Her had was steady as ever as she aimed it at his head, Magnus after all was a Doctor and to have a shaky grasp even in the worst of times would have dire consequences. Another trait that served Helen Magnus well, was that she had lived for a very long time and when you live for more than a hundred years things just didn't affect her as they once would have. Over time she had built up what she had thought was an impenetrable resistance to whatever she may feel around John, the man who was Father to her child, a man she thought she knew as the love of her life.
"Stay exactly where you are...don't even think about teleporting..."
"Helen... I have no intent on escaping, I will answer for my actions."
"Don't try me, John."
"I'm quite serious, Helen. Something has changed if you let me I'd like to help." He advanced toward her.
"Stop talking..."
Now however she was on the verge of landing a bullet between his eyes, not something she was unaccustomed too, and flinching right now was strictly out of the question. How could she just believe that the darkness within him was an entity on it's own? That it had manifested in him since the day he obtained his power? What kind of lies was he filling her head with? She wasn't actually sure why she had revived him from the operating table but there he was.
"Helen when you revived me, I-I felt the change, I feel purged, purified..."
"It came from you." Helen had finally dropped her gun, placing it to rest behind her back. She spoke with her team over the old fashion intercom to see what they could do about the situation, knocking out the security cameras was the first step and then getting Henry to hack into the system to regain control of the building. Meanwhile she was stuck in a box with him.
"You said you feel different how?" She had the urge to put as much space between them as possible, she crossed the room.
"The darkness within me is gone, before, with Tesla that was appeasement but this, this is different, I feel peaceful"
"So you're telling me that all these years that thing has fed of your power and grew inside you? Making you into a monster? I want to believe you, John, but it's far to easy to blame everything you've done on something else." Helen took a few steps toward him, she couldn't deny that what she now saw in his eyes was different, even the way he carried himself, it seemed as if a massive weight had been hoisted from his shoulders.
"Yes. You're right. My mind is so clear, as it was when we first met, that thing was my rage. I'm sure of it."
Helen couldn't believe the words coming out of his mouth it sounded like lines from a fairytale, her fairytale. She'd spent so many years alone she had deliberately cut herself off from the closeness of others the loss was too hard on her, she couldn't stand watching the people she loved grow old and die. She threw her self into her work and being a good Mother but now even that was gone, she knew it would happen someday but her daughter had been taken from her far too soon. Now here John was her former Fiance telling her that he was no longer evil, that he no longer felt the urge to kill. She'd been having nightmares about him for years, no matter what Helen did John would never be gone from her mind, it would start of romantic, the way it used to be between them, great discussions of science or of literature, drinks late into the night chatting by the fire, and then before they could get intimate it would end with him finally taking his blade to her throat.
"Helen, Helen? You've not said a word in several minutes, where have you gone just now?"
She blinked out of the flood of memories and dreams, she only then realized he was holding her hand and had a look in his eyes of concern. She pulled back from him and bumped against the table behind her she looked at it and decided to take a seat.
"How do you do it? After all this time you are still the thing that makes my world go topsy-turvy in an instant, I never manage to keep my grip for very long when you decide to show. I don't know how much more of this I can take, I may have been the one who shot you John, but you are the one who's injured me more, that's the problem isn't it? You can't even comprehend for a moment the impact your actions have had on my life for all these decades? There isn't one excuse for any of it, but now this gives you exactly that, we'll I won't allow you a get out of jail free card, not any longer. All of this defies my logic, I've made built precise calculations as how to deal with you in my head and this doesn't fit my order, I have an iron clad grip on my sanity, no thanks to you. But you just keep trampsing in here at the blink of an eye mucking it all up, telling me somehow you are miraculously purged of all evil and you'll never kill again... I-I want to get off the ride now you damned bastard, it's making me sick." Helen hadn't realized she got up from the table, he was standing in front of her now, she'd pounded a fist to his chest, not that it had phased him any, but this time he had caught her arm and he was laughing his miserable eerie cackle at her.
"What do you expect me to say? You never believe me when I tell you that I'm sorry, for all the pain I have caused you, the pain I caused our Daughter, the countless lives I took, those women had families they all have suffered because of me as well. I regret it but none more so then what I have done to my own family. It's far to late to apologize don't you think? You forget Helen that you were the love of my life as well, it wasn't just you alone with those feelings my dear, I was a man once. It may have been decades ago but I've never stopped loving you. The fates had a different way for things to turn for us now you walk around with all that pain and anguish you try to bury so well, I can see through you. It's all because of me and it's not good for you Helen, you can't just go on hating me for the rest of our lives because neither of us know when it might all come to an end. Look what rage has done to me? It's made me a monster, now it's feeding upon you too Helen, it's only good for destroying our-your humanity. You are too much of a dignified woman to let this consume you any longer it must stop, you need to find a way to make peace with all of this, with me, with the past so it cannot hold you captive as it's prisoner any longer."
For the first time in a long time Helen Magnus didn't have anything to say, there was no response that she could pull out of the top of her head that would make any sense, why deny what he was saying when she knew it was all true? Sometimes she forgot how long they had been playing this game together, and just how much he knew about about her, that he could see straight through her strong front she worked desperately to keep up with each trying moment of her life, and there were many. She backed away from him and took a seat on top of the table before she could blink he was sitting there at her side she wasn't sure what exactly possessed her but in a moment of weakness she reached out and touched his hand.
She was damn tired of being the strong one of being the leader of playing things like nothing ever bothered her and that her emotions were corked inside, the problem was the bottle was under sever pressure that was bound to pop. She didn't dare look in his eyes she was afraid of what she would see when she did, she'd been accustom to seeing the cold eyes of a monster, a killer. The man she loved died the day he injected himself with the source blood and that was a very long time ago. "I've never really let go of the hope that things could have been different, that's the major flaw in my thinking, different for us and that Ashley...was here, I'll never forgive myself for her death."
Druitt took a seat next to her on the table. "Come now Helen Do you really think holding on to all of that is healthy? Beating yourself up over things you had no control over, it's not rational, I'd always believed that you were the rational one of the bunch." They both managed to laugh, Magnus picked up his arm and put it around her then slipped her arms around his waist. "It's time to move on my dear, it's killing you." Druitt let out a breath he didn't know he'd been holding he yearned for this moment to happen, just to have her in his arms again if only for a few seconds before she came to her senses and threw him off the table to kiss nothing more than the concrete of the chamber floor.
"It's hard to just move on John, you keep showing up in my life, with the shroud of danger surrounding you, you've never really left we just lost what we once had. For the record John, I've only ever truly loved few of people, over the hundred and near sixty years of my life, I can count them on a hand, you must know this. I can't discount the time we spent even knowing what you are. You are a killer, it's in your nature I understand the scope of things. Even still it was your child I chose to have, not James.
Most people think I'm out to lunch for that but I could not let go of the life we were supposed to have, the lonesomeness was crushing. Now you sit at my side and tell me you've been purified of an evil entity and you are as you were before, the man I loved. However, you are right I cannot go on any longer pretending like none of this has had an effect on my life. But if I didn't play cold as stone I wouldn't know how else to manage. Even telling you to leave and never come back, taking every precaution so that you don't interfere in my life, here you are if not one thing but another, as a Doctor I took an oath to do no harm, so I could never leave you to just die without trying my damnedest to get you back, no matter what you or anyone has done, if I can save someone, I will. There's always another fresh hell around the corner and no matter how hard I push, and push, I just can't push you away. I think we've needed to have this conversation for a long time but neither of us were ready for it and these are certainly not the circumstances under which I wanted us to speak, but if I am really talking to my John and not the monster then I trust you. As you've said we can't undo anything that's happened, but how do we deal with what's to come? We don't know how long this is going to last."
"I cannot answer that for you Helen, I gave up any right to be in your life or within in a foot of your person, yet you let me in, I can't help but pursue you Helen, you're all I've got. I'd like nothing more than to be with you until the end of our time, but that's not realistic. What's real however is my love for you and we've already made all our decisions, accepted the repercussions, evaluated all the explanations but I think it's time to just lay it out to pasture. I suppose we're business partners at the very least." He laughed. "As for James, I would have never wanted you to go it alone especially not after all I did. If I had the ability to feel, to just understand what I had done, maybe...but we can't live on maybe. If any other man than me, then it would be my once best friend, he was trust worthy, honest, qualities I just could never possess. My dear sweet Helen, you've done more than alright and you'll stay that way, there's no reason for things to come tumbling down now after so very long."
"I lost her John that's that problem, she made me realize what it was I was living for, that life was worth all the years of pain. Ashley got me through so much, needing to take care of her and give her direction, it took away from me. Now she's gone and I suppose I've just shut down."
"You have to live for yourself now my love, not I nor anyone else can do that for you. Give yourself the credit which everyone else showers you with, indulge in it, in the person you are and the legacy you've left independently, it's not something to over look. You don't always have to be strong, besides you do that naturally."
Magnus was quietly weeping into his shirt, for, just a moment before when she looked up she saw that flicker in his eyes, along with the words that touched his lips, there he was sitting with her, the man she loved with all her heart, only it was not a dream. She tightened her grip on his shirt because she knew he could slip away at any moment. "Oh John..." she sniffed, he made her so bloody weak
and she wanted to do something she would no doubt regret. She wasn't sure when he started rocking her in his arms but it made her cry just a little more. She held in far too much. He had always made her cry, the thought made her rethink letting him get this close. She did her best to wiggle out of his arms.
"T-This needs to stop John, I can't keep going round with you, it's just too much."
"I don't see anything wrong with a little comfort between old friends."
Magnus wiped her eyes and started to slip off the table they had been sitting on, she shook her head. "We've not been friends for a very long time, we're not going to start again now. I don't know why my brain melts when I'm round you but after we get out of here I want you gone, I can't keep doing this to myself. You lure me in like a helpless fawn, then when I think everything is fine, you go and kill someone else, and a piece of me goes with them. I've simply had enough."