A/N For Sanctuary Bingo, prompt: The Five (character)

Keeping the Fifth

The idea had initially been Nigel's. The Five, who had once spent almost every day together, had broken off to their separate pursuits, looking forward to a future where the world's secrets were all theirs for the taking.

The invitations were for the fifth of May in 1885, and a collective groan rose from four throats at the ham-handedness of it all, but secretly all were pleased. They attended a performance of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony and retired for evening drinks in the Five Lords club after.

"I'm going to grow very tired soon of the number five," Nikola moaned into his glass of wine. He was the one they had all anticipated to see, unsure of whether he should show, having sailed for America just a year previously.

"How is working with Edison treating you?" James asked. "I've been following his work with electrical lighting and generators very keenly—"

"—the man's a thief," Nikola growled. "May his soul rot with his direct current generators. He isn't even a very good thief, as I can't convince him to appropriate the best of my ideas. A sad, old man stuck in the stone age."

"A man who sees fit to criticize your work?" Druitt remarked dryly, "He's a man after my own heart."

"Gentlemen," Helen intoned warningly. "Let us not spoil Nigel's careful designs for a pleasant evening with more of your bickering."

Nigel shrugged indifferently. "Not to fret, love. It's never a dull moment with these two at each other's throats. I've rather missed it."

"So glad to entertain you," Nikola sneered, but without malice. He refused to admit it, but he had been looking forward to the small reunion. He looked over at Helen, who had been quiet most of the evening, and frowned. "You haven't aged a day…"

She shared a secretive smile with Watson. Growing impatient, Nikola demanded, "Out with it."

"It seems we've discovered the rather elegant gift our Helen has, unlocked by the source blood." Watson reached into his coat pocket and brought out some notes that he handed to Nikola. "These five years since injection, Helen's blood cells have not degenerated in the slightest."

Nikola's eyebrows shot up into his hair as he looked over the test results. Nigel laughed and nudged Helen playfully. "She'll never lose her looks, this one. Soon we'll all be too old for her."

"Oh Helen, it'll just be the two of us at the end like it was always meant to be." Nikola smirked as she rolled her eyes, and discreetly enjoyed the murderous look on John's face.

"Gentlemen, and most esteemed lady, I'm afraid I must take my leave. Important work waits for no man, and Scotland Yard does not look kindly upon drunk-sick inspectors." James rose to his feet, bowing once to Helen.

"Hey, my good man – who will pay for my fare back home?"

John, who was gathering his coat as well, arched a mocking eyebrow. "I could always escort you back to America, old chap."

Nikola grimaced. "I'd rather swim."

John laughed, kissed Helen's hand, and left with James. Nigel chuckled, "Don't worry, old boy, I'll see you to your ship."

"You're a king amongst peasants, Griffin."

"I'll go see if I can't persuade the proprietor to relieve himself of another bottle of that fabulous scotch." Nigel got up, not bothering to close the door behind him, and Nikola was left sitting with Helen alone.

She fiddled with her hands, picking up her glass absently and then setting it down again. Nikola regarded her through hooded eyes, sipping his wine.

"Nikola, I've something to tell you. Something I couldn't rightly put in a missive."

"When's the wedding?" He interrupted softly, and she looked at him startled.

"How did you know?"

"You may be wearing gloves, Helen, but I can still see the ring through the lace. I'm just surprised Johnny's making an honourable woman of you."

Helen glared at him. "Nikola. To question a man's honour in such a fashion is beyond the pale."

Nikola shrugged, uncaring. "The man is a philosopher and a poet. Their honour is always in question." He held up his wine glass to her. "Congratulations. Name your first son after me."

Helen giggled despite herself as Nikola suddenly frowned, and added as an afterthought, "On second thought, don't. John will be looking for excuses at every corner to discipline him with prejudice solely based on his namesake."

Nigel returned with the promised bottle, and they toasted to the Five. "In give years time," he said with a mischievous glint in his eye.

"Just don't make me listen to more Beethoven!" Nikola complained.

May fifth, 1890. They went to a performance of Mozart's Piano Concerto Number Five (in D major) and retired to their private room in the Five Lords. Nigel had come prepared with liquor from Mongolia that he had procured in his travels.

John sat mostly to himself in the corner of the room, drinking slowly and only adding to the conversation when prompted. James finally took it upon himself to sit beside John, away from the merry conversation, and inquired after him softly.

"I haven't seen you in ages, old boy. Was beginning to think you'd forgotten me."

John smiled wanly at him. "Of course not, old friend."

James considered his face carefully. His cheeks were gaunt, his eyes shadowed, and he looked as if he had not slept in a year. "You've withdrawn and you look sickly. You must let me examine you, John, your health is failing."

"I'm fine, James." Came the curt reply.

"No, you are not." James' tone was sharp and he lowered his voice so that their conversation remained private. "You've let Helen wait so long to be your wife in name. I've helped her freeze your unborn child so it won't be born a bastard. Why aren't you married yet, if not because you fear you'll leave her a young widow? I can help you, John—"

John Druitt rose suddenly, his chair almost toppling over. It startled everyone and John swept from the room without a word of goodbye.

"Dear James," Nikola admonished, "You haven't upset him with that awful joke about the barrister and his three dogs, have you?"

Nigel frowned. "That was my joke."

Helen and James shared a dark, knowing look, and he refused to speak more of the matter.

May fifth, 1895. Helen trembled as they sat in their private room at the Five Lords. Even Nikola had nothing clever to say. He looked nervously to Nigel, who could only shrug and stick his nose back into his tumbler of whiskey.

John Druitt had not shown up. It had been a few years since they had finally discovered him as the true perpetrator of the Whitechapel murders. Helen and James had hunted him, and the last they saw of him was when Helen put a bullet through his chest.

He would have been insane to show his face, but Helen's eyes flanked upwards to the clock every hour as if she were hoping he might anyway.

Their night passed in relative silence, Nigel only pausing to whisper once in Nikola's ear, "It's as if I invited Worth."

"No … James would have had cause to use his pistol then."

May fifth, 1900. They attended a performance of "Henry the Fifth", much to Nikola's complaints ("I hate bloody Shakespeare") and later raised a toast to the arrival of a new century. John, of course, was absent. Helen didn't know what to think after seeing him again when they were all summoned by the king to stop Adam Worth, and he had disappeared again soon after.

Nigel did his best to cheer her up with a roster of the filthiest stories he had gleaned from pubs all around the world. James badgered Nikola to give him some hint as to the experiments he was conducting in Colorado Springs, but the vampire remained stubbornly tight-lipped on the subject.

In 1905 Nikola got up and left during the performance of "Tosca" (Puccini's fifth opera) when a journalist recognized him and asked him to comment on his million dollar folly.

Helen was sure they'd find him at the Five Lords with empty bottles once the performance was over, but Nigel ran after him to see as he boarded a train to the shipyard. She wrote him many angry letters for abandoning them, and he replied to not a one.

He showed up, shame-faced, in 1910 and Helen hit him with her umbrella.

The Five, now more appropriately the Four, watched as the decades rolled by, stopping time for a short while in their reunions to remember days long past. James finally perfected his suit, allowing him to achieve the longevity Helen and Nikola had. Nigel drank bitterly alone during the rest of the years, feeling they had somehow left him. He bought land in Louisiana and immigrated to America, thinking to live a normal, happy life.

There was a war. And then another.

May fifth 1945. Nigel had suggested they move their meeting place to a more stable area that had already been repaired, but Helen flatly refused.

"How will they find us then? We've been meeting here for over fifty years."

They sat in the much diminished Five Lords club, waiting. Nigel played her his own rendition of Beethoven's fifth on the harmonica he had learned to play in New Orleans. James held her to his chest when she cried.

She had faked a funeral for Nikola after he had disappeared during the war. She was so certain he would have shown up for this meeting. And John, of course, never came.

Nigel had gently teased that perhaps they should meet every three years now, but she shook her head and said, "That will just throw the dates off."

Nigel shared a look with James. She would believe in her heart that they would all be reunited again some day, no matter what her mind knew.

Her humour returned with the coming reunions. Nigel would play silly or bawdy songs on his ukulele and proudly show off pictures of his daughter. James relented and even played his violin for them a few times.

May fifth 1985 Helen and James raised a toast over Nigel Griffin's grave.

"I think … I think it is unnecessary for us to keep this date any longer," Helen said as James walked arm in arm with her down Bourbon Street. "It is just you and I, and we have no need of a formal date to see one another."

James smiled softly. "So long as you remember to make social calls now and again instead of business as usual. Maybe we should keep the fifth, it'll be the one night you actually drink and dance."

In London, Nikola sat in the building that used to be the Five Lords and sipped forlornly at his wine. He had waited too long and he knew it.

May fifth 1990 Nikola stepped into their old meeting room, thinking to give it one last farewell, and nearly jumped out of his skin when he saw John Druitt inside. Druitt looked similarly startled, and they glared at each other suspiciously. Nikola finally broke the silence by asking, "Did you bring any wine?"

John nodded slowly and brought forth a slim bottle from one of his deep coat pockets. Nikola similarly drew out his own bottle and they finally sat back down and assumed a semblance of civility.

"What have you been doing all this time?" Nikola asked.

"And you? I heard you died."

Nikola shrugged, brushing a speck of dust from his suit. "I thought the same of you, though it's a pity you never had a grave I could dance on."

John snorted. "I pissed on yours."

Nikola looked as if he were about to gut him, but then laughed and uncorked his bottle with his teeth. He held it out and they clinked the necks of their bottles together.

"It seems they've finally given up on us," John commented dryly as he drank from the neck of his wine.

"Yes, well … we were young when we thought it could all last forever."

John gave him a curious look, and then raised his bottle. "To the Five."

"To the Five."

FIN