Title : Listen to her heart
Author : DiBee
Summary : After Haunted, Ashley is brought back to the Sanctuary, injured, but alive. Henry is the first to visit the sleeping young woman, soon joined by Helen. When he gets out, she is soon surprised by one visitor she hadn't expected. Family for Ashley/Henry/Helen, and Helen/John Romance. Translation from : Ecoute son coeur.
Rating : K+
Spoiler : slight for Haunted, but otherwise for the first episode of season 2
Disclaimer : Nothing is mine, I only write for fun.
Author Note : This is technically a translation from a french fic of mine, though I merely translated along as I wrote. I am one of the numerous fans in denial of Ashley's death, and this is what I wish could be, even though I'm well aware it wouldn't be in the tone of the series at all. But fangirls can dream, can't they? =) English is not my first language, and this is by far not the best I've done, especially considering phrasing and such, but I couldn't find a way to rewrite it without losing the spirit of my first idea.
Ashley had been retrieved. As to now, it had been unhoped for, it seemed way too good to be true. And yet...
Wired to more medical stuff than the young werewolf could count, she seemed way too fragile, yet the steady beat of her heart, echoed by one of the monitors, told him that she was there, and alive, for good.
The young man felt someone approach behind him, and didn't need to turn around to recognize the steps he heard. As she came closer, Helen Magnus put a hand on his shoulder, both as a reminder she was there in that new hardship their family would have to go through, and that it definitely wasn't a dream
He turned around to face her, and was shocked at the storm of emotions he could read in her eyes, threatening to ravage her at any time.
He only had time to put her in an embrace, she, who had always been a mother figure for him, before feeling, more than hearing, her silent sobs. He had never seen her expressing so much of a distress in his presence ever before. No matter how much she trusted someone, she would nearly always remain the strong-willed woman, whose face never fell.
However, that day, she was simply the mother fearing for the child she thought she had lost for good. A g that Henry, who treated Ashley as a sister, could well comprehend.
After a few minutes, he felt the sobbing slow and stop, and averted his eyes from hers as she pulled back, not willing to see her tears. He then quickly retreated back to the door, as he was reminded by the speakerphone his help was needed with the basement's electrical wiring. Nearly just another day at the Sanctuary.
Once left alone, Magnus couldn't avert her eyes from her daughter's face, her ears focusing on the beeping of the monitors. She couldn't but wonder how she had put through all of what had happened to her, and return home.
She sighed as she thought she had felt a presence in her back, smelling a perfume she knew all too well, which haunted her ever more regularly ever since the disappearance of its owner.
She jumped as she felt a hand brushing past her hip, then arms around her waist, but didn't pull back, letting her head rest against him, a single tear of relief trailing down her cheek despite her attempt to stop it.
As her former lover breathed her name against the skin of her neck, she was sure without having to face him that he was back, not as the well-too-known killer, but the man she had fallen in love with more than a century earlier. She let out a sigh of relief as she turned her head, making an attempt at facing him without wanting to break free of his embrace.
« You came back » she stated, her voice catching in her throat as her eyes met his, full of a promise she hadn't seen there for far too long.
He only smiled back at her, slowly closing in on the distance between their two faces, giving her time to stop him if she wanted to. But she didn't, and he could feel her smile against his lips as he kissed her, the surrounding silence only slightly disturbed by the echo of their daugther's regular heartbeat. It had been so long, an eternity. But he had promised, and she could still hear his words in her mind. Today, he was there, for her, for them both.
Too focused on the newly rediscovered feeling of their kiss, they didn't notice their daugther's eyes fluttering open, a smile cracking her lips. That, she hadn't expected. It took them a few more seconds to hear the difference in the rhythm of her heartbeats, while she simply watched them, reunited. When they finally broke the kiss and spotted her awakening, mother and daughter shared a look, that meant far more than all words they could have spoken, had the young woman been able to speak yet. It would take time. But, as the scene before her eyes had just proven her, time was a great healer.
