AN: Remix for tielan's Untold Things, which you can find on livejournal.
Spoilers: Beginning of season two.
Rating: Teen
Disclaimer: A girl can dream...
Characters: Helen, Kate, Henry, Will, The Big Guy
Summary: Helen Magnus is not omniscient.
Unasked Things (The Questions We Don't Answer Remix)
Helen Magnus is not omniscient. She doesn't know everything there is to know about her employees. She hadn't even known everything there was to know about Ashley, though of anyone in the Sanctuary, it was Ashley she knew best.
She lets Will think she's been following him all his life. It's more or less true, anyway, but not in the way he thinks. It took her some time to put together the scared boy she'd held in her arms with the young agent who got laughed out of the FBI, but once she did it was easy enough to track his movements and then accidentally run him down with her car.
She gives Henry space, because she is his boss, his foster mother and his doctor, and if she hovered, he would only panic, and that wouldn't be fair to either of them. She lets him make his own decisions, and indulges in his odd vacation requests because he's fought hard for his identity and his individuality, and she knows what that feels like.
She's not sure yet what to do about Kate.
There are things she knows. Kate moved around a lot. Kate ran with a bad crowd. Kate took to the abnormal world for fun and profit, yes, but she took to it as well as Ashley had, and Ashley had been brought up for it. Kate taught herself.
There are things she can guess. Over the decades, she spent enough time with James Watson to develop her own powers of observation out of self-defense. She's never liked feeling flat-footed, and though she couldn't always match James for speed, she is far from head blind when it comes to reading people and reasoning things out.
She sees Kate's face while Henry reads his new comic book, fingers carefully guarding the edges as he walks but too engrossed to set it down, and knows there is a story there. Helen knows it's not a good one, and wonders what Kate could have possibly done to a book, or to the reader of it, that would give her that expression.
She watches the way Kate retreats to the armoury after Will leaves for O'Farrow's funeral. Helen knows there is nothing out of order there; she and Kate had updated the catalogue only this morning, but there is something about the way she carries herself that makes Helen let her pass without comment. She's slow to trust Will, which is not surprising. Kate can forgive the woman who would have shot her, but not the former cop who intervened. It's not quite a problem with authority, just a dislike of the status quo.
When The Big Guy reports that he and Kate had to euthanize a humanoid abnormal, Helen observes Kate's behaviour for a week. It's not hard to determine that this is not the first time Kate has given that dreadful mercy, but Helen doesn't think she's had a lot of practice. She had to do it more than a few times herself, to abnormals sentient and otherwise, and she knows how it feels. If Kate needs to talk, she will.
Kate's never told Helen about the less salutary things she done. Helen has never asked.
Helen doesn't know for sure, but she doubts Kate has done anything she would find too surprising. She's been alive a long time, after all.
finis
Gravity_Not_Included, May 5, 2011