Title: Before
Characters/Pairing: Helen/John
Rating: Teen
Summary: Helen confronts her worst fear…John. Written for (and winner of) Syfy LAS Round 1 Challenge 1 on LJ.
Cross-posted: Shorter version with the Syfy LAS entries.
The gun was cold, heavy in her hand. A testament to the fact she had just loaded six bullets into it. Helen Magnus was not unfamiliar with holding or shooting a gun. While working with her father, she had come across many unfortunate situations when lethal force, and accurate aim, had been necessary. The difference tonight was she was not seeking an abnormal, hoping to bring it safely to the Sanctuary. Tonight, she hunted what she desperately hoped was not her fiancé. The gun, instead of promising her safety, felt foreign in her hand.
When Nikola had come to her, concerned about John's erratic behaviour, she had dismissed it as mere jealousy. It was only a week after they had announced their engagement. She ignored the fact that, when he thought he was unobserved, she had also noticed he was distant with thought. When Nigel came to her, a month after Nikola, he was concerned for John's wellbeing. He had noticed that John rarely attended the classes she did not, and was less and less inclined to join both him and Watson for drinks or lively debate on modern affairs, especially when her work at the Sanctuary kept them away from their meetings. Finally, James sought her out to convince her, as the others had failed to, that John was not himself. Where others had provided their opinions and questions as to John's mental health, he had provided objective facts, persuading her using the logic they both loved so dearly.
That night, when she finally asked him what had been troubling him, he hesitated and turned to smile at her. Coming close, he whispered "Nothing, my love." Before setting to work at making her forget her own name. That night, as she rested, he quietly left the room. She waited for him to creep down the stairs, finally hearing the door creak open, and closed, before she dressed. It was entirely possible he was returning to his lodgings, lest she be found in a position that would compromise her virtue, but she would just check.
She left the house minutes later, following the form she could see in the distance in the direction of his accommodation. She followed it through winding streets, eventually finding herself in one of the poorer areas of the city and unable to track him further. She returned home, banishing the thoughts from her mind. That was the night of the fifth Ripper killing.
The next morning, still in denial about the events of the previous evening, she talked to John, her father, and even James, as though nothing had happened. Because nothing had happened, he had just gone for an extremely extended stroll.
The second time she followed him, Helen had not planned to do so. They had returned from a night at the Opera and he gallantly held open the door for her, kissed he hand in parting, and departed into the cool and foggy night. She had merely clutched her coat, counted to ten, and followed him out into the night with the intention of putting her ridiculous doubts to rest. She trailed after him through the city. The hem of her nice gown was eventually hard with the grime of the streets. Just before dawn, after losing and following him several times, she came across him in one of the many darkened courtyards. His form was hunched over and muscles straining against the thin shirt he had worn. Small whimpering noises could be heard coming from before him.
The sight shook Helen to the core. She had not expected this. In all truth, she had known instinctively that something was amiss, but her conscious mind would never have permitted to conceive that her beloved John was the target of James's manhunt. Jack the Ripper. He turned to face her, and would probably have seen her had the woman he restrained not held his full attention. Upon seeing the knife he held to her throat, Helen quietly, with the timidness of a rabbit quivering in its burrow and waiting for the wolf to find it, slid from the alley and ran as fast as she could. Eventually she stopped and collapsed in a small heap. Her elegant dress had long ago been ruined, her sparse makeup smeared, her carefully crafted hair loose about her shoulders. She could easily be mistaken for one of the whores John had killed.
Each night she was not in John's presence she followed him, armed with a gun and wrapped in heavy layers of dark clothing, usually reserved for mourning. In a way she was mourning. She grieved for her love that was lost to madness, the women he had killed and their child who would not know her father. She stalked through alleys, hunting a predator, relentless in her search. Their confrontation was inevitable, she only hoped she could talk sense into him.
She finally came across him in an alley as he approached one of the women from the area. She could see the glint of his partially drawn blade as he neared the woman, Molly. His steps were slow, casual, but there was a bloodthirsty hunch in his shoulders, an eagerness in his step. The poor woman probably thought he was looking for satisfaction of a far different kind.
"John! This ends here." She had to say something before the prostitute found she was unable to escape his strong arms. In reaction to her exclamation, he quickly thrust the blade back into the cane that concealed it. With yet more urgency he walked to Molly, standing beside her as he introduced her.
"Helen, what a lovely surprise. Molly, I would like you to meet my fiancée. Or, should I say, former fiancée, Helen Magnus. Doctor Helen Magnus." His manner and coldhearted words left little to the imagination about the impact this had on their relationship. Even if their 'relationship' had not existed in any real form for weeks.
"Doctor? I'm pleased to meet you, ma'am. Well...I'll be on my way." The situation was obviously making her uncomfortable. Though, again, her ignorance of the true situation, or dispute, involved was clear in her almost flippant manner. She gained a real idea of the significance of the moment when John reached, roughly, to grab her arm. His vice-like grip was preventing her from leaving and also causing significant discomfort.
"Stay. I insist." The gentlemanly words failed to disguise the contempt in his voice, the words a cruel parody on the kind man she had once known him to be.
"John, let me help you before you make things worse." In that moment, her greatest desire was that he would release the woman and come quietly. She wanted nothing more than to cure the disease he carried and return to the life she had loved for the last year. A life where their daughter could be safe with a loving family.
"And how is that possible? I've already murdered, what, seven whores? How could one more make the slightest difference?" The last of his guise as a man was dropped as his eyes conveyed pure malice to her and the woman in his arms. He was truly a monster.
"Murdered?" In the intense exchange of non-verbal communication between her and John, Helen had nearly forgotten Molly. As if his attention was also draw back to the figure before him, he pulled her towards him, hand covering her mouth, knife once again unsheathed and at her throat.
"What more have I to lose?" Helen knew it was a rhetorical question, but couldn't help but provide him with reminders of her, of his life before this had started.
"Your power's driving you mad, John. I can help." The woman who remembered John Druitt, as the man she had fallen in love with retreated to the back of her mind. Now she was Dr. Magnus. The woman who had fought to gain her medical degree, who hunted things most men didn't believe in.
"My power is all I have left." In a way he was right. He had lost his friends, his morals, his character. Soon, he would lose his love. The revolver now hot and slick with sweat, was raised. The force of will required to do so was phenomenal. To point the dangerous weapon at him screamed against everything in her being. She wanted to be back months ago in the carriage, leaving the play, as he proposed to her. She wanted to be years in the future, educating her child as its attentive father watched on and laughed, whole and sound. She wanted to be anywhere but in this moment, aiming a gun at John, tight coil of fear in her gut saying she might have to shoot him.
"Let her go." It was her last chance, the command that he would obey and renew his life with her, or ignore and destroy her heart. Her voice shook slightly with the level and multitude of emotions she felt.
"As the lady wishes." For a brief moment her heart soared. She would have him back. All would be well, the past forgotten. Her euphoria lasted only moments as he slowly relinquished his hold over the woman, before it was crushed as he pulled her closer towards him. Violently, he slit her throat before moving away from Molly's now lifeless body. She saw in his eyes that it was his last act of defiance. She aimed her gun at him and fired as he disappeared. She would not know for years to come if her shot had been fatal, or if she had missed and condemned others to die.
But for now, there was a lifeless body that would be discovered by the police and a woman who had just faced the worst conceivable outcome for the evening. She had killed her lover.