A/N: Set right after Resistance. I swear I'll get back to (mostly) fluff in the next chapter. Enjoy!
"Hey Fenrir, don't run off without this." Nikola practically shoved Henry's tablet at him. "This has Sanctuary files on it, for God's sake. Are all you people so blasé about leaving critical information in the lair of your enemy? The incompetence…"
Henry took the tablet a little defensively. "I guess I was a little busy being almost eaten by the evil From Beyond Beholder you had roaming the halls back there."
"That's no excuse," Nikola insisted. "Even if Helen took it upon herself to passionately kiss me right now, you still wouldn't be able to pry something this important out of my hands."
Henry wrinkled his nose, making a noise somewhere between "ugh" and "ew."
"Anyway," Nikola continued, ignoring him, "your tablet's outdated, you should get Helen to give you some cash to upgrade…"
Helen watched them from where she stood a little off to the side, having already gathered all of her things together. Her arms were crossed, her fingers tapping restlessly on her arm. After their close call earlier, Helen was more than happy to keep both of them in sight, but Nikola was proving to be just as difficult to deal with as she remembered.
His betrayal – contentedly working for SCIU, of all things – stung, possibly more than he realized. For Nikola, it had only been a few months since they'd seen each other. It was somewhat difficult to sort it all out, but Helen supposed the last time by his reckoning was after their trip to Africa, last year for him, nearly 114 years ago for her.
Despite everything, Helen couldn't help but smile a little, thinking about that time they'd spent together meandering home from the Cairo Sanctuary the long way around. It seemed short now, after a century had passed for Helen, but they had certainly stretched it out as much as they could at the time. They had parted warmly; that was the word she would use, though privately she would admit it had been more than warm. It had been – a beginning, though of what, neither of them was exactly sure.
Helen hadn't had much to look forward to other than the completion of her work over the last hundred years, which seemed to drag on yet never give her quite enough time to prepare for reliving her darkest days, completely alone. Among the few things she had been able to anticipate with absolute, unmarred joy was seeing her dear friends in the present again, Nikola included – along with whatever they'd begun in Africa, however uncertain.
She had missed them all terribly. The odd thing was, she shouldn't have missed Nikola – she had gone to see his past self, perhaps more than she really should have, considering her constant efforts to not alter the timeline too much. But she trusted herself around Nikola in a way that she didn't around anyone else from her past, always fearing that she would slip up, tell one of them some crucial bit of information that would keep them alive just a little bit longer: she'd lost so many people dear to her, and the chance to alter history was so tempting Helen had nearly given in more than once. Around Nikola, one of the few (and the only one, until more recent years) who was still alive in the present, she didn't have to worry about that particular danger.
But Helen never had the luxury of losing herself for just a little while in familiarity – she had always believed that Nikola had remained essentially unchanging over the last century, but she had been wrong. He was different, in ways that she had never noticed over the natural course of time but were almost painfully obvious to her now, and it wasn't the same around him any longer. She could never be completely honest with him, and he could always tell.
Besides that, there was something subtly different about their past relationship and the one they had in the present. They had fallen apart during the sixty years that Nikola had been absent, and Helen had thought that over the years preceding her trip backwards in time, they had only rebuilt what they had lost, regaining their former warmth and closeness. But she had realized that they had built something else, too; it eluded Helen every time she tried to put a name on it, but the fact remained that Nikola in the past just wasn't quite her Nikola anymore.
It made sense – after all, she was no longer the person she had been back then either – but she had missed her Nikola. She had imagined that when they saw each other again, Nikola would be torn between wanting to know all about time travel and its inherent coolness, and worrying about all that time she'd spent alone. He would understand, if no one else living could, how very, very long the years could be.
Perhaps, Helen had thought, they could even pick up where they'd left off before. Of course, he'd done this instead.
At least he had shut his experiments down, and promised her afterwards to be more careful in the future with other people's lives (whether that promise would be kept remained to be seen.) And it wasn't as if he were enamored with SCIU either; in fact, he seemed quite enthusiastic about making off with as much of their money as he could, even if Helen found his "fighting from the inside" motivations a little hard to buy. Regardless, he was still working for them, and had made it clear he planned to keep doing so.
Which meant that, for the first time in a long, long time, they were working against each other. Not just separately pursuing their individual goals, which occasionally clashed, but actively opposed to one another.
"Alright, do you finally have everything?" Nikola asked Henry, his tone some bizarre cross between supremely annoyed and over-concerned parent.
"Yeah, yeah," Henry said. "Are you sure you don't want us to stick around and help you with clean-up, damage control, anything?"
Nikola waved a hand. "Nah, I'll just make my staff do everything."
Henry looked doubtful, rolling his eyes a bit, but shrugged. "Hey, doc, I think we're ready to go."
They both turned to her, Nikola dodging direct eye contact.
Helen nodded. "Very well. Let's not waste any time." Nikola had already called ahead to the few people remaining in their way after the creature's attack to let them pass, so she started towards the door.
She didn't want to leave without saying something to Nikola, but she also didn't want to leave on an angry note, which was what she had a feeling it would turn into if she did talk to him. It was better to go now, after successfully rescuing Henry had at least made them friendly if awkward again, than to let things dissolve into another argument with no resolution in sight.
At least, that was what Helen told herself. There was a tiny part of her that suspected she just didn't want to tell him goodbye.
A rather surprised look crossed Henry's face before he followed her. They were almost out of the lab when Henry muttered, "Uh, doc…"
At the same time, Nikola called out from behind them. "Oh come on, Helen, you're not really going to just leave like that, are you?" He darted towards them, catching up to them in a second with that inhuman speed of his.
Helen turned. "What would you like me to say, Nikola?" she said, unable to keep a degree of bitterness from her voice. "You refuse to stop working for these people; you know how opposed I am to them and their goals."
"I – " Nikola lifted his hands and let them fall again, motioning behind him helplessly. Henry had backed off to the side, giving them a little space.
"You've seen this place, Helen. I've been able to do research here that I could only dream of before." He looked at her intently, as if he was trying to make her understand.
Helen sighed. "Do what you will, Nikola," she said tiredly. "It's your decision. Only…think about it, please."
He gave her a miniscule nod.
"And thank you for saving Henry," she added, some genuine warmth creeping back into her voice. That needed to be said, at any rate.
"Yeah, thanks again," Henry put in.
"My pleasure," he said, a hint of his usual smug smile returning. "Almost getting strangled by a tentacled creature from another plane of existence was the highlight of my day. Speaking of that, thanks, by the way," he said to Helen.
"You're welcome," she told him, and before she could say anything else Nikola had wrapped himself around her, hugging her so tightly she could barely move. Henry coughed, and from out of the corner of her eye, Helen could see him looking at the floor as if it were the most interesting thing in the world.
"Don't think too badly of me," Nikola whispered, low enough for Henry not to overhear.
Helen closed her eyes and allowed herself to lean into him, taking a deep breath. "Oh, Nikola," she murmured. "You really are impossible."
"That's why you like me," he said, his voice thick.
Helen folded her arms around him, her eyes still closed, and tried not to think about how this might be the last time she'd see him for a long time. She wanted very badly all of a sudden to ask him again to leave SCIU and come back with her – right now, in this moment, she was almost certain he would.
But that had to be a decision Nikola made on his own, and Helen still had enough faith in him to believe that he would, eventually. So she didn't say anything, but she held onto him tightly, for much longer than she had been planning to.
Nikola rocked a little back and forth, still clinging to her, his head bowed to her shoulder, but he released her without a word when she reluctantly let go of him at last. They looked at each other for a moment; then he settled his hands gently on her shoulders, leaning forward, and kissed her.
It was a short kiss, and a very light one, a marked contrast to the way they'd said their farewells after Africa. Helen's eyes closed again anyway, her hands finding their way to his neck, and she pressed into him, even more unwilling to say goodbye now than she had been then.
Nikola was the one who pulled away first. "Helen," he said. His voice was soft, and he looked at her earnestly. "Please be safe."
They'd hardly had a chance to talk at all – she hadn't mentioned any of her plans to him yet – but he still knew without asking that there was something out of the ordinary coming.
"You know me," Helen said, giving him a reassuring pat on the arm, her hand lingering for just a second too long.
"Yes, exactly," he said wryly.
"Then I should say, likewise," she said. "Be careful here, Nikola. These people are more dangerous than you realize."
He managed to grin a little. "Sure you don't want to stick around to keep an eye on me?"
Helen smiled back at him. "You'll be fine." She touched his cheek. "Vampire, remember?" She stroked it once, thumb brushing the dimple from his wavery smile, then dropped her hand, backing away.
"Goodbye, Nikola," she said. Her words were very quiet.
"…Helen," Nikola said with difficulty. He looked as if he were about to say something else, but closed his mouth, inclining his head before tilting it back up to hold her gaze. After another moment, Helen spun around before the look on his face made her stay any longer.
She could feel his eyes on her all the way to the door.
A/N: I go back and forth on whether or not I think Helen and Tesla were officially together at any point in the past - I love it either way, so I tried to keep it mostly open-ended here. Helen's thoughts about Past!Nikola were prompted by the fact that I imagine whether they were or weren't together, it would still be jarring to get thrown back in time to be around someone she knew that well before most of the things that made him the person she knew had even happened.