A/N: Post-Sanctuary for None, originally for the prompt "a kiss we had to wait for" though it ended up getting expanded quite a bit past my original idea.
Enjoy!
The new Sanctuary was amazing, Nikola had to admit. There had to be some positively mind-blowing technology at work behind the artificial environment, complete with sunlight, making him feel for all the world as if he were standing on the surface. Then there was that Praxian rail system he had wheedled some details out of Helen about last year, whistling by right over his head. The waterfall was a nice touch too, if a little dramatic.
Of course, he would have expected nothing less from Helen, especially since she'd had over a hundred years to prepare. He still wasn't entirely sure how she'd slipped this one past him, but he was going to have to remember to congratulate her on her concealment skills.
For that matter, he wasn't sure how she'd managed to hide the fact that there were two of her running around there for a while. Two Helens. Nikola was sure that he would come up with a suggestive remark appropriate for the occasion eventually, but his first reaction had been deep unsettlement by the fact that he'd never quite put the pieces together: he, who prided himself on knowing Helen better than anyone. Never mind the fact that he'd believed time travel to be impossible back then – he should have figured it out anyway.
Nikola generally tried to stay away from the giant headache that was time travel, but his curiosity had been piqued once he'd found out Helen had gone back. He'd had to wonder how many of his memories of her were old and how many were new, constructed by Present Helen coming to visit him in the past. Which made her Future Helen. Who was now Present Helen again.
He sighed. Damn time travel.
It was actually kinda flattering, when he thought about it – Helen risking the timeline just to see him. Or to get his (unwitting) help with the new Hollow Earth Sanctuary, but damn it, he was going to get a little more "you missed me" mileage out of it when he saw her again. Not to mention having her hammer out the details of what happened when and with whom.
When he saw her again. That was a good phrase, Nikola thought, reaching what looked like the main building and pushing open the door. The décor was surprisingly old-fashioned, given the glittering modernity of the exterior, but there was Helen's hand showing through.
He was pretty sure he recognized some of those chandeliers from the old Sanctuary. Helen had had them "replaced" recently. He wondered what else she had been able to save by smuggling it out of the old place: any of the truly excellent wine he'd thought was left in her cellar when the old Sanctuary was destroyed, for starters. He'd have to ask her when he saw her.
There was that phrase again. Nikola, still looking around the entrance hall, leaned against the wall and considered the words. They were beautiful – so beautiful – but he couldn't trust them.
After Helen had destroyed the old Sanctuary, with herself inside… Well, that wasn't something Nikola particularly wanted to think about. When he slept, which wasn't all that often nowadays – even when he just closed his eyes, all he could see were the scenes his mind had convinced him he would find in the ruins. He'd been frantic to disprove them, and if he hadn't had accelerated healing, he was certain he'd still be singed and scratched and bruised from the entire days he'd spent trying. Possibly with some broken bones. Or a lot. He really hadn't been in a safety first kind of mood, with little things like "structural damage" and "half the Sanctuary falling on him" getting tossed straight out the window.
He had spent those days sick with dread at what he might find, but he had dared to let a little flicker of hope in once he found no sign of Helen there. There were really only two other possibilities after that. Though, if neither of those panned out, Nikola didn't have much planned for the next few hundred years apart from getting rid of SCIU: he was going to find Helen, no matter what it took.
The first possibility: Helen was alive and in hiding. She had told him some – not many, but some – details of her plan, and he knew that she was going to try to use Henry's shield to make it out. Telling him that was what had allowed her to persuade him to leave her behind with Caleb. Just the memory of walking away and sealing her in ached enough: Nikola wasn't sure how he'd ever managed to go through with it.
Nikola had been working towards finding the way in to whatever Helen had been hiding in Hollow Earth ever since he figured out she was up to something. After all, he'd known at least one entry point, and he had part of the Praxian database to draw from. He'd been distracted by the Caleb fiasco, but after his search for Helen in the Sanctuary hadn't turned anything up, he'd thrown himself back into it with a single-minded drive. If she were in hiding, it had something to do with Hollow Earth: of that he had been sure.
After another seemingly endless few days of research, he had finally managed to discover one of the passages down to Helen's little segment of Hollow Earth. He hadn't quite been expecting an entire Sanctuary, let alone of this size, but that only reinforced his theory that everything that had happened had been Helen's plan. She had meant to survive that explosion, and come down here to resume her work.
That all left the troubling question of why Helen hadn't contacted him at all, though. Surely, after everything they'd been through together, she wouldn't just leave him hanging like that, thinking she might be dead.
That led him to the second possibility, the one that left no such troubling questions. Nikola shied away from thinking about it every time it occurred to him, which was about twenty times a minute. What if she hadn't made it out of the Sanctuary? She had been working on Hollow Earth for a hundred years: she could have built all this before she resumed her life in the present. By itself, it didn't mean she was still alive. Depending on how close she was to the blast, there may have simply been nothing left for him to find.
Which meant, despite the shiny new Sanctuary staring him in the face and treacherously building up his hopes, it was entirely possible that he would never see Helen again. That she was gone, forever.
He used to thrill at that word, what it meant for his work, but now... Forever seemed so empty without Helen to share it with.
Nikola swallowed and pushed off the wall, hurrying forward and choosing a door at random. Even by his standards, his plan was exceedingly vague – wandering around the Sanctuary or all of Hollow Earth if need be until he found her. But it was all he had.
He almost regretted not bringing Henry along. Even consumed as Nikola was with finding Helen, he had seen how much the idea that her survival had been dependent upon Henry's competence was haunting the kid. But the children were all preoccupied with their own issues, and Nikola preferred working by himself on this one anyway. (Though Henry had tried to make Nikola take better care of himself. Nikola didn't know if it was something he'd come up with on his own or a directive from Helen. Either way, he would privately admit it had been a kind gesture, even if it had been doomed to fail from the get-go.)
So he had come to Hollow Earth alone, and now he was roaming around through a very empty Sanctuary looking for Helen.
He had to admit it was a little weak, speaking from a dramatic point of view. What was he going to do, run into Helen's arms while trying to avoid knocking over the furniture that was still being moved into its final place? Now, that waterfall out front, that was an ideal reunion spot. He could picture it now: the sound of the water rushing, the spray coming up, Helen's hair billowing in the (fake) breeze –
Turning a corner, Nikola froze. There, walking slowly down the hall towards him, nose buried in a tablet, was Helen, looking remarkably alive and well.
He stopped breathing – that sort of thing was usually hyperbole, but as a vampire, he was able to go without oxygen for longer than a human. He'd have to start back up eventually though, and the way it was looking he might not be able to.
She still hadn't seen him, but what should have been time for Nikola to get one of the many passionate speeches he had drawn up in his free moments ready for the occasion was instead time for him to lean against the wall, head spinning. Just another second, he told himself, to clear his head, and then he would –
Helen looked up. She stopped in her tracks, their eyes meeting across the corridor.
Nikola stared back, speechless. He forgot all of those passionate words that seemed so pale and inadequate to the task now. For a single, blissful moment, he even forgot the dread he'd been living with constantly. There were only two thoughts running through his head, blocking everything else out: he loved her, and she was alive.
Managing to lever himself off the wall, he took a shaky step towards Helen.
His legs started working again once he was moving, and as soon as he trusted himself he sprinted to Helen, blurring through the corridor in less than a second and throwing his arms around her with enough force to make them both stumble back a few steps. He took a deep, hungry gulp of air, breathing her in as her arms came up to hold him.
Everywhere he looked, there was proof: the way she smelled, her hair slipping through his fingers, even the pressure of her holstered gun against his leg. Helen was alive. She was real, and alive, and in his arms. Her name tumbled out of him in uneven gasps, and he buried his face in her neck, letting the words play through his head again and again.
She was alive.
In retrospect, Helen shouldn't have been surprised. It only made sense. Nikola had always been one to go charging off on a whim, and all of the hints she'd dangled in front of him regarding her secret workings in Hollow Earth would have been enough for him to barrel his way down here even without the added motivation of finding out whether she was alive.
Still, she hadn't been expecting him quite so soon. It was dangerous for him to be down here, with SCIU still keeping a close watch on all of her associates; if they'd tracked him somehow…
But it was done now. He was here, and Helen couldn't bring herself to be sorry. For the most part, she was all by herself down here, and it was too reminiscent of her years alone over the last century for Helen to really feel at ease.
She wrapped her arms around Nikola in return, leaning into him, and stood there with him for a long time. Nikola didn't give any indication of letting go of her any time soon, though he had fallen completely silent. Helen couldn't blame him – she wasn't quite sure what to say either.
Perhaps, she thought, it was because there was nothing they could say that felt good enough. Not after their history – or after the way they had parted.
Henry's shield wasn't guaranteed to work. In case it hadn't, if that was going to be the last time she ever saw Nikola, she wanted him to know what she had never quite told him: how she felt about him. It hadn't seemed possible to compress two hundred years into one all-too-brief kiss – friendship, close friendship, and the something other than friendship that had always been present with them. And mixed in with those, inseparable from either, a depth of love that staggered even her sometimes. Because Helen did love him, even though she had never once uttered the words out loud. That was what she had tried to tell him. She had wanted to give him a proper goodbye.
Not that a proper goodbye really existed, not for them. They had known each other for too long and had had too great an impact on each other. There was no way to encompass all that in words. Actions came closer, so Helen had kissed him instead, letting her hand linger over his heart for one moment. She thought he had understood the message, if the way he had looked at her afterwards was any indication.
Helen was sure she'd had a similar expression herself. If it really had been goodbye, there was a great deal they would have left unexplored. Helen would have regretted it, but now, faced with the opportunity to do so, she couldn't find the words she needed. Neither could he. Usually, they would just put it aside as they so often had before, but something was preventing them from doing that now. All they could do was stand motionless, holding each other.
The silence stretched.
"Nikola, I'm glad you're here," Helen said at last, feeling the inadequacy of it. Say what she would about Nikola, she was rarely uncomfortable in conversation with him. If one of them didn't find a way to restore their usual equilibrium, they would both go mad.
Nikola just nodded against her and clutched her a little tighter. "Helen," he repeated softly, which, while touching, was astoundingly little help. Silence fell again, bringing a suffocating atmosphere with it this time.
Helen was beginning to find a wild kind of humor in the situation. So it was possible to render Nikola speechless. Except that she didn't want him speechless, she wanted to be able to talk with him again. Before anything else, she wanted her best friend back. There was so much about the new Sanctuary she hadn't been able to tell him before that she wanted to share with him now.
This was usually the point where Nikola grinned and came up with some ridiculous joke to make her laugh, but he didn't seem to be capable of that right now. Which meant it was going to have to be her.
Well, Helen thought with a return of that odd hilarity, if she wanted to distract them both, she could always kiss him again. She snorted. That probably wouldn't go very far towards lessening the tension, though.
There was nothing for it. She had to do something.
She pulled back and grasped his shoulders, giving him an earnest look. "I…need you to fix my generator," she said, a little stiffly. How did Nikola think these things up on the spur of the moment?
Nikola stared at her for a moment, leftover tears still rolling down his cheeks – then a hesitant smile cracked across his face, and he gave a strangled laugh. Stepping back, he swiped a hand over his eyes, keeping it in place for a few seconds longer than necessary, and dropped it with something closer to his old grin back in place. He flipped his coat behind him and put a hand on his hip.
"Well, that didn't take you long," he said. He was overdoing the smugness, his voice was shaking, and tears still stood in his eyes, but Helen would have thrown her arms around him if she didn't think it would start everything over again. "I see what you really want me around for. Hold on, you gave me a tie last Christmas. I'm not your house elf anymore."
"It's Praxian." Helen's eyes flicked down. She had given him a tie last Christmas, and he was wearing it now.
"So after I get it running, is there anything else you need?" he asked immediately.
"I'm sure I can think of something," she said, her lips twitching. This lacked the energy of their usual banter, but it was a start. "Follow me."
Nikola didn't exactly follow her – he attached himself to her side, linking their arms and interlacing their fingers. Helen did nothing to dislodge him.
Helen gave him an impromptu and incomplete tour on their way down to the generator room, using the opportunity to examine him more closely while his attention was occupied by the Sanctuary.
He looked awful. From her lifetimes of experience, Helen knew the signs of a starving vampire, and from the looks of things he had barely gotten anything since the destruction of the old Sanctuary. She made a mental note to stop off on the way down to the generator to get him something to eat. He was pale and unsteady on his feet, with dark circles under his eyes that confirmed what her knowledge of Nikola's character already told her – he hadn't been sleeping at all either. Vampire or no, he couldn't carry on like that forever. He had to be feeling the effects.
He smiled at her when he caught her looking at him, and though his face lit up just as warmly as it always did, his eyes held a kind of desperate longing that made her stomach twist. And when he wasn't smiling, he looked so exhausted that Helen was reminded of his time as a human, when he had nearly worked himself to death.
It wouldn't have taken a genius to figure out the underlying reason, and Helen felt guilt rippling up from where she had pushed it down: she had caused this. God only knew what the rest of her friends, her family, were suffering.
Helen paused in her description of the new abnormal levels to Nikola. "Have you talked with any of the others lately?" she asked finally. She had been keeping tabs on them as best she could, and she had been proud of them for handling everything as well as could be expected. But if she had missed what was going on with Nikola, who knew what else had slipped by her notice?
"Uh, if 'talk' means 'ignore them while they try to distract me from – well, more important work,' then yes."
"How are they doing?"
He took a second look at her and sighed, that tired expression even more obvious. "I don't know, Helen. No one's been exactly skipping through meadows lately."
She nodded. "I'll contact them soon," she said. "In a few weeks perhaps. They're still being monitored by SCIU far too closely to risk any more communication, or any sooner. You shouldn't even be down here."
Nikola was quiet for a second, a touch of sadness flitting across his face. Helen didn't need him to say anything to know what he was thinking.
She sighed. "But I doubt they'll see anything unusual in you suddenly disappearing off the face of the earth. Certainly not if you were as diligent in your job at SCIU as you were at the Sanctuary. We should be safe."
Giving him an encouraging smile, she squeezed his hand. She was glad he was here. More glad than he knew.
As expected, the generator seemed to cheer Nikola up, as did the rest of the Sanctuary for that matter. Particularly when Helen told him he could have the run of it, or at least the finished levels. Helen had been planning to leave him messing about with it and get back to the mountain of work awaiting her. But she found herself hovering around him instead, watching him twirl and dart around trying to do eight different things at once, his hair standing up even more than usual from the shocks he kept accidentally inflicting on himself.
It was because she knew he was distracted and tired, Helen told herself, and a distracted Nikola could be rather dangerous. She had to keep an eye on him if she wanted to make sure her Sanctuary was still standing in the morning. Plus, she knew she was eventually going to have to drag him to bed herself if she wanted him to get any rest, which was thankfully a sentence she didn't say out loud anywhere near him.
And she had missed him, but Helen wasn't going to credit that with any more than a passing influence in her decision when she slipped out for a few minutes and came back with her laptop, continuing her work perched nearby him. Occasionally, she offered him a bit of advice about the Praxian technology she had spent the last hundred years familiarizing herself with, but for the most part she listened to him rattling on excitedly about the new Sanctuary with a small smile.
When she noticed it was growing late, she shut her laptop and hauled Nikola away from the generator over his complaints that he would have it finished by tomorrow morning if she let him stay up all night.
"Unless you have something more fun planned," he added somewhat predictably, and grinned at her.
Helen only sighed.
Optimistically, she had prepared rooms for all of her staff in the new Sanctuary, and Nikola was almost as enthusiastic about the fact that she had included him as he was about the rest of it – even the new wine cellar. Helen walked him to his door and left him there. He gave her a rather mournful look before she turned away, which Helen would have ignored except for the fact that he actually tried to hide this one instead of sliding smoothly into a cheesy line. It almost made Helen reconsider staying with him. Perhaps… It wasn't as if they couldn't both use the company.
Helen shook her head. She didn't want to risk anything after the awkwardness earlier; more complications were the last thing either of them needed right now. No, it was better to leave things as they were for a while.
So she went to her own room instead, settled into bed, and had been comfortably reading for over an hour before she heard a knock on the door.
"Bloody hell," she muttered. It had to be Nikola. There was hardly anyone else down here, and besides it would be just like him. "Who is it?" she called anyway, sliding one of the guns she kept handy out from under the pillow just in case it wasn't.
An incomprehensible yet distinctly Nikola-esque mumble sounded from behind the door, and Helen sighed, putting her gun down and getting up to let him in.
When she opened the door, she couldn't stop her eyebrows from shooting up. If he'd looked dreadful before, it was nothing compared to what he looked like now.
"What have you been doing?" she asked, stepping aside so he could come in. He wobbled a little and she caught his arm to steady him.
"Sleeping," he said with a hollow smile.
"Drinking, more like." Helen frowned. He must have snuck down to the makeshift lab to brew it up.
"Well, the sleeping came before the drinking, but you know it's all a little muddled at this point." Nikola's hands fluttered in mid-air, confusedly attempting to illustrate the chain of events. All he was getting across was the "muddled" part. "You look amazing, by the way. Is this your bedroom?"
Helen sighed. "Nikola, sit down before you fall down." He would only be like this for a short while – his physiology didn't allow him to get drunk for long, no matter what he'd cooked up.
He didn't move, so Helen took his shoulders, marched him over to her bed, and pushed him down herself. She sat next to him, putting a hand on his shoulder gently.
"Now," she said. "Tell me what's going on." Nikola was usually a bit more giggly when intoxicated. Now, all he did was sit on the edge of her bed and stare at the floor, his fingers drumming impossibly fast against his thigh.
"You know, you really should have gotten angrier at me in Cairo," he said after a few minutes of dead silence. From the looks of things, the effects of whatever alcoholic mixture he'd come up with this time were already lifting.
Helen was used to Nikola's non sequiturs, and it didn't take her long to figure out where he was headed with this. Nikola was now getting a taste of being the one who couldn't sleep for thinking about what had almost happened to her – and what she had let him believe.
Her fingers curled tighter around his upper arm, trying to offer him some comfort even if she was still unwilling to cross that invisible wall that had sprung up between them today.
"And I'm not just saying that because you're hot when you're angry," Nikola continued. Even that was delivered weakly, with none of his usual spark, and that perhaps more than anything troubled Helen.
She shook her head, her eyebrows furrowing. "Nikola –"
He finally looked at her, and Helen was taken aback by the sheer pain on his face.
"Why didn't you tell me?" he choked. "I thought I'd – I spent this whole time thinking you were – just gone, Helen, and I – I couldn't, I couldn't – " Nikola looked away again, bowing his head to rest on his shaking hands. "Helen…"
Complications and walls be damned. Helen couldn't watch him in pain like that any longer.
"Come here, Nikola," she said softly, and folded her arms around him. He leaned against her, burying his face in her shoulder and clumsily wrapping an arm around her waist.
Helen rubbed his back with one hand, giving him a gentle kiss on the forehead. Her other hand she slid through his hair, stroking it lightly. Nikola loved it when she did that.
"I couldn't tell anyone, not even you," she said. "If SCIU caught even a hint I was still alive, if they found out about the Sanctuary here…"
She had never wanted to hurt him, or anyone else, by temporarily letting them think she was dead; she had only wanted to protect what she had begun here. But however justified she knew she was, her heart ached at the way he was clinging to her desperately, broken sobs muffled in her shoulder.
"I know, I know," he said miserably. "Your grand, century-long spanning plan would be all for naught. I understand, Helen. I don't blame you. Ok, I might blame you a tiny bit. But not enough to ruin our friendship."
Helen had to smile just a little at that. He was still doing it, even now. All of a sudden, she rather wanted to make him smile, to see that brilliant grin with his deep dimples, his eyes sparkling in the way she loved more than she could ever tell him.
"But – "
It didn't make it any easier. Helen knew that from experience.
For a moment, he said nothing. Helen could still feel his hand trembling on her side.
"I left you," he whispered. "I left you to die."
Helen's breath caught. Oh, Nikola.
"Because I ordered you to," she said firmly. "Henry's shield was only good for one. If you had stayed, you would have died, Nikola. Do you think I wanted to be responsible for that? With just me staying behind, there was a chance for everyone to make it out alive. And we did." Bigfoot was still in critical condition, but Helen was still hoping.
"Oh, Helen, why do you always have to be so damned logical?" Nikola raised his head, though he still held her tightly around the waist. "Do you think that made it any easier to lock you in with half a dozen murderers, knowing you were about to blow yourself up?"
"You knew my plan, Nikola. I wasn't about to let them kill me."
"Yeah, I knew your plan. But it might have been kinda nice to know if it worked. You'll have to forgive me if I wasn't exactly expecting the disappearing act." Bitterness was creeping into Nikola's voice.
"I just told you," Helen began with a frustrated edge, but Nikola cut her off.
"You should tell Henry," he said.
A jolt of pure surprise ran through Helen. She'd known they were becoming closer, but she wasn't used to Nikola openly displaying kindness towards Henry either. It silenced her long enough for Nikola to get his next words out.
"He thinks you're dead and it's his fault, because he screwed something up on the shield."
Helen closed her eyes. "Dear God."
"And I gotta say, since I took a look at it while I was there, I wasn't too far off from thinking the same thing about myself."
"I can't let them know, Nikola. Not yet," Helen said. "It's too dangerous."
"There are more ways to tell him than whisking him off the surface, Helen," Nikola said, pulling back and fixing her with a persuasive look. "Just…let him know there's a chance."
"He'll want to come down here. They all will," Helen said. "You did."
"Sure, but none of them are madly in love with you." He gave her a hesitant smile.
"Dear lord," she said. "I'll tell them when it's safe, Nikola. I can't jeopardize this." She waved a hand around her. "I've spent a century on this place, this work, I can't endanger it for personal reasons. I told you before, it's dangerous even for you to be down here. If I bring anyone else in…"
Nikola let out a faint hiss. "You know, while we're on the subject, tell me something Helen: if I hadn't found you myself, how long would you have waited? Would you have let me think I'd walked away and let you die, or better yet, caused your death with my sloppy work? Actually, never mind. I don't think I want to know." That pained expression came back. "After everything, Helen – I thought – " He stopped.
Helen stiffened. "You thought what, Nikola?" she asked sharply. "You thought you were too important to me for you to get left out of the loop? I wanted to tell you! I wanted to tell everyone. Do you think I enjoyed destroying my life, leaving everyone I care about, letting them think I was dead? You think this, any of this, is easy for me?"
"Helen –"
"It was my home, Nikola." Her voice broke. "Ashley grew up there."
Nikola looked stricken.
"Her old room is gone. I saved everything I could from it, but it's – it's gone. She knew every inch of that place. Everywhere I looked, I could remember her there, and it's all gone, because of me. That's the result of my grand plan." Helen took a shuddering breath, hot tears spilling down her cheeks. "And the shield – Nikola, the EM shield – "
The shield might have been reset, but the impossible hope that Ashley might return someday through it had never quite left the back of Helen's mind. But she had destroyed that too.
Her composure shattered. She collapsed, sobbing, against Nikola, whose arms opened to her without a second thought.
All his bitterness from before seemed to dissolve in the face of her grief. He murmured her name as he held her, stroking her hair. "It's not possible that she was still there," he said gently. "You exhausted that line of research years ago."
Helen nodded against him. She knew that already, and the knowledge did nothing to alleviate her pain, but he was trying his best to comfort her. For that, she was grateful.
A long moment passed by, the sound of Helen's crying the only thing breaking the silence.
Nikola wound his arms tighter around her, then hesitated. "Do you want me to leave?" He knew Helen didn't like anyone else to be present at times like these.
Helen shook her head, clutching a fistful of Nikola's waistcoat. "No," she managed, her voice hoarse. "Stay."
"Say no more." Nikola shifted his hold on Helen, easing them both down onto the bed into a more comfortable position, and kept stroking her hair tenderly.
"I'll be right here, Helen," he whispered. "Right here. For as long as you want me."
Whatever remnants of the uncomfortable tension had been left, they pretty much evaporated after that, leaving only their familiar (and much more pleasant) tension behind. Neither of them really wanted to revisit it to examine why, though Nikola's personal suspicion was that after a bout of weeping in each other's arms, whatever was causing the strained atmosphere seemed rather unimportant. He would have preferred to go without the weeping, but at least things were back to normal with Helen again.
Well. As normal as they ever got, anyway.
"Keep working on that while I'm gone," Helen told him, fiddling with her guns in an incredibly attractive way. She had come down to the generator room to let him know she was leaving on a mission and wouldn't be back for at least a few hours, though more likely a day or so. "When you get done, the abnormal levels need to be checked over, and the perimeter sensors. There's about a million things to do: take your pick."
"I thought you were laying low," Nikola said, picking his way over to her through the clutter of parts and tools on the floor. He made sure to let his eyes flicker appreciatively towards her gun. "What about the prying eyes of SCIU, huh?"
"This one is too serious to leave to someone else, I'm afraid," Helen said. "Giant salamanders in the sewers."
Nikola raised his eyebrows. "You realize that sounds like an awful B-movie? I can see the poster now: 'NIGHT OF THE GIANT SALAMANDER INVASION.' No, wait. That's a terrible title for a movie. Never mind."
"Missing your chance to cling to my leg as I fend off the salamanders? I'm disappointed in you, Nikola." She chuckled. Nikola snuck his gaze downwards to the legs in question, complete with that stunning thigh holster.
"Keep an eye on things here until I get back, will you?" Judging from the slight emphasis, she knew exactly what he had just been thinking.
"Of course," he said. "Unless you want me to come with you. Leg-clinging aside, you know I'm useful." He brought up his hands, twisting them together and pulling them apart, drawing a flickering electric arc between his fingers and holding it up to show Helen before he let it fizzle out.
"Look what I've been practicing."
Helen's face softened and she smiled. She often did when she saw him using the powers that she had given back to him, like it was her own personal little reminder that he would be around to annoy her for the rest of her life. At least, that's what Nikola liked to think.
"I'll be fine," she said. "You'll be more useful here."
Nikola stifled a sigh. He didn't mind staying at all, really. There was so much of this place he hadn't even investigated yet, and Helen was right: he was more use here. But he'd just found her again, and his fear for her hadn't left him completely yet.
He swallowed it and gave her a smile. "Well, have fun."
Tentatively, he touched her arm and leaned in, kissing her on the cheek. He wanted to ask her to come home safe, but he settled for saying, "With my usual shocking productivity, I'll have the generator done by the time you get home."
"Shocking, Nikola?" Helen asked, giving him a look. "Really?"
He raised his hands. "I know, I'm a menace."
"You are. I'll have to do something about you when I get back," she told him with a mischievous smile.
"Ooh. Now that sounds fun."
Doing something about Nikola involved cracking open a bottle from the new wine cellar when Helen got back late the next night and talking into the early hours of the morning. Nikola would have happily stayed with her until dawn, but she sent him off to bed instead, peering at him in a concerned way like she knew he hadn't been sleeping. She probably did.
The night before last, Nikola had told himself it was for Helen. It had taken her a long time to fall asleep, and if she needed him he had wanted to be conscious. But even after she had finally exhausted herself and fallen into uneasy, fitful sleep, Nikola stayed awake. He just hadn't been able to shake the fear that she'd be gone when he woke up, and since his vampirism allowed him to go without sleep for much longer than he could as a human, he had decided to simply avoid it altogether.
The decision had been even easier to make last night, when Helen was away, and Nikola hadn't thought twice before staying up all night, fixing everything she'd mentioned and more. He'd gone exploring a little too, getting an idea of the place's layout. It was a little eerie, wandering around the new Sanctuary by himself as artificial stars twinkled overhead, but it beat the alternative.
–he caught a glimpse of dark hair and froze, and as he dug her out a shower of rubble fell on him, blurring his vision as he curled over her to shield her from it. When he could see again, an anguished cry tore from his throat. Henry's shield had protected her from the explosion but not the building itself – she was cold in his arms, her face twisted in pain, a trickle of dried blood running past vacant, staring eyes –
He jerked awake with a cry, gasping for breath, his heart thudding so loudly it felt for one wild moment as if it were about to burst out of his chest. Sweat coated him, and he had gone from being unpleasantly warm to freezing in the space of a few seconds.
Nikola sank back against the soft pillows Helen had furnished him with, more exhausted than he had been a few hours ago. He reached a hand out, turning his bedside lamp on with a brush of his finger.
He stared at the light for a minute before sighing and getting out of bed. Clearly, this was a pointless endeavor tonight; he might as well get something done.
Helen found him in the temporary lab they were using until the actual lab was finished, tinkering mindlessly with something that probably shouldn't have had the word "mindlessly" attached to it.
"Nikola?" she said, coming in. "I thought you were supposed to be in bed."
"I'd love to comment on that sentence, but what are you doing up and about?" Nikola asked, deflecting her unspoken question.
Helen tilted her head, narrowing her eyes at him. "Couldn't sleep," she said. The brevity of her reply left about an ocean's worth of questions, though Nikola could guess at the answers for most of them.
"Hmm," he said, swiveling his chair over to the computer and tapping away at the keys. "That would seem to be the common affliction tonight."
"It would," Helen said. She watched him quietly for a moment.
The new Sanctuary had an entirely different set of ambient noises than what Nikola knew from the old one. The waterfall was rushing outside, though muffled by thick walls. He wasn't even sure if it was audible to someone without his abilities. There was the hum of the advanced Praxian technology that helped keep the Sanctuary running, too.
But there was no ancient building to creak and rattle in the wind. The weather was on a loop of clear skies, so there was hardly any wind to speak of anyway, or rain or thunder. And there was no traffic, either – to Nikola's ears it was glaringly obvious that they were completely isolated down here.
It was…off. It disturbed him, though he couldn't have said why until he concentrated. If it was throwing him for a curve, he couldn't imagine what it was doing to Helen, who'd spent a good chunk of her long life in the old place. He doubted that was the only reason she couldn't sleep, though.
"Genius might work best for an audience, but if you're going to stand there all night you could at least put an episode of Operation Paranormal on," Nikola said after a while.
Helen laughed, the sound seeming to fill the quiet corners of the Sanctuary at night. "I thought you hated that show," she said.
"Exactly. If it's that or me, you're bound to watch me instead."
"You don't fool me," Helen said. "I know you watched the first four seasons in the space of a week and a half last year."
"Whatever," Nikola said, because he had.
Helen crossed the room, looking down at what he was working on. "I have a better idea," she said.
"Oh yeah, what is it?"
Nikola was expecting her to tell him to go to bed, just as she had before. But instead, she touched his wrist gently.
"How would you like some help?" she asked.
Nikola remembered Helen saying she couldn't sleep the next day, and on the off chance that he could do something to help, he snagged a bottle of wine from the cellar and brought it up to her that night. He had just raised his hand to knock when the door opened.
Nikola raised an eyebrow. "Miss me?"
Helen rolled her eyes and gestured for him to come inside.
They talked for a while, and by the next morning they were curled tightly around each other, just like Nikola's first night in Hollow Earth. Neither of them could change anything that had happened, but there was some solace in not facing it all alone.
The next night was the same, except that Helen showed up at Nikola's door instead of the other way around. They didn't waste time on words that night; they only melted against each other, accepting comfort in each other's simple presence. It was the same for several nights afterwards, until it had somehow turned into a habit that neither of them particularly wanted to give up.
Despite Nikola sleepily telling Helen one night that if they were going to have mind-blowing reunion sex now was the time, nothing actually happened between them. Helen had laughed though, which had kind of been the point in the first place. Her fingers were stroking softly through his hair, and that combined with the rich sound had made Nikola smile as he nestled closer to her and drifted off.
Outside of the occasional peck on the cheek or forehead, they hadn't even kissed since the old Sanctuary. Even though the rest of their temporary awkwardness had faded away, that one thing still hung over them, and Nikola thought he knew why.
They had spent so long locked in their endless tension, getting together and falling apart and then doing it all over again, they had never really figured out how to do anything else. Helen had only ever hinted at the way she actually felt about him, and though Nikola had always been pretty obvious about his own feelings for her, he would freely admit that he was also pretty awful at confessing them. (Ok, so he was bad at one thing. Rome in particular had been a disaster – almost letting zombie vampires kill your love was decidedly not the most romantic follow-up to the love declaration itself.)
He and Helen together were indefinable; they always had been. And Helen had changed that when she kissed him – when she had told him, in her own way, that she loved him back. (Not out loud, which Nikola didn't expect to hear any time soon. Someday, perhaps, which was a thrilling enough thought by itself.)
Now, they both knew that if they took another step and cemented that revelation, they would be past the comfort of their relationship as it had always been. It seemed a ridiculous thing to avoid, but they were very, very old and set in their ways. Constants were rare in their lives, and they had been each other's for too long to remember.
Right now, they needed constants.
Helen looked up from her desk when she heard the knock on her office door. Nikola was standing on the threshold, one arm behind his back and an ingratiating smile plastered on his face. Helen waved him in.
"You're in a surprisingly polite mood today," she said. Nikola almost never knocked.
"I have something for you – for both of us, actually," he said, pulling a bottle out from behind him. "I figured a little pomp and ceremony wouldn't go amiss."
Helen peered closer at the bottle as he walked towards her. "Is that from my cellar?" she asked, then, sarcastically: "What a generous gift."
"Well you know me, Helen, I like to really go all out when I lavish you with attention." He set two glasses down on her desk with a clink as they knocked together. "Join me for a drink?"
Helen gave him a nod, leaning back and watching him pour. "What's the occasion?"
He gave her a smile. "No occasion. I'm just trying to butter you up."
Helen snorted. "Alright Nikola, what did you break?"
"Nothing!" he said defensively. "I have a question for you. But…" He hesitated. "If you don't want to answer it, I'm still drinking the wine."
Helen's lips twitched as she leaned forward, accepting the glass he offered her. "What's your question?"
Nikola sat on her desk and swirled the wine in his glass. "Your other hundred years," he said after a pause. "Now that I know about all your super-secret workings down here, I was wondering…"
"You want to know how often I visited you?" Helen guessed.
He shrugged, looking away. "Sure."
His attempts at being nonchalant had never fooled Helen. She took a sip of wine, considering. She didn't need to hide anything from him now, or from anyone else. But she had grown used to it over the years.
Then again, maybe that was a habit she should start trying to break.
"New York, 1901," she said finally. "You were right about that, and about 1902. What you don't know is that it was me for almost all of that year. I hadn't visited you very much then, originally, and I thought it was an ideal time to get your assistance."
"My assistance? Oh please, Helen, you just couldn't stay away from me." Nikola sounded purely delighted.
Helen rolled her eyes, even if she privately conceded that she had sought him out more often back then than she had really needed his help. "Do you want to hear the rest, or would you prefer to keep interrupting me?"
Nikola grinned, edging closer and fixing her with an attentive expression. "Say on, my lady."
She shook her head, smiling. "I could tell you were beginning to suspect something, so I left for a while…"
Over the next couple of weeks, Nikola could tell that Helen had finally begun to settle in down here. Getting back into the swing of work was probably helping to keep her mind busy, and she was clearly becoming more comfortable with the new Sanctuary as a home instead of a project. However it was happening, Nikola was glad to see Helen looking happier.
Helen eventually gave him the full tour he had been begging for, of the entire new Sanctuary and a fair amount of the surrounding part of Hollow Earth. It took up the majority of the day and night, and the rest of it was spent chatting in her office over tea about her plans for the place.
Other evenings, they worked with each other in the lab, or sat together reading, their attention focused on their separate books and their arms rubbing when either of them turned a page. Or Nikola convinced Helen to watch television and took the opportunity to snuggle into her shoulder, making fun of the inane plot of whatever she turned on until she broke down laughing against him. Sometimes, all they did was talk.
One night, a few weeks after Nikola had come to Hollow Earth, they had just finished lambasting Nikola's favorite episode of Operation Paranormal: the season 3 Halloween special, in which Steven and Michael investigated the vengeful spirit of a woman supposedly killed by vampires in the 1950s. It was Nikola's favorite because it got vampires so horrifyingly wrong that even his sensitivity about the subject in popular culture was overcome by sheer hilarity.
The episode was the last on the disc, and they were both too tired to get up and change it: the lack of sleep lately was telling on them. Helen was settled comfortably on Nikola, a blanket thrown over both of them and a bottle of wine on the nearby table.
In the silence following the credits, the last of their laughter faded away, and she began to tell Nikola more about her ideas for the new Sanctuary. There were going to be other Sanctuaries scattered throughout Hollow Earth, with connecting tunnels and their own routes to the surface. It would work much like the old Sanctuary Network, Helen said, only underneath the surface, but it would take time and effort to get it all set up. A lot of the elements were in place, but even this one Sanctuary and the skeletal basis for the network had taken Helen a hundred years to get in working order, and those were still getting the finishing touches put on them.
Sometimes, she slipped "we" or "us" in there, or asked his opinion on some major issue like communication between the Sanctuaries, and Nikola practically glowed every time. She hadn't asked him yet, but he had very little doubt that Helen knew he would stay and help her, if she wanted him to. When she talked like that, she sounded as if she were as glad to have him by her side as he was to be there.
Lying there warm and cozy with Helen, listening to her describe her dream with the passion that he loved so much, Nikola realized this was one of the few times since the destruction of the old Sanctuary that he had actually felt content. From the expression on what he could see of Helen's face, she was thinking something similar.
There was a break in conversation and she turned her head, nuzzling tiredly into his neck. "Nikola." Her voice was muffled in his collar.
"Mmm?" Nikola inhaled deeply, enjoying the feeling of Helen pressed into his chest. He adjusted his arm around her.
Helen paused. "I'll be leaving the day after tomorrow to check over the building sites for the other Sanctuaries. It may take a while."
"Want me along?" Nikola asked, though he suspected he already knew the answer.
"I need you to stay and monitor things here," Helen said, with enough regret to soothe Nikola's sinking spirits.
"Sorry, the only part of that I heard was 'I need you.'" Nikola grinned into Helen's hair as she chuckled. "Fine, fine, I'll stay." Even if Nikola still didn't relish the idea of being away from Helen for any length of time, she wasn't the only one who had begun to feel more comfortable in this place.
"And I won't even blow anything up while you're gone, just for you," he added.
"How gallant of you," she said dryly.
Helen propped herself up to look at him, smiling. There was so much affection in her eyes that Nikola couldn't help but smile back as he reached up to cup her face, stroking his thumb gently across her cheek, his index finger touching the crinkles around her eyes.
"Nikola," she murmured. His hand fell away in surprise when she leaned down and pressed her lips to his. Her arm slid around him as she kissed him unhurriedly, her other hand burying itself in his hair. She pulled away slowly, resting her forehead on his and breathing against his lips for a moment before leaning back and opening her eyes. The expression on her face told him she was waiting for his answer to her unspoken question.
Fortunately, Nikola had it ready to go.
"I have a lengthy and moving speech prepared about breaking new ground regardless of the difficulties, if you'd care to hear it," Nikola said seriously. "I think it's a good one. Much better than any of your dull lectures."
"Is that so," Helen said with clear amusement, though he could see a flood of relief behind her eyes.
"Yeah, it really tugs at your heartstrings. I even make this great connection to our work at Oxford."
"That's a dreadful analogy, my dear," Helen said, and Nikola felt a shivering thrill run through him at hearing her call him by one of his own endearments for her.
"You know," Nikola said, licking his lips as his eyes flicked down to hers, "now that you mention it, it is…kinda awful…"
Kissing you again is a much better idea, he was going to say before Helen did just that, still tenderly but with a bit more force than before. He craned up into her, his eyes closing as his free arm came up to wind around her back, his fingers running through her hair as she deepened the kiss.
One of her hands slid down his chest, and anything else Nikola was going to say was promptly forgotten apart from inwardly cursing that this waistcoat didn't have metal buttons.
Tangled in each other and breathless, they collapsed against Helen's pillows much later that night (the couch was too small and her room had been the closest, though Nikola hadn't been paying much attention at the time). Helen immediately curled into his side, pressing soft kisses to his skin and tracing her fingers across his chest. Her caresses slowed and finally stopped as she fell asleep, her arm still thrown loosely over him.
Her breathing was steady, the even thrum of her heart clearly audible to him, her body even warmer than it usually was. Nikola sighed sleepily and snuggled a little closer, basking in comfortable heat and the scent of Helen. He was beginning to drift, too. He was pretty sure neither of them had actually gotten a full night's sleep since the old Sanctuary, but who knew? Maybe tonight would be the night.
Though at this point, a decent rest would only be icing on the cake. Nikola would accept a thousand sleepless nights for the one he'd just had.
That was when it occurred to him: he'd been expecting something more…dramatic. He had figured that if they ever did overcome whatever barriers were left between them, they would do it in some tense, gripping, life-or-death situation. After all, that was kinda their modus operandi.
But right now, Nikola found that he wouldn't have changed a thing – not when Helen had smiled at him and kissed him like she never planned on stopping, not when she had gotten just as distracted by him as he had by her on the dizzy, heated trip back here, and…
Helen chose that moment to tighten her arm around him in her sleep, mumbling his name contentedly. Nikola gazed at her, his throat tightening, before leaning over to plant an impulsive kiss against her hair.
Right now, it was perfect, just the way it was.
Helen decided the next morning that Nikola could come with her on her trip through the new Sanctuary network if he wanted to. Nikola, occupied at that moment with trailing sleepy relaxed kisses up Helen's throat, paused for a second before pushing himself up to make sure he'd heard her right.
"What about the, you know," and he waved an all-encompassing hand, rather wanting to get back to Helen's warmth as soon as possible. "I thought you needed me," he added, smirking.
"It's your decision, Nikola," Helen said, smiling before she flipped them both smoothly over and bent to kiss him, her arms winding around his neck. "I'm merely giving you the option."
Some time later, when he got his breath back, Nikola took the alternative she had offered, murmuring against her neck that he would follow her to the ends of the earth, or, less dramatically, wherever her Hollow Earth tour led.
He was close enough to feel her laughter vibrating through her throat before she took his face in her hands, tilting it up and kissing him again and again until their wide smiles made it nearly impossible to continue.
The Hollow Earth tour took nearly two weeks, despite their travel time being greatly reduced by the presence of the Praxian rail system, and Nikola finally got to see some of the things he had only heard descriptions of before. The great city itself was still in ruins, the restoration in its early stages; he slipped an arm around Helen and drew her against him when they stood looking out over it, remembering what she had lost there.
But some of the other wonders had survived, and Helen showed them all to him, seeming to take almost as much delight in watching his reactions as she did in revisiting them herself. Even without any of that, Helen's Sanctuary network plans would have kept them both plenty busy. When they finally got home, they were exhausted, but with lighter hearts and a sense of determination.
By that time, SCIU's oversight had lifted enough that the rest of Helen's staff could make their way little by little down to Hollow Earth. Despite his honest belief that Helen should tell them, or at least tell the ones he liked, Nikola felt just a twinge of regret at no longer having Helen all to himself. It had almost been like old times, just the two of them together against a task that seemed too big for an army. And there was the added bonus that he could now kiss her any time he liked, and he got to wake up with her every morning. But having the kids around made Helen happy, so Nikola would put up with them. Besides, he was looking forward to freaking them out a little with the aforementioned bonuses.
Henry came down first, of course. Erika was still on the surface, someplace out of SCIU's reach, and Henry was staying away from her for a while to keep her that way. Nikola happened to be around when Helen greeted him – totally coincidental – and he couldn't help a small, private smile when he saw Henry throw his arms around Helen and sob his relief into her shoulder.
He was punished for his moment of sentimentality when he was treated to the same, nearly getting bowled over when Henry flung himself at him.
Nikola met Helen's eyes in a pleading way over Henry's head to find her watching him with a rather smug expression. She raised her eyebrows, and Nikola lifted his hand to give Henry a tentative pat on the back.
"Careful there wolf boy, you don't want to know how much this suit cost," he said.
Henry squeezed him tighter. "I'm so glad you guys are ok," he said happily.
Another traitorous smile flickered on Nikola's face before he quashed it – not before Helen saw it and gave him, not the smirk that Nikola had been expecting, but a look of deep, almost painful joy.
Kate was next, her connection to Hollow Earth making it nearly impossible to keep the secret from her any longer. Helen and Henry both got hugs from her (Nikola didn't). She couldn't stay, but she promised to swing by any time they needed her.
"And even when you don't. After all, who's gonna torture Hank if I'm not around?" she added, grinning at Henry.
Kate had spilled the beans to Bigfoot, who insisted on coming down to stay even if his recovery wasn't complete yet. According to him, he was tired of her snorting over the novels he had her read to him, though this was said with such a fond tone that even Nikola wasn't fooled. He had entirely too much fun faking his tragic death in the hospital so SCIU wouldn't ask too many questions about his disappearance.
Nikola hung back for a few minutes so Helen could talk to him privately, but rejoined them when Helen beckoned him over and they started down the hall for a celebratory drink. Bigfoot took one look at their clasped hands, raised his eyebrows, looked at Helen smiling, and grunted at them both with a short nod.
Declan and the other Sanctuary leaders Helen trusted trickled in after that, called down by her to receive their new assignments now that SCIU's watch had let up enough. They all oohed and ahhed appropriately at the new facilities, and Nikola felt rather smug watching them. It was about damn time they lavished Helen with the praise she deserved.
Nikola didn't bother heading to Will's greeting, though he had a few ideas about how it should go.
"Make sure and tell Junior you've just gotten out of bed with me," he told Helen, leaning back against the headboard and watching her get dressed with a lazy grin. "Don't skimp on the details."
Helen rolled her eyes. "Oh, very mature." She smirked at him. "Actually, I wasn't planning on mentioning you at all. Don't want to frighten him off, you know."
"Sure about that?" Nikola muttered.
"Nikola," Helen said disapprovingly. "If you're to stay down here, I expect you to at least make an effort to get along with my staff."
On that first night, when Helen's usual reserve had broken, she had let slip to Nikola some of what Will had said to her in Bolivia. Lightly put, it had not endeared him to Nikola.
Helen seemed willing to forgive him, and Nikola would do pretty much anything for her. Still, he wasn't exactly keen on playing nice with Will at the moment.
But it was Helen, and she was giving him that look that she had perfected over the centuries, and Nikola was totally helpless against her.
"Fine," he said. "If he can find it in his unimpressive power to be civil, then so can I. But don't expect much," he warned before his cool demeanor was shattered by Helen coming over and dropping a kiss on his forehead.
"Thank you," she said, kissing him again.
Nikola melted under her touch, an idiotic smile plastering itself to his face. He caught her hand as she leaned back, getting ready to go.
"I might even manage to be downright friendly," he said, grinning. "With a little more convincing."
Helen laughed. "Liar," she said fondly, ruffling his hair. "Have fun in the lab."
"Don't trip over his self-importance," Nikola said as she left. "A fall from that height could kill you."
"Civility, remember?" Helen called back, still laughing as the door swung shut behind her.
"So I finally get to find out what you've been doing up here?" Nikola asked as he followed Helen down the top floor of the new Sanctuary. "You know, this whole 'stay out of the third floor corridor on the right hand side' thing is getting a little old."
"Not to worry, Nikola," Helen said cheerfully. "I suspect you'll like this."
"No painful death?" he asked.
Helen smiled, taking his hand. "No painful death."
She opened the door, leading Nikola through and stepping aside.
Nikola's mouth dropped open. "Wow," he said, and could say no more.
It was a laboratory, but it was nothing like her old one. This one was completely decked out with every Praxian goody imaginable, with room to breathe left over. Three of the walls were made of what looked like glass, though Nikola knew it was actually a material much stronger than glass, since the rest of the windows here were made of the same stuff. It gave him a flawless view of Hollow Earth, waterfall included. Everything practically sparkled, brand new and ready for his use, and a bottle of wine sat on the center table.
It was – Nikola couldn't find the words for what it was, so he settled for whispering "wow" again.
"I take it you approve," Helen said with another smile.
"Helen," Nikola said breathlessly. "This is…incredible. Much better than that god-forsaken museum piece you tried to shove off on me before."
"Museum piece?" Helen raised an eyebrow. "You realize both of us are older than that laboratory was."
"Yes, but we've aged so fabulously."
She chuckled. "Well, it's yours."
Nikola turned to her, his eyes widening. "Really? All mine, not some 'work with Henry and I'll let you use it' deal?"
"All yours," Helen confirmed. "Though if you'd like to work with Henry, I would be happy to arrange that."
"Did you give him a lab?"
"I'm afraid so," Helen said, her lips twitching.
"But you gave me all the really cool stuff, right?"
"Certainly not," she said.
"Crush my hopes and dreams, why don't you," Nikola said. "So what's the occasion this time? As much as I'd like to believe it's simply because you adore me, I know you better than that."
Helen tilted her head, looking at him thoughtfully. "I would think it was obvious, Nikola. I'm offering you a job."
"A job?" he repeated.
"Yes. What with your finally abandoning your attempts at world domination –"
"What kind of example would I be setting for the kids?"
"I no longer felt that I would be endangering all of humanity or anyone else by aiding you in your work," Helen continued, ignoring him.
"And I heroically betrayed SCIU, too," he reminded her, conveniently leaving out the part where he was fired.
Helen gave him a sarcastic look that told him she hadn't forgotten that part. "As long as you swear to me you'll be reasonable with your experiments, you can use this place as much as you want."
"So what else would this job involve?" Nikola asked suspiciously. "You're not going to stick me with paperwork, are you?"
She laughed. "Just what you've always done. Stay here, help out. Fix my things when I need you to. I'll even let you at the wine cellar and come on missions sometimes."
"Well, I can do that. You are in desperate need of someone competent around here." Nikola grinned. "You know you didn't even need to bribe me with the lab to get me to stay," he added. "Not that I'm turning it down."
"I thought as much," Helen said, looking amused.
A few seconds passed in silence. Nikola went over to check the label on the wine, whistling softly.
"As a matter of fact, Nikola," Helen began from behind him, sounding nearly as stiff and hesitant as he'd ever heard her.
He turned around, his forehead creasing. Helen was avoiding his eyes.
She cleared her throat. "I brought you up here for two reasons."
Nikola's heart gave an odd stutter and dropped into his stomach before jumping into his throat –at least that's what it felt like. Helen finally met his eyes, and the expression on her face made a choking, confusing, blissful wave of overwhelming joy rush over him.
"Because only you can help me carry on my work here at the Sanctuary," Helen said gently. "And – "
"Wait." It escaped Nikola before he could stop it, and he felt like throwing himself against the wall and banging his head against it. What the hell was he thinking? He knew exactly what she was about to say, and he'd stopped her?
"Helen, wait. Don't get me wrong, I love that you're doing a callback," he said, his words coming out in a muddled rush. "Really, I love it, it's so…me. But…" He swallowed. "Look, that really isn't my best moment."
Helen's expression softened. "Nikola –"
"No, let me finish," Nikola said hastily. He had to get this out. "I almost let you die, Helen. I was – well, if it weren't me, I would say I was an idiot. I mean, I almost turned into my late and unlamented ancestors. I would have, if it weren't for you. And let's be honest, they were a bunch of assholes. And not the charming, adorable kind like me." He took a deep breath.
"You saved me," he said softly. "Even when I let you down, you just kept saving me. So many times, in so many ways. And I… I can never thank you enough for that." Nikola faltered, wanting to tell her he would do his best to never let her down again, but unable to find the words he wanted.
"Including the time I shot you so you didn't take over the world?" Helen asked, her eyebrows raised in a suspiciously amused way. But her eyes were filled with a tender light.
Maybe Nikola should have waited to deliver his speech.
"I kinda had it coming," he heard himself say. "And besides, you looked really hot."
Helen stared at him for a moment, then she started laughing.
"Nikola," Helen said after a minute, shaking her head, her voice still quivering slightly, "you really are impossible."
Nikola gave her a hesitant smile. "Well, that's why you love me, right?"
Helen smiled at him. The look she gave him then wasn't overflowing with intense, desperate passion, though it was there, underneath the surface. But mostly it reminded Nikola of the way he felt every time he made her laugh, a familiar, comfortable warmth covering him with its glow.
"Yes," Helen said quietly. "I suppose it is."
Nikola had known it was coming – really, he had known for a long time – but he still felt dizzy at hearing it out loud, his entire body suddenly very warm. The next thing he knew Helen was in his arms and her lips were on his and Nikola could finally, finally, tell her himself.
"I love you," he whispered, his lips brushing hers. "I love you." He kissed her jaw, dipping his head lower. "I love you," he breathed against her neck.
Helen whispered it one more time in his ear and Nikola went very still, closing his eyes against her for a moment. "Helen," he sighed before raising his face to hers again.
When they separated for air, Nikola planting kisses all over her face and neck between breaths, Helen had a mischievous glint in her eyes. "Nikola, there's a magnetic lock on the door," she told him.
"You are brilliant."
He could feel her smiling against him. "Don't I know it?"
Nikola leaned back to grin at her. "Ah, you managed a callback after all. You know, I'm pretty sure we were in bed that time."
"Well," Helen said, her eyes sparkling. "We'll get there eventually."
"Have I mentioned that I love the way your mind works?"
"Possibly."
"I love you, actually."
"Are you ever going to lock the door?" Helen asked, laughing.
"I don't know," Nikola said. His grin deepened. "I think I should leave it open, to be symbolic of our future, you know?"
Very deliberately, Helen lifted a hand to his chest and grasped his tie, tugging him towards her.
Nikola swallowed. "Ok, locking it now." He waved a hand, feeling the lock click into place as Helen pressed into him again.
No matter how many times he kissed Helen with his vampiric senses intact, he never quite got used to it. His breath drew in sharply. Helen's heartbeat pulsed through her skin against his fingers, her own hands twisting through his hair, leaving burning trails of her body heat. The faint but sharp smell of gunpowder caught him for a moment before he went whirling through the next cascade of sensations – he was drowning in Helen, in the warmth of her wrapped in his arms, in the pounding heart beats he could no longer tell apart from his, in the sheer taste of her, her lips – her tongue –
Nikola shivered in Helen's arms, moaning into her mouth. Her lips curved up in a smile, and she pulled him even closer, crushing him against her.
Nikola's hands untangled from Helen's hair, running across her shoulders and down her back –
And that was when the intercom buzzed abruptly.
Helen and Nikola surfaced with what Nikola was sure were matching expressions, and Helen stalked across the room to slam her hand against the button.
"What is it?" she asked stiffly.
Behind her, Nikola swayed on his feet, feeling rather drunk.
Helen was talking to someone off to the side and Nikola heard something about paperwork through his fuzzy head, then Helen said, "Excellent," and turned off the intercom.
"Now," she said, turning back to Nikola. "Where were we?"
Nikola gave her a brilliant grin. "We were about to make passionate love on that lab table I notice you've left conveniently clear."
Helen laughed, long and hard, and Nikola was overcome by that warm, dizzy feeling from earlier. She loved him.
"Well then," she said, walking back across the room to touch his cheek, sliding her hand down to his chest in a tantalizingly slow way. Her eyes twinkled. "Shall we begin?"
A/N: The end, for now! There will definitely be more chapters coming at some point, but there are a lot of other fics I want to work on, so I'm leaving this here for the moment.
My personal headcanon is that Past!Nikola did figure out what was going on with Helen, somehow, and BIGFOOT'S NOT DEAD. I stuck to show canon for the former and ignored it for the latter, haha. (Hey, they left it kinda up in the air, right?)
Thanks for reading! :D