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sfa_history. Much more shaky this time, my apologies.
Title: New Worlds
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: Sanctuary
Characters/Pairings: Helen, Nikola, Nigel. Some Helen/Nikola
Summary: It's 1929, and Nikola brings Helen to a speakeasy
Wordcount: 4015
Notes: Written for two prompts: "Helen Magnus/Nikola Tesla, speakeasies and jazz" and "Nigel Griffin, Prohibition-era gangster" Um. Sort of.
Disclaimer: Not mine
sfa_history. Much more shaky this time, my apologies.Title: New Worlds
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: Sanctuary
Characters/Pairings: Helen, Nikola, Nigel. Some Helen/Nikola
Summary: It's 1929, and Nikola brings Helen to a speakeasy
Wordcount: 4015
Notes: Written for two prompts: "Helen Magnus/Nikola Tesla, speakeasies and jazz" and "Nigel Griffin, Prohibition-era gangster" Um. Sort of.
Disclaimer: Not mine
New Worlds
She'd only meant to visit. To spend some time with him, let him rant about throwing pearls before swine, maybe go out for a quiet meal together, let him flirt shamelessly with her across the table. Just two old friends, in the wilds of New York City.
Nikola wouldn't hear of it. Literally. He didn't stand still long enough.
Helen watched him move around the room, watched his hands fly and dab at the makeup on his cheeks, watched him stride between the wardrobe and the bathroom, never pausing for a moment, walking past her without the first care for his various states of dress and undress in the process. Helen watched him peel the age from his face with deft, near desperate movements, watched him throw off old-fashioned clothing and pull on the dress of a much younger man. She watched him transform himself from an ageing, battered scientist to something younger, fiercer, and, in some indefinable way, infinitely more desperate.
She watched him, and felt a vague stirring of alarm in her chest. A low, steady murmur of concern. But Nikola wouldn't hear of that, either. He wouldn't stand still for that.
"Let's go out," he said. Whirling, eager. Turning in place in the center of his rooms, his tie still hanging loose, the buttons of his double-breasted waistcoat more than half undone. The grey wiped from his hair, the vaguely cadaverous look lifted from his cheeks by some magic of Nigel's creation. He looked ... like himself again, she couldn't help but think. More like her old friend than she had seen in years.
And also not in the least bit well.
"Are you sure, Nikola?" she asked, as tactfully as she knew how, searching for an excuse. She had the insistent feeling that he should not be allowed out in this state, not under any circumstances. "I'm not really dressed for it ..."
He grinned at her, that old, familiar appraisal as he swept her form, that appreciation just shy of a leer. His eyes lingered for a long minute on her ankles, bared to the world by new fashions she absolutely refused to do anything but delight in, and the look on his face when he met her eyes again announced to anyone in range that he, at least, was perfectly happy with how she was dressed. Very happy indeed.
"You look magical as ever, my dear Helen," he smiled, executing a neat little bow for her, all smug, confident charm. If she wasn't so worried just then, Helen would have hit him. Or laughed with him. She wasn't quite sure which. She never was, with Nikola. "Come. A night of music and drink, good company and dancing ... I'll make it worth your while, I promise."
She raised her eyebrow at that. "Will you?" she asked, tartly, but she was softening. She knew he could see it. Nikola was vibrating too fast to be contained, caught in some strange desperation, and he must act or burst, she saw that. Understood it, too, in her way. There had been so many times she had felt the same, had felt constraint after constraint pile in on her until she must simply do something, or go quite mad.
And Nikola, of all of them, teetered most precariously on the brink of madness.
"I will," he answered, grandly, sweeping out his arm for her to hold, looking vaguely sheepish as she pushed it aside for a moment to finish doing up his buttons for him. "I know a wonderful little place. Wholly illegal, of course. These days, anywhere you can get a decent drink is. You'll like it." A sly, sneaky grin. "Might even meet an old friend, while we're at it ..."
"Oh?" she asked him, looking up from the neat lines of his waistcoat to catch his eyes only a few inches away, watching her with undisguised delight, and felt an odd urge to flush. "My old friend, or yours?"
"Yes," he said, with that maddening grin of his, and she hit him. Lightly. Not that it would do much good either way. His grin only widened, becoming almost cheshire-catlike as he reached to scoop up his jacket, and held his arm back out to escort her.
She blinked, looking around the room, and realised that for all the seeming madness of the past half hour, not one sign of his aged disguise remained. Not one sign that there was not one Nikola Tesla living in this room, but essentially two. She blinked, and turned to study him that little more carefully, taking his arm with considered care. He smiled at her, sly as a schoolboy, and tired as the old man he really should be.
"Do this often, do you?" she asked, quietly, and an expression somewhere between a smile and a grimace crossed his features.
"Whenever I can't bear ..." He gestured agitatedly at his face. "Whenever I can't bear this anymore. Whenever I just want to be ... to be me again." He shrugged, stiff and taut, that vibrating desperation back in his movements, then tried a grin. "And, of course, whenever I run out of wine. I've gotten quite good at sneaking out, you know. You wouldn't believe how many people are watching me these days."
"Oh, I'd believe it," Helen muttered drily, but let it go. This wasn't the time to get into a debate with him on the ethics of his work, or his almost stunning lack of realisation of what people would actually do with the things he gave them. Not when he was so clearly at the end of his tether. "So. Are you going to sneak me out through the laundry chute?"
He laughed, walking her to the door and opening it with a flourish. "Only if you particularly want to spend some minutes with me in a small, dark space." He grinned. "I, of course, would be more than happy to oblige ..."
"Thank you," she replied, sweetly, and stepped past him to pull him into the corridor behind her, grinning again herself, laughing just a little as he fell into step behind her. "Maybe next time."
He muttered something at her back, almost too quiet to hear before he caught up and caught her arm once more. Helen couldn't be sure, but it'd sounded a lot like: "I live in hope".
---
The 'little place' he talked about looked little more than a hole in the pavement, on first look. Of course, it was meant to. Helen wasn't spending a lot of time on this side of the Atlantic lately, but the attempted stranglehold of Prohibition, and the incredible underground industry that had sprung up around alcohol overnight in its wake, were issues she had bumped into more than once. The booming demand for abnormals with talents leaning towards illusion, glamours and the more potent natural narcotics, meant that the nascent Sanctuary network had been pulling exhausted abnormals out of backroom distilleries and high-end speakeasies alike for years now.
There were times when she really wished governments would think before making grand, sweeping moral decisions. Completely aside from the impact on her work, she could have told them that the likes of Prohibition would only drive people to illegal means to get what they desired. If the Five had taught her anything, it was that there was little people wouldn't do, if they were bold enough, and desired something enough.
All in all, perhaps Nikola, with his dove-grey suit and his now-youthful features, and the near-manic cheer of him as he manoeuvered them both down the steps and to a seat ... perhaps he fit right in here. Perhaps he fit right in with these nervous, outspoken young men, these daring, fluttering girls and young women, all laughing and joking and glancing surreptitiously at the stairs as if expecting a raid at any moment. With the hard-eyed men at the door, and the tired dancers painting bright faces over their weariness on the stage, and the dark musicians staring with rich, proud defiance out at the seething white throng. Perhaps Nikola, with his wine and his secrets and his masks and his sly, surreptitious grin, fit right in.
Perhaps, in her way, she did too. Perhaps they all would have, they Five. To the worlds beneath the world, behind it, the lure of the forbidden and the danger of secrets. Perhaps their world of blood and abnormals and clandestine sanctuary was not so far different from this, this play of light and music and desire.
"...len? Helen?"
She looked back, startled out of her distant contemplation of the scene, to find him watching her. To find him staring at her, flushed with excitement and the heat of the throng, watching her in curiosity and soft concern. Nikola Tesla, exactly as he had looked forty years before, the only one besides her as pure now as then, and for a moment she felt such a rush of ... not regret. Not longing. But a kind of loss. A kind of severing, somewhere inside her.
The world was changing, and she was running to meet it at every turn, as young now as then, as young as he, and still ... She had never thought, when he slid the needle into her arm all those years ago, that one day they would sit here, in a world so changed, and look exactly as they had that thrilling evening in 1886. She had never thought that she would sit here, as if inside a photograph, seeing the past layered over the present in his face, and suddenly wish, hot and bitter, that the rush of music around them would fade to the muted sounds of an Oxford evening, that the throng of strangers would vanish into the familiar forms of four men, her four men ...
"Are you alright?" Nikola asked her, voice pitched above the music, his hand reaching out to gently curl around hers, warm and solid, exactly as it had been that night. His eyes, watching her, concerned and elated all at once, exactly as then.
But more tired, now. Older, more bitter, for all the laughing in them. Manic, pulling his grin up as the girls on the stage pulled on their makeup, a shield against the glaring of the lights and the harshness of the stage. Whenever I just want to be me again. Whenever I can't bear it.
Perhaps madness was infectious. Perhaps his mood, the strange, vibrating desperation of it, had crept inside her as she touched his arm. Perhaps Nikola Tesla, same as always, could touch her hand and slip his madness inside her. Make her see the world as he could, for only a moment. Perhaps he could do that.
Perhaps, looking around at the desperate, surreptitious, illegal swirl of life around them ... perhaps that was no bad thing.
"I'm fine," she said, leaning close so he could hear, feeling the hot touch of his breath against her cheek, watching his eyes widen faintly and his concern falter a little to his distraction. She laughed, soft and faint, and impulsively touched her forehead to his, pressed their madnesses together for just a little moment, before she pulled back to stare into his bewildered eyes and smile. "I'm perfectly fine, Nikola."
He raised a sceptical eyebrow, the smooth arc of it saying more than a thousand words, but he didn't comment. Allowed her her little madnesses, as she allowed him his.
"According to Francois, the Chemist is in," he said instead, perhaps purely to see her blink in confusion in her turn, grinning just a little at her expression. "I've sent him off with an invitation for the man to join us. With any luck, he'll be along in just a few minutes." A flashing grin, somehow familiar. "Hopefully with my wine. He keeps all the good stuff to himself, you know. Practically have to blackmail the man to get anything worthwhile around here ..."
"Or bribe me. Bribing works too, you know. Considerably better, I might add."
A voice drawled from behind his shoulder, tired and familiar and amused, with all the thick, rounded sounds of old London, and Helen looked up past the heavy shoulders and well-cut suit into dark, familiar eyes, more webbed at the corners now than she remembered, and more grey in the dark hair than when she'd last seen him. Though despite that, despite it not being near so apparent as the rest of them, he'd still aged almost shockingly well.
"Hello, Helen," Nigel Griffin smiled quietly, reaching out to take her hand and bring it to his lips, as old-world and dignified as age made him look. Then he smiled, that flash of old, school-boy mischief that made him a match for the best of them, and thumped Nikola solidly in the shoulder, almost knocking him forward into the candle on the table. "If this bloody nuisance had thought to tell me you'd be here, I'd have gotten us a better table."
"You mean my charming presence alone doesn't warrant your best?" Nikola shot back, grinning as he righted himself. "Nigel, I thought you loved me!"
"Not in this lifetime," their old friend grumbled cheerfully, sitting down between them and plonking a bottle on the table in front of Nikola. "But I did bring you a present, so I don't foresee too many problems in our relationship."
"You know me far too well," Nikola laughed, and promptly started pouring. "You could spit on me, and provided you kept me in wine while you did it, I'd still love you. Prohibition is killing me."
"You and half the country," Nigel commented drily. "Don't worry. I won't tell anyone you're this easily bought. I'd have half the Secret Service down on top of me for putting the nation at risk, and I'm in enough trouble with them as it stands." He shook his head, turning away from Nikola to smile back at Helen. "Sorry about that," he said, lip curled in a rueful smile. "It's good to see you again, Helen. It's been a while."
"Years," she agreed, reaching out to touch his hand again, freer now to casually touch the both of them than she would have been even a decade before, and determined suddenly to take advantage of it. "You've been gone a long time, Nigel."
He smiled a little sadly at her. "Yeah, well. Sorry about that, but you're a bit too close to the government now for my liking. To any government. Makes reunions a little troublesome."
She shook her head, frowning at him. "You can't think they're still after you for those bank jobs. It's been twenty years, Nigel!"
"Yes," Nikola cut in, leaning back in his chair to watch them softly. Smiling at Nigel in something like sympathy. "Twenty very busy years on all fronts." A glassy grin. "Not all of us are so clean-cut as you, Helen."
She blinked, looking between them for a moment, then turned a quizzical look on Nigel. On her old friend, older now, and tired, and the smile he sent her in return showed that so clearly. So very, very clearly.
"Bankjobs weren't the first of it. I made a few mistakes over the years," he said softly. "Did a few things I maybe shouldn't have done. There was a lot of work for an Invisible Man during the War, you know. Figured I'd do my duty a bit. Backfired afterwards, didn't it?" He smiled lopsidedly. "A few of the big boys decided they'd like to keep me on the payroll. I decided I'd done enough sneaking around in the blood on their behalf. They didn't like me very much after that."
"You should hear what the Secret Service here say about him," Nikola commiserated. "Of course, you should hear what they say about me, too. Makes doing anything fun a nuisance, unless you manage to change your appearance to some forty years younger once in a while and sneak out the back door."
"Or disappear into the criminal underworld for a decade or so," Nigel finished, smiling at him. "Earn some decent money as a chemist for the bootleggers while screwing the government and their bloody Eighteenth Amendment over. Whereupon, of course, some bloody menace from the past shows up to pester you into getting him some decent wine and a free pass at the door ..."
Nikola grinned at him, utterly unfazed, but Helen was still caught up in the story, in the ramifications. And, perhaps, in the little curl of hurt in her chest.
"You didn't think to contact me?" she asked, quietly. "I have, as you say, a good number of government contacts. You could have sent word through Nikola. James and I would have been happy to help."
She would have helped. Either of them. Both of them. Even if they hadn't been her friends, the closest of her friends, they were also abnormals. That was what the Sanctuary was for. To prevent governments from trying to use them against their will, to provide a shield from the world. If the British government, or the American one, or any government at all, had been trying to force Nigel to use his abilities in their service, Helen had the means and the will to step in on his behalf, and she would have done so. Surely he knew that? Surely they both knew that?
They looked at each other. Nigel, older and more tired, with the years written on his face as it was on none of theirs, hesitant and almost nervous in her presence. Nikola, soft and wary, with the desperation climbing to claw at the underside of the makeup he was forced to wear day after day. The two of them, sitting surrounded by the snatching of illegal pleasures, outlawed relief, the music and alcohol and laughter swirling around them and making them a part of it. Part of this world, so like her own, and so different.
And suddenly, the thought made her angry. Made the anger surge up inside her, that this time and this place should steal them from her, that the years should take them away from her, who'd once been closer to her than anyone. That the years that never marked her face should take them, even Nikola, as unmarked as she, far enough away that they didn't even think to ask for her help. Suddenly, the madness in her heart since Nikola slipped them inside this world of nervous laughter and fearful pleasure became anger, stunning, seizing, and she glared at them. At the world.
"I can help you," she said, low and furious. "Both of you. Any time, any place. No matter who or what. If you need help, come to me. I'll find a way, no matter what governments may be hunting you. That's what the Sanctuary is for. That's what I'm for. That's what I've spent my life building, and the very least it can do is protect my friends from abuse! Do you understand that?"
They stared at her, with that same wary, bewildered expression they'd had that first time, all those years ago, when she'd shown them her world, their world, and invited them to step into it. A vague worry for her madness, and awe for her power, and tentative hope for their part in it. Tentative, despite their own madness, their own passion.
"Might be a bit late, for me," Nigel said, very quietly. "Don't think an old crook like me would go down well with the high-ups of this new network of yours. Besides." A small grin, hand gesturing out at the swirl of life around them, at his world. "I've gotten rather good at this game. Always was a bit of a crook, wasn't I?" And then, for the flashing in her eyes, a hand raised placatingly. "But I'll keep it in mind, Helen. If I ever need it. I'll keep that in mind."
"Hmm," Nikola mused, watching her. Nikola, with that manic desperation lurking somewhere within him, below the consideration in his eyes. "Yes. I might ... I might yet take you up on that, Helen. If things get ... When I've reached the limits of this charade." A wry little smile, oddly black. "It might yet be necessary."
"And when it is, I'll be there," she said evenly, meaning it with every scrap of self she possessed. No matter what happened, no matter who came against her, she would be there. She would endure, she would help, and she would triumph. One way, or another.
And looking at them, there was not one doubt in her mind that they knew it, too.
Then Nikola, with that instinct he seemed to have, to shatter the mood when it grew too serious for him, with that perverse instinct to let no matter, be it most desperately serious, impede him for more than a moment, looked out past them towards the stage, towards the musicians and the dance floor, and turned back to her with an anticipatory grin she knew all too well.
"You know, if we'd wanted to brood, we could have stayed at the hotel," he noted, grinning manically once more. "Helen, I do believe I promised you a night of drinking and dance. And here we are, with good wine," a smile at Nigel, "half-decent company, and the music ..."
He smiled, waving his hand towards the band, and despite herself, Helen let herself listen. Let herself be distracted, caught up in the brash, confident strains of jazz, the heat and smell of bodies in motion, and the rich, dazzling grin he sent her way. Feeling the anger, the hurt, subside within her, and the old, familiar rush of their company, of his company, surge up inside her in its place. He smirked, seeing it, knowing it, superbly confident in his ability to distract. That was alright. Helen let him. She already had her victory.
"I'll mind the table, shall I?" Nigel asked wryly, watching them, looking between them with a look in his eye Helen didn't quite know how to interpret. For a moment, as it settled on Nikola, it looked almost sympathetic. "Pretend I'm the old bugger in the corner, while you two young things have some fun?"
Nikola laughed at him, reaching over as he stood to nudge the man's shoulder, to hold it and squeeze for a moment before he reached out to take her hand, and ask her to stand with him. To dance with him. "It's a role you play so well," he said, to Nigel, but his eyes were fixed on her, and there was desperation in them, and glee, and daring, and some softness she didn't know how to name, and above all, mischief. The mischief that was never quite gone from him, never quite lost. Nikola Tesla, young once more. Her Nikola.
"You poor, sorry sod," Nigel said gently, watching them, and Helen blinked at him in confusion. "You poor bastard. Go on. I'll make sure no-one steals your bloody wine while you're gone."
"Thank you," Helen said drily, on Nikola's behalf and as her own little joke, shared with Nigel, who knew as well as she what a Nikola without his comforts could become. He smiled up at her, for a moment the friend she had known all those years ago, for a moment once more the friend she would do anything to protect. And then, slipping away, someone new. Someone older, and more tired, with lines around his eyes that would never circle hers, and a sadness in his eyes as he watched them, as if he could see something they didn't.
"Well," said Nigel Griffin, the Invisible Man, crook and thief and friend, "If I'm the only one who bloody looks his age, I suppose I should be the only one who bloody acts it, too."
And he grinned at them, and Helen let herself slip away inside the new music, inside the wine and the jazz, let herself slip away inside their madness and their world, her hand tight in Nikola's, past and present and future all in one, and she let herself smile in her turn. She let herself grin.
Sometimes, the years looked good. Sometimes, the future looked bright, even if only because she made it so.
And that was alright too.
A/N: Continued, as part of my Nikola/Nigel series, in 1959: Old Times
She'd only meant to visit. To spend some time with him, let him rant about throwing pearls before swine, maybe go out for a quiet meal together, let him flirt shamelessly with her across the table. Just two old friends, in the wilds of New York City.
Nikola wouldn't hear of it. Literally. He didn't stand still long enough.
Helen watched him move around the room, watched his hands fly and dab at the makeup on his cheeks, watched him stride between the wardrobe and the bathroom, never pausing for a moment, walking past her without the first care for his various states of dress and undress in the process. Helen watched him peel the age from his face with deft, near desperate movements, watched him throw off old-fashioned clothing and pull on the dress of a much younger man. She watched him transform himself from an ageing, battered scientist to something younger, fiercer, and, in some indefinable way, infinitely more desperate.
She watched him, and felt a vague stirring of alarm in her chest. A low, steady murmur of concern. But Nikola wouldn't hear of that, either. He wouldn't stand still for that.
"Let's go out," he said. Whirling, eager. Turning in place in the center of his rooms, his tie still hanging loose, the buttons of his double-breasted waistcoat more than half undone. The grey wiped from his hair, the vaguely cadaverous look lifted from his cheeks by some magic of Nigel's creation. He looked ... like himself again, she couldn't help but think. More like her old friend than she had seen in years.
And also not in the least bit well.
"Are you sure, Nikola?" she asked, as tactfully as she knew how, searching for an excuse. She had the insistent feeling that he should not be allowed out in this state, not under any circumstances. "I'm not really dressed for it ..."
He grinned at her, that old, familiar appraisal as he swept her form, that appreciation just shy of a leer. His eyes lingered for a long minute on her ankles, bared to the world by new fashions she absolutely refused to do anything but delight in, and the look on his face when he met her eyes again announced to anyone in range that he, at least, was perfectly happy with how she was dressed. Very happy indeed.
"You look magical as ever, my dear Helen," he smiled, executing a neat little bow for her, all smug, confident charm. If she wasn't so worried just then, Helen would have hit him. Or laughed with him. She wasn't quite sure which. She never was, with Nikola. "Come. A night of music and drink, good company and dancing ... I'll make it worth your while, I promise."
She raised her eyebrow at that. "Will you?" she asked, tartly, but she was softening. She knew he could see it. Nikola was vibrating too fast to be contained, caught in some strange desperation, and he must act or burst, she saw that. Understood it, too, in her way. There had been so many times she had felt the same, had felt constraint after constraint pile in on her until she must simply do something, or go quite mad.
And Nikola, of all of them, teetered most precariously on the brink of madness.
"I will," he answered, grandly, sweeping out his arm for her to hold, looking vaguely sheepish as she pushed it aside for a moment to finish doing up his buttons for him. "I know a wonderful little place. Wholly illegal, of course. These days, anywhere you can get a decent drink is. You'll like it." A sly, sneaky grin. "Might even meet an old friend, while we're at it ..."
"Oh?" she asked him, looking up from the neat lines of his waistcoat to catch his eyes only a few inches away, watching her with undisguised delight, and felt an odd urge to flush. "My old friend, or yours?"
"Yes," he said, with that maddening grin of his, and she hit him. Lightly. Not that it would do much good either way. His grin only widened, becoming almost cheshire-catlike as he reached to scoop up his jacket, and held his arm back out to escort her.
She blinked, looking around the room, and realised that for all the seeming madness of the past half hour, not one sign of his aged disguise remained. Not one sign that there was not one Nikola Tesla living in this room, but essentially two. She blinked, and turned to study him that little more carefully, taking his arm with considered care. He smiled at her, sly as a schoolboy, and tired as the old man he really should be.
"Do this often, do you?" she asked, quietly, and an expression somewhere between a smile and a grimace crossed his features.
"Whenever I can't bear ..." He gestured agitatedly at his face. "Whenever I can't bear this anymore. Whenever I just want to be ... to be me again." He shrugged, stiff and taut, that vibrating desperation back in his movements, then tried a grin. "And, of course, whenever I run out of wine. I've gotten quite good at sneaking out, you know. You wouldn't believe how many people are watching me these days."
"Oh, I'd believe it," Helen muttered drily, but let it go. This wasn't the time to get into a debate with him on the ethics of his work, or his almost stunning lack of realisation of what people would actually do with the things he gave them. Not when he was so clearly at the end of his tether. "So. Are you going to sneak me out through the laundry chute?"
He laughed, walking her to the door and opening it with a flourish. "Only if you particularly want to spend some minutes with me in a small, dark space." He grinned. "I, of course, would be more than happy to oblige ..."
"Thank you," she replied, sweetly, and stepped past him to pull him into the corridor behind her, grinning again herself, laughing just a little as he fell into step behind her. "Maybe next time."
He muttered something at her back, almost too quiet to hear before he caught up and caught her arm once more. Helen couldn't be sure, but it'd sounded a lot like: "I live in hope".
---
The 'little place' he talked about looked little more than a hole in the pavement, on first look. Of course, it was meant to. Helen wasn't spending a lot of time on this side of the Atlantic lately, but the attempted stranglehold of Prohibition, and the incredible underground industry that had sprung up around alcohol overnight in its wake, were issues she had bumped into more than once. The booming demand for abnormals with talents leaning towards illusion, glamours and the more potent natural narcotics, meant that the nascent Sanctuary network had been pulling exhausted abnormals out of backroom distilleries and high-end speakeasies alike for years now.
There were times when she really wished governments would think before making grand, sweeping moral decisions. Completely aside from the impact on her work, she could have told them that the likes of Prohibition would only drive people to illegal means to get what they desired. If the Five had taught her anything, it was that there was little people wouldn't do, if they were bold enough, and desired something enough.
All in all, perhaps Nikola, with his dove-grey suit and his now-youthful features, and the near-manic cheer of him as he manoeuvered them both down the steps and to a seat ... perhaps he fit right in here. Perhaps he fit right in with these nervous, outspoken young men, these daring, fluttering girls and young women, all laughing and joking and glancing surreptitiously at the stairs as if expecting a raid at any moment. With the hard-eyed men at the door, and the tired dancers painting bright faces over their weariness on the stage, and the dark musicians staring with rich, proud defiance out at the seething white throng. Perhaps Nikola, with his wine and his secrets and his masks and his sly, surreptitious grin, fit right in.
Perhaps, in her way, she did too. Perhaps they all would have, they Five. To the worlds beneath the world, behind it, the lure of the forbidden and the danger of secrets. Perhaps their world of blood and abnormals and clandestine sanctuary was not so far different from this, this play of light and music and desire.
"...len? Helen?"
She looked back, startled out of her distant contemplation of the scene, to find him watching her. To find him staring at her, flushed with excitement and the heat of the throng, watching her in curiosity and soft concern. Nikola Tesla, exactly as he had looked forty years before, the only one besides her as pure now as then, and for a moment she felt such a rush of ... not regret. Not longing. But a kind of loss. A kind of severing, somewhere inside her.
The world was changing, and she was running to meet it at every turn, as young now as then, as young as he, and still ... She had never thought, when he slid the needle into her arm all those years ago, that one day they would sit here, in a world so changed, and look exactly as they had that thrilling evening in 1886. She had never thought that she would sit here, as if inside a photograph, seeing the past layered over the present in his face, and suddenly wish, hot and bitter, that the rush of music around them would fade to the muted sounds of an Oxford evening, that the throng of strangers would vanish into the familiar forms of four men, her four men ...
"Are you alright?" Nikola asked her, voice pitched above the music, his hand reaching out to gently curl around hers, warm and solid, exactly as it had been that night. His eyes, watching her, concerned and elated all at once, exactly as then.
But more tired, now. Older, more bitter, for all the laughing in them. Manic, pulling his grin up as the girls on the stage pulled on their makeup, a shield against the glaring of the lights and the harshness of the stage. Whenever I just want to be me again. Whenever I can't bear it.
Perhaps madness was infectious. Perhaps his mood, the strange, vibrating desperation of it, had crept inside her as she touched his arm. Perhaps Nikola Tesla, same as always, could touch her hand and slip his madness inside her. Make her see the world as he could, for only a moment. Perhaps he could do that.
Perhaps, looking around at the desperate, surreptitious, illegal swirl of life around them ... perhaps that was no bad thing.
"I'm fine," she said, leaning close so he could hear, feeling the hot touch of his breath against her cheek, watching his eyes widen faintly and his concern falter a little to his distraction. She laughed, soft and faint, and impulsively touched her forehead to his, pressed their madnesses together for just a little moment, before she pulled back to stare into his bewildered eyes and smile. "I'm perfectly fine, Nikola."
He raised a sceptical eyebrow, the smooth arc of it saying more than a thousand words, but he didn't comment. Allowed her her little madnesses, as she allowed him his.
"According to Francois, the Chemist is in," he said instead, perhaps purely to see her blink in confusion in her turn, grinning just a little at her expression. "I've sent him off with an invitation for the man to join us. With any luck, he'll be along in just a few minutes." A flashing grin, somehow familiar. "Hopefully with my wine. He keeps all the good stuff to himself, you know. Practically have to blackmail the man to get anything worthwhile around here ..."
"Or bribe me. Bribing works too, you know. Considerably better, I might add."
A voice drawled from behind his shoulder, tired and familiar and amused, with all the thick, rounded sounds of old London, and Helen looked up past the heavy shoulders and well-cut suit into dark, familiar eyes, more webbed at the corners now than she remembered, and more grey in the dark hair than when she'd last seen him. Though despite that, despite it not being near so apparent as the rest of them, he'd still aged almost shockingly well.
"Hello, Helen," Nigel Griffin smiled quietly, reaching out to take her hand and bring it to his lips, as old-world and dignified as age made him look. Then he smiled, that flash of old, school-boy mischief that made him a match for the best of them, and thumped Nikola solidly in the shoulder, almost knocking him forward into the candle on the table. "If this bloody nuisance had thought to tell me you'd be here, I'd have gotten us a better table."
"You mean my charming presence alone doesn't warrant your best?" Nikola shot back, grinning as he righted himself. "Nigel, I thought you loved me!"
"Not in this lifetime," their old friend grumbled cheerfully, sitting down between them and plonking a bottle on the table in front of Nikola. "But I did bring you a present, so I don't foresee too many problems in our relationship."
"You know me far too well," Nikola laughed, and promptly started pouring. "You could spit on me, and provided you kept me in wine while you did it, I'd still love you. Prohibition is killing me."
"You and half the country," Nigel commented drily. "Don't worry. I won't tell anyone you're this easily bought. I'd have half the Secret Service down on top of me for putting the nation at risk, and I'm in enough trouble with them as it stands." He shook his head, turning away from Nikola to smile back at Helen. "Sorry about that," he said, lip curled in a rueful smile. "It's good to see you again, Helen. It's been a while."
"Years," she agreed, reaching out to touch his hand again, freer now to casually touch the both of them than she would have been even a decade before, and determined suddenly to take advantage of it. "You've been gone a long time, Nigel."
He smiled a little sadly at her. "Yeah, well. Sorry about that, but you're a bit too close to the government now for my liking. To any government. Makes reunions a little troublesome."
She shook her head, frowning at him. "You can't think they're still after you for those bank jobs. It's been twenty years, Nigel!"
"Yes," Nikola cut in, leaning back in his chair to watch them softly. Smiling at Nigel in something like sympathy. "Twenty very busy years on all fronts." A glassy grin. "Not all of us are so clean-cut as you, Helen."
She blinked, looking between them for a moment, then turned a quizzical look on Nigel. On her old friend, older now, and tired, and the smile he sent her in return showed that so clearly. So very, very clearly.
"Bankjobs weren't the first of it. I made a few mistakes over the years," he said softly. "Did a few things I maybe shouldn't have done. There was a lot of work for an Invisible Man during the War, you know. Figured I'd do my duty a bit. Backfired afterwards, didn't it?" He smiled lopsidedly. "A few of the big boys decided they'd like to keep me on the payroll. I decided I'd done enough sneaking around in the blood on their behalf. They didn't like me very much after that."
"You should hear what the Secret Service here say about him," Nikola commiserated. "Of course, you should hear what they say about me, too. Makes doing anything fun a nuisance, unless you manage to change your appearance to some forty years younger once in a while and sneak out the back door."
"Or disappear into the criminal underworld for a decade or so," Nigel finished, smiling at him. "Earn some decent money as a chemist for the bootleggers while screwing the government and their bloody Eighteenth Amendment over. Whereupon, of course, some bloody menace from the past shows up to pester you into getting him some decent wine and a free pass at the door ..."
Nikola grinned at him, utterly unfazed, but Helen was still caught up in the story, in the ramifications. And, perhaps, in the little curl of hurt in her chest.
"You didn't think to contact me?" she asked, quietly. "I have, as you say, a good number of government contacts. You could have sent word through Nikola. James and I would have been happy to help."
She would have helped. Either of them. Both of them. Even if they hadn't been her friends, the closest of her friends, they were also abnormals. That was what the Sanctuary was for. To prevent governments from trying to use them against their will, to provide a shield from the world. If the British government, or the American one, or any government at all, had been trying to force Nigel to use his abilities in their service, Helen had the means and the will to step in on his behalf, and she would have done so. Surely he knew that? Surely they both knew that?
They looked at each other. Nigel, older and more tired, with the years written on his face as it was on none of theirs, hesitant and almost nervous in her presence. Nikola, soft and wary, with the desperation climbing to claw at the underside of the makeup he was forced to wear day after day. The two of them, sitting surrounded by the snatching of illegal pleasures, outlawed relief, the music and alcohol and laughter swirling around them and making them a part of it. Part of this world, so like her own, and so different.
And suddenly, the thought made her angry. Made the anger surge up inside her, that this time and this place should steal them from her, that the years should take them away from her, who'd once been closer to her than anyone. That the years that never marked her face should take them, even Nikola, as unmarked as she, far enough away that they didn't even think to ask for her help. Suddenly, the madness in her heart since Nikola slipped them inside this world of nervous laughter and fearful pleasure became anger, stunning, seizing, and she glared at them. At the world.
"I can help you," she said, low and furious. "Both of you. Any time, any place. No matter who or what. If you need help, come to me. I'll find a way, no matter what governments may be hunting you. That's what the Sanctuary is for. That's what I'm for. That's what I've spent my life building, and the very least it can do is protect my friends from abuse! Do you understand that?"
They stared at her, with that same wary, bewildered expression they'd had that first time, all those years ago, when she'd shown them her world, their world, and invited them to step into it. A vague worry for her madness, and awe for her power, and tentative hope for their part in it. Tentative, despite their own madness, their own passion.
"Might be a bit late, for me," Nigel said, very quietly. "Don't think an old crook like me would go down well with the high-ups of this new network of yours. Besides." A small grin, hand gesturing out at the swirl of life around them, at his world. "I've gotten rather good at this game. Always was a bit of a crook, wasn't I?" And then, for the flashing in her eyes, a hand raised placatingly. "But I'll keep it in mind, Helen. If I ever need it. I'll keep that in mind."
"Hmm," Nikola mused, watching her. Nikola, with that manic desperation lurking somewhere within him, below the consideration in his eyes. "Yes. I might ... I might yet take you up on that, Helen. If things get ... When I've reached the limits of this charade." A wry little smile, oddly black. "It might yet be necessary."
"And when it is, I'll be there," she said evenly, meaning it with every scrap of self she possessed. No matter what happened, no matter who came against her, she would be there. She would endure, she would help, and she would triumph. One way, or another.
And looking at them, there was not one doubt in her mind that they knew it, too.
Then Nikola, with that instinct he seemed to have, to shatter the mood when it grew too serious for him, with that perverse instinct to let no matter, be it most desperately serious, impede him for more than a moment, looked out past them towards the stage, towards the musicians and the dance floor, and turned back to her with an anticipatory grin she knew all too well.
"You know, if we'd wanted to brood, we could have stayed at the hotel," he noted, grinning manically once more. "Helen, I do believe I promised you a night of drinking and dance. And here we are, with good wine," a smile at Nigel, "half-decent company, and the music ..."
He smiled, waving his hand towards the band, and despite herself, Helen let herself listen. Let herself be distracted, caught up in the brash, confident strains of jazz, the heat and smell of bodies in motion, and the rich, dazzling grin he sent her way. Feeling the anger, the hurt, subside within her, and the old, familiar rush of their company, of his company, surge up inside her in its place. He smirked, seeing it, knowing it, superbly confident in his ability to distract. That was alright. Helen let him. She already had her victory.
"I'll mind the table, shall I?" Nigel asked wryly, watching them, looking between them with a look in his eye Helen didn't quite know how to interpret. For a moment, as it settled on Nikola, it looked almost sympathetic. "Pretend I'm the old bugger in the corner, while you two young things have some fun?"
Nikola laughed at him, reaching over as he stood to nudge the man's shoulder, to hold it and squeeze for a moment before he reached out to take her hand, and ask her to stand with him. To dance with him. "It's a role you play so well," he said, to Nigel, but his eyes were fixed on her, and there was desperation in them, and glee, and daring, and some softness she didn't know how to name, and above all, mischief. The mischief that was never quite gone from him, never quite lost. Nikola Tesla, young once more. Her Nikola.
"You poor, sorry sod," Nigel said gently, watching them, and Helen blinked at him in confusion. "You poor bastard. Go on. I'll make sure no-one steals your bloody wine while you're gone."
"Thank you," Helen said drily, on Nikola's behalf and as her own little joke, shared with Nigel, who knew as well as she what a Nikola without his comforts could become. He smiled up at her, for a moment the friend she had known all those years ago, for a moment once more the friend she would do anything to protect. And then, slipping away, someone new. Someone older, and more tired, with lines around his eyes that would never circle hers, and a sadness in his eyes as he watched them, as if he could see something they didn't.
"Well," said Nigel Griffin, the Invisible Man, crook and thief and friend, "If I'm the only one who bloody looks his age, I suppose I should be the only one who bloody acts it, too."
And he grinned at them, and Helen let herself slip away inside the new music, inside the wine and the jazz, let herself slip away inside their madness and their world, her hand tight in Nikola's, past and present and future all in one, and she let herself smile in her turn. She let herself grin.
Sometimes, the years looked good. Sometimes, the future looked bright, even if only because she made it so.
And that was alright too.
A/N: Continued, as part of my Nikola/Nigel series, in 1959: Old Times
