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никола тесла ([info]genius) wrote in [info]marinanova,
@ 2013-06-11 01:48:00

Previous Entry  Add to memories!  Tell a Friend!  Next Entry
Entry tags:helen magnus, nikola tesla

day 223 | iii » action → closed.
He let himself in. No sense in loitering about the hallways when he could just as easily undo the lock himself. Especially a lock that was nothing more than an actual, simple lock. Quaint, convenient, and something he was adding to his growing list of improvements to be made — but that wasn't why he was here. No, there was other business to attend to.

Someone's been keeping secrets. (Said the pot to the kettle he was calling black.) Secrets that were becoming more and more apparent by the minute. He didn't know what they entailed, exactly, but they were there. Mocking him, lingering just out of reach.

Time to stop beating around that bush. Which is why he was presently seated on one of the sofas in her apartment, waiting for her to return from her wherever it was she'd gone off to this morning.


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[info]lifelines
2013-06-11 07:10 am UTC (link)
She had her reasons for being gone that morning. An errand she needed to attend to and had been planning for whenever they returned to the other dome. Of course then she'd awoken to the feeling of her muscles being sore and tense and all of the cuts and gashes stinging. This morning she was feeling worse than the other two days. Perhaps it was something to do with the amount of work she'd been forced to do yesterday. Whatever it was, it had placed her in a bit of a temper and so she'd left the building early to attend to her errand.

Her mood hadn't improved by the time she returned. Rebekah's post in particular had gotten her a bit more uptight, the idea of memories being pressed upon them weighing on her. She was so lost in thought that at first she didn't even notice her lock was unlocked. A moment passed and she blinked, frowning at it.

"What in the world--"

She could have sworn she'd locked it before she left... Glancing around cautiously, she finally found the culprit sitting on a sofa. Really, she should have known and her first thought was what he might want. He was here for something; he was never anywhere accidentally.

"What is it now?"

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[info]genius
2013-06-17 06:19 pm UTC (link)
"As the French playwright, Jean Rancine, once said, there are no secrets that time does not reveal."

In other words, he knew she was hiding something. He's been well aware of it for quite some now, and how off-kilter she's been had been painfully palpable in that other, above ground prison they'd been tossed into while this place presumably recuperated from that unfortunate cephalopod attack. That place, however, had not been the proper environment to bring that up. Good thing there's nothing of the sort to stop him from doing so here.

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[info]lifelines
2013-06-18 03:40 am UTC (link)
Those words were rather telling and he probably knew it. Helen's expression turned from exasperated to cautious, even wary, in the span of a few seconds. She should have known she wouldn't be able to hide it all from him for long. The question was, how much did he know? And what should he be told?

The silence wasn't long, but it was long enough that she knew he'd pick up on that. He would know his assumptions were correct.

"Not unless time itself would rather not reveal those secrets," she replied carefully, fully aware that she was just opening herself up to being badgered by him. At this point, she may as well just give in and tell him about the time travel. He would get it out of her eventually anyway.

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[info]genius
2013-06-20 06:44 am UTC (link)
"I suspected that," because he did. There was something about the way she always had to pause and double check her months, make sure her calculations were correct before saying something in relation to a point in time. "Is that what this is about, Helen? Is there something more than just a couple of years distance separating us that's got you waltzing around here like your mind's ten thousand miles away? I haven't seen you this distracted since, well, 1912, to be brutally honest."

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[info]lifelines
2013-06-20 07:22 am UTC (link)
Helen paused. She could say so many things in response to that. The lie she'd been practicing since she rejoined her correct timeline was on the edge of her tongue, the one she'd been upholding even here in prison. It was easier to pretend that nothing had happened to her, that those 113 years had never been an issue, that she had never been separated from her timeline.

She could lie. But he would know. He knew her too well not to figure it out eventually. And, honestly, it would be nice to have someone here who knew, someone she could admit to a few difficulties as far as keeping her timelines straight. So instead of lying, as she suspected her expected her to do, she decided to drop the first of many bombshells on him. See how he liked that.

"The first or second time around?" she asked, pointedly avoiding him as she moved towards the small dining area in her apartment. The window would be nice to use as a distraction, assuming Nikola allowed her to brush past him.

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[info]genius
2013-06-20 10:21 pm UTC (link)
The first or second-- What on Earth was that supposed to mean? The notion of time travel, of her being forced to live like a duplicate overlaying her own timeline while doing her damnest to stay out of history's, and her own, way hasn't occurred to him yet. What he's been telling those who inquire about this theories in regards to the nature of this place has been true: he's never tampered with time. He's capable -- more than capable -- but every man has their limits, that spot where they draw a line in the sand and refuse to step over it. For him, that was time. He'd try to resurrect an extinct race, but he'd never go so far as to travel back in time and bring one of them to the present. No, that's madness. That's Einstein and Schrödinger playing with fire and things they didn't fully understand, no matter how much he may agree with them now.

"Doing what? Helen, you're not making any sense." He rose from his place, following her. "Talk to me."

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[info]lifelines
2013-06-20 11:03 pm UTC (link)
"It's a long story," was her answer as she finally came to a stop by the window, gazing out of it and across what she could see of the dome around them. Lifting her arms, she crossed them protectively over her chest and refused resolutely to look at him. That probably told him better than anything else that she was hiding a whole lot.

"What do you remember, of being in -- for lack of a better term -- our 'world' before you got here? When was the last time you saw me?"

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[info]genius
2013-06-21 02:57 am UTC (link)
"I was still in Africa after that mess with the Praxian ruins turned vampire ruins. You had taken back off to make sure the children hadn't made a complete mess of your house while you were away."

Oh yes, he noticed. She won't look at him. That's telling -- very telling. Because she knows that he can read her, can detect a lie in her better than anyone these days, and will know if she's fibbing to him. Question was, did she want to lie to him or did she have to?

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[info]lifelines
2013-06-22 12:11 am UTC (link)
Of course. This couldn't be easy, could it? At this point, she likely wouldn't have been able to answer that question. "Want to" and "had to" were becoming nearly synonymous in reference to her stint of time travel. She had never wanted to experience it, but she'd been forced to go through with it in order to stop Adam Worth from irreparably damaging the timeline. Now, she knew she needed to keep that secret and she didn't want to have to rely on anyone, knowing that no one could understand what she'd gone through, how difficult it had been to sit back and do nothing, and why she hadn't tried to at all.

Yet, Nikola might.

Either way, he would pull it out of her sooner or later. May as well drop this one on him while they're both still standing.

"That was 113 years ago. And it's a very long story."

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[info]genius
2013-06-24 10:49 am UTC (link)
Helen was naturally older than him, having been born several years before he was ushered into the world one dark and stormy night. Always the youngest, never the oldest. (The children hardly counted.) There was never supposed to be an age gap like that between them. He'd assume she was simply from a time well beyond his own, as their respective lifespans made such a thing possible, if not for something she said earlier.

Nikola's more than clever enough to put two and two together.

"Dear God..."

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[info]lifelines
2013-06-25 07:50 pm UTC (link)
Yes. Time travel. He'd figured it out, as she had known he would. "I'll have you know it was neither my idea nor my design. You know whose idea it was. He turned up for the first time in over a century this past year."

Adam Worth. For reasons Nikola could probably deduce if he really wanted to.

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[info]genius
2013-06-28 07:42 am UTC (link)
"I should've killed that leprechaun when I had the chance."

Whether it was back at Oxford or while he was bedridden at her Sanctuary, he should've done it. Stopped tending to him, playing physician when he wasn't that kind of a doctor to a man who deserved to die. Изнервирало црв. How dare he...

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[info]lifelines
2013-06-29 05:21 am UTC (link)
"And changed a great deal about our history in the process." Well, a lot more, anyway. "In the end, his actions didn't make a large impact on our future. He died long ago." Back in 1898. Oh but she didn't specifically say which year they went back to, did she? Whoops. She did give him clues about how long a time it's been. The fact that she has to calculate at all suggests that it's been a very long time since she was in the right timeline. The previous timeline, before the jump and her century of hoping she wouldn't mess with anything major.

The implication of all of this, however, is the fact that she's had to relive a good deal of her own history, allow horrible things to happen again, and she wasn't entirely certain how Nikola would take that.

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[info]genius
2013-06-30 01:21 pm UTC (link)
"That still doesn't change what he did, Helen!" Nikola snapped, clearly more perturbed by this revelation than she was. Maybe she had a good century plus to get used to the idea of clashing timelines and staying out of history's way, but he hadn't. And frankly, this bothered the hell out of him. Time wasn't meant to be tampered with for a reason.

"Leave it to Adam to go and mess with that which is meant to be left the hell alone. I might've debated quantum theory with the best of them, but even I never intended to start actually playing around with it."

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[info]lifelines
2013-07-01 01:31 am UTC (link)
"I never said it did! I spent 113 years following the timeline, trying to keep everything going the way it should." It was tiring, keeping an eye on everything her past self had done while living a life that wouldn't disrupt the flow of time. "In any case, he's gone now, along with a lot of other people."

The way she shifted at that should tell him that she'd lost a lot more people than just Adam Worth. Those 113 years had changed her.

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[info]genius
2013-07-01 08:29 pm UTC (link)
He moved up to her quickly; quicker than he did around anyone, even here. Nikola always took great care when it came to the way he moved and carried himself, always doing so with a tremendous amount of grace, never putting that inherent ability to move faster than the human eye was capable of comprehending to use unless he absolutely had to. He didn't have to in this instance, but he wanted to. (Because he was angry. Not at her, but at this situation, at Adam Worth, and at himself, because what the hell was he doing at the time? Didn't he make it his business to watch for things like this?)

"Always the martyr, always willing to let yourself suffer in the face of the greater good. It hasn't done you any favors, Helen."

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[info]lifelines
2013-07-03 05:53 am UTC (link)
She narrowed her eyes at him as he sped up to her. It was hardly a flinch -- she'd long ago gotten used to both humanoid species and non-humanoid ones displaying non-human abilities around her -- but she was giving him a wary sort of expression. Wary and calculating. She supposed that was what he was referring to, but preferred not to ask him directly.

"It was never meant to."

She always gave herself over before she would allow someone else to suffer. Her life was long; better to let herself be hurt than someone whose lifespan was much shorter. In doing so, she had closed herself off. Slowly but surely, she had taught herself not to let her emotions get in the way of what had to be done. Now that she was being faced with an entity of her past, she was realizing more and more what she'd done to herself and yet she didn't want to change it. Living was easier this way.

"I don't know what you expect from me, Nikola. You know my 'secret.' What else do you want to hear?"

That question was more to direct or divert the topic of conversation as necessary. It was straying onto far more dangerous grounds than it already was.

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[info]genius
2013-07-05 04:51 pm UTC (link)
Something else had clicked for him, something else that had never made much sense, but he had no other proper explanation for. When he'd brought it in the days following her arrival in New York from the Carpathia after the Titanic went down, she hadn't known what he was talking about. At the time, he attributed it to stress, the trauma of having nearly gone down with the ship -- or assumed that there was something more to that multi-headed cave shark that equaled secrecy and a non-discussion clause she hadn't bothered to inform him of, but it didn't add up.

Unless...

"That was you, wasn't it? Not you, but you. This you, the one that got stuck in the past and had to follow history up into the future. In 1912, I mentioned you having come to me ten years earlier about some stupid little cave shark, and you had no idea what I was referring to. That's why, isn't it. Because that wasn't you who did that, it was you."

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[info]lifelines
2013-07-05 07:03 pm UTC (link)
She glanced at him as he started to piece together everything he'd experienced. It hadn't taken him long and she wasn't surprised. Were they anywhere else, at home in the Sanctuary or somewhere else in their world, she would have kept him guessing. But here it didn't matter and somehow... somehow having someone in the know with her made her feel less alone.

A part of her disliked how much she needed someone on her side, but as Will hadn't yet arrived and she hoped he never would, she knew Nikola would be a good substitute.

"I knew you'd figure it out sooner or later."

Congratulations, Nikola.

"I remember you asked me about it when I was the present version but I hadn't known then what you meant. Going through with it as the person who shouldn't be there was the only option I had to keep the timeline straight. It seems I was successful."

For various values of "successful." It had changed her, as Nikola had recently figured out. And this likely wasn't the only time she had pulled something like that.

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