AN: This is the third installment of the quasi-series that began with Unto Every End andWhispers on the Edge of Dark. You don't have to read them first, but it might help.
Thanks to oparu and colej55 who helped me get this thing done.
Spoilers: Up to "For King and Country", I suppose, but only for The Five.
Disclaimer: If they were mine, they'd probably spend more time in period costume. Or, you know, out of it. ;)
Rating: Teen
Characters/Pairing: James Watson, Helen Magnus, mentions of the Five.
Summary: The house does not rest on the ground, but upon a woman.
The Foundation of the House
"Damn it!" Helen set the uncooperative slide down on the bench with more force than was really necessary.
"Helen?" James said, his voice deliberately calm as he turned to face her. He replaced the fire poker next to the shovel and broom in their iron cage beside the mantle piece with the same deliberate care and, for just a moment, she wanted to strangle him.
"Another failure," Helen said. She rather wished she could smash the offending slide, or at least throw it into the refuse container and send it off with the charman in the morning. But funds were tight at the moment and, for all a slide was cheap, it was also easily cleaned and reused.
"Have you tried," James began, moving to join her at the bench. His voice trailed off at her expression, and he settled for taking her hands as though he feared damage to the microscope.
"I've tried everything," Helen said, defeated. "Perhaps if my father were here…"
But Gregory was gone. More than gone, he was disappeared. For six months they'd heard from him regularly as he made his way across Europe and into Asia Minor. After he left Constantinople, communications had been infrequent, but it was not until Gregory departed Jerusalem that they had ceased altogether.
Mecca, Gregory's intended destination, was completely forbidden to Europeans, but he had been determined to go. There were rumours of an abnormal there unlike anything ever seen in Europe, and Gregory had never been the sort of man who could avoid that kind of temptation, so he had gone and left the fledging Sanctuary in Helen's care.
James had not been directly witness to the arguments that surrounded Gregory's planning for the expedition or his departure, but he knew Helen well enough to have some idea as to the words that had passed between the father and daughter when Zeus announced he was leaving his Athena home to tend the farm. They had seemed amiable enough by the time Gregory actually went, but Helen was still annoyed at being left out.
As 1892 dragged on, Helen's annoyance turned to irritability, particularly when a letter describing some foreign wonder arrived. Once Gregory's letters stopped arriving at all, she became quiet, and that was far worse. She took to spending all hours in the lab, compulsively working to improve her knowledge of the abnormals her father had left in her – their – care. Neither James nor Helen ever dared voice that her governance might have become permanent, but as the spring of 1893 began to break through the London snow, it was a thought neither of them could avoid any longer.
Helen slumped against the bench and pulled her hands away from his. He had never seen her like this before, not even after…after John, he forced the thought out, unwilling to belittle his own anger by calling him The Ripper. At the time, Helen had been on fire with rage and then colder than he had ever known another human to be. This was different, though, and he had no idea what to do about it.
"He might still come back," Helen said quietly, sounding younger than she had in half a decade, yet somehow older at the same time.
"Helen, I promised you once that I would help you," James reminded her. "But you have to let me. Let me move my practice here permanently, and join the household."
"We should be the scandal of the neighbourhood," Helen said, a faint fire brewing behind her eyes again.
"I imagine we already are," James replied easily. Anything was better than her silence. "But I am not joking, Helen. I promised we would do this together, and I meant it."
"One of us should make money," Helen protested weakly. "I invest, but I'm beginning to think that I shall need to plan very long term."
Her hand rose to her cheek unconsciously as she spoke. Helen was not a vain woman, and James was not inclined to waste his powers of perception on so petty a thing as appearance, unless he was working a case of course, but Helen had not aged a day since 1886, and it was becoming impossible to miss.
"My patients will still come, even here," James said. "And I can still consult with the Yard. I won't beggar you."
"Very well," Helen acquiesced. "I am glad to have you here, James. It's been lonely since…well, it's been lonely."
"I know, my dear," he replied. He offered his arm and she took it, sparing only the slightest glance at her failed experiment as she let him lead her out of the lab and into the sitting room.
It had been redecorated, but no amount of carpet, wallpaper and new furniture could conceal from James that this was the room in which his life had seen its most profound change. He glanced at Helen, judging by her face whether or not the room held too many memories for her to face this evening, but she remained expressionless. He knew it wasn't real, but he could almost imagine Nikola reclining on the carpet in front of the fire like some kind elegant savage, while John sat as close to Helen as propriety allowed and Nigel wandered about the room like a horse in too small a paddock. If Helen saw the same things, she gave no indication, but allowed James to hand her into the chair and then turned to face him as he sat down.
"It began with Mary Kelly," she said without preamble.
He had been planning to ring down for tea, but decided that some privacy was in better order. "Her murder?" he said.
"No, not that. Her murder began something entirely different," Helen said, her eyes suddenly full of memory. James knew she was far away, and gave her a moment to return to herself. "I was speaking of her money."
"Her money?" James said, puzzled. "How could she possibly have money?"
"She was quite clever," Helen said, smiling a bit sadly. "I rather liked her."
"I had not realized you were such close acquaintances," James said, genuinely surprised. The night that Helen deduced the identity of Jack the Ripper, she had told him of her associations with Mary Kelly, but had not spoken of the poor woman since.
"I did not tell you the entire story that night," Helen said admitted.
"You told me that Mary came to you for help, and that you offered it in return for her continuing to monitor Whitechapel," James reminded her. "And that she had seen John."
"Not his face." Helen barely winced at the name. "But it turned out that he had seen her. He must have followed her home the last night I spoke with her. For all I know, he watched us while we talked."
James clenched his fists in his lap as anger and remorse ran through him like a herd of wild horses. Were they always to be so haunted?
"She came to me for aid, that part was true, but she wasn't afraid of the Ripper, not really," Helen said. "She was an abnormal, James. She looked completely human, but when she touched a man, she could read his thoughts."
"That's how she knew what John was," James said, mostly thinking aloud. "Even though she didn't see him."
"Yes," Helen said sadly. "But when we met, she was looking for a place to hide the money she had acquired over the years utilizing her abnormal talents."
"And you offered to serve as her bank?" James surmised.
"With a few conditions, yes," Helen said. "I insisted she stop stealing, for one, and I told her my fee would be any profit made off of investment."
"Helen that's practically piracy!" James laughed in spite of himself. He reached into the box on the table between them and extracted the pipe he had taken to keeping there. "Do you mind?"
"Please," Helen waved a hand carelessly, and he set about stuffing the pipe. "When she died, she left me everything. I haven't used any of it yet, though. I wasn't sure how exactly to explain it to Father."
"I should think he would be impressed with your ingenuity," James said, quite sincerely as he was rather impressed himself. A woman of means might generate income based on prudent investment, but Helen had rather outdone herself. "Are there others you serve in a similar capacity?"
"No," Helen replied, passing him the matches. "But Mary did introduce me to a good many other human looking abnormals. I love my father, but he tends to be shortsighted when it comes to understanding that an abnormal might be just as good at this job as we are ourselves."
James couldn't help but notice Helen's use of the present tense when discussing Gregory, but let it pass without comment.
"Do you think this house is large enough to serve as Sanctuary?" James asked.
"We had planned to set up a number of houses, if possible," Helen said. "And there are already a few cotholds set up in remote areas of Scotland."
"I did wonder why Gregory spent so much time up there," James said. Despite the general feeling in London that anywhere north of Pitlochry was beyond the edge of civilization, James suspected that it would be more or less perfect for an operation such as the one he and Helen were about to undertake.
Helen slumped back in her chair in a way James would have thought impossible given that she was wearing a corset. She shifted a bit, which he took to mean her stays were digging into her sides, but apparently it did not cause enough discomfort for her to straighten. He reached out with the hand that was not holding his pipe and she clasped his hand in hers. He folded his fingers around her wrist and looked into her eyes.
She was tired, the weariness of long sadness, and still frustrated from her failed experiment, but there was more hope in her countenance than there had been when he'd arrived for dinner.
"I can be moved in by the week's end," he said. "And set up in my own lab soon enough, if you wish to have different working areas."
"I can't see much point in that," Helen replied. "We'd only spend all our time walking back and forth between the two. But your rooms will include a study for when you need to escape me."
"Thank heaven for that," James said, returning her smile.
"I think the first task you'll want to do is a proper inventory," Helen said. "I know where my own things are, but I haven't made many inroads of father's supplies. They'll probably be of more interest to you in any case."
"Not to mention it will familiarize me with the sublevels of the building," James said.
"There is that," Helen stared into the fire, and as James watched, her weariness all seemed to settle on her at once.
"In that case, I should probably retire for the evening," James said gallantly. "I've a good deal of packing to do if you expect your inventory in a timely fashion."
"I'd appreciate it," Helen replied. He knew she was glad to have the excuse to go to bed.
"I shall see you tomorrow, then." James rose and knocked the pipe's contents into the fire. Helen followed him out of the room, like any good hostess even though it was probably the last night he would need to be shown the door.
James's hat and coat were set out for him near the door. Long practice had made Helen's household staff somewhat nonchalant with regard to his comings and goings, particularly those that wished a full night's sleep rather than to be kept waiting up in case he needed help into his coat after a long evening of talk. He hoped none of them would mind his moving in on a permanent basis, even though they would face the ramifications of scandal as well.
"Good night, Helen," he said, his hand on the brim of his hat.
"Good night, James," she replied.
Once she was alone, Helen made her way upstairs to her rooms. She lingered in the doorway of her father's sitting room, looking at his books and maps with a sad fondness. Had she married John, Gregory would have given up these rooms for the newlyweds and retired to one of his country houses, coming back to London only for consultations. Even though he had all but given her the rooms five years ago, Helen was reluctant to take them now, and even more reluctant to give them to James. Fortunately, there was plenty of space, so no decision would have to be made in any haste.
Helen sighed, twisting her hands around a ring she no longer wore – hadn't worn in nearly half a decade – and closed the door on her father's room.
"I miss you," she whispered, before heading off down the corridor.
She was not entirely sure to whom she spoke.
James worked by candlelight in one of the small storerooms under the Sanctuary proper. There were gaslights available of course, if he'd wanted to turn them on, and Nikola had left space for electric wiring, but had been so busy with his projects in Chicago over the last few years, not to mention getting a few more up against Edison, that nothing had been installed yet. In any case, James found the flickering light cast by the candle soothing, and soothing was in short supply at the moment.
James's relocation to the Sanctuary had gone about as well as could be expected. Eyebrows had been raised, but James's patients respected him enough not to say anything to his face. He arranged his new practice in a room near the kitchens, ostensibly to keep out of the way of Helen's housekeeping staff. In truth, he chose the location because it was close to one of the side entrances to the house, and the most likely to be out of the way should one of Helen's creatures get loose while he was seeing to a patient.
His Fellows at Oxford were somewhat less understanding. They all knew Helen, from when they'd been at Oxford together, and the older ones had all known Gregory. James, normally civil to the point of disinterest, was not sure he'd be able to control his temper if even one more well-meaning colleague took him aside and gave him a thinly veiled warning about his associations. He had made his choice years ago, even if no one but Helen and John had known it, and he was not about to turn back now.
Which explained, of course, why he was in the basement of the house making a tally of test tubes, something he would have shunned even as an undergraduate. He had no appointments this afternoon, and Helen's mood had not improved since the day they had decided he ought to move in. Her experiments continued to fail, and James knew that if she did not make a breakthrough in the next few days, they would be forced to terminate the abnormal she was working so desperately to save.
Terminations were rare at the Sanctuary. More often than not, Helen would simply ship the more ostentatious of the creatures she housed off to Scotland or Cornwall, where trusted friends of hers, or her father, kept them out of the sight of the general populace. Every now and then, however, there would be a creature that she could neither conceal nor render harmless and, on the rare occasion that happened, she was forced to choose between the people of London, who scorned her very presence, and the creatures she loved. He knew she viewed each death as a betrayal of the world she had chosen to inhabit.
James was not entirely comfortable with it either, if he was being honest. He had sworn an oath, after all, and his was official in ways that Helen's was not, at least in the eyes of other medical practitioners. At least the creature Helen was working on was not sentient, which was a small mercy, though one Helen was not entirely embracing as a means of solace. It was not the creature's fault, after all, that it couldn't control the strange odours it emitted, which turned all within its range to a state of slothful madness. Helen saw only its wide, bright eyes and the shifting colours of its skin, and mourned the fact that they didn't even know what type of creature it was.
And of course, any failure reminded her of John.
So James was hiding in the basement, because he had tried everything he could think of already, and if he did try to work with Helen, she would only read his defeat in his actions and give up herself. At least separated this way, there was the chance that her frustration would turn to brilliance, as had been known to happen, and he would then make himself available to supplement her work, as had ever been the case with them. Until then, it was the inventory and the flickering candles and the ghosts of old memories at every turn.
A strange crate in the very back of the room caught his eye, and he abandoned the glassware to investigate more closely. It made a very faint sound, he realized as he walked towards it, which meant it was electrical. Something that Nikola had built before leaving for America. James suppressed a flare of annoyance. Apparently, the inventor had time to create things to be hidden away in the basement, but not to finish the wiring.
James laid his hands on the polished wood and absently ran a finger over one of the brass knobs. The whole thing vibrated ever so slightly, another indication of the current coursing through it, and it seemed to be emitting heat. James looked at what appeared to be a temperature gauge and realized that the interior of this strange wooden box was very, very cold. Cold enough to freeze human tissue to stone.
He thought for a moment about opening it. He wasn't worried that he would accidentally thaw whatever was inside. Tesla would have built in redundancies, and anyway there was no point in freezing something if it failed when its container was opened. He turned the box slightly on the shelf, looking for the latch, and was confronted with another mystery: it was sealed with one of Nigel's puzzles boxes.
A simple trick, but one James had no doubt let itself to safe cracking as well, Nigel's puzzle boxes had often been a pleasant distraction to all of them if an experiment was going poorly back when they'd been at Oxford. Typically, they were made of wood and could hold one small treasure. The locking mechanism was controlled by letters of the alphabet, and if a person set the letters to the correct word, the box would open. On occasion, an incorrect word would shatter a vial of some chemical, to the ruination of whatever lay inside, but more often, they functioned as a combination lock.
This particular one was six letters long, and there did not appear to be any accompanying clues to provide aid for its decipherment. James wondered what on earth Tesla could be storing, and why Nigel would be helping him, and resolved to bring it up with Helen at dinner.
That train of thought reminded him that it had been a while since he checked the time
and, when he withdrew his pocket watch, he saw that it was indeed time to go back upstairs and meet Helen for their evening meal. Eventually, when they acquired more staff, he knew Helen hoped that dinner would serve as a final report for the day's activities, but as of now, it was just the two of them and their talk was a shade more informal. Still, it wouldn't do for him to be late.
He wasn't aware of how dusty he'd got while he was in the basement until he was back under the glow of the gaslights upstairs. He diverted to his rooms to change, but still managed to arrive in the dining room as Helen was settling into her chair. He could tell immediately that she still had not been successful, so he said nothing as the table was laid. Once the housekeeper had retreated to the safety of the kitchen, he began what he thought was an utterly harmless line of conversation instead.
"You will never believe what I found in the basement this afternoon," he said. "In one of the little rooms off the side."
Helen straightened sharply, her fingers tightening around her fork and knife in a way that unmistakably conveyed surprised discomfort, but when she spoke, her voice was calm.
"I wasn't aware you had proceeded that far," she said. "I had thought would you be in the main rooms for at least a week."
"I am making good progress," James said. He wondered why his being in the side rooms would upset her. "Gregory left things quite well organized, once I realized what his system was, so there hasn't been a great deal of hunting or seeking on my part, just careful notation."
"Father did enjoy organization," Helen said, relaxing her face every so slightly, though her body remained tense.
"In any case," James pressed on, anxious to turn the conversation away from Gregory as quickly as possible. He made his voice as light as possible, sure that he was about to share some joke with her she might find amusing. "I found something that Nikola must have made with Nigel and hidden away in your house. Did you know it was there, or did they just leave it here one evening?"
"Did you touch it?" Helen demanded, all of the sharpness back in voice and bearing. James flinched at her sudden vehemence. "James, did you touch it?"
"No," he all but stuttered, completely at a loss. "No, I merely examined it, observed the temperature gauge, and turned it slightly to see the puzzle box mechanism that locks it."
Helen slumped back into her chair, relief plainly evident in her every pore.
"Helen, what on earth is in that box?" James said.
"I don't know yet," Helen said. "I haven't decided."
"Helen, you're not making any sense," James said. He set his fork down and closed his hand about hers, stilling its fidgeting. His touch seemed to ground her, and she met his eyes.
"It's Mary Kelly, again," she said. "Well, after a fashion."
"What do you mean?" James said gently.
"Everyone was so distant," Helen said. "Father was traveling and you were obsessed with the Ripper and you'd corralled Nigel and Nikola into helping you, and no one would tell me anything, and John – "
Her voice broke, but she maintained her composure.
"But Mary was introducing me to all manner of people," Helen continued. "With all manner of talents."
"Abnormals," James said.
"Yes," Helen confirmed. "After Mary died and John disappeared, I made a discovery."
"You were with child," James said softly, a dozen clues and half-forgotten impressions finally coalescing into a clear vision in his head. He wondered if he was doomed to always be limited to perfect hindsight when it came to the things that were truly important.
"I was," Helen said. "But Mary had introduced me to someone who could help."
"Why didn't you come to me?" James asked, even though he was almost positive he knew the answer. "I know the procedure as well as any doctor, and I would never presume to disagree with you over the matter."
"Mary's friend does not terminate pregnancies, James," Helen said, an edge of pain back in her voice. "She stalls them."
"How?"
"Are you aware that the Australian kangaroo can prevent pregnancy from taking hold until there has been sufficient rain to let the environment support an increase in numbers?" Helen asked, as though it were any matter of science.
"I did not," James said, matching her tone. "Is it similar then, what Miss Kelly's friend could do?"
"After a fashion," Helen confirmed. "In her own species, the pregnancy can simply be delayed for as long as necessary. When it came to Mary's professional associates, the foetus was typically removed frozen and disposed of. I endeavored to create the means to maintain the frozen state indefinitely."
"Nikola built you the box, and Nigel sealed it," James said.
"I didn't tell either of them why," Helen said. "No one was supposed to know until I was ready."
"Ready for what?" James said, without thinking about it. He closed his eyes, because as soon as the words left his mouth, he knew what Helen would be waiting for.
She must have seen his comprehension in his face, because she didn't answer him. Instead, she picked up her fork again and returned to picking at her food.
"I'm sorry I didn't tell you," she said, though she didn't really sound like she was anything of the sort.
"We all have our secrets, Helen," James reminded her. "That's the only way we're going to get by."
"Father is never coming back," Helen said. "And I am going to terminate the beast tomorrow morning."
It was not, James would later reflect, the best of beginnings. But a beginning it was, all the same.
Nearly One Hundred Years Later…
Helen did not return to London often enough. She loved Old City, and the house she'd built amongst its ruined tenements, but there was something about the London Sanctuary that would always be home for her, even after James had spent nearly a century tuning the place to his own designs. Her visit this time was almost entirely social, or at least entirely personal, but her work was never far from her mind, so she was not surprised when James didn't meet her at the door, and instead had his aging protégé guide her down into the lab. Alistair wasn't much for small talk; Helen rather assumed he was still afraid of her, actually, but he had relaxed a little bit since her last visit, when a misidentified pathogen had locked the two of them in a lab for eight hours while James tried to get them out.
As soon as they entered the lab, however, any frivolous thoughts were driven from her head. James stood in the centre of the room next to a beast she thought was long extinct at her own hand. She plugged her nose without thinking, and was on the edge of panic before she realized that neither Alistair nor James were taking similar precautions. Somehow, James had found a way to render the beautiful creature harmless.
"Helen!" James said warmly. "I've left it to you to name it. But we've discovered how to keep it from harming anything, at least so long as it is in captivity."
"Where did you find it?" Helen asked, extending one hand to touch its flank.
"Greece, just a few weeks ago," James replied. "I was going to surprise you on your birthday, but then you announced you were coming for a visit."
Helen watched the abnormal, very nearly transfixed by the shifting patterns of its hide. It was as beautiful as she remembered, and she found she had tears in her eyes.
"James, I'll be taking something home with me, from your cold storage." The words were out of her mouth before she knew she'd said them, but suddenly she knew that this was the reason she'd come.
James's eyes slid to Allistair, who immediately pretended to have something to do on the other side of the room.
"Will you require assistance?" James said quietly. "I was not there at the beginning, but I am a doctor and your friend, and it would be my honour."
"That would be appreciated," Helen said.
"Excellent," James replied. He turned to Alistair and raised his voice, "If you could finish here, Alistair, Helen and I will meet you at dinner. We'll discuss how you can proceed in my absence. I'll be in America for a year or so, I think, and you'll be in charge temporarily."
To his credit, Alistair didn't even blink. Helen, on the other hand, was quite surprised.
"I didn't mean that much assistance," she said, as James handed her from the room and towards the cold storage.
"Of course you did," James said. "And I should get out more often anyway."
The cold storage was lit by electric lights, now, but the wooden box was unchanged. Buried this deeply in the rooms below the Sanctuary, it hadn't even been threatened during the war. Helen walked towards it without James's guidance, and hesitated with her hand on the dial that would open the box.
"It's a girl," she said.
"Have you picked a name?" James replied.
It wasn't particularly wise to have named the foetus already, and Helen could have denied it, but the truth was she'd picked the name out years and years before. She turned the first dial slowly to A.
"Yes," Helen said. The second dial turned to S. "I did."
"You know, you've waited so long that she'll probably call you 'Mom' and be horribly independent and ill-mannered." James said. The third dial turned to H.
"As if a daughter of mine could be any another way," Helen replied, smiling. The L appeared in the fourth segment.
"You know, when the government money started, we still had some of our original funds left,' James said. "Thanks mostly to your prudent investments."
"You mean Nikola's prudent investments," Helen said, revealing the E.
"Well, yes," James said. "But I kept the money separate. It's grown quite a bit as well, of course. I thought you might use it for her."
Helen's hand froze on the Y. Mary Kelly's money had seen her start what she thought would be the biggest endeavor of her life. Even though she was well financed herself, she couldn't deny that she appreciated the gesture.
"Thank you, James," she said.
"Ashley?" James said, reading the puzzle box. "Wasn't that a boy's name?"
"I was hoping for change," Helen said.
"You did more than hope," James pointed out, and Helen smiled because it was true. "Let's go back upstairs," he continued. "Before Alistair realizes I meant what I said about leaving him in charge and has a fit of apoplexy."
Together, the three of them went up through the foundation of the house, and into their beloved Sanctuary.
fin
AN: Historical Fact of the Day! Mary Kelly was indeed suspected of being an abortionist. It's a piece of "evidence" cited in any number of insane theories about how she wasn't actually murdered by the Ripper (or possibly the reason that she was murdered, but not by the Ripper at all). I very briefly considered having her be alive in this, but really it's a story about James and it nearly killed me as it stands, so I let well enough alone.
Gravity_Not_Included, February 22, 2011