End of 1979

Adjusting to living with a newborn was hectic, but a more than welcomed change-up for the two immortal women. For the first couple of weeks of his life Tristan was mostly cared for exclusively by his mother, sleeping in a bassinet just off to the side of her bed. It wasn't until a routine finally started to form that Ashley was able to get more involved, such as helping out with his nightly feedings with prepared bottles of breast-milk as well as doing his night-time diaper changes to allow Helen to get a more restful and uninterrupted sleep. Ashley didn't mind though, as not only was that to be naturally expected, but she also really enjoyed being able to quietly sneak into her mother's room at night while she slept to cuddle with Tristan in the rocking chair in the nursery.

With the addition of her brother into the family and her mother going on maternity leave to focus on caring for him, it meant another life change for Ashley in which she stepped into Helen's role, acting as her on-site liaison, in regards to the managing of the building of the Underground Sanctuary.

1980s

It wasn't until Tristan got to be about two years old that Helen felt comfortable in shifting around half of the on-location duties back over to herself personally.

Ashley absolutely adored her little brother and playing with him as a baby. Now that he was turning into a toddler running around all over the place, one of her favorite activities to help him burn off some extra energy was when the three of them would go to the park and play. She especially loved their walks along the paths, when both her and her mother would swing him between them, hearing him giggle and ask for 'more'.

As he continued to age, they could see his personality starting to form and come through; becoming quite clear to them that he had not only inherited his father's charm and his mother's wit, but that the core spirit of him was ruled by Helen's love of adventure and for learning. He was definitely his Mummy's boy through and through, just the opposite of how Ashley had been her father's daughter. Having a little mini-Helen on their hands was pretty exciting as it made it really easy to introduce new skills to him through the concept of play, making him none-the-wiser at them prepping him for dangerous situations down the line, things such as enrolling him in martial arts classes while in elementary school.

One passion that the boy had all his own that never faded was his intense love for playing ice hockey. When he was four, Helen had signed him up for the pee-wee league. He was incessant about being on the ice and Helen never missed a single open practice or game, ever, even when he would eventually go through high school and get into college. She always made it a priority to be there for her son, another lesson she had unfortunately learned while raising Ashley was the importance that family comes first, no matter what. This time around, with Ashley helping out, she wasn't forced to compromise the time that she had with her child. When she was raising Ashley, being the sole head of the Network meant that she often regrettably became very busy, having to travel away a lot. It was slightly unfortunate for Ashley that during the time of her childhood it was also the time when the majority of the global expansion of the Network had happened. Even though most of the time Ashley came along with her on her business trips, the work Helen was there for didn't leave much time to go out and explore the locations they went to, such as Rome. Because neither of them wanted to repeat history, Ashley wasn't at all jealous of all the attention her brother was getting from their mom during his young age, in fact Ashley encouraged it, understanding that each of their situations were different through nobody's fault, it was just what it was and is.

Early 1990s

Being part of the Sanctuary meant that weapons training was standard. Unlike Ashley who enjoyed the thrill of shooting them, Tristan on the other hand while a capable shot, mostly enjoyed the mechanics of the weapons, taking them apart and marveling about their construction and how each piece came together to work in sync as a single unit. It wasn't so much a love for engineering as it was for the understanding of the concept of how simple and complex systems worked together. This directly fed into his desire to follow into his mother's footsteps to learn medicine. Helen was more than glad to start teaching him what she knew. She had an inkling suspicion that he held an interest in the practice as ever since he was really small he had always enjoyed helping people. She also felt that he was primly apt for it as he had also inherited her father's love for the Latin language. It wasn't absolutely confirmed for her until she found him one afternoon when he was eleven flipping through one of her old medical text books and she asked if he'd like to learn more about the subject, to which the boy eagerly agreed. Helen couldn't help but feel a sense of pride at taking her son under her knowledgeable wing.

While her kid brother was off doing his own thing, Ashley decided to indulge herself in aviation; another interest that she had gotten from their mother. By that point in time the family of three had built up their own small fleet of private aircraft, including several fixed wings and helicopters. While working on the Underground Sanctuary on the side, Ashley became a search and rescue helicopter pilot in the Yukon. Another interesting development for her was that in 1991 she had decided to change her name to 'Leigh Druitt', formally adopting the lovely moniker that her brother had bestowed upon her ever since he could start to talk, when he had struggled to say her name.

Developmentally, Tristan had been just like any other normal boy growing up, hitting his milestones at an average predictable rate. Unlike Ashley who looked more like their father, with some of their mother thrown in, Tristan's features definitely had followed more of their mother, though it was undeniable at the same time that John was obviously his father; giving him a ratio of about 60/40 between mum and dad. Genetic testing at his birth revealed that like Ashley, he as well had inherited both of his parents gifts, and also like Ashley, they were intrinsically dormant. Helen and Ashley had a discussion together about this information and decided the best course of action would be to wait until he was a lot older (close to the age Ashley had been) to eventually approach him about the possible activation of his genes; giving him the option if he wanted to or not. They also both agreed to not lie to him if he ever did eventually come to ask about his possible dormant abilities before then.

However, the ultimate decision to activate the genes or not turned out to have never been an option based on cognizant consent. His body automatically made the 'choice' for him when he started to go through puberty and hit his thirteenth birthday in 1992.

During the celebration that night while they were sitting at the dining room table, Ashley had been teasing him about the details surrounding his history of how he eventually came to be born.

"So, you kept me as energy in your body for all that time? Where?" he questioned.

"Right here in my back pocket," she said giving a light smack to her arse as she stood to start collecting the empty plates on the table before breaking out into a gigantic smile a few seconds later at the look of absolute disbelief on his face.

"Nuh uh, no way!" he semi-shot back unbelieving with a half-smile, looking between both his sister and their mother, looking a little wide-eyed at Helen for confirmation.

All she could do however was burst out into a fit of giggles at the whole scene in front of her involving her two children bantering back and forth.

"It's true!" Ashley laughed back unconvincingly.

"Oh come on, Leigh. Where was I for real?" he asked again.

Ashley at that point gave in. "All right, the truth is that I kept you in my heart for safe keeping," she admitted with a warm smile. "Now that you know, are you going to help me clean up the table?" she asked with a light nod.

As requested of him, he moved to get out of his chair and grabbed a few items before turning to walk after his sister towards the kitchen. However, he made it there before she did, teleporting the short distance.

Ashley almost dropped all of the silverware and china she was carrying at the moment of seeing his sudden appearance in front of her, stopping dead in her tracks with her jaw hanging wide open.

Helen rightfully so freaked out about her son disappearing unexpectedly in front of her. She immediately jumped from her chair and rushed over past a stunned Ashley to be by his side, taking him by his shoulders as he confusingly set the items down on the counter that just appeared out of nowhere in front him.

"W-what just happened?!" he turned around to face his mother, shock written all over his face.

"You teleported. Are you okay? How do you feel?" she worriedly asked as she held on to him, looking at him all over from head-to-toe to check and see that he was still in one piece.

Ashley by that point had finished walking the last few steps to the sink to deposit the items that she was carrying before she turned around to look him over as well.

"I'm fine, but you said that I couldn't do that!" he stated accusingly.

"I did," Helen nodded.

"Then how…?" he wondered, looking at her directly in her eyes, searching for answers.

Helen was at a loss. "Right now, I'm not quite sure how you are able to," she said, truthfully confused. "You were obviously somehow able to activate your dormant genes all on your own," she shrugged.

"Wait, so I've had this ability all along?" he asked.

"Yes, you have," Helen answered.

"But when I asked you if I could teleport just like Ashley, you said that I couldn't because she wasn't able to until some scientists experimented on her, turning her into a vampire," he questioned.

Ashley and Helen then looked at each other before Ashley decided to jump in. "Yeah, I uh, left something out of that story." she winced. "While it is true that I couldn't teleport before the experiments, I could actually teleport before I was turned into a vampire." She admitted.

Tristan was confused. "Wait, what?"

"Teleportation is something that we get from our Dad," she spilled.

He lofted an eyebrow at that. "So, it's inherited?"

Helen and Ashley both nodded and said, "Yes" simultaneously.

"Why didn't you tell me before now?" Tristan wanted to know.

It was now their mother's turn to wince. "I honestly didn't know exactly when to tell you. Being honest, I didn't tell your sister either before she found out for herself," she said motioning towards Ashley.

"That is true," Ashley confirmed. "You actually found out long before I did. I didn't even know I could until I was twenty-four," she pointed out that fact hoping it could in some way make him feel a bit better at being told hidden information.

Tristan looked back at their mom. "Why was it that you never told either of us?"

"It's somewhat of a complicated answer that involves less-than-pleasant details surrounding your father's ability. I was hoping that you would have been several years older than you are now when I finally told you," Helen told her son.

Ashley looked down and away at that point, she knew exactly where this discussion was headed and that it wouldn't be what any child would want to hear. Ashley was at least an adult that could fully understand the situation behind their mother's actions when she finally learned the truth that Jack the Ripper was her father.

"What do you mean 'less-than-pleasant details'? What did he do with it?" he probed.

Ashley decided to take pity on her mother as she knew this would be a very difficult subject for her to broach. "Tristan, you know how Dad's not here right now with us because we told you that mom and I are time travelers and him being here would interfere with our history?"

He nodded. "Yeah."

"Well, during the time that I was growing up he wasn't around for me either. I never knew him as a kid. I didn't know who he was or that he was even still alive until he randomly showed up one day at the Old City Sanctuary when I was twenty-three. There was a really good reason behind why mom never told me about him before that moment, the reason being…" Ashley paused to glance at their mother to make sure it was okay to proceed.

Helen nodded her consent.

Ashley then barreled straight into it. "The reason behind why she didn't tell me is because his ability led him to become one of the world's most notorious serial killers of all time. You actually just learned about him in your history class today at school." Her mouth became very dry at that moment.

Tristan couldn't believe it. "Jack the Ripper is my father?!" he said wide-eyed.

"Our father, yes," Ashley nodded. "Having 'Druitt' as our last name isn't a coincidence."

"So teleporting makes you kill people? You haven't killed people, have you?" he asked Ashley worryingly.

Ashley felt really uneasy at having to reveal this next truth to her young brother. "Actually, I have killed people, but I was forced to by the Cabal which is a different situation altogether. But no, teleportation itself doesn't make you want to kill people." She then looked towards their mother. "Mom, would you like to take over this part, please?" she somewhat begged.

Helen nodded and began to clarify the situation. "Do you recall when I told you about the source blood serum I created at Oxford that activated my longevity ability?"

Tristan nodded. "I do."

"Well, I omitted your father's role in the experiment. He not only helped me in creating the serum, but he also had it injected into himself like I did, unlocking his teleportation genes. It wasn't until a couple years after the injection that the Whitechapel murders started happening. When it became known that it was your father who was the person behind all of the killings, everyone assumed that it was his ability that drove him mad until well over a hundred years later when we learned the truth that his madness was actually caused by a murderous energy creature that has been using your father's body as a host. He somehow had picked it up during a random teleport at some point not long after the experiment, forcing him to kill all of those women. Your father himself is a good man, just plagued by something that he can't fully control." Helen rubbed his shoulders lightly to comfort him as she finished.

Tristan looked towards his sister when she began to speak.

"The existence of this electrical creature, while seemingly exceedingly rare according to Mom, is what makes it not completely safe for the two of us to teleport. At least not until we can possibly find a way to protect ourselves from potentially getting infected with one," Ashley sighed and shifted her weight, casually resting her hands in her jeans' pockets. "It's the reason behind why I don't teleport the three us all over the world and we still drive or fly to the all of the places that we want to go." She added in.

Tristan was a bit sad to hear this news and looked back towards his mother. "So what does that mean for me? You don't want me teleporting anymore?" he asked sincerely.

Helen tilted her head and a little smile crept up on her face. "Not exactly," she teased. "For right now, I would actually prefer if you practiced teleporting more to get comfortable with the ability, learning how to control it. Ashley can help you with that. It'll make me feel better about you not accidentally ending up in a wall or randomly who-knows-where out in public. After that, I would err on the side of caution, using it infrequently only when necessary. For the time being, of course. It won't be forever, I promise," she smiled to which Tristan gave her a tight hug in response.

The next day Ashley started lessons outside, just to make it easier and safer. Helen watched from a far, standing next to the side of the house about thirty feet away to give them plenty of space to train. While it was pretty much natural for Ashley and her father as they started teleporting when they were fully grown adults, it didn't come as easy for Tristan as his brain and body were starting to undergo a major physiological stage of adolescent development. Left and right he failed to hit his mark over and over again, eventually falling through the air to get stuck in the limbs of one of the very large oak trees they had in their backyard, dangling upside down about ten feet off the ground. How that happened, Ashley had no clue as she had actually wanted him to just land on the concrete patio just about fifteen feet in front of him. At that point, their mother immediately stopped the train wreck of a training session out of safety concerns. Rightfully so, as the fall through the tree gave him several bruises and cuts, some of which were deep enough that Helen had to stitch them. She couldn't help but also think of the injuries he could have sustained had he'd continued to fall to the ground, or worse, him possibly dying had he fell from that same height and not had a tree to help pad his fall.

Mid-1990s – Mid 2000s

Throughout his early teenage years, even though teleporting was still an ongoing issue, Tristan otherwise did excel at most of his core studies throughout his schooling. History was a subject that he couldn't help but to know a lot about by default already due to both his mother and sister regaling him with their many stories, practically imprinting it into him since early childhood. However, unlike his sister and father, and even his mother to an extent, he did struggle in areas such as literature, philosophy, and art as the subject matter wasn't quite 'definite' enough for his analytically focused mind to fully grasp and comprehend very easily upon first encounter. Also unlike Helen and Ashley's love of many languages, outside of learning Latin, he also didn't care to dabble in trying to learn languages outside of Romance languages that share similar structures with Latin cores and roots, such as Italian, French, and Spanish; languages that were also easily readable and translatable script, anything else and he left it to his mother or sister to translate.

When he graduated senior high school in 1997, he had been accepted into the University of Toronto. Not only did it have a great hockey program, but it was also the place where he had wanted to attend for their great medical school as well. For Helen, no matter what institution he had ultimately chosen, she would always be happy for him. Her only stipulation was that she didn't want him living in any of the dorms. Instead, she bought a house near to the the school's campus just like how Ashley had done while she was at Yale.

In 2001, after four years had subsequently passed, Tristan completed undergraduate school; earning a Bachelor's degree for his major in Biology.

Another four years after that in 2005, his celebrated his post-graduate medical school graduation; a momentously joyful occasion that Helen would never forget. James Watson had been present for the exciting special event and snapped one of Helen's favorite photos of the small family; it captured the scene of her now six-foot-tall broad-shouldered handsome son in his cap and gown holding his newly earned MD certificate, flanked on both sides by Ashley and herself, all of them smiling brightly towards the camera. She couldn't help but stare frequently at the happy picture every now-and-again as the frame sat on her office desk in the now almost completed Underground Sanctuary.

The facility was pretty much structurally finished aside from the rail transport station she planned to build. That would require help from Praxis. Otherwise it still needed a lot of furnishings outside of the family's private quarters. Helen and Ashley had pretty much both moved there permanently by this point, outside of needed trips to the surface, to try to stay off the Cabal's radar. They weren't sure how far back their plans for world domination involving the Sanctuary stretched, as it could have well pre-dated their dealings with the Morrígan in three years' time.

2005 was also the year that micro-technology and tools for it had progressed far enough along that Helen was able to sneak into the Old City Sanctuary to 'borrow' some spare parts from the EM shield generator and was able to create micro-versions of the machine in the shape of a wrist bracelet for both Ashley and Tristan to wear, creating a thin protective EM shield bubble around their pure energy signatures, somewhat similar to the way Tesla was able to naturally create a shield around himself and Helen to avoid the scan from the holographic map in the Old City Sanctuary's library in 2010. Now her children were free use their teleportation ability to come and go as they pleased, even at the Underground Sanctuary. It was easy for them to travel between the surface and the facility, unlike the issues John faced in getting to Praxis, as the facility was nowhere as deep in the Earth as Praxis was and was also not located in a pocket of surrounding dense magnetite lodestone, but instead in an area almost completely comprised of granite; materials she was keenly aware of that would affect their ability to teleport.


Authors Note: Apologies for this chapter being semi-clunky and hopping through time. I starting to struggle with finding interesting ways to flesh out so much time and had to bunch about twenty-six years altogether. By the start of Chapter 8, I had literally 'ran out of road' from the show about what and when Magnus had been doing things in the past in regards to the progress of the Underground Sanctuary, so from then on I'm having to completely wing it at my own discretion.

I'm not very confident of when or if Magnus had actually started to primarily live in the Underground Sanctuary any point in time up until the moment she rejoins her timeline in early 2011, so that's just me going out on a limb with 2005. For me, it seems a bit too early, but I also know I can't wait too long and have everything be last minute as that wouldn't make much sense considering that the Underground Sanctuary has what seems to be an established flora biome by the time we see it in early 2012.