She spends the next months in London, dealing with the fallout of the war and the resulting political tensions after the Versailles Treaty is put into effect. It makes international networking difficult in Europe, and she focuses on re-forging her connections across the continent, using the London House as a hub.
She keeps in touch with nearly half of her men in that time. Some she even runs into while on errands in town. But as the years pass they drift away from her, and the only ones she receives letters from are the ones whose injuries were the most severe during the war.
They tell her what has become of the lives she saved, how they have grown, started their own families, and all those who write invite her to come visit—they want their families to know her.
But she doesn't ever accept. It would be too difficult, too hard to explain why she hasn't aged a day.
It warms her heart, though, to know they still think of her.
But even the satisfaction of those letters is tempered by the simple gray stone standing guard over a private corner of the Sanctuary's garden. She can't bear to look at it most days—when she does pay her respects, more often than not it's in the dead of a sleepless night.
James never asks about her relationship she shared with the dead captain, but she was sure he'd deduced the truth in his own. He'd followed her instructions regarding the captains' burial without question, and she remained forever grateful for that—even long after her old friend passed.
With no family to send his body home to, she'd refused to let her captain's body join the other abandoned corpses in the one of the many, impersonal military plots. She'd shipped the pine box home to the London house, with a note to James promising to explain everything in due time.
But her lover would not be the only captain to grace the Sanctuary.
Almost five years after the end of the war, Helen is hunting a wayward Abnormal through a London alley when she runs headlong into a haggard drunk. She almost blows past him in her impatience, but something about him makes her pause.
It's the captain she'd last seen on the train platform, and last heard from over three years ago.
He's a mess, stinking of booze, vomit, and filth, and he doesn't recognize her in his stupor. But it doesn't matter. She's already slipped into the role that has been second nature to her, even before the war. She sends the rest of her hunting party after the Abnormal, and takes the captain back to the Sanctuary.
She cares for him, until he is sober enough to do so himself.
When he is clean and coherent, he recognizes her. But it's several days before he realizes she shouldn't be looking exactly as she had the last time he'd laid eyes on her.
In the meantime, she learns that he has not been able to get over the war. His only family is an elderly mother who no longer recognizes him, and the army is all he knows, having enlisted straight out of school.
He's been abandoned by an army that no longer needs him, and forgotten by a people who'd lost interest in its heroes. He'd lost himself, and had no one to look for him.
Until now.
She offers him a room in the Sanctuary, first as a guest until he can get back on his feet, and later as permanent personnel when he demonstrates an affinity for handling the chaos that comes with the care and study of the Abnormal world.
The work gives him the direction he needs, and he flourishes in his new role, just as he had when he received his field promotion. He doesn't drink another drop, and ends up meeting his wife a few years later. When the next war ravages the globe, he remains behind to run the Sanctuary while she once again jumps headfirst into the war effort.
Once again, Helen knows she made a good decision in putting her confidence in him.
What she does not know is that his devotion to the Sanctuary would trickle down through generations—she has no idea his grandson would one day become the head of the London house.
When he dies in his sleep at the ripe old age of eighty-two, he is laid to rest beside his commanding officer.
His gravestone reads Robert Declan McCrae.
He was a dear friend, a trusted officer, a beloved husband… and an even better father. This time, she is there to witness the interment and it feels right.
She hears the eulogy, and offers her own words in the memory of the man who has been in her family since their days in the trenches. But even as she speaks, her thoughts wander to the man she'd lost more than fifty years ago.
She still misses him, and every now and then she feels the familiar pang of hurt when she remembers his touch, his voice. But it doesn't ache so much anymore, and the guilt has faded. Instead, she feels blessed to have been there when his time had come—he hadn't been alone.
Sometimes, it's all one can hope for.
It was something she couldn't guarantee for herself. But she'd been there for him, and she lived to remember, along with two dozen men who lived as a result of his leadership.
She still loves him.
After Robert is laid to rest, it is easier to visit them both. She tries to make a point to visit them once a month, but life gets in the way, and when she ultimately moves her base of operations to Old City, she settles for once a year.
So each year she returns to London, and spends the day sitting in the garden. She lingers well into the night, and many times she ends up laying flat on her back, staring at the stars just as she had in France.
And just as she had in France, she lies beside the dashing captain who warmed her heart.