Everything came down around their shoulders with a crash and a bang. Nikola tastes ash. It's bitter, dry, and for a moment he panics. Killed them all and sealed it with a kiss. That too burns, all the more bitter, as Nikola picks himself up and proceeds (attempts) to brush off. It is clouds and clouds of cement and grit and he succeeds in very little before remembering (Heinrich), and scooping up the lump that lay at his feet. Henry is dazed, and there is a dark bump on the side of his head, centered by a deep red that trickles down the side of his face. Nikola grips him by the shoulders, shaking him once. "Henry." He says loudly (they've blown out their ears again, oh happy day) and shakes him again. "Whattthappen'd?"

Boom. Crash. Wallop. Not a bang but a whimper. Au revoir, Sanctuary! Das Vidanya! He wants to say. It's just as bitter as the ash in his mouth. Nikola thinks it better to spit instead.

Henry's smart. He'll figure it out on his own. Helen has sealed their fate. Brought her Sanctuary down upon herself and down on them, too.

"Oh man..." Nikola rolls his eyes. "Oh, shit."

Ding ding ding. Henry runs his hands through his hair, coming out looking like dishevelled porcupine, talking a mile a minute. Somewhere behind them, there is a crash. Something settling. The final resting place for the ruins. Somewhere he hoped SCIU was playing the fiddle.

"We need to get out of here." Henry finally begins to make sense again and Nikola presses his lips together grimly and nods. "Magnus...the Doc- She-" he chokes up.

"She's dead." Nikola's nonchalance surprises himself. It just makes Henry angry.

"Saving you, you asshole."

"And you. And Junior. And your whole big happy family. Hardly for me." No, never for Nikola, the one with the funny accent who stands at the back of the room. He's going to have to have the level head, apparently. Children are never good in a crisis. "I was just here."

"What did she say to you?"

"Go."

"That's it?"

"No, then she read me a poem, we sat down, and had a nice heart to heart before she sent me on my way—yes. That's it. That's the last thing she said to me." And locked herself in. Down with the ship. Helen was too poetic for her time. It was disgustingly cliche. Somewhere beyond there is a groan of foundation, a scrape of charred metal and concrete and wood. They should go soon. Lest they be crushed under it all, just like dear Helen. Henry's anger subsides, a short outburst followed by a vacuum of silence, a near catatonic state as his own realization settles. Nikola hates to repeat, even to himself, but he spares this, his agony.

Helen Magnus is dead.

All angsting and poetic waxing aside, they didn't really have the luxury of mourning. Continual debris shift from what had once been the inside of the Sanctuary case and point. Nikola grabs solidly the cleanest part of the wolf boy, the collar of his shirt, and tugs a little (like a leash almost, which would be humorous in any situation. It's just soul shattering to watch him shuffle his feet dutifully in the direction indicated). "Get a move on, Bambi." Nikola pushes him a little firmly and Henry nearly trips before shuffling. He much preferred him angry, he thinks. At least then he'd have someone to talk to when they had to disappear from society for (another) half a century.

The further they walk to the end of the hallway, the louder the crashes get, and Nikola thinks that's mighty strange so he stops, yanking again on Henry's shirt to take a look around. It's not as loud as debris advancing debris implosion is supposed to sound (and he's got enough field experience to know), but like something is pushing through with little care as to where they're displacing materials, a little pile driver through ash and smoke and rock. Nikola wonders when he'd swallowed the rock churning now in the pit of his stomach. There would not be enough curses on the whole great earth for him to invoke if (after all of this) that tunnel-crawling, thrice-faced, murderous bastard was able to crawl through debris like a maggot through flesh. Nikola's going to greatly regret approaching then. Afterwards his only regret will be he didn't have more time to make the man suffer more.

But there's another big shift, and through what was once upon a time the exit unto the Old City catacombs comes a second wave of dust and rubble, which shoots into his face and coats him (again) with dirt. Nikola recovers from the attack red-eyed, shifting his jaw back and forth to ease the tension of expansion from shiny teeth.

Then it is Helen Magnus emerging like a fallen angel, half pulling, half swearing her way through the small available hole.

"Hi." is the first gloriously uncultured thing out of her mouth. "Some help would be nice." and she smiles at him, and coughs, and gives a little half sob as she leans over against (what he's going to guess is) a cracked rib.

"Doc!"

Henry is running a marathon it sounds, the 50 yard sprint as he rushes to Nikola's side, wrapping his arm around her shoulders to pull. "No-" she manages before Henry is launched backwards like the rest of the debris and Helen's back gives a resounding spark and pop and the whirring that Nikola hadn't even been paying attention to until just then stops.

"It works." Nikola mutters bemusedly as he digs his fingers between Helen's hip and the hole.

"Remarkably." Helen sounds weary, but pleased. "Well done, Henry." is a laugh turned into a pained gasp for air.

"Thank you." says a dazed Henry who picks himself up from the ground again.

"Ready?" Nikola asks and Helen nods. "On three."

Three is actually one and Helen comes out with a firm tug, piling into Nikola's arms while her boots hit the floor with a resounding thump. Nikola didn't think that ghosts made so much noise, and he stares hard at Helen as to figure out the reason why. Her smudged brow wrinkles but softens moment by moment, as if it's too hard to hold one face. "What? Didn't think I'd really be gone, did you?"

"You blew up your house." he points out.

"Yes."

"So much for going down with your ship."

"I have never been good at bowing out gracefully."

It makes Nikola smile. Helen manages a grimace before she takes a step, another step, a knee, and sits down on the rubble-laden ground amongst a cloud. "I don't think I can go on any further." she admits after a moment. She can't quite meet Nikola's eyes, staring past his shoulder to look at the concussion-shattered overhead lighting. "It's a good thing there are three of us, then." Nikola says before lifting her easily, wrapping arms around her shoulders, hesitating a moment before he grunts and picks up her knees as well. "You're quite heavy."

He's rewarded with the weakest slap from her he's ever received and a tinkling laugh before she drifts into an exhausted unconsciousness, Henry guiding the way forward as they wind through the catacombs to find an entrance into the scratched and burned postbellum surface.