A/N: A friend of mine (smackalicious) is writing tags to all the new NCIS episodes this season, so I've decided to write for all the Sanctuary episodes :D

Healing Isolation

It is only ten o'clock in the morning, but already she is waiting for him, glancing out the window every five minutes and then chastising herself for being so dependent.

But he is the only human being she will talk to for the next seven years, and it has been seven years since she last talked to him. She needs the contact. Watching the families that farm near where she's been staying is enough for about three years, then she begins to need more but she refuses to let herself make contact with the outside world – not for thirty-some more years, when her own time comes, because only then will it be safe for her to have an effect on the future.

Ten-fifteen, and she is already three-quarters of the way done with her tea and has paced up and down her small living room so many times she's dizzy. She so looks forward to these days, because he will spend the whole day with her, even though they know that these small deviations from his expected timeline may alter something significant. But she keeps vigilant count of the days, and if something important happened on a day he is supposed to come to her, she finds a way to let him know. This has only happened once, and it was almost painful for her to push his visiting date off because it is something so important to her.

It is 1980, and Ashley will be born in five years, in America. She plans to go, to move, to be there to watch her daughter grow up again – it will be difficult, but after so many long years of being alone, she is going to go find her new family, even if she can't interact with them. She'll watch everything she did with Ashley, when she found Henry, when Will's mother died – all of them, the important moments in their lives, she is going to watch. It will help her survive seclusion.

Ten-thirty-three, and a knock comes at the door – he is earlier than usual, and she does not know if this is good or bad. Hurrying to answer, she still peeks through the peephole, even though he is the only one who would ever be able to find the place she stays. A grins spreads across her face as she throws open the door and they hug.

"James!" She rests her head on his shoulder, breathing in the warm smell that just signifies another human present in her own sphere of reality. He rests his chin on top of her head and she can feel him smile.

"Good morning, Helen," he tells her, his deep voice soothing her frayed nerves after the solitary confinement she has recently found so hard to endure. She breaks the embrace and steps back, his hands still resting on her shoulders and hers placed on his elbows. They smile at one another, cataloguing the differences from the last time they met. Helen knows she looks no different – she keeps her hair the length it was when she went back, and she has not changed the color in just as long, preferring the dark brown to her natural blonde.

But James. Her heart sinks as she sees how much he's aged, even with the machine he wears to slow down the process. He may not look much reduced to others, but she knows him so well, has lived through this once before, and she can tell that he is sliding faster towards the end she knows is coming.

Attempting to put thoughts like that out of her head, she pulls him inside and they sit down at her small kitchen table, her cup of tea newly refilled and a new one steeping for him. He doesn't need an invitation but starts immediately into telling her what has been going on in the outside world, trying to satisfy her curiosity with whatever he can give her.

1980, she marvels, almost unable to comprehend that she has lived this twice. Eighty-two years of seclusion have passed, and she has not given up yet. Some days and weeks and months she feels the darkness of her loneliness will never end, but she will be okay – James is here now, and in five years she can go watch her beloved daughter grow up, and life will turn out all right in the end.

~0~0~0~0~0~0~0~0~0~0~0~

She cannot believe how difficult it is to keep herself from interfering. But Will is only eight years old, and already she thinks of him as hers, and she cannot stop what is about to happen without irrevocably affecting the future she knows.

A rustling in the trees across from her startles her, and she watches her own past self break through the treeline and hurry towards the young boy and his mother. Tears stream down her face as she remembers what this incident will do to that little boy – but this is one of those incidents that turns him into her Will, the man who knows so much of her work.

~0~0~0~0~0~0~0~0~0~0~0~

Today is the day. She has spent it crying, and she refuses to leave her safe haven for any reason today.

Ashley dies today. Her thoughts have been consumed, and it has been nearly impossible for her not to go and try to find a way to affect the past, the future, anything – just to keep her daughter alive.

She is scared. This is the least in control she has felt in her entire seclusion – her whole being hums with the need to go save her daughter.

James is gone, too. The day he died, she roamed the forest where she hides, unable to sleep. He kept visiting, every seven years, just as he had for so long. But he is gone now, and in two years she will be able to return to human civilization – and she does not know exactly how that is going to work.

The desire to return to working – to fulfilling human relationships with others – is often an all-consuming fire that drives her ability to stay in seclusion for so long. But other times, that fire quickly fades, and she questions the sanity of waiting this long to return to her own time. Is it even her own time anymore? She isn't sure.

All she is sure of is that today Ashley dies, and today waiting does not seem worth it.

~0~0~0~0~0~0~0~0~0~0~0~

She only has two more weeks of seclusion. Two more weeks until she can go back to the Sanctuary, reunite with Will and Kate and Henry and Bigfoot, and John and Nikola if they're lucky, and all she can think about is how difficult it's going to be to talk to someone after so long alone.

This is a complication they did not foresee. After finally resolving herself to the loneliness of the past 113 years, she became somewhat accustomed to being totally alone. Being with the others, who all know her at different levels of intimacy, will be a relief but also a trial.

It is not a difficult decision for her to make – she is going back no matter what happens – she is just worried about the reaction and adaptation that will be necessary for her to become part of her own life again.

But watching her colleagues – friends – for the past long years has taught her much. They are a close-knit family, and she made the right choice, no matter how hard waiting has been.

And she is ready to go back.