A/N:

Many thanks to Chartreuseian, my beta for this!

Welcome to the ride! Remember time is out of order. It's all timey-wimey confusing and fun.I have 6 out of 10 vignettes written, and hope to post on Monday/Tuesday and Thursday/Friday, assuming I can finish the last 4 vignettes quickly.

Chapter One

The Fifth Time

Rome, 2008

Nikola Tesla slumped to the dirt floor of the Roman catacombs, his intestines threatening to leak out of the huge hole in his abdomen. Jack the Bloody Ripper indeed. He clutched at their disgusting slipperiness, blood pouring from the wound even as his body tried to heal him. He wasn't sure it would be fast enough. He was going to die because he was an idiot. He hadn't seen Helen in six decades, and he actually thought inviting her to conquer the world with him and some mindless idiots would be a good proposal. Nikola Tesla, technological genius, cretin at romance.

"I am an idiot. A vile, pathetic idiot. And I am too young to die."

"Very true. You are too young to die, and you are an idiot, Nikola Tesla. But I love you."

He turned and there was Helen. Not the Helen who John had just whisked away, the one in the short business skirt and the condemning eyes. No, this Helen looked at him with concern and…was that love in her eyes? Had she just said…his head exploded in pain, as decades worth of memories fell back into place.

He let out a gasping breath then chuckled ruefully. "I couldn't manage two whole hours in this masquerade without getting myself killed, lbujavi. You see why I insisted we remove my memories again? If I could remember what our life was truly like together, I could never act like such an unmitigated ass."

"You are still an ass, Nikola. But you're my idiotic ass. Let us save your life. You have a date with the younger me in three months at Bhallassam." She pressed a kiss to his brow, then motioned behind her, where a tall, dark haired man and a woman with red gold curls stood with a stretcher and an array of portable medical equipment. Helen held her wrist in front of her, tantalizingly close to his mouth.

"Drink now, Nikola. My blood will do more to heal you than all the medical wizardry at my disposal."

He stuck out his tongue at his wife, before his teeth distending and his eyes grew black. He bit gently, and the ecstasy of her flavor almost dimmed the pain from his wound. He would miss this when his memories were blocked again. He would dream of it, he was certain.

The Second Time

New York, 1911

Nikola paced along the roof of the Waldorf-Astoria, too agitated for the pigeons to work their calming magic upon him. It had been an unmitigated disaster. The oscillator* should have worked perfectly, it should have been a revolutionary means of creating cheap electricity. The harmonic potential was unlimited! How was he to know that the vibrations with call forth some Earth abnormal and create an earthquake in the middle of New York?

He flexed his hand, the bones still aching from having to slam his fist into the oscillator, destroying it. The police had been banging on the door, his Houston Street labs had been shaking, glass breaking, pipes groaning, as some kind of mud man rose up from the floor and started making droning noising at his oscillator that sounded like a cow in heat. His oscillator worked just fine, but it also managed to mimic that mating call of some creature that Helen would likely find fascinating. But Helen wasn't here, no matter how many times he had tempted her with the thrilling freedom of New York.

He stood staring out at the lights of the city blindly, his mind swirling in a tempest of self-pity. He didn't want to think of Helen. He'd last seen her three years previously, in '08. First, she'd asked him to help her track down a vampire codex in Austria. It had been spring in Vienna. They'd found the book, which was disappointingly incomplete, and managed to rescue a pair of flying purple fuzzy creatures that he'd not bothered to learn the name of. He'd taken her to the Prater amusement park despite the crowds and mess, just to see her laugh.

He'd held her hand, stroked her cheek, and finally gotten up to nerve to kiss her. He'd been courting her, he knew. She'd pulled him into her room, and he'd made love to her. He'd worshipped her, somehow knowing how to make love to her, how to bring her pleasure, without having any idea how he'd acquired the knowledge. He was simply meant for her. She'd cried afterwards in his arms, tears of joy she'd said. She'd kissed his shoulder, and he'd fallen asleep to the sound of her steady breathing. He'd woken alone, a note on his pillow that simply said, "Not yet. Someday."

He's fled to Budapest for a week, tried to drink himself into a stupor – almost impossible for a vampire. Then the damn British government had stopped his trip back to New York, dragging in all of the Five in a hunt for that cockroach, Adam Worth. She'd worn high collars – trying to cover up the marked he'd sucked into her collarbones. And she could barely look at him. Eyes only for that hovering, possessive bastard, John Druitt; eyes filled with pain and heartache. He could feel "someday" growing farther and farther away.

He dreamed of that night over and over again. And when he wasn't dreaming of a soft blonde Helen and sheets in Vienna that smelled of springtime, he was dreaming of his dark haired Helen – the one that lived only in his mind. Harder, bolder, his dark goddess rode him as though he were a stallion, argued with him like a gorgeous hussy, sucked on his cock with dancing timeless eyes, and challenged him to work through problems he'd dismissed as impossible. She was sweat and tears and laughter. She was his lifeblood. She would be ashamed of him now, brought down to be the laughing stock of New York, of the world.

"The stronolith apologized for the misunderstanding, you know."

He spun around, somehow unsurprised that his maudlin thoughts had called her up out of thin air. Her dark hair wafted around her face in the hot breeze of the exhaust from the roof fans, the orange light of the city glowed against her skin, making her seem otherworldly as she stepped out of the darkness.

"Apparently the frequency was exactly the same as a larval stronolith in distress. If you change the rate of recoil by a few hundredths, it shouldn't happen again."

"Helen?" He couldn't keep the awe out of his voice. He truly was going mad.

"In the flesh." She shrugged out of her overcoat and draped it over the duffel bag that was behind her on the ground. It seemed odd that a hallucination would carry luggage, but he was still unconvinced that he was awake and lucid.

"Why are you in New York, Helen? Come to gloat that Nikola Tesla is a walking disaster, just like you used to say back in Oxford?"

She frowned at him. "That's a bit harsh, Niko. I only ever said that you were a walking disaster to my wardrobe. Your experiments are hell on sateen and lace."

His eyes flickered over the tight black blouse and loose trousers that she wore. This vision was so completely, sinfully different than the blonde Helen Magnus that was real. There was no way she could have walked through the lobby of the Waldorf in such an ensemble – he would have heard the commotion a block away. "There's a lot less wardrobe to destroy at the moment, Helen. Don't tempt me. That fabric looks easily shredable and we are very alone." He let his talons and teeth appear, though he winced at the ache remaining in his hand. Surprisingly, the pain did nothing to dissolve this dark temptress.

"That was a terrible pick up line. You are lucky that I missed you so much." She lifted her hands to the buttons of her shirt, opening the top button. His mouth fell open in anticipation just as she laughed softly and spoke again. "You are an idiot, Nikola Tesla. But I love you."

Pain spiked through his skull, like that hangover from three days of drinking cheap wine in Graz. But with the pain came memories…precious, precious memories of skin and laughter, the taste of her on his tongue, the intimacy of tracing his mind with her, organizing pathways of memory until he'd learned to lock away his Helen, his miracle who walked through time itself.

He closed the distance between them before she'd unfastened the last button, his arms pulling her close, his lips pressing against hers, aching with need. He backed them up slowly, until they were embraced by the shadows, the wall of a ventilation shaft at her back as she nipped at his lips, her hands buried in his hair. He'd been lonely, aching for this, and he'd not understood why. This was his Helen. His fingers stroked over the scar on the back of her neck and she shivered, her hips rocking against him. He tore away from her lips, pressing his face against her neck and inhaling the scent of her – her blood, her sweat, her need of him.

"Five years, Helen," he whispered against the skin under her ear as he fought to keep himself human. "Five years since you taught me how to love you properly. I'd say it's time for a refresher course."

He dropped to his knees, long fingers running over the mysterious trousers of hers to discover how to get them off of her. Impatient, he used his talons and dismissed her protestations over his destruction of her clothes and sliced at the waistband, growling in pleasure as her trousers fell to her ankles, revealing bloomers so small and sheer that he could see her dark gold curls through the fabric. He felt a tiny twinge of regret as he sliced through those luscious undergarments, but when she was bare to him and he could plunge his nose in to her mound, inhaling the rich, complex scent of her, any sacrifice was worth it.

His tongue darted out to tap against her clit and she gasped out a quick, hard breath around the ghost of his name. He savored the sound, knowing that soon enough she would be holding in her screams. His stroked in his tongue against her, long and hard from the bottom of her slit to the aching, throbbing top. Then he dove inside, seeking the font of her flavor, the sweet, musky proof of her need.

Her hands played havoc with his slicked back hair, her nails scraping roughly at his scalp and he loved every second of it. She came with a muffled yell and he smiled against her flesh, pushing down his inner monster long enough to risk pushing two, then three fingers inside of her. He undid his trousers with the other hand, freeing his cock from painful confinement even as he determinedly worked her over, focused on every sigh and whimper and gasp. She hooked a leg around his shoulder and relaxed into the wall, letting him play her like a fine instrument, giving in to the idea that he was going to take his fill of her before giving her any chance to worship him – call it his revenge for keeping their memories when he could not.

After three climaxes she was crying, begging for him, and his cock was hard enough to drive nails into the stone tiles under his knees. He stood and she kicked at the ruins of her trousers, wrapping her legs around his hips, titling her pelvis to the perfect angle that when he surged inside of her he went deep, so perfectly, brilliantly deep that he cried out, his voice frightening the last of the pigeons from the rooftop.

She laughed in his ear then sucked the lobe into her mouth. The heels of her boots dug into his back as he clutched at her hips. He was suddenly completely out of control, running, galloping, thrusting harder and harder toward the bright sparks flashing behind his eyes. She was tightness and heat and welcome and deliverance and he was found and lost inside of her. He came as she convulsed around him, her hips swiveling circles writing their impossible story in a language only the heavens understood.

He collapsed into her as they slid down the wall, ending with him on his knees in an inelegant heap on the ground, tangled and sweaty. He was appalled by the dirt, but couldn't bring himself to move. He was still half-hard inside of her, still throbbing, and her soft kisses against his neck, his temple, his eyelids did little to convince him they needed to move.

"Five years, Helen. You said it would be a century. More than a century before we could be together completely. You told me James said to use this failsafe rarely, that each time would create more risks for the timestream."

She sighed, her sweet breath ruffling the hair stuck to his forehead. He drew back, his hips shifting and making them both gasp softly at the sensation of still being locked together. Her feet fell to the ground and she pushed up, separating them, though this had not ben what he wanted. But he saw the sense in it. The next time would be in a bath, and the time after than in a bed. Or at least on a much cleaner floor than the one beneath them now.

She stood on shaky legs and took a few steps, hindered by the ruins of her clothing. She crouched over the duffle bag, extracting a familiar looking box while he tried to concentrate on her hands and not the delicious looking curve of her ass and the welcoming wetness between her thighs.

She turned to him and stood, large black box humming away, her hands stoking it as though she was stroking a child.

Oh.

He used the wall to stand, one hand keeping his own trousers from falling around his ankles. "Is that…which…is that…"

"Ash…" she stopped cold, swallowing thickly. "My first fetus is safe with the younger me, no doubt high up on a shelf where she…it will be safe for years to come. This…this is another…happier accident. Our happy accident."

He had known it existed, this child created out of time. He'd even dreamt of her, a little girl with Helen's smile and his grey-blue eyes. Part of him and part of Helen that had already come to be and was yet to be created. Even his brilliant mind boggled at the intricacies of probability and impossibility that clashed inside that stasis chamber.

"You knocked me out cold in Ninety Eight for the plans for that. And I can't think of a more noble reason that I have ever been made unconscious and my memories sealed shut. I presume that the transfer was successful?"

She bit her lip. "James had experience, after all. So yes, the transfer was successful. But it's been over a decade, and I'm afraid that even with James and I following your plans to the letter, something seems off. Some of the gauges are in the yellow. I didn't want to risk…"

He surged forward, his hands gently taking the stasis chamber from her hands, his eyes eating up every detail of the reading displayed on the dials. An eleven week old fetus, frozen to await implantation at a time more convenient and hopeful for her time traveling mother and memory-locked father.

"How long do I have with the two of you, Helen? I presume it is not yet time to rescue this little one from her imprisonment."

"I think of it as safekeeping. You won't wish to imprison her until she is in her adolescence and first discovers an interest in sex."

He looked at her, eyes piercing, hands unconsciously caressing the box just as Helen's had done.

She sighed. "In six months, I will send you a wire telling you I plan on finally visiting New York. You sprint out on the first steamer to England and escort me back here on the largest ship ever built."

"The Titanic? Splendid. I would love to get a look at her engines." Six months was too short. Far too short. Not when he didn't know when he'd have her again.

Helen blew out a slow breath, her eyes holding a century of pain she couldn't undo. "We will have to make sure you keep up with your daily swimming regime, Nikola. That's all I'm going to say on the matter."

He grew pale, thinking of the implications. Thinking that he would have these memories taken from him. Thinking that he should just stop thinking of a future he couldn't change and worry about getting Helen down to his rooms, into his bath, and how to keep her there as long as possible.

Helen pulled on her long coat, kicking off her trousers and those delicious underthings and leaving them in a sad pile of fabric. He caught of flash of a curve of a breast before she buttoned up – making him realize that he'd yet to worship those properly, making his cock harden in seconds.

She looked down at him and giggled softly, a charming sound from this hard looking woman. He grinned at her, shrugging his shoulders.

"Let's go to your rooms, Niko." Shaking her head, she took the box out of his hands, letting him fasten his trousers uncomfortably over his swollen equipment.

"Don't we make the pair, Helen. Sneaking through the Waldorf, intent on mischief."

"I don't think saving our offspring is exactly mischief, Nikola."

He slung her bag over his shoulder, easing his arm through her elbow and guiding her to the access door least likely to be patrolled by hotel staff. "The mischief comes afterwards, Helen. I'm certain we'll bring complaints with the noise we make, and we shall have to move within days. You are worth it though, ljubavi."

She leaned over and kissed his cheek, a gentle sign of affection that made his heart thump oddly. "I missed you, Niko. I missed you so much."

"I missed you too, my Helen. I didn't know it, but I missed you with every breath."

* From Wikipedia: While experimenting with mechanical oscillators at his Houston Street lab, Tesla allegedly generated a resonance of several buildings. As the speed grew, it is said that the machine oscillated at the resonance frequency of his own building and, belatedly realizing the danger, he was forced to use a sledge hammer to terminate the experiment, just as the police arrived.