AN: Sorry for the delay, I just started a new job and it's taken a couple of weeks to adjust, plus the on going internet/computer problems. Oh and how annoyed am I that in the UK season three has been moved from ITV4 to Watch, which I don't get cos I don't have Sky or Virgin. So fingers crossed for Youtube!
John was only slightly surprised to see that his room in the guest accommodation hadn't changed at all since the last time he'd visited. There were still changes of clothing in the wardrobe and the bed was neatly made. Taking a change of clothes from the wardrobe John headed into the bathroom and began filling the tub, sure there was a shower but he'd always felt that a man needed a bath to be truly clean. Plus a good soak would hopefully help with his sore muscles.
As the tub filled he stripped off his dirty clothes and placed them in the basket intended for that purpose. Then he slipped into the hot water and sighed in pleasure. He could feel his muscles relax as the heat of the water penetrated them.
He couldn't remember the last time he had felt so relaxed but he had a feeling that it wasn't in the last century. The demon was gone, forever with any luck, Helen was still speaking to him and hopefully once Ashley calmed down she would be as well. He had honestly thought she already knew about his natural abnormality, the one she had always shared with him. After all she had controlled it perfectly well.
He could understand why Helen would keep it from her, the truth would make everything more complicated and no doubt the longer she kept the secret the harder it became to tell it. She must have swore James to secrecy, although he hadn't originally known about John's natural abnormality it hadn't taken long after the experiment with the Source Blood for Watson to work it out. If Harkness had known, and John rather suspected he had, then he too must have also been sworn to secrecy.
John spent several long minutes reflecting on his family. Months ago, before the demon had begun to once again grow too strong to be denied, Ashley had begun to accept him. He could still remember the immeasurable joy that had gone through him after Ashley had first woken. She had called him 'dad', he had never hoped for such familiar acceptance from his daughter.
He wondered if there would ever be any hope for him and Helen. Once they had been so happy together, so alive with their love for each other. Then the demon had come and taken all that from them, it had stolen the future they had planned together and it had stolen the first twenty-four years of his daughter's life from him.
They had planned such a wonderful future, they would marry and together build the research facility her father had planned in his journals. Her dream had been not just for research but a home for the abnormals, John's own experience had taught them how frightening it could be to not know what was happening to you and to have no one to help you control it.
Eventually they would have a family and their children would be raised within the Sanctuary and eventually help them to run it if that was their wish. Helen wanted to travel the world and discover all the variety of life there was to be found. John had wanted to teach and help the abnormals live in the outside world where that was possible, he wanted to help others learn the wonders that Helen would discover.
The one unifying theme of their plans was that they would be together. That was what the demon had taken from them. Helen's life had ended up been close to their plan. She had founded her Sanctuary, even expended it to a global network, she had travelled the world and taught her findings to others to help them follow in her footsteps. She had even raised their daughter as they had once planned and Ashley had become a key element in her mother's work.
The only thing missing was him.
John hoped he could make a place for himself in Helen's house. He still loved her more than anything and with the demon gone it was safe for him to be near her once again. The intervening decades and the atrocities he had committed might have ended her love for him, and he really feared they had, but he still loved her and wanted to be near her. As masochistic as that might seem, for him the true pain and punishment would be in been exiled from her presence and forbidden to see their daughter.
Perhaps, John thought as he enjoyed the way the heat of the bath soothed the aches and pains in his muscles, she would one day come to love him again.
Helen took a quick shower, as much as she wanted to linger or better yet take a long soothing bath, there was too much she needed to do. The other Heads needed to be briefed, she needed to contact Mumbai to check on the empaths, she had several patients she needed to check up on and a few possible cases she should be looking into.
And despite all that her only thoughts were for John Druitt.
The way he had looked at her had all but stopped her heart, it was a look she had once been very familiar with but had not seen, not in such a pure form, for a hundred years. He had looked at her like she was the centre of his universe.
He still loved her, he had said as much before he took the parasite back, the question was: Did she still love him?
In the beginning her feelings for John had been so simple; friendship that had quickly turned into love. Then came what she now knew was the parasite and though she wished she could say that her feelings him had died they hadn't. Betrayal and hatred had eclipsed the love but they had not removed it completely. After Nikola had first shocked the parasite in dormancy those feelings of love had begun to resurface.
Then Ashley had been taken and they had spent so much time together trying to find her. She'd had to fight to maintain the distance between them when all she had wanted to do was draw closer to him once again and have him hold her. But she had told herself she couldn't do it because she still didn't know if she could trust him. When he reverted to his former ways she had thought she'd been proved correct in her choice.
Now they knew about the parasitic abnormal and she knew that the blame had to lay there. When they were locked in that cell she had told him it would be too easy to lay all the blame at the, metaphorical, feet of the parasite but having seen the extreme change in personality that taking the creature back had caused and seeing what the creature had tried to do during the hour or so it was free, she could now firmly say that if anything John had been a restraint on it. Without him far more would have died.
Still she couldn't yet allow herself to love him, she decided as she dried off and dressed. So much had happened and she needed time to process it all. Time to decide if she still wanted the future she had once planned with John. And time for him to decide if he wanted the same.
Once he eventually dragged himself from the bath and redressed, John went in search of Toshiko. He was unsurprised to find her with Henry in the young man's work space. They were discussing something at a mile a minute and occasionally gesturing at the diagrams that filled the computer screams in front of them.
"I believe you wished to see me Miss Sato." John said by way of announcing his presence. He was inwardly pleased to see that his presence still had the ability to make Henry jump out of his skin. Quiet an achievement considering the younger man was a werewolf.
"Will you stop doing that?" Henry complied, "You're as bad as Ashley."
"Strange, you always seem far more pleased to see Ashley, regardless of how she appears." John enjoyed watching the werewolf turn several different shades of red, so it seemed that Mr Foss's affection for his daughter had not changed over the past few months. Interesting.
"If you would come with me?" Toshiko asked, slightly hesitantly and John wondered just how long his presence was going to continue terrifying everyone he came across. He followed the Japanese woman into another room and spent the next half hour been scanned, poked and prodded by a variety of instruments. He took it all willingly enough since he knew it would hopefully prevent them having to go through all this again, be he was getting very tired of it all when Toshiko finally said that she had everything she needed. She told him that the results of the scans would be sent to Helen so she and Owen could go over them and hopefully find a way to detect the parasite before the host went homicidal.
With nothing else to do John took the opportunity to walk around the grounds of the Sanctuary. He eventually found himself in the ruined chapel. He had never before set foot there, it hadn't held any appeal to the man he was while the demon was inside of him. It did now.
Silently he took a seat in one of the pews that Helen had decided to preserve. He had never been a particularly religious man, none of the Five had, but that said he was a product of his times so he had a measure of faith in God. It was surprisingly peaceful the ruined chapel, especially since he knew that under his feet was the Main Lab of the Sanctuary.
The quiet of the place encouraged reflection and John found his mind straying to Nigel and James. Nigel would never know about the demon that had possessed him, would never know that it wasn't his friend John who had committed crimes too heinous be bear thinking about. And John would never be able to make his peace with Nigel as he had with James. Even though James hadn't known that his murderous ways were caused by an abnormal parasite he had at least known that John had changed, that he was once again the friend he had originally been. They had been able to make their peace before the end.
John raised his eyes to the roof, which was only half there, and to the sky beyond. Were James and Nigel out there somewhere, in the afterlife, watching over those who they had left behind. Did they now both know the truth and forgive him? Would he be able to see them again when he eventually died or had the sins of the demon damned his soul to hell?
He looked back down at his hands and found his thoughts once again straying to more Earth bound things. Would he be able to make a place for himself in Helen's House? He didn't have any great knowledge of modern technology nor science. He could fight, as much as he might dislike the origin of his knowledge in that area, but Helen already had Ashley and Kate for that need.
He could help her with research, that was something he had once been very good at, he had the patience needed to spend hours pouring over texts looking for the one key piece of information they needed. Patience that not even Helen and James had when it came to their books. Both minds could devise experiments and piece information together but when it came to finding one scrap of information amongst thousands they could both become frustrated. Though John had to admit that a century did seem to have taught Helen patience, James had never been good at that, he liked to get straight to the point and move on.
He'd never had the time for the detailed recording that a true researcher needed, his great mind could store all the information he needed so why bother with pen and paper? The fact that it sometimes left his friends baffled didn't bother him too much. Nigel hadn't been one for detailed recoding or research either, nor had Tesla unless it related to his own work.
John had always been prepared to help Helen in her note taking since it meant they could spend hours together in her lab. It was a socially acceptable why for them to spend time alone, well as socially acceptable as a female scientist could be at that time. John had endured quite a bit of teasing about that outside of the Five, society's view was that if Helen insisted on working in science then she should be his assistant. He'd had a rough couple of years between that and the rumour about his sexuality his parents had started to try and separate him and Helen, they really hadn't approved of their engagement and hoped the embarrassment would cause Helen to leave him.
It hadn't worked, but his anger and frustration at his family probably hadn't helped when the demon had infected him.
He thought of Ashley and tried to imagine doing the same to her. Starting a vicious rumour and slandering her name just because he didn't approve of her choice in husband. He couldn't see himself doing it, he might try to talk her our of it, advise her against it but ultimately if she was in love and happy then he would allow the union, after first informing the young man of the penalty he could expect if he hurt her. Of course the entire scenario was rather hard to picture in the first place since it involved Ashley in a wedding dress and the most feminine thing John had yet seen her in was a necklace.
As if summoned by his thoughts he heard his daughter say, "Mind if I join you?" He turned to see her standing behind him.
"Not at all." He slid further down the pew to allow her to sit next to him. "I was just thinking."
"Yeah this place tends to make you do that." Ashley agreed as she sat down. "I don't come here much anymore, not since mom told me they held my memorial service here. It's a little creepy."
"I can imagine." John said, remembering when he had read the news reports of his own supposed death by drowning in the Themes, no doubt manufactured by James Watson and Helen, possibly with Nigel and Tesla's help. The vampire would have taken great delight in faking his death, he'd probably just wished it was real.
"What are you going to do now?" Ashley asked, looking down at her hands.
"What do you mean?"
"You're free of the parasite, you can go anywhere, do anything." Ashley filled in, not looking up at him.
"I want the life I always planned." John told her, "But I don't know if it's possible."
"Why not?" Ashley asked.
"Because that life was planned a long time ago and the world has changed since then." John told her, "I always planned to stay by your mother's side, help her in her work and raise our family. But she doesn't need me for any of that anymore, she's built her dream and raised you without me."
"That was your plan?" Ashley asked.
"I didn't know about you, not until after you were born, but yes that was always the plan." John agreed, "Now I must try to make a place for myself in a world that is quite alien to me."
"Do you remember everything from when your were that thing's host?"
"Yes." John said sadly. "Doesn't mean that I know how anything works or the details of this world, after all I used to just bully people into doing want I wanted."
"You can learn." Ashley told him.
"I can." John agreed then he paused and thought for a moment. "Do you think your mother can accept me?"
Ashley considered how to phrase her answer for a moment. "After you left again, mom went to the library and started researching how to help you, she didn't stop to eat or sleep and shouted at anyone who disturbed her. She was so focused on finding a way to help you that she only stopped when I brought Jack and his team to help. She drove Henry and Tosh crazy by checking on their progress every hour." Ashley paused for a moment to compose her thoughts, "I think that she couldn't let you go, even when she had to kill you to save herself she still brought you back. Now she knows it wasn't you she'll want you back but I don't know." Ashley hesitated unable to find exactly the right way to phrase her thoughts.
"You don't know if we can be what we once were again or if we can only be friends." John guessed, Ashley nodded, relived that he had understood what she was trying to say. "Thank you Ashley, you have given me more to think about."
"You're welcome," Ashley said as she stood, "Though if you want a clue about mom's feelings you should ask her about the radio."
With that she left, leaving a rather bemused John to wonder what the hell she had been talking about. His peace didn't last for long tough as soon enough William found him.
"How are you doing?" He asked as he stood at the end of the pew.
"Better than I have in some time." John admitted. "I am myself once again and no long feel the need to spill the blood of everyone around me."
Will obviously took the fact that he answered as an invitation to stay and sat down on the pew. "Ashley's worried about you." He told the older man. "She's worried that you don't think you have a place in the world and that you feel the guilt of all the deaths the creature caused."
"Of course I feel guilt Doctor Zimmerman." John said, "I should have done more to stop it. And don't worry I will find a place for myself. Now if you'll excuse me?" He said standing, Will was forced to stand to allow him to pass.
As he was walking out of the chapel Will called after him, "You aren't going to find your place unless you make your peace with that happened." Then in a lower voice that John assumed he wasn't meant to hear the psychiatrist muttered, "Just like Magnus." John wasn't exactly sure how he was just like Helen but from the other man's tone of voice it was not supposed to be a complement.
Please R&R
