I do not own Sanctuary.
"As far as I can tell she's entirely normal." Biggie spoke, his voice slightly grim.
"But that's good news surely? That she's fine?" Henry asked.
"Helen Magnus isn't usually normal." Biggie replied. "She can't access the memories since 1886 because she doesn't have them, she doesn't have the mends in her bones from damage dealing with abnormals, there's no sign she ever had a child and her hair hasn't been bleached back to blonde it is just naturally that way. I can see no sign she was ever injected with the source blood." He spoke gravely.
"So the machine was like a time machine, it switched her with her past self?" Will asked.
"No I don't think it could have." Henry responded. "You can't switch her with her past self without you know, risking changing history all over again and making a paradox that she couldn't have grown up and whatever. I think they might have just kinda rewound her, turned her back into her earlier self, before the source blood."
"But she's not going to have any negative effects from the process, she'll be fine until we can reverse it?" Tesla focused on what he thought should have been the main issue.
"Well she'll start ageing again but otherwise she should be fine." Biggie replied. "I'm not sure if it can be reversed though, the only people who might know if it can..."
"Are the ones who kidnapped her." Will finished his sentence. "Well at least we know she's okay, mostly. I'll go and bring her some food, it's getting pretty late. Henry can you see if we can get any info on where they might have headed next? Tesla you try and figure out what that machine might have done to reverse time or rewind or whatever." Tesla almost argued with Will about who should take dinner to Helen, Will was entirely prepared for it, but Nikola dropped it before opening his mouth, he wasn't sure he was quite ready to face her again yet.
"I'll start the food rounds downstairs." Biggie commented just before the group dispersed.
"Helen?" Will asked as he knocked on the door.
"Yes?" He opened it to find her curled up with a book in the window seat. "Jules Verne." She smiled at him, holding it up. "I was very much hoping he'd write a third book to follow 'From the Earth to the Moon' and 'Around the Moon' and here it is, along with so many other books I must have read." She gestured to the shelves. "Was I late for dinner? I wasn't quite sure where to go?" She asked as she took in the tray, her stomach rumbling slightly. "Or evidently quite what to wear." She commented apologetically, putting the book to the side as she stood, he noticed she had opted to change into a long navy skirt that extended to the floor and a white shirt which covered her from neck to wrist while clinging just enough to show her figure.
"You look fine. We tend to be a bit busy with things so we don't really sit down to dinner, I'll show you the kitchen when I take these back ok?" He put the tray onto the table, setting out the two meals for opposite seats. "I thought we could talk for a bit, see how you're doing?" She nodded a little warily as she sat. "So, how are you coping? I'm sorry we haven't had chance to give you the tour yet."
"I think I am managing quite well all things considered." She was polite in her tone.
"You mean losing all your memories?" He probed as they began to eat, trying to push for a bit more, his psychologist training whirring in his thoughts.
"Amongst other things." Seeing he merely raised an eyebrow she continued. "It is... disorientating to lose ones memories, certainly, but what is more disturbing is that my father is dead and of my four closest friends, those I might turn to for support, two are also dead, one I am assured I no longer talk to and the other..." She quieted, not quite sure whether she could trust the young man in discussing the fact that Nikola may have been expressing feelings.
"The other is Tesla." Will finished, his prejudices against the vampire tinting his interpretation slightly. "If you ever need to talk about anything or want any support you can count on me. Henry and Biggie have both known you for decades, I mean you raised Henry, so it might be a bit hard on them dealing with the missing memories but you can trust them too, they only want what's best for you."
"Thank you." They ate in silence for a few minutes before Helen spoke again. "What happened with John do you know? Nikola seemed... reluctant to discuss it, and he was never particularly impartial on the matter to begin with."
"He wound up being infused by a creature which brought out his blood lust and... well he ended up Jack the Ripper." Her blank look prompted him to explain further. "England's most well known serial killer, the first properly documented one, he killed women, prostitutes mostly. He hid it from all of you for a while but eventually you figured it out and he disappeared, literally, went on a killing spree elsewhere."
"Nikola said something about..." She paused, almost reconsidering asking but his inquisitive look drew it out of her, "about love. With John..."
"Well he was Ashley's father so I assume that there must have been something."
"I have a son?" Her eyes went wide, she dropped her cutlery. "Where is he?"
"A daughter... Ashley's kind of a unisex name these days, and she... I'm sorry Magnus."
"She's dead as well?" Her hand went to her stomach, suddenly Helen didn't feel like eating any more. "But you still call me Magnus, not Druitt?"
"You never married him, you were only engaged, from what I heard anyway." She could only imagine what the betrayal must have felt like, even hearing it second hand it gnawed at her gut. If she had been there, lived through it, known the daughter she had apparently lost, been there for her first steps, how many times worse must it have been?
"Was there anyone else, since him?" Nikola had spoken with such longing that afternoon, surely it couldn't have broken her so very much that she had spurned romance for all these decades?
"Not in the time I've known you, you always seemed too wrapped up in your work. You told me you only took a long weekend break every seven years. I guess if you did meet anyone it probably didn't really get far." She swallowed hard forcing herself to return to her meal. Though she couldn't bring herself to speak again, replying merely politely to Will's comments. He saw that she was processing the new information and didn't press her further.
"Nikola, there you are." Helen said cheerfully as she entered his lab some hours later, around the time the others at the Sanctuary were heading to sleep. She knew he would still be up though, he always did stay up unreasonably late, a trait they had in common.
"How exactly did you find me?" He asked, looking up from his work.
"I just followed the scent of burning metal." She responded sweetly. "You do have a habit of creating some spectacular explosions out of the most harmless materials."
"Scientific discovery has its risks, but I doubt you could trace it all the way from the residential floor." He said scowling at her reminder of his failures, even if they did contribute to his brilliant successes in a roundabout way.
"Henry gave me a map." She said holding up the print out in question, which was laid out on seven sheets of paper stapled together in the corner. "It was very considerate of him. May I come in?" She asked uncertainly, still standing in the door way. "I don't want to be a imposition, you may ask me to leave, I won't be offended." His face softened at the insecurity there, Helen Magnus, sparkling and innovative pioneer of her field had been reduced to archaic by having missed the advancements of time and he could tell she felt it.
"You are always welcome in my laboratory, just be careful what you touch, as you oh so graciously pointed out thing do seem to have a tendency of exploding around me." He managed to spark another smile out of her, but he could see that she still felt useless, having been left in her room for half the day while the sanctuary staff had been busy around her. He felt more than a little guilty for not having realised sooner what she would have been going through, the isolation and, more importantly, lack of purpose must have been torturous for someone like Helen. She had always been so driven, he had never been able to discover why she felt she had to work so much harder than everyone around her. "I'm glad you came actually, I am doing some rather delicate soldering and your hands have always been so steady and precise." He was lying, he had practised enough over the decades to be as exacting as he needed to be with the soldering iron, but it would be helpful while he focused on other things, usually he would have given the work to Henry if they were working on the project together. He took the hands in question into his own, holding them up between the pair of them. "And, while it is entirely unnecessary for the task, they are also as beautifully soft and smooth as a rose petal." He added, dropping a kiss onto the back of each one before, releasing one and using the other to pull her over to a work bench. "Think of it as the opposite of one of your dissections. The piece goes in, the solder is applied, like the reverse of a scalpel, attaching rather than separating, and the parts end up as a cohesive and complicated whole."
She sat, reading through the diagram and lining up the parts neatly as he settled himself back at the next work bench over, close enough to be on hand should she need assistance but giving her space so that she wouldn't feel she was being watched or checked on.
"I know you are quite capable of this Nikola, but thank you, I was beginning to feel quite lost with so much time on my hands. As useless and ill educated as a Débutante."
"The great Dr Helen Magnus useless? Never!" He scoffed.
"But that's just it. I'm not Dr Helen Magnus, I'm just... Helen. I don't remember all those things, I just remember being in Oxford, and a woman, a pioneer simply by virtue of being there."
"This isn't like you, there will always be things you don't know yet, simply because they include matters which you think you should know doesn't change things. Remember... three months ago for you, that young lad in that biology seminar you dragged me to, with the ridiculous accent."
"Oliver Pembleton?"
"How should I know? Anyway do you remember what he said after the seminar?" Nikola asked.
"He said that I was pretty and that if I wanted to learn something I should learn to keep my mouth shut rather than the anatomy of gorilla and I might find myself a good husband." She muttered bitterly.
"And you said..." He prompted. Still carrying on with his work, as she was with hers.
"I said that the world was full of such infinite wonders that no person could hope to hold knowledge of them all but that it had not prevented them from seeking it out and that ambition which he sought to discourage in me, to learn all I could of the world, was widely considered a laudable attribute, though it may not be associated with women on the whole." Her voice grew stronger as she spoke.
"And I told him that his ill manners in attempting to tell a lady what she should do would be considered deplorable in either gender."
"You always did get in too many fights." She thought of the black eye the young man had given him before the pair were drawn apart. "But I realise what you mean, I have been wallowing in ignorance and despair at what I don't know instead of focusing on what grand new opportunities I have to learn. Even if the things I learn may not always be pleasant." He turned at that, looking at her in her pause. "William told me I had a daughter, Ashley. With John."
"You did." He turned back to his work. She could see the tension in his shoulders. "What was she like?" He relaxed somewhat at her question, that the hurt he could hear was more regret that she'd never meet her daughter than the tearing loss that had haunted her at any mention of Ashley's name before. He was also relieved that she hadn't asked why he didn't tell her, he hoped she knew it was an attempt to protect her from losses she didn't need to feel.
"She was beautiful, like her mother, hardly a trace of Druitt, thank heavens, apart from her eyes." He thought of the hints that had hid in them, her eyes had been similar to Johny's alright, they were the eyes of a killer, but Helen didn't need to know that, the girl had her reasons. "She grew up in the Sanctuary, alongside your wolf boy Heinrich, he knew her better than I did, but what a little wildcat she was, a warrior, she died protecting the ones she loved." Protecting Helen, but she didn't need that guilt, he'd have to be sure to mention the details to be omitted to Heinrich, and have a word with Dr Expendable about keeping his mouth shut on some things.
Despite the awkward topics they had begun with the pair worked into the early morning, Helen's nimble fingers completing piece after piece as he focused on developing the designs. They spoke as they worked, discussing all kinds of things, the wide use of Tesla's Alternating Current, Helen's development of the Sanctuary Network, Hollow Earth, the World Wars, Women's Rights, it seemed as though now that she had adjusted her view point she was determined to catch up on as much as possible as quickly as possible. It reminded him of the conversations they'd had back when they were the outsiders at Oxford, the ones expected to lag behind, to be unable to keep up, both determined to shine, to force their brilliance into the faces of the world. It was rather more one sided than it had been, but her questions were as insightful as ever.
As ever her body, attractive as it was, was not quite so impressive as her mind, he caught her stifling a yawn and remembered that while she may never have needed as much sleep as many people she had still needed more before the injection of the source blood than after, and certainly more than his vampiric body asked for.
"You should go to sleep Helen."
"I'm fine." She insisted, stubborn as ever.
"At least take a break then, or you'll finish them all and I'll have to be leaning over you to draw the designs as you're building them." He smiled lopsidedly at her before continuing, hoping to take some of the sting of asking her to stop away with humour. "Not that I'd mind standing that close behind you as you work." He winked. She hid another yawn, which made him raise an eyebrow.
"Oh very well, I'll take a little break, rest my hands a little. But not for long." She said firmly and he smirked, knowing he'd won the argument.
"There's a comfortable couch over there." He gestured.