Helen was looking at one of the most amazing sights she'd seen in her two lifetimes – her toddler son was carefully making his way around her office on wobbly legs, investigating any item that had been left low enough for him to reach. He let out a little squeal of happiness as he poked at one of the paperweights on an end table.

Children really are miraculous, she thought to herself as she watched. "James," she called to him. "Come here, love."

She was entirely unprepared to see the baby vanish into thin air with a red flash and reappear beside her a moment later. He reached toward her to get picked up, not having found anything unusual about his behavior. Helen just stared in shock. "James…"

"He is his father's son," a voice said, and she looked up to see John standing across the room. Ashley was beside him and – much to Helen's horror – her eyes had taken on the same orange hue that they'd had while she was under the Cabal's control.

"What have you done to them?" Helen asked him, lifting James into her arms as she stood up.

John laughed. "It's in their blood. YOU're the one who did it, Helen. You made them who they are simply by allowing them to be born."

She gasped as James suddenly disappeared from her embrace and reappeared next to his father. "John, please – "

"It's all on you, Helen," he told her before all three of them vanished.

Helen sat straight up in bed, her heart pounding as if she'd just run a marathon. It was just a dream, she told herself as she started to calm back down. Nothing but a dream…

As she got out of bed, however, her heart rate increased once more. John wasn't beside her like he'd been when she fell asleep, and James' bassinet was empty. She quickly turned on the lights and looked around, but that only verified that she was alone in her bedroom.

Helen quickly pulled on a robe and headed down the hall toward her office. She could pull up the security system and check through all the video footage to see if they were still in the Sanctuary. They have to be in the Sanctuary, she reminded herself. The EM shield is always up during the night and the doors are alarmed.

As she rounded the corner, she came face to face with John and her sleeping son as they returned from their walk in the labs. She froze for a moment before relief flooded through her and tears spilled from her eyes. John was instantly concerned.

"Helen? What's the matter? Are you all right?" he asked, but she was too emotional to speak. He quickly took her back down the hall to their room, settled James in his little bed, and sat down with her. "What happened?" he calmly asked.

"I'm sorry, my hormones are a bit out of sorts at the moment," she quietly told him as she wiped at her still-leaky eyes.

"Where you were going, love?"

"I…I had a dream," she admitted, though couldn't look at him. "That you…that you and James and Ashley – you were all gone. And when I woke up…"

John sighed and pulled her into his arms. "I'm sorry," he whispered as he held her and let her finish calming down. "I'm so sorry. I didn't want him to wake you, but I didn't think…"

"I need to run an analysis on his blood," she quietly told him. "We have no idea what he's inherited from us, no idea how much it's going to affect him."

"He'll be fine," John assured her. "Whatever the case, you'll do anything he needs."

"You don't know that," she argued. "You don't know that he'll be fine. He's going to be another target, in danger from anyone who wants to get to me. I was deluding myself when I thought I'd be able to do any better of a job this time in keeping him safe!"

"You could keep him here, in the Sanctuary," John proposed. "He can be schooled here and always kept safe indoors. To the outside world, it will almost be like he doesn't exist. And if no one knows he exists, then…"

Helen shook her head. "No, I can't. That isn't a life for a little boy. He deserves more than that, John. Just like Ashley deserved more than that."

He nodded in agreement, glad that she'd seen the ridiculousness of the suggestion. "You'll find a balance, Helen. Nothing in life is ever 100% safe, but…you'll do the best you can. You won't always be this afraid."

She looked over to where their son was peacefully sleeping, blissfully unaware of their concerns. "I love him so much already," she whispered.

John held her a little closer. "I know. So do I."

Helen knew that John stayed up most of the rest of the night, watching over her and James. By the time she awakened in the morning, he'd finally fallen asleep, exhausted. Helen decided to do the same favor for him that he'd done for her and take James out of the room so that the baby wouldn't awaken him. Additionally, she now had a chance to go to her office and check on the status of her Sanctuary without John pestering her about getting more rest.

She put James' bassinet at the end of her desk and logged in to her computer. Any messages from the other Sanctuaries should have been going to Will, who was Acting Head of the Old City facility for the next few weeks, but the other Sanctuary leaders knew her well enough to know that they'd better CC her on everything as well. She was halfway through the status updates when she heard a hesitant knock on her open door frame.

"Aren't you supposed to be taking it easy?" Ashley asked her mother as she came in the room.

"I feel perfectly fine, and had a few things that I wanted to attend to."

She raised an eyebrow. "And I'm assuming that John isn't supposed to know about this?"

Helen smiled. "Not if it can be avoided."

Ashley nodded. "You secret's safe with me, Mom."

Her use of that title for the second time got Helen's attention. "Do you know what you just said?" she asked her daughter.

Ashley frowned. "That I wouldn't tell John you were in here?"

"Well, yes, but you called me Mum." The younger girl's eyes widened. "You did it last night as well."

"I wasn't even thinking about it. I don't know, it just seemed…normal. Do you want me to stop?"

Helen gave a watery chuckle. "No," she told her daughter, "Never."

Ashley nodded. "Okay…Mom." They shared a smile at that.

"Did you need to speak with me about something?" Helen asked.

"Yeah… I know I don't understand medical stuff, so stop me if I'm way off base, but…could you use my DNA – whatever the Cabal did to me – in order to give John my regenerative abilities? So you don't have to worry about him getting messed up again from teleporting, I mean."

Helen frowned, perplexed. "His condition is being controlled. He's been doing fine for several months now."

"I know," Ashley tried to cover. "I just…I just want to make sure. I mean, you've all done so much for me and I figured maybe this was something I could do to help him. Just to make sure," she repeated.

Helen studied her for a moment; Ashley had never been able to lie very convincingly to her. Why would she suddenly out of the blue be worried about whether John was getting brain damage again from teleporting? Unless…

Unless she knew something that Helen didn't. She quickly got up from her desk. "Can you stay with James?" she asked her daughter.

Her eyes widened at the idea of being alone with the baby. "Wait, what am I supposed to do?"

"Nothing. Just stay with him." She then headed down the hall toward her bedroom.

John was still asleep, but the sound of the door slamming shut behind her woke him up. "Helen?" he groggily asked as he sat up.

She just glared. "You bloody liar."

TBC...