1912 – 1920's

With an added person to hide through this re-run of history, not only did it make certain things a little more complicated, but in other aspects it also made a few things easier. One of the issues was identification and what name Ashley would be using. They both knew the fact that using multiple random names and identities would create a continuity issue down the road, making it harder to keep their stories straight such as if they ran into another person and had just so happened to be using another name at that given time. Helen knew from her first go around through time at how complicated it got using false names and passports, and that was even with the helpful assistance of the British government being involved; a luxury that was now absent. Biology also dictated that a person would always respond to their given name as it was ingrained in them since birth as being part of their core identity. For that reason, Ashley adopted what her mother had decided to do, to continue to use her same first name and just switch out her middle and last names. To keep the lie simple, they both agreed upon sticking close to the truth; using actual family names to fill in the gaps.

However, with two people this became a slight problem. For them to both try to remain as hidden as possible meant that they couldn't be registered with the same last names or even documented as being related to one another. Since Helen had already started to use names on Ashley's maternal side of the family, it was decided that it would be best if Ashley took names from her own paternal lineage. They each started fairly close, Helen using her mother's maiden name 'Bancroft' and Ashley decided to go even closer, using her father's first name, 'Montague' for her new last name. With the naming, Helen also implemented the rule of 'use it and lose it'. The intention is for it to help conceal the fact that they are essentially immortal. It would be very suspicious if a name never died out and was being reused over and over again for everything. To avoid any unwanted attention, they agreed on time limits for each name that they had chosen to use and also made sure that each name wasn't to be over used to thwart creating a long paper trail following behind them throughout history. One of the positive things about having another person in the past was that there was now a second individual who could bring in income. Following the 'use it or lose it' model meant that any account, business, stock, bond, property etc. that each of them opened separately had to be a one-time-only deal and fully closed or sold once matured. There were to be no 'inheritance' profiles that were transferred from an older alias to a newer one. This practice in Helen's mind would release the ventures to hopefully be claimed by its 'rightful' owners in time, if that were to be the case. Another stipulation included that if one of them for some reason wanted to reinvest in a particular portfolio that it had to be set up with a brand new clean account with a different identity several years to decades apart, as to not be remembered or connected to any previous affiliation or involvement.

While it would eventually become harder to continually re-create two brand new fictitious individual people who never actually existed once the advent of digital technology and consolidated data bases came about, it would be the most unnoticeable approach if someone were to do a historical search at some point in the future. Having two people with the same first and last names linked to each other repeatedly over the course of a century would put up a giant red flag. Helen didn't want to leave too many breadcrumbs for people to follow and she absolutely did not want any trace to come back to Ashley what-so-ever. Her daughter had already been taken from her once before and used as a weapon against her in one of the most unimaginable ways possible, and because of that she vowed with her entire being to never let that happen ever again.

Within the first month of living at their new home in Montreal, Helen had a conversation with Ashley one afternoon about what would happen once they hit the day that Ashley's time loop had completed. Helen made it very clear to Ashley that she was to never attempt to return to the Old City Sanctuary or any Sanctuary and to also not attempt to contact any of its personnel and affiliates; that unfortunately included Henry. She even went so far as to ban her from visiting any of the cities that the Sanctuary Network resided in. Helen was very strict about this protocol and declared that the matter was non-negotiable. Ashley was very distraught by this restriction until her mother explained to her the reasoning behind it. That not only would this hold true as to why Helen's past self nor any other person ever saw Ashley making a single appearance for almost two years after her assumed fatal teleportation through the EM shield, but it also reinforced Helen's want for her daughter to capitalize on her death; to take as much advantage of the opportunity as she possibly could for as long as she could. Being a ghost that no one would even think to look for provided the best anonymity any one could ever hope for. It also would help reduce their shared fear of a possible future copy-cat abduction by further limiting the chance that she was found out to still be alive. At the end of the conversation Helen admitted that she too wanted an 'out' just like Ashley had been granted. Once she had returned to her own time and it became apparent that the Sanctuary Network was prepped and ready to completely shift everything over the Underground facility, she intended to fake her own death to stop governments and other organizations from hounding her. Though currently, she wasn't quite so sure how she was going to go about doing that convincingly.

Not very surprising, Ashley became bored quite quickly and found herself one morning lamenting on the sofa to her mother. The initial novelty and excitement of time traveling and being in the 1910's had evidently faded beyond contentment. Helen knew that her daughter never liked to settle for too long, and just like herself, she preferred to stay busy. She also knew that even though the girl loved to travel and explore, that it was the connection to a place that her child enjoyed the most. While Helen had resigned herself to playing the long game, Ashley was still on the complete other end of the spectrum and started to get frustrated with how slow everything was moving in-between major steps. She came from a world of always being on the go, a lifestyle full of action and adventure accompanied by a large dose of danger and drama twisted into it; so was the way of her life at the Sanctuary bagging and tagging Abnormals. She was the chainsaw to Helen's scalpel. To help alleviate Ashley's internal struggles, Helen encouraged her to take part in the world, involving herself in the cultural eras by experiencing various jobs of all sorts and investing her time learning new hobbies. Helen herself had already begun to do that, but her career choices she pursued all had a connected purpose to building the new Sanctuary. Ashley on the other hand, while still a full partner, knew that she didn't have much to bring to the table this far out other than filling the role of being the brawn and shadow puppet that her mother needed. Her mother would unquestioningly be the brain of the operation and logistics manager for a very long time to come, possibly forever, and she accepted that as that was the role she was born into and it so far fit perfectly with her. It's what made them work so well, as they could cover each other's bases and short-comings; Ashley being the 'Yin' to Helen's 'Yang'.

Helen understood that while both of them were stuck in the past, that it didn't necessarily mean that both of their paths had to follow the same exact directions to their shared destination. To make it easier for Ashley to understand, Helen made their lives analogous to a two-car road trip. She made the point of relating herself as to being the lead car that is stuck in very slow-moving traffic on an interstate with a direct route straight to the finish. Although all-purpose, it's not very enjoyable as it is lined with pine trees that she can't see through to help her avoid the distractions of her first life. As for Ashley, she would be the following car that saw the congestion ahead and decided to not stay on the interstate anymore, opting instead to detour and take an exit ramp to travel faster yet ultimately further by driving the scenic route that bypassed all of the traffic; winding through townships, neighborhoods, farm land, and national parks. Along the way she could make several pit stops and take her time to sight see, embracing her journey to create her own story and gain new experiences out of it. Helen emphasized heavily to Ashley that she had already taken the interstate once before, but in the form of being a piece of luggage in Helen's car while she was still a frozen embryo for all of those years; that she now has a second chance in the past to live a life that she had already missed out on once before.

While Helen would always be there to provide insight and guidelines, Ashley was technically free to do whatever she wanted as long as she stayed relatively within the boundaries. Her life in a way had become a coloring book. While the outlined pattern was there, she could pick what colors she wanted to use and the when, where, and how she wanted to use them to fill in the mosaic. It didn't matter if the occupation or activity was high class, low class, industrial, corporate, entry-level, advanced, paid well, was based on tips or commission, full-time, part-time, lasted more a year or only for a few months, so long as it was something that had initially interested her and held something that she wanted to learn about or just to experience either because she thought it would be fun or simply just wanted to add it to her acumen. The world was her oyster.

Taking the leeway granted from mother, Ashley set out on testing multiple career paths to see what she liked. Within the first ten years she had already tried seven different trades, refining a few skills along the way such as being a telegraph operator during the second half of the First World War; knowing Morse code certainly did have its advantages. She had also taken up formal classical music lessons involving learning music theory and diving into the mechanics of the piano as a start; her mother had tried to teach her when she was little, but it never caught on as she was more interested in just watching her mom play rather than playing herself. During that decade she had also moved out of her mother's place within the year and into her own apartment and subsequently moved another three times since, semi-following her career choices, moving to cities that would be hiring the occupation she was going after.

With her daughter off on her own individual pursuits, Helen during this particular decade had doubled down on her own agenda, getting a little too involved with history, a knowingly amount more than she should have. Being as there were a lot great minds still around at this time and that there were a lot of inventions and techniques on the cusp of being created, with how technologically ambitious she had intended for the new Sanctuary to be, it required her to try to enlist their help; what better way to gain information than from the actual sources and creators themselves! Helen knew that to even be able to get near such people and on top of that, to be heard, required her to build credit behind the name of Helen Bancroft, and one of the best ways that she knew was through her passion for medical science; something that she was extremely adept in. On one side, she had literal future knowledge of procedures at her disposal. On the other side, there was the issue that she was walking a very delicate line of not accidentally stealing an innovative practice from someone or pushing medicine to be more advanced than it was. She also didn't want to stick so far out that her past self would read about her in a journal. It was a gamble that she had to take.

By the year 1916, Helen had accomplished a lot of feats. Not only had she had enrolled in the University of London and graduated with a Doctor in Science degree in Medical Science, becoming a visiting professor there, but she had also gained a PhD in Global Health from University of Lahore in Pakistan. She did so well there that she quickly rose through the ranks in the establishment, not only becoming the professor of Global Health at Lahore, but also the university's Executive Director of Health Science and their Director of Medical Fellowship. Helen also became an honorary professor at the University of Queensland in Australia as well.

1920s

At some point all of this achievement gained the attention of Viscount Haldane who invited her to be a guest at a private symposium that he hosted for Albert Einstein in London in 1921 for a listening on breakthrough medical research and discoveries. Helen was given a chance to speak about her upcoming advancements in medicine, and the placement of her research team. This allowed her to rub shoulders with some of the brightest minds that the world would ever know. Though, Helen had to be careful here as her other self would also being interacting with these same people in just a few years' time, if not already.

Other than that, the rest of this decade was spent similarly to the first, with Helen and Ashley each going their own separate ways. They would frequently keep in touch with each other via post; updating each other of on their activities and any residence changes they would make. They only met with each other in person about six times during that entire period due to how busy they had each become. Though overall, it didn't really bother each other too much, as Helen felt proud at seeing her daughter spread her wings and be independent of the Sanctuary, and Ashley relished in being her own decision maker; happily traveling to where ever the road may take her.


Authors note: There is a major conflict in the show regarding the University of Lahore. In real life it doesn't exist until the year 1999. I don't know if the writers knew that or not, them possibly thinking they could just throw in some off-the-wall university that most people have never heard of, believing it wouldn't be a big deal if Magnus interfered with it? At the same time it does seem oddly specific?

This is based off of the text viewers see on the computer screen Abby is looking at as she searches SCIU's database for a 'Helen Bancroft'. It says that Bancroft has a PhD in Global Health from Lahore, but yet Bancroft is also the professor and director of the university. This is confusing to me. Like, did she earn a degree then replace her teachers, superseding them to take over the program / institution herself? Or, did she create the entire medical program there and then award herself her own degree? The first option sounds more plausible as there also wasn't any specific mention that she herself had founded the university more than 83 years before it actually was. I'm leaning towards an over sight on part of the writers as on that same screen Abby is reading is a noticeable typo of the Dallas Sanctuary being listed as 'Dalass' instead.

Also, another interesting conflict to consider is that past Helen already knows Einstein and other major scientific pioneers. I'm not sure how'd she be able to show up as Bancroft and no one ever question the name change and or later recognize her using the name Magnus. But, I just have to roll with it.