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, Hazy Shade of Winter, The Good Fight, Paint It Black and Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town. Time Travel! Who knew?
Spoilers: Into the Black
Rating: Teen
Disclaimer: Among the things I do not own.
Characters: Helen Magnus
Summary: She only has seven more days.
The Last Week
She only has seven more days.
She's made sure the the warehouse compound she had purchased three years before under a fake name is put up for sale for Will to find. She offloads the last of her paintings to a gallery on the other side of the continent, uncaring as to whether or not they sell. She takes time storing her art supplies. She's become rather fond of the hobby, and assuming she's still around next week, she might continue to paint once everything settles back down. But for now, she has other things to think about.
She has spent more than a hundred years being a different Helen Magnus, always taking extreme care to never overlap with herself, to never be similar enough to the woman she was to raise any suspicions. Starting next week, she'll be free to be herself again. She's just not sure she remembers how.
When she can't stand the suspense, she drives her white car past the Sanctuary one last time. As far as she can tell, everything is proceeding as it should. Her team has gone through trials, challenges she knew they would face and had not warned them about, and they are as ready as they had been the first time she watched them do this. Only she is different, and she will not become involved until the very last moment.
She had waited patiently for Will Zimmerman to grow up again. She could not interfere too much in his life because she had interfered so hugely the first time. She has to avoid both him and herself whenever she wants to check up on him, so she doesn't check that often. She does keep track of his progress, though, watching from a slightly different angle this time, and she has to admit that her instincts in selecting him had been good. He's so green that sometimes she can't help laughing at what he's done, but his brilliance is a force to be reckoned with, and every time one of her contacts brings her news of him, she smiles.
She does what she can for Henry, setting up safe havens for young abnormals who wanted to explore their new abilities without submitting to the Sanctuary for study. She wishes she could do more. Wishes that she could sit him down and tell him, as she didn't before, that an abnormality is not the end of the world, not the end of being human. She has embraced her abnormal side for more than hundred years now, and she feels all the more human for living true to herself. She can't do that, of course, but she does resolve to thank him when she gets back. He gave her more courage than he probably knew he was capable of.
She had watched from the shadows on Dead Bridge when Kate stood down her old acquaintance. Kate had never needed Helen's help to get out of these types of situations, and this one was no different, but watching over her makes Helen feel better. She couldn't watch over most of the others the way she could watch Kate. She'd been too close to Ashley, Henry and Will the first time they grew up to spend a lot of time with them on her second pass. But even though Kate needs her the least, she thinks it's time well spent. Helen understands her better now, understands that Kate has felt herself to be an abnormal, if only in name, since she was a teenager. They will have a lot to talk about, assuming that Adam Worth doesn't break the world apart before Helen can sit down.
She's been tempted, so very, very tempted, to go to Hollow Earth and kill Adam (again), but she doesn't. It costs her Ranna and her father, but she didn't make exceptions for Ashley or Amelia or anyone else she loved, so she holds firm. Still, in the dragging moments of the last week, she starts to second guess herself, doubts closing in on what had been so absolute a purpose a few decades ago.
Maybe she should have taken the chance, the opportunity, to change things. Maybe John wasn't completely wrong. Maybe his motivation to be with her and free of the monster that ruined his life was not so abhorrent as she'd thought. Maybe she should have tried to make things right.
Of course, that's what she'd done the first time, letting Nikola press the needle into her arm. She'd been making things the way she wanted them to be. If she did that again, there was no way to tell if the world would turn out any better. If some other soul, someone who lacked John's conviction and bizarrely twisted loyalty, were made to suffer in his place, perhaps it would be worse. There is no way to tell. And in the dying moments of her second life, she knows that if she could go back again - and she already knows she, the other Helen, will - she wouldn't do anything differently.
The night before Adam cracks the world, Helen doesn't sleep. She takes the leather coat, a replacement since the original did not survive, and dresses in a carefully copied outfit to pace away the last hours. The apartment is completely empty now, except for the small table where her iPhone sits plugged into the wall, charging after a century of non-use. She's sure that Henry will have words with her about the man she'd gone to to get it working after all this time, but she really only needs it until she can get home and get a new one.
Home. Just thinking the word sends a shiver down her spine. She's been on the outside for so long now, and while she hasn't hated it, has actually come to rather enjoy it, soon she will be back in the house she built, with her people around her, and even though Adam might be destroying the world, it will be hers again, and not something she merely observes. The Keeper of Death has come to the end of her time. Athene has played her part, and so has Persephone. Helen isn't exactly sure who comes next, but she knows it's nearly time to find out.
On the seventh day, the day that Hollow Earth abnormals invade, Helen Magnus walks through the front door of her Sanctuary like no time has passed at all, and saves the world
finis
Gravity_Not_Included, September 26, 2011