into a spot of bother with a somewhat hot-tempered abnormal that he'd… erm… insulted. Anyway, the concierge – who'd been living a very different life at the time – helped him avoid the abnormal's fits of murderous rage, and his low-life cronies, for long enough to get the next train out of there. Skip forward fifteen years and here he was, completely unchanged, showing up at this man's hotel.
To Nikola's surprise, Frenchie had not only insisted he was the same man he'd met in '45 – but seemed quite unperturbed at his guest's apparently unchanged appearance. When asked, the concierge had simply shrugged nonchalantly: "I was a member of the Resistance, sir. I saw a lot of strange things, believe me. You know," he lowered his voice, leaned in with the barest of knowing smiles, "a good friend of mine once said they knew a vampire – personally."
Nikola had stared at him intently; worried that he'd meant James or Helen, or worse – Druitt, and that shark-toothed grin of his had emerged to guard his thoughts, "What made you believe them?" He asked cagily.
The shorter man laughed abruptly, continuing just quietly enough not to be overheard, "I was looking straight through him at the time."
Realising precisely who he'd meant Nikola's smile had turned to one of relief. Indeed, he'd quite taken to the man who'd proven himself a most excellent concierge and incredibly discreet.
Actually, Tesla had come across some very interesting research on this trip. He'd been eager to get back and apply it to his most recent discovery in the depths of the Indian Himalayas. Then, on his return from the library, just before dinner, the concierge had hailed him from the other side of the lobby and he'd been met with a hesitant enquiry: did he truly know one Nigel Griffin?
Nikola's heart had sunk at the question, before he'd even answered, before the concierge had explained he was the invisible friend he'd hinted at before. Before he described how he'd heard it from another ex-Resistance leader, who still lived in the village where Nigel had, apparently, married one Jeanette Anaise. Tesla could tell immediately though, it was simply in the way he had asked. Nigel was dead.
Even so, it was a shock. To be met with the startling fact, that one of the few people left alive he could've counted among his friends and peers had passed away. It was laughable really, considering their age. That he could be so taken aback by such a thing. As far as they knew only he had the capacity to outlive eternity. Even Helen was slowly – ever so slowly – aging, and Nigel had always been reluctant to play God. He couldn't imagine him begging for Helen's blood as Druitt, or even James might be tempted to do.
Being confronted with the reality of his passing, however, was another matter entirely. It sent a shiver up his spine colder than the breeze that nipped about his ears on the cold Cornish coast.
A sudden woosh, an unexpected crackle of electrostatic, heralded an all-too familiar presence emerging from the ether behind him. A flash, a blast from the past conjuring the smell of Victorian alleyways in the fog: coal and river swill, tobacco and tar. He supposed he should've counted himself lucky that he hadn't seen or heard from him in an exceptionally long time, but it was hard to think in such positive terms with Montague John Druitt looming in your periphery. Nikola didn't swivel around to face or even acknowledge the Ripper – he remained staring, obstinately, towards Nigel's grave, raising his head only so as to better track the step of his old adversary's heavy boots.
What he really wanted was for tall, dark and broody to disappear before he had to look at him, but John had always found silence more comfortable than Nikola… a man of measured words.
"Well, well, well," the vampire tilted his head, just enough to see Druitt moving closer, looking to read the grave for himself, "look what death dragged in."
He looked at him then, and there was a tortured flinch in those pale eyes: angry at Nikola's presumptuous, cold, snipe, but not as much as he was overwhelmed by what lay at the vampire's feet. The Ripper had donned a long, dark leather coat that looked like an SS original, and managed to drain all the colour from his face. Frankly, he looked like hell – gaunt and drawn, as if he'd flooded his system with every drug imaginable in the last twenty years. He'd shaved off his hair too, like the convict he'd never actually become.
Predictably he ignored Tesla, as if he were nothing, coming to stand closer to the grave and reading the epitaph once again. The emotions coming into John's face – that overpowering grief – sparked an old hatred in Nikola that sharpened his tongue, agitated his limbs, until his pretended calm was disturbed into ripples of movement.
"You know…" he began deliberately, in a nonchalant tone, "I've gotta say…" but his eyes gave him away, betrayed the latent threat, the wariness, "kind of a surprise to see you here, Johnny."
Oh Druitt had always been so very good at that crumpled, anguished look – as furious as it was distraught, conflicted. A look caught between two urges, and always regretting the choices made. Oh the endless self-flagellation! It's one of the things that had always pissed Nikola off the most: that lack of self-awareness, of acceptance for who he really was – the fact that Helen had almost admired it. Mistaken it for humility perhaps?
Even before the source blood, Druitt had been quick to judge himself, and others, by his own, impeccably high, moral standards. No sooner did a complication emerge would he make the same practical decision any of them did, and then proceed to persecute himself for his supposed failings until everyone was trying to reassure him to the contrary. All of them telling him he was still a good man. Sometimes he would listen, other times… Nikola had gotten the distinct impression that John enjoyed bearing crosses. Perhaps that's why, in some strange way, he almost preferred the cold-blooded serial killer he'd become: at least now the playing field was levelled. People didn't need to be told that Saint John wasn't so bloody perfect after the hell he'd put them through.
"Why," Druitt asked slowly, growing sterner and straighter in his bearing as he spoke, "he was as much a part of my life as yours. Though seen as though I hadn't heard a peep of you since '44," he retaliated a little more harshly, "I didn't think you'd be close enough to civilisation to even get the news old boy. How are you finding obscurity by the way?" he smiled spitefully, "Had any more bright ideas to unite the world?"
Tesla straightened, "Well," he raised an eyebrow, keeping his face as neutral and unaffected as possible, "it's easier to work without the distractions."
"Yes," John agreed sarcastically in that gravely hiss of his, eyes never leaving Tesla's, like a tiger stalking prey, "that is one advantage."
There was a moment of desolate silence between them. Nothing but the tails of two coats flapping gently in the sea breeze and a distinct lack of eye contact: but it wasn't an armistice, not even a truce – merely a pause. John's eyes drifted back to the grave. A real grave this time – not the fake one Helen had bought for Tesla back in '43. He'd worked that one out the minute he'd caught sight of her at the funeral. That calm, the slight nervousness in her pressed-together lips: she had been worried, not grieving, and despite his wishes to the contrary Tesla had never quite upset her enough for his passing not to have gone unlamented. Then he'd picked up a paper and read the obituary – natural causes his backside… which is why John had very nearly chocked Leon to death when he'd said the same had come of Nigel.
"Of course," Tesla started cockily, wagging his finger and deliberately meeting John's eyes, "I suppose if you do get distracted, there's never a shortage of poor young women in the world for you to murder."
One could always rely on Tesla for that sort of ungentlemanly jibe at a time like this. John straightened intimidatingly at the not un-founded accusation, his jaw hardening, to which Tesla merely crossed his arms defiantly, awaiting the Ripper's defence with relish.
"Don't you think it a little poor taste to start all this tit for tat over the grave of a friend? I hardly think Griffin would have approved."
"Oh, I'm sorry," the sarcasm rolled thick from Nikola's tongue, "now you care how Nigel might've felt. Now he's dead and buried, and can't actually feel anything."
"Of course I do," Druitt snapped loudly, his volume dropping as he tried to recover control. "Whatever our differences, I respected Nigel. He was an honest friend, before…" before the source blood, John stilled at the thought, before demons, and Whitechapel. He hadn't given Griffin's efforts to stop him a second thought at the time. After all, if Watson couldn't figure it out, how could dear, ever-faithful Nigel? But he'd come close – that night John had stuck his knife into two whores – fumbling his way into that dark place at just the wrong moment to interrupt him. He was too late to save the girl, of course, and John hadn't been stupid enough to give him a clue by teleporting in his presence. Something Griffin had said to him in 1909, when they were hunting for Worth, came swimming to mind. The shorter, stockier man had said very little to him on their mission, kept his distance, until one night, in a fit of stress and anger, it had all come out: 'I saw the light leave that woman's eyes,' he'd said, 'her body still warm and bleeding in my hands, and you took the time to taunt us – leave a little clue to your next kill site which you knew we'd never make in time. I ran, across the whole of Whitechapel, fast as I bloody could – even stole some poor sod's bike – and I was still too late to do a damn thing. Far as I'm concerned Druitt, you died the first time you gutted a human being, and I don't talk to dead men.'
John growled as much in self-hate as anything, "I don't have to explain myself to you, Tesla," he stated bitterly, turning away from the grave… and his conscience.
"Oh come on John," Nikola wasn't about to let him escape that easily, "Out of the Five of us the only people you ever cared about were Helen and James, and we all knew it."
The Ripper rounded stormily on him, "I don't see that you were much of a friend to him yourself you selfish–" John bit his tongue, recognising that unintimidated, slightly amused expression of Nikola's – he'd let the vampire get to him, and they both know it. He rallied, getting right up in Tesla's personal space, knowing just how much the Serb had always hated it. He started to smile at the discomfort he was no doubt inflicting, but the vampire managed to hold back the creeping sneer of distaste. Just enough to maintain the illusion of indifference. Not that John couldn't see right through it – the tension in Nikola's face, the sharpening tips to his top row of teeth. Druitt's face dropped, growing more serious as he changed topic, "Nigel's family is in danger. Not that you would have the blindest idea about that. I came here to see whether the rumours were, indeed, true."
The change in Nikola was miraculous, his demeanour instantly shifting in the sudden, imperative intrigue, "What?"
John started to stalk away but Nikola grabbed his arm without a second thought, physically holding him back. Druitt stared coldly at the offending hand, gripping through the leather of his jacket, felt the strength in it… God he hated how strong the blood had made him. Oh he got cocky enough to give Druitt chinks he could work around – he could still inflict plenty of pain on the pipsqueak – but no matter how hard or how often he lashed out, it was almost a certainty that the Serbian would get back up again. He was faster too, when he was focused enough – a small blessing then, that he didn't have the discipline or interest in mastering fighting techniques as John had.
On the up side, Druitt mused to himself with no small amount of pleasure, only he could teleport the little shit to Timbuktu, shove him off, and leave him there. See how long it took for him to get back. The fact that Nikola hated to touch anyone, least of all his adversaries, however, was a strong enough indicator to John that he wasn't prepared to let him disappear without explaining himself. You could call Nikola many things, but tenacious was certainly one of them. He wasn't going to let go without a fight.
"What do you mean, his family's in danger?" he pressed with the upmost seriousness, all pretence, all bravado washed away with his concern.
John was always suspicious of what lay behind such shifts in mood, what truly motivated it. How could you ever trust someone so inconstant? So capricious? Why Helen ever had astounded him, the fact that she repeatedly did so, amazed. Nevertheless, he cleared his throat, looking down on Nikola. He couldn't help but feel a little smug at the vampire's sudden desperation, the fact that he knew more than the irritant Serb – despite the gravity of the situation, and the people whose lives were at stake.
"Word is there was a heist," he explained at a leisurely pace, "an impossible one… and the people who contracted the thief never received their goods."
Nikola frowned, that didn't make sense. Not from the picture painted by the concierge, or the local he'd spoken to whilst looking for Nigel's grave. That's not how their friend's life had been the last few years.
"Up to his old tricks again, I presume," John continued, a note of remorse creeping in, "– and paid the price for it."
Tesla wasn't so convinced. Griffin had been settled with a wife and child – the quiet, white-picket fence he'd so long desired, the happy ending he never thought he'd get between spooks and wars, abnormals and thievery. Last he'd spoken to Nigel he was dreaming up a quiet little life in the country, away from power in all its forms and what he'd called 'the madness that followed it'. It hadn't been just a big hint to his friend, though he had, as usual, been trying to dissuade Nikola from his own ambitions. Nigel may have been impulsive at times, made a few rash choices here and there, but he'd never valued his powers above the people he cared about: his lovers, however often they changed, The Five, no matter how long it had been since they'd spoken, his comrades-at-arms. So it made no sense that he would abandon the people he loved for the thrill of the game, for another crack at getting one over on someone or something. That wasn't Griff. It wasn't worth it in his eyes, wasn't worth falling back onto the government radar, drawing the attention of any large organisation looking to use you as their own personal weapon. Nikola had been down that road, he knew what it was to have them on your tail, to be constantly watching your back, to find yourself facing the prospect of enslavement to their cause. A cause you didn't care for, and certainly didn't want to die for. Why would he endanger himself, his family, like that? He wouldn't. Unless he was blackmailed into it. Now that he thought about it… death suddenly seemed too convenient – if what Johnny was saying was true.
Pissing off the sort of people Druitt mingled with in his free time, the killers and smugglers, traffickers and criminals working in the shadows… always a bad idea. Not that Griffin wouldn't have known that. Then he dies of an apparent heart attack, and his family's still in danger?
"And the goods?"
He could see Druitt's self-assured suspicions materialise, the presumption that the only reason Nikola was asking was because it might be of some benefit to him. That whatever was worth incurring the wrath of Griffin's employers might be of use – but right now all Nikola could focus on was whether Nigel's untimely death was, in fact, perfectly timed… by his enemies.
"Still missing, it would seem" John announced, "– hence the danger to his wife and child."
Tesla walked off without another word, not even an expression, brows lightly knotted in thought.
"Where are you going?" John called out against the wind.
"To solve his murder," he responded caustically, a grumpy set to his slight frame as he continued to cut across the tombstones.
A familiar shift in pressure, a slight tinge of red in the air made Nikola pause, just in time for John to materialise right in front of him, to the tune of that static crackle. The vampire stared at the unwanted presence as if he wasn't so annoyed he could bear fangs right now – knowing John would've only grinned in return.
"Wouldn't it make sense to pool our resources?" the taller man asked in all seriousness.
Nikola nearly laughed in his face, managing to rein it in to raised eyebrows and a sudden, burning curiosity as to why he was even asking.
"On this occasion-"
"Forget it Baldy," he disparaged darkly. Hardly able to countenance the notion he started off again – this time around the six foot obstruction.
"I can follow you anyway old boy."
He span on him with an uninhibited venomous hiss, all his aggravation finally pouring out into transformed teeth, pointed talons and darkened irises that had reddened like drying blood.
"Temper, temper," Druitt teased, looking far too smug.
It was enough to pull Nikola back into a more human appearance, though no less pissed off at the prospect, "I said I wanted to solve a murder, not commit one."
The truth stung. Slicing through John's superior expression instantly, with the hard unpalatable reality of his particular skill set. He only wanted to make this right; to rectify, in some small way, his relationship with Griffin. Yes, he had spent many years permitting his darker side liberty to kill and control – almost as many as he had spent fighting its inexorable hold over him – but this wasn't about that. It wasn't about his bloodlust. It was about honour. It was about Griffin, and his family. It was about some part of himself which was still that naïve young man of the 1880s, looking towards a future full of love and family.
In the sudden silence Nikola felt the slightest, barest hint of regret start to creep in on him – the awareness that Druitt wasn't in it for the blood any more than he was. In John's face, his own desire to rectify past remises reflected back at him. Would it be such a hardship – they had set aside their differences before, for Helen, for the World. Damn it all. No. He didn't need the Ripper any more than the Ripper needed him. He could do this without his obnoxious presence looming over his shoulder, and if he could, he would. Nikola Tesla worked alone.
Finally understanding from his hardening expression that this was a position from which the irascible, stubborn vampire would not be swayed, John relented, "Very well." He replied, gravely, before disappearing into the ether.
Author's Note: I know, I know, it's been… months! I am sorry for that but there we go, life happens. I'm kinda posting this as a happy new year treat. HAPPY 2015 EVERYONE! But also to let everyone know I'm still around, still reading fics (though I have been terrible and not been reviewing), and to let y'all know that I do really, honestly, truly want to finish my unfinished fics. I just, really, really don't have enough time :( but when I have some, I will write. I promise. I still love this show like you won't believe! Hope you enjoyed Druitt and Tesla FINALLY entering the frame – sorry it took so long. :) You know this won't be the last of them.
Edit: JanSuch you're right dang it, thanks for that :) Montague John Druitt - want to bet he called himself John because his Dad/Grandad was also Montague?