In her memory, she wakes moments before two resounding chimes from the grandfather clock, none too far away. She has half-cried herself to sleep, and wakes from nightmares only to find that she is within another dream - a dream that is almost real, but a dream nonetheless.
At least, she has written it off as such; now, in her father's Sanctuary again, she realizes that the artificially of the scene was invented in her own mind. Almost as soon as she has decided, it is too late to turn back; she jerks awake with a choked noise that is half sob, half gasp, enveloped in her own arms. Her heart pounds with the fear that she will fight her way to a light, despite that she knows in the recesses of her mind that she won't.
"Shh," will not convince her. "You're safe," half-whisper, is breathed into her own hair. The memory is too far gone, too shrouded in sleep, to script the interaction, so she swallows, gently squeezing the younger Helen's forearm and forcing herself to breathe slowly, evenly, deeply, against her own back.
"Who - "
"No," she cuts herself off, as if it's an appropriate answer. The younger woman stops, and remains in shocked silence for a moment before sniffling in the wake of her nightmares. Helen comforts herself in the way she might comfort Ashley: eases her thumb back and forth across her skin, strokes her hair carefully in the blinding darkness of an era long gone. "He won't hurt you again. Not any time soon."
She does not need to specify that it's John she means; the woman in her arms already knows, and she releases another quiet sob to prove she does. "He nearly killed me today." She's almost forgotten the mystery of her companion.
"I know," she murmurs quickly, squeezing the forearm again, a little more firmly this time. "It's over."
"But not forever." She's naive, not stupid.
"No. Not forever."
Despite that she cannot speak in absolutes, and despite that she's shaking again, she recalls the sense of relief that wells up within her simply because someone knows.
Helen is cautious when the blonde begins to shift, but in a moment they are facing each other in the dark room. As the younger Helen draws nearer, present Helen pushes her right arm beneath her other body, drawing her into a fierce embrace.
Relief and residual terror combined have her sobbing into her own bosom, and in an instant, she has invented the idea that her mother has come to comfort her in a dream.