AN: Another installment in "Helen Does the Time Warp, Again", this section comes after Long Road Home, Begin Again, Enter Athene, To The Letter, Dog Days are Gone, The Keeper of Death and Hazy Shade of Winter. Time Travel! Who knew?
Spoilers: Into the Black
Rating: Teen
Disclaime: Among the things I do not own.
Characters: Helen Magnus
Summary: Helen Magnus prepares for war.
The Good Fight
Helen Magnus prepares for war.
She's early, and there's only so much she can do. She can't tell any politicians and she can't lay on stores of anything overtly perishable, but she's never been one to let mere practicalities stop her. No one expects The Keeper of Death to be entirely above board, so when she sees the opportunity to set up a black market a few years before she is going to need it, she takes it.
There are beings at the Sanctuary who will not get ration cards. Even the arrangement Helen has with the government will not cover all her creatures, because there are quite a few she didn't disclose to the Prime Minister. She didn't want them weaponized. And even though she knows now that that's exactly what the Germans did, she can't change it now. So instead she learns her way through the underworld again, and quietly accumulates favours from people she is going to need later on.
The war begins and the bombs fall from the sky. While those around her cower and despair, she stays strong and hopeful. She knows how this ends, after all. And she knows how long it's going to take to get there. She's patient and unwavering. Those around her start to take notice.
Helen spent this war on the front lines, the first time, ducking behind enemy lines on important missions and in conferences with Churchhill and Eisenhower. She made policy and strategized and contributed in a fairly major way to the eventual allied victory. But no one knows that they win, not yet. Instead, she huddles in the Underground with her court, as they call themselves, and changes the course of the fighting with a thousand small moves instead of big ones.
The black market works out better than she could have ever imagined. Apparently managing a multi-national corporation is good practice for that sort of thing, and the Keeper of Death is the perfect person to manage it. She has fingers in pies, sometimes literally, all across the Empire, and she is able to make sure that hunger doesn't turn to starvation.
She meets Kas one night during an air raid, almost three years before she thought she did. They've made it to the tunnels shortly after the sirens begin, and the court has set up where it usually does. Helen ducks away. They can manage well enough without her, and it adds to the mystique if she is unpredictable. She takes stock from the background, noticing more and more familiar faces. There shouldn't be this many children. They should have been evacuated. But even the most well-intentioned plans can miss those that need it. She knows that better than most.
Before Helen took to feeding everyone in the neighbourhood, or at least arranging for them to be fed, children Kas's age would stay above and pillage other people's tables, taking risk over empty stomachs. Now they mostly stay below, and Helen has learned their faces. It's not often there's a new face, though this one is not precisely new.
"Haven't seen you before," she says, her lowerclass accent comes as naturally as lying now. She's going to sound atrocious when she gets back to her modern timeline. At least she'll have some time to get herself back on track.
"Haven't been here before," Kas says. She hasn't said her name yet, Helen reminds herself. She must play by her own rules.
"New in town?" Helen says.
"No," Kas says. "Just new below."
"It's dangerous up there," Helen points out. Over the years, she has learned how to get people to tell her things she already knows. It's useful, though sometimes it's more useful to pretend she can see the future. She tries to avoid that as much as possible with children.
"I never get hit."
The light is pale, but Helen knows what she'd be seeing if the light were better. Kas's body is bent in all places it should be, bones broken and knit in ways they weren't meant to. It's her power, and her burden. Helen lays a hand on her arm, and calls to mind the x-rays she won't take for decades. The Keeper of Death speaks next.
"Your bones say otherwise, child." She's learned that turning it on and off is best. "You have hits written in your bones."
"That's not the same thing," Kas says, tearing her arm out of Helen's grip.
"Well, you're safe enough down here, in any case," Helen says. "Every night until the Germans stop."
"Not tomorrow night," Kas says. "Tomorrow night, it will rain."
Helen looks at her sharply. She knows the girl's power, of course, but she didn't expect her to admit to it so freely.
"Do you always know the weather?" she asks carefully.
"When I've had a break, yes," Kas says.
"Only when you've had a break?" She knows the answer to this one too, knows what the answer is nowin any case. She asks it because she knows what the answer will be in the future.
"Yes," Kas says.
"There's a man you should go and see," Helen says. She is positive that James recognized her when he sought out The Keeper of Death two decades before. This will do no harm. Plus, she doesn't remember ever learning how Kas knew to call on the Sanctuary anyway. "His name is James Watson. He's a doctor, amongst other things, and he is very interested in the weather."
"Will he break me?" Kas says. She doesn't sound scared, and Helen realizes that there was a lot about this woman she never learned, even though she became Head of House in New York after Wexford, and Helen makes it a practice to know as much as possible about those who get so much power.
"Nothing will break you, Kassandra," Helen says. Dark eyes widen when Helen says her name, but Helen doesn't regret telling her that. Nothing will break Kassandra.
Because nothing ever does.
The Germans decide that the Blitz is not doing its job properly and call a halt to nightly bombardments. There is not enough fear on the ground. They never guess the reason, never guess that the Keeper of Death whispered of safety and survival, and gave the people courage to hide and patience to wait. Helen Magnus fights the war abroad. The Keeper of Death fights at home.
The black market runs itself by now, fueled by rumour and reputation. Helen finds she is restless as the war goes on. Restlessness is the worst enemy now, because it leads her to temptation. There are still things she must avoid.
She joins the Women's Land Army under the name Nan Steventon, and sets about learning with the other girls. They look half her age and never guess the actual fraction, but they accept her because she works hard. It's backbreaking labour, and she knows it will be almost entirely forgotten after the war, but it eats away the years as Normandy draws closer.
The week before is the worst. It rains and rains and rains, and she considers running away, crossing the Channel somehow. Just to watch. To make sure. But there is no way into France now, even with her connections in the abnormal world. It would cost her too much to go, and so she stays back and frets.
She hates fretting.
She returns to the black market, this time focusing on what they will need to rebuild. Her court, who acted in her name when she was gone, take notice. Whispers spread. The war will be over soon, and they will win it. By the time the armistice is signed and the celebrations begin, she is already thinking about where she needs to be.
Leaving London for the first time was hard, but necessary. The second time is equal measures of both again, which shouldn't really surprise her. It is never easy to leave home, even when you already have. She gives herself until 1948. She has that much time to plant seeds, to lead those she knows will find it to the Sanctuary. Kas followed her instructions, and others follow her when they see the benefits of allying with the Doctors Magnus and Watson.
It makes sense now. Originally, James had theorized that the war had made abnormals nervous. Made them willing to accept the Sanctuary where before they had been loyal to their own groups. News had come from Germany and Italy, of course, horrible tales of what had been done to those abnormals that the Reich didn't see fit to use. It made sense that the English and French abnormals, not to mention the Polish ones, had been willing to take Helen's protection in face of that.
Except that's not what happened, or at least not all of it. The Keeper of Death sent them, with careful stories and planted whispers. She laid the path, and they followed it to her without knowing that the same person stood at the beginning as stood at the end.
Her work is unfinished. America calls, Old City calls, even though it's not called that yet because New City is still a dream. Helen understands what it is to be old when the new hasn't been done yet. England will be safe when she leaves it. She is needed somewhere else.
She doesn't plant rumours of her death before she goes. She's pretty sure no one would believe them anyway. Besides, The Keeper of Death is useful, moreso than she realized when she first let the rumours spread. She will be useful in the New World too, especially since Helen plans to stay as far from the bright lights as she did while she was in the UK.
The boat is cramped, but the ocean is safe. It takes less time to disappear this time than it had when she went to Scotland, half a century ago. She travels by train; she is in no hurry. She stops along the way in places she will learn later are abnormal centres. She lets rumour do the rest, knowing that she'll walk this path again, for the first time.
Her house has a view of the mountains and the ocean. At night, she can hear the bells of the Catholic church, and she knows that the good father is waiting for her, even though he doesn't know it. Old City is in her bones, and she will care for it in whatever way she can, preparing it for what is to come.
She is still worried about getting restless, though. So she buys oils and canvas, and teaches herself to paint.
finis
Note: Kas will probably make an appearance in my sfa_bigbang story. I just wanted to see what she was like. When she grows up and takes over the New York Sanctuary, she'll be played by Nichelle Nichols. She's about eight in this story.
Gravity_Not_Included, August 31, 2011