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By which I mean mini Tesla, not mini fic, though I suppose that too ;) Prompted by the awesome discussions on Day 2 of the Sanctuary Countdown. Just a small snippet, no explanation, no nothing. Heh.
Title: Universal Language
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: Sanctuary
Characters/Pairings: Henry, de-aged Tesla, Team Sanctuary
Summary: On the coaxing of scared, de-aged vampiric geniuses. Why does this kind of thing always happen to Henry?
Wordcount: 1884
Warnings/Notes: My first time writing Henry, be warned -_-;
Disclaimer: Not mine
Title: Universal Language
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: Sanctuary
Characters/Pairings: Henry, de-aged Tesla, Team Sanctuary
Summary: On the coaxing of scared, de-aged vampiric geniuses. Why does this kind of thing always happen to Henry?
Wordcount: 1884
Warnings/Notes: My first time writing Henry, be warned -_-;
Disclaimer: Not mine
Universal Language
In all fairness, they really should have figured it out beforehand. Given that, mini-me or not, this was still Tesla, after all. Where else was he going to end up, really? But somehow, in all the shock and confusion of the man suddenly transforming into a six-year-old boy, they got a little sidetracked panicking about all the deadly things in the Sanctuary that could be eating and/or frying him about now, and forgot that he was still Nikola Tesla, and thus would gravitate to exactly one place above all others.
Well, possibly two, but they'd already tried Magnus' bedroom (without, of course, ever actually mentioning to her that they had), and besides which, Henry sort of thought that being six years old again put something of a damper on that kind of thinking. Sixteen, maybe, but six ...
Right now, everyone from Magnus to the Big Guy were out scouring the grounds for a scared, six-year-old boy with none of his adult memories, no idea where he was or who he was with, and only a limited grasp of the English language, a grasp that apparently didn't include the meaning of the words 'we're not going to hurt you', or even 'stay still'.
Which ... had sort of caught them by surprise, really, because, you know, Tesla. Mr 'I Snark As A Professional Sport' and all. Sorta hard to remember that the guy who'd spent a hundred-plus years honing his command of English to weapons-grade levels hadn't actually been born or grown up somewhere where English was the first, or even second, language. And Magnus was about the only one of them who had any grasp of Serbian or Hungarian. Well, Magnus and Kate, but Henry had the sneaking suspicion that the words Kate knew were not the sort you yelled after scared kids. Not if you wanted them to stay put, anyway.
So they'd lost him, because a scared Nikola Tesla was also apparently a really fast Nikola Tesla, and also one not in least afraid to bite if he had to, and had spent the past hour in increasingly frantic search, until Will ... had the bright idea for Henry to check for lifesigns, captain. Which had been followed by a round of sheepish looks and Henry heading for the lab. Which, had they actually thought about it, probably should have been the first place they looked.
If they had, Henry mightn't have been greeted by a pale-faced kid spinning in panic and firing one of the stunners at him.
He dove to one side with a yelp, though he probably needn't have bothered, as the blast went wide by a mile. Fast the kid may be, but aiming was a bit more trouble, especially when swinging around a weapon about four sizes too big for his suddenly tiny hands. Damn, but Tesla had been scrawny when he was young.
And also, it seemed, not at all violent, because the instant the stunner went off, the kid jerked it away from Henry with a squeak, and almost dropped it in shock and fear. Which ... would have been bad, probably, so Henry was sort of glad he hadn't, even if it did leave him with an armed and very scared kid who didn't understand a word Henry was saying. And who looked at him, as Henry slowly and cautiously stood up, with an expression of such fear and shame, such desperate apology, please don't hurt me, that he almost felt sick, holding out his hands placatingly, and hunching over so he looked as small as he possibly could.
"Hey, little guy. Look, I know you can't understand me right now, but I'm really not going to hurt you, I swear. I mean, Magnus would kill me, for a start. So why don't we just be cool, be calm ... put down the weapon ..."
And that ... that got him a look of such scathing contempt, mustered from somewhere under the fear, such a haughty, defiant tilt to his chin and a look as if to say 'what kind of idiot do you take me for?', that Henry had to grin. Found his mouth widening entirely of its own accord, as he looked down at the little guy, because oh yeah. Vlad was definitely in there somewhere. No doubt about it.
"Hey," he said, still talking slow and soothingly, because even if it did get him looked at like he was the village idiot, it was obviously helping the guy relax, too. "How about you give me the stunner, kiddo? Before, you know, you shoot somebody by accident ..." He held out a hand, twitching his fingers invitingly.
Tesla ... Nikola? ... stared at him with deep suspicion for a long moment, but it was obvious the kid no more wanted to be holding the weapon than Henry wanted to be facing it, and so, eventually, with a wary and almost desperate look, Nikola reached out and gingerly dropped it into Henry's hand. And then flinched back, quivering faintly, as Henry stood up and put it on the bench with a sigh of relief, obviously expecting this to be the part where Henry showed him why it was a bad idea to shoot at strange men. Which ... sort of made Henry want to scoop him up and say, no, kiddo, I'm not going to hurt you, but he figured that actually touching the kid might be a bad idea at this juncture. Where was Will when you needed him? Or Magnus, Magnus would do ...
Oh, hey, yeah. Radio. Right. People would probably want to know he'd found the kid, too.
"Hang on just one second, kid," he said, smiling gently in the hopes that it'd make Nikola less likely to do another runner, and quickly radioed the troops. Explaining to Magnus that he was in the lab, that he'd found Tesla, that everyone was okay ... And got a very terse response back, they were on their way, don't lose him again, give them fifteen minutes to extract themselves for various corners of the Sanctuary. Henry, looking down at the pale, defiant little boy glaring up at him, took a moment to quietly despair before saying yes ma'am, he'd do his best.
Whatever his best turned out to be. Were all kids this ... this intimidating? He didn't remember Ashley being that way. Well, yeah, she'd been scary, but that was because she could kick his ass any day of the week, and they'd both known it. Also, because she'd been a girl, and that automatically gave her an unfair advantage in every encounter. Nikola was ... all stiff and scared and breakable and defiant, and Henry was pretty sure the kid couldn't kick his ass, but he was also pretty sure Nikola'd give it the good old college try if he did something wrong, and more to the point would look at him like ... like this, all scared and proud and waiting to be hurt, and right now Henry was thinking that was an even more unfair advantage than being a girl would have been.
Thinking about it, trying to figure out a way to both a) keep the kid distracted and still here for when the others arrived, and b) stop the kid from looking at him like he was expecting Henry to up and eat him any second now, Henry looked around the lab. Frowning a little as he realised that the stunner ... had been the one on his table, ready for dismantling because there was something funny about the power transmission, and wow, okay, they were probably both very lucky the thing hadn't blown up on them, and this? This was why they didn't have kids at the Sanctuary anymore. At least not without warning.
But as he was looking at it, he noticed the kid looking at it too, and part of that was fear, because he'd just almost shot Henry, so maybe Henry was going to shoot him back, but part of it ...
And Henry grinned, because yeah, this was definitely Vlad, teeny-tiny or not, and really, the lab should probably have been the first place they looked, because Henry knew that look. He knew it very, very well, and suddenly he knew just how to keep the kid distracted, and get rid of the terrified look at the same time.
He reach out, picked up the stunner, ignoring the flinch, focusing on the narrow-eyed curiosity that came despite it, and flipped it over, holding it out to show Nikola the underside. Nikola squinted at him suspiciously, but didn't bolt, looking back down at the stunner, little fingers twitching gently. Henry grinned, and slid open the charging panel, exposing the power core and some of the inner workings, and watched the kid's face light up in greedy fascination, watched Nikola Tesla, genius and currently tiny kid, reach out with suddenly demanding hands to be shown how this thing worked right now.
Henry smiled, shaking his head, and popped out the power cell. Carefully, but quickly. No need to be handing the kid explosives, after all. He pulled out the power cell, and handed the stunner, now more science project than weapon, back over to the kid. Tesla looked down at it in confusion, obviously catching the gesture as more than just indulging his fascination, but then looked back up at Henry, and down at the exposed guts of the thing in his hands, and back up again, and Henry matched the sudden shit-eating grin with one of his own.
Oh yeah. Who needed English, when you spoke the universal language of scientists everywhere? And yeah, six years old the kid may be, but Nikola Tesla, man. Lost and scared and suddenly more than a century out of his time, but holding out a demanding hand for the power cell, not to put it back in (yet, anyway), not because the thing in his hands was a weapon, but because he was squinting at the exposed connections inside the stunner, and turning the cell in his hands to study it, and working out, visibly figuring out, what the cell had to be, if removing it rendered the stunner safe to hand back, and from there trying to puzzle out how a tiny plastic-and-metal block provided power for the blast earlier, and how it tied in, and from the power source how the mechanism produced the effect ...
Henry fetched down his set of jeweller's screwdrivers, sat down on the floor with the kid and spent the next fifteen minutes, waiting for the others to show up, happily watching a six-year-old Nikola Tesla attempt to reverse engineer a stun gun from first principles while Henry pointed out current pathways with the tip of a screwdriver and cheerfully ignored what he suspected were words six-year-old boys probably weren't supposed to know, in any language.
And hey, the look on Magnus' face, and the conspiratorial grin on mini-Tesla's face, more than made up for the lecture he got on putting potentially explosive weaponry in the hands of de-aged vampiric scientists. Besides. From the way she looked at them, exasperated and resigned, Henry figured even Magnus knew that this was pretty much just par for the course.
Six years old or not, this was Nikola Tesla, after all.
In all fairness, they really should have figured it out beforehand. Given that, mini-me or not, this was still Tesla, after all. Where else was he going to end up, really? But somehow, in all the shock and confusion of the man suddenly transforming into a six-year-old boy, they got a little sidetracked panicking about all the deadly things in the Sanctuary that could be eating and/or frying him about now, and forgot that he was still Nikola Tesla, and thus would gravitate to exactly one place above all others.
Well, possibly two, but they'd already tried Magnus' bedroom (without, of course, ever actually mentioning to her that they had), and besides which, Henry sort of thought that being six years old again put something of a damper on that kind of thinking. Sixteen, maybe, but six ...
Right now, everyone from Magnus to the Big Guy were out scouring the grounds for a scared, six-year-old boy with none of his adult memories, no idea where he was or who he was with, and only a limited grasp of the English language, a grasp that apparently didn't include the meaning of the words 'we're not going to hurt you', or even 'stay still'.
Which ... had sort of caught them by surprise, really, because, you know, Tesla. Mr 'I Snark As A Professional Sport' and all. Sorta hard to remember that the guy who'd spent a hundred-plus years honing his command of English to weapons-grade levels hadn't actually been born or grown up somewhere where English was the first, or even second, language. And Magnus was about the only one of them who had any grasp of Serbian or Hungarian. Well, Magnus and Kate, but Henry had the sneaking suspicion that the words Kate knew were not the sort you yelled after scared kids. Not if you wanted them to stay put, anyway.
So they'd lost him, because a scared Nikola Tesla was also apparently a really fast Nikola Tesla, and also one not in least afraid to bite if he had to, and had spent the past hour in increasingly frantic search, until Will ... had the bright idea for Henry to check for lifesigns, captain. Which had been followed by a round of sheepish looks and Henry heading for the lab. Which, had they actually thought about it, probably should have been the first place they looked.
If they had, Henry mightn't have been greeted by a pale-faced kid spinning in panic and firing one of the stunners at him.
He dove to one side with a yelp, though he probably needn't have bothered, as the blast went wide by a mile. Fast the kid may be, but aiming was a bit more trouble, especially when swinging around a weapon about four sizes too big for his suddenly tiny hands. Damn, but Tesla had been scrawny when he was young.
And also, it seemed, not at all violent, because the instant the stunner went off, the kid jerked it away from Henry with a squeak, and almost dropped it in shock and fear. Which ... would have been bad, probably, so Henry was sort of glad he hadn't, even if it did leave him with an armed and very scared kid who didn't understand a word Henry was saying. And who looked at him, as Henry slowly and cautiously stood up, with an expression of such fear and shame, such desperate apology, please don't hurt me, that he almost felt sick, holding out his hands placatingly, and hunching over so he looked as small as he possibly could.
"Hey, little guy. Look, I know you can't understand me right now, but I'm really not going to hurt you, I swear. I mean, Magnus would kill me, for a start. So why don't we just be cool, be calm ... put down the weapon ..."
And that ... that got him a look of such scathing contempt, mustered from somewhere under the fear, such a haughty, defiant tilt to his chin and a look as if to say 'what kind of idiot do you take me for?', that Henry had to grin. Found his mouth widening entirely of its own accord, as he looked down at the little guy, because oh yeah. Vlad was definitely in there somewhere. No doubt about it.
"Hey," he said, still talking slow and soothingly, because even if it did get him looked at like he was the village idiot, it was obviously helping the guy relax, too. "How about you give me the stunner, kiddo? Before, you know, you shoot somebody by accident ..." He held out a hand, twitching his fingers invitingly.
Tesla ... Nikola? ... stared at him with deep suspicion for a long moment, but it was obvious the kid no more wanted to be holding the weapon than Henry wanted to be facing it, and so, eventually, with a wary and almost desperate look, Nikola reached out and gingerly dropped it into Henry's hand. And then flinched back, quivering faintly, as Henry stood up and put it on the bench with a sigh of relief, obviously expecting this to be the part where Henry showed him why it was a bad idea to shoot at strange men. Which ... sort of made Henry want to scoop him up and say, no, kiddo, I'm not going to hurt you, but he figured that actually touching the kid might be a bad idea at this juncture. Where was Will when you needed him? Or Magnus, Magnus would do ...
Oh, hey, yeah. Radio. Right. People would probably want to know he'd found the kid, too.
"Hang on just one second, kid," he said, smiling gently in the hopes that it'd make Nikola less likely to do another runner, and quickly radioed the troops. Explaining to Magnus that he was in the lab, that he'd found Tesla, that everyone was okay ... And got a very terse response back, they were on their way, don't lose him again, give them fifteen minutes to extract themselves for various corners of the Sanctuary. Henry, looking down at the pale, defiant little boy glaring up at him, took a moment to quietly despair before saying yes ma'am, he'd do his best.
Whatever his best turned out to be. Were all kids this ... this intimidating? He didn't remember Ashley being that way. Well, yeah, she'd been scary, but that was because she could kick his ass any day of the week, and they'd both known it. Also, because she'd been a girl, and that automatically gave her an unfair advantage in every encounter. Nikola was ... all stiff and scared and breakable and defiant, and Henry was pretty sure the kid couldn't kick his ass, but he was also pretty sure Nikola'd give it the good old college try if he did something wrong, and more to the point would look at him like ... like this, all scared and proud and waiting to be hurt, and right now Henry was thinking that was an even more unfair advantage than being a girl would have been.
Thinking about it, trying to figure out a way to both a) keep the kid distracted and still here for when the others arrived, and b) stop the kid from looking at him like he was expecting Henry to up and eat him any second now, Henry looked around the lab. Frowning a little as he realised that the stunner ... had been the one on his table, ready for dismantling because there was something funny about the power transmission, and wow, okay, they were probably both very lucky the thing hadn't blown up on them, and this? This was why they didn't have kids at the Sanctuary anymore. At least not without warning.
But as he was looking at it, he noticed the kid looking at it too, and part of that was fear, because he'd just almost shot Henry, so maybe Henry was going to shoot him back, but part of it ...
And Henry grinned, because yeah, this was definitely Vlad, teeny-tiny or not, and really, the lab should probably have been the first place they looked, because Henry knew that look. He knew it very, very well, and suddenly he knew just how to keep the kid distracted, and get rid of the terrified look at the same time.
He reach out, picked up the stunner, ignoring the flinch, focusing on the narrow-eyed curiosity that came despite it, and flipped it over, holding it out to show Nikola the underside. Nikola squinted at him suspiciously, but didn't bolt, looking back down at the stunner, little fingers twitching gently. Henry grinned, and slid open the charging panel, exposing the power core and some of the inner workings, and watched the kid's face light up in greedy fascination, watched Nikola Tesla, genius and currently tiny kid, reach out with suddenly demanding hands to be shown how this thing worked right now.
Henry smiled, shaking his head, and popped out the power cell. Carefully, but quickly. No need to be handing the kid explosives, after all. He pulled out the power cell, and handed the stunner, now more science project than weapon, back over to the kid. Tesla looked down at it in confusion, obviously catching the gesture as more than just indulging his fascination, but then looked back up at Henry, and down at the exposed guts of the thing in his hands, and back up again, and Henry matched the sudden shit-eating grin with one of his own.
Oh yeah. Who needed English, when you spoke the universal language of scientists everywhere? And yeah, six years old the kid may be, but Nikola Tesla, man. Lost and scared and suddenly more than a century out of his time, but holding out a demanding hand for the power cell, not to put it back in (yet, anyway), not because the thing in his hands was a weapon, but because he was squinting at the exposed connections inside the stunner, and turning the cell in his hands to study it, and working out, visibly figuring out, what the cell had to be, if removing it rendered the stunner safe to hand back, and from there trying to puzzle out how a tiny plastic-and-metal block provided power for the blast earlier, and how it tied in, and from the power source how the mechanism produced the effect ...
Henry fetched down his set of jeweller's screwdrivers, sat down on the floor with the kid and spent the next fifteen minutes, waiting for the others to show up, happily watching a six-year-old Nikola Tesla attempt to reverse engineer a stun gun from first principles while Henry pointed out current pathways with the tip of a screwdriver and cheerfully ignored what he suspected were words six-year-old boys probably weren't supposed to know, in any language.
And hey, the look on Magnus' face, and the conspiratorial grin on mini-Tesla's face, more than made up for the lecture he got on putting potentially explosive weaponry in the hands of de-aged vampiric scientists. Besides. From the way she looked at them, exasperated and resigned, Henry figured even Magnus knew that this was pretty much just par for the course.
Six years old or not, this was Nikola Tesla, after all.
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