AN: Another installment in "Helen Does the Time Warp, Again", this section comes after Long Road Home, Begin Again, Enter Athene, To The Letter, Dog Days are Gone, The Keeper of Death, Hazy Shade of Winter, The Good Fight and Paint It Black. Time Travel! Who knew?
Spoilers: Into the Black
Rating: Teen
Disclaimer: Among the things I do not own.
Characters: Helen Magnus, Ashley Magnus, Declan MacCrae
Summary: She isn't prepared for this.
Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town
She isn't prepared for this.
In her defence, she isn't prepared because she didn't know it happened. She's kept records. She knows where she, the other she, is all the time. When the time arrives, she keeps tabs on Ashley too. And Will. And Kate, though she is harder to avoid because there are whole periods where Helen doesn't know where she is. She even manages to avoid Clara, except to look in every now and then and make sure she's doing all right.
She didn't know that this would happen because she knows she's at a conference in Singapore with James this week. And she knows that the Big Guy has taken Henry camping, in an effort to keep him from disappearing entirely into whatever computer is currently in fashion. And she knows that Declan is at the Old City Sanctuary, ostensibly to learn how the American operation works, but mostly to keep an eye on Ashley.
Ashley is 12 now, and Declan has been at the UK Sanctuary for nearly three years. In eleven years, just a moment, really, Ashely will be dead and Declan will be in mourning, but Helen tries her best not to think about that. She tries so hard that she's gone so far as to buy a small shop where she sells her paintings to bored tourists as a front (a successful front, it's worth mentioning. She has no trouble paying the bills), while counseling the local abnormal community out the back door. It's not exactly lucrative, but it keeps the lights on.
She has a reputation to protect, so she still wears the black veil and gloves most days, even to deal with the tourists, who all think she's a bit batty. She's been thinking about leaving it off, but she knows she'll always find an excuse to put it on. She hadn't understood hiding before, the first time, but she understands it now. When you're hiding, you can get a lot done, especially when there's another you on the front lines. It took nearly a century to make her peace with that, and now she's taking full advantage of the time she has left. And it's a mercy that she put the veil on this morning, because this is, apparently, the morning when Ashely Magnus meets the Keeper of Death.
At first, Helen looks right past her. She's been seeing Ashely everywhere for a while now, every time there is a blonde head in a crowd, a face turned away from her, a laugh that is almost, but not quite, the right one. She is unprepared for an actual encounter, but the veil hides her shock. And her tears.
"Declan!" Ashley calls out. She's standing in the door of the shop, shouting back over her shoulder, and God, Helen remembers that voice. "Declan, this is the one."
She could run. Ashley hasn't seen her yet. But she doesn't. She can't. For this one moment, she doesn't care about the consequences.
"You know," says Declan, entering the shop and closing the door behind him, "I'm pretty sure this isn't what your mother meant when she told you to show me around."
"Oh, come on, Declan!" Ashley says. "Isn't this more fun than sitting around in Old City and learning about Norwegian accounting?"
"You have a point," Declan admits, and grins at her. Helen can only imagine how Ashley talked him into this, but at least she knows nothing too dangerous happens to them today.
"Besides," Ashely points out, "Henry got to go on an adventure while Mom's away. This is only fair."
"I'm sure that will mean a lot when your mother has James fire me," Declan says.
"Oh please," Ashely scoffs, "James wouldn't fire you even if mom fired him."
Declan turns a bit pink at that, but Ashley only laughs and starts walking through the artistically arranged maze of displayed paintings that cover the floor of the shop between the door and the till. Helen takes a deep breath and steadies herself for what she's signed on for.
"Are you looking for a painting, dears?" she asks, her voice cracked with feigned age and accent pitched to match the local.
"No," says Ashley with her typically directness. Helen starts to worry that she has made a terrible mistake. "We're looking for you, I think."
"Are you now?" Helen lets her voice harden, the way abnormals do when they know the Sanctuary is looking for them. It will do no harm for Declan to see that in her, and it will hold Ashley off, for a while.
"Unofficially," Declan says quickly. "We're on vacation."
"Charming," Helen says.
"I'm Ashley and that's Declan," Ashley says. "I'm showing him all the hot spots on this side of the pond."
"All of them?" Helen asks.
"Well, all the ones that are close enough to be feasible given the circumstances," Ashley says.
"The circumstances of your escape, you mean." Helen says it without thinking, but now at least they will believe she has the powers that rumour claims she does.
"Ha!" Ashley says happily. "You owe me ten dollars, Declan. I told you she knew things."
Declan sighs, but passes over the folded purple bill without protesting. Helen is glad the veil hides her smile.
"Did you come all this way for a performance?" Helen asks.
"Not really," Ashley says. "Mostly it was just for something to do."
"What about you?" Helen turns to Declan, who doesn't flinch the way that others have.
"I'm not interested in my death, if that's what you're asking," he says. There is no discomfort in his voice.
"Do you have a name?" Ashley asks. "The paintings aren't signed. Do you friends called Keeper?"
"They do not," Helen says. This is largely because she does not have friends, but she doesn't feel the need to mention that. "You may call me Persephone, if you wish."
"The Queen of the Underworld," Ashley says, nodding. "That's what some abnormals call my mother."
"You flatter me," says Helen.
"Are you old like she is?" Ashley asks.
"Yes," Helen says, because the truth will do no harm. "As old and then some."
"Have you met her?" Ashley asks.
"I do my best to avoid the Sanctuary," Helen replies, which is also true.
"We're not all that bad," says Declan, with the same warm sense of welcome over loyalty and steel that Helen knows convinced James that Declan was Sanctuary material.
"Still, I prefer to avoid entanglements," Helen says.
"Well, if you ever do need us, you know where we are," Ashley says. "The door is always open."
"Sanctury for All," Helen says without thinking. Ashley grins.
"Sanctuary for All."
Time is getting short.
Helen feels like the shop is too small and too big all the same time. Too small to hold her impatience, too big to keep her hidden from the world. But she stays. She has waited this long. She can wait a little longer. She doesn't even know what she is waiting for.
The bell above the door rings on a cloudy day, a storm hovering on the horizon that refuses to break. Her paintings gleam unnaturally under the new environmentally friendly light bulbs, reminding her of how far she's come, again, since gas lights. Without the sunlight, her art is depressing and bleak, strange landscapes painted for eyes not adventurous enough to go and see them for themselves.
"I know you're here!" calls Ashley from the front of the shop. Helen freezes. This is why she waited. She takes a deep breath, and stands up.
"Of course I'm here, Ashley Magnus," she says, her affected tone forces her voice to be calm, even though she knows from the date why Ashley is here.
"Did you know?" Ashley demands, ramming her fists down hard against the wooden counter top. "Did you know about my father?"
"I knew," Helen says.
Ashley slumps against the counter, the fight going out of her for just a moment before she stands straight again and hardens.
"I didn't ask you the right questions last time, did I?" she says.
"You were only twelve," Helen says gently, as gently as that cracked, harsh voice will let her, and tries not to let the tears that sting her eyes fall.
"Am I a monster?" she asks.
"No," Helen says, surprised she doesn't choke. The tears fall, silently under the veil, and she holds herself still with effort. "No, you are not a monster."
"Am I a killer because of him?" Ashley says.
"No," Helen says, because she has had a lot of time to think about it, and this was the answer she came up with. "You're a hunter. Like your mother."
"Will I live forever like her too?" Ashley says. Her shell fractures a little bit, and so does Helen's, but hers is hidden behind the veil and Ashley sees nothing of it.
"No," Helen forces her voice to stay level.
"Thanks," Ashley says. She leans against the counter again, and Helen can see the huntress even in her casual pose. She smiles through her tears. "My mom would have had some crazy answer about genetics and picking my own destiny. And then possibly taken me to another museum and told me more about the Victorians than I ever really wanted to know."
Helen laughs at that, her true laugh because she is surprised. Ashley looks at her sharply, but Helen lets the laugh die naturally rather than cutting it off. That will only heighten Ashley's suspicions.
"I'm glad to help," Helen says, her voice under control again. "Are you sure I can't interest you in a painting?"
"Maybe next time," Ashley says. She turns, a smile on her face, and leaves the store as abruptly as she entered it.
Behind the counter, Helen stoops. All of her years pile up at once, like the wind has been knocked out of her, and she holds hard to the counter to stop from falling. Because that is the last time. She will never see Ashley again.
finis
Note: This installment was very much inspired by the Charlotte Martin cover of the song "Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town".
Gravity_Not_Included, September 14, 2011