IMPORTANT AUTHOR'S NOTE: When this site recently stopped accepting character section breaks like rows of asterisks, it removed this essential formatting from all earlier chapters of this fic. This means the jumps from present time to flashbacks are no longer denoted, which makes reading extremely confusing...sigh. I am attempting to go back and fix all early installments with some kind of notation for breaks, but this hasn't happened as yet, and I deeply apologize. Please bear with me!
All ratings, categories, etc., apply to the series as a whole, rather than individual parts, and I reserve the right to revise these as the series develops.
DISCLAIMER: All belongs to Damien Kindler and Stage 3 Media and Ms. Tapping and all the usual suspects who aren't me. Just borrowing these beautiful people. Thanks for the favor)
CATEGORIES: Hurt/comfort, angst, adventure, Helen/John, Helen/Will (friendship now, telling you whether there's more would be a spoiler)
Jumps from present day to flashbacks will be denoted by "###". Traditional section breaks will use "88888".
Many thanks to Teddy E, Annie, and TaliaToEnnien for the wonderful betas and for committing to a long term project!
Special thanks to Geonn Cannon and tigerlilybrown for the Grimalkin (Felis Praedatorius).
This chapter also adds a certain aspect to the mythology for which Geonn Cannon deserves partial credit. Further notes at the end of this chapter.
INTERVIEW WITH THE PROTEGE
by
Rowan Darkstar
Copyright (c) 2010
Chapter 8:
"Your hair is the softest I've ever felt," he says, dark curls spreading through his fingers.
Her smile is indulgent and warm and her gaze lowers and her lashes are dark.
He knows dozens of men have taken this role, stood in this place he stands. He knows these other men have had more money, better looks, more charm, more exciting lives, or more power. But she makes him feel like the others don't matter in the moment. Like he deserves the attention she grants.
But he asks her one night, when the insecurity of a boy who could never stay in one place long enough to believe he was loved dances to the forefront. He lies beside her in the half dark, listens to her soft sigh as she snuggles into her silk-covered pillow, and he says, "How could you want me?"
"What?" Her voice is so soft, hoarse and gentle, like fingertips brushing his arm.
His stomach feels too hot and tight, and he wants to melt in the shadows, disappear, but he's started this and he can't stop or the words will eat at him until he can't open to her anymore. He owes her honesty above all else. "After all the men you've known, all the...unbelievable things you've seen. Staying up all night talking to geniuses of their time, watching inventions happen right in front of you that will change the world. World renowned musicians writing songs for you, scientists, politicians, billionaires...Helen, what the hell am I doing here?"
She is quiet for a long time. Another woman would have rushed to reassure him, never let him wait in silence. Helen Magnus is not "another woman". "Are you asking if you're a casual diversion?" she says. "The entertaining pool boy? You know better than that."
"I'm not asking what I'm not. I'm asking what I am."
"Nikola Tesla changed technology for all time," she says abruptly, and he takes a beat to catch up. He takes a lifetime to catch up. "He's one of the most brilliant men I have ever known," she continues. "And he's a self-centered bastard, with a tiny bit of good buried somewhere so deep inside you need a microscope to find it. Mostly a bastard."
"He's your friend."
"Yes, very much so."
"So, he-"
"Musicians only think you're beautiful while you're inspiring their work. When you lose your shine, they lose interest and move on."
"Helen, I'm not-"
"Politicians want things bigger than love. They may love you, but you will always ultimately take second place to ambition."
"I'm not asking you to tear down every other man you've ever known. That will never ring true, Helen. We both know there have been amazing and good and loyal men that you have loved." He leaves no room for argument.
She takes this in stride. Like so much else. And some nights her composure infuriates him. "Yes. There have. And I make no apologies. But their money and talent and intelligence didn't determine their loyalty or kindness or their worth to me. Those qualities are entirely separate. Intriguing, entertaining, of course, but not the heart of things. Some of my most treasured friends...lovers...were also brilliant, or powerful, or talented, or well-travelled, and those qualities were a lovely and charming bonus. But they weren't the reason I loved. Some of my most treasured friends were nothing particularly brilliant on the outside, but something wondrous to me within. People are people, Will, in all walks of life. None of it is so different as you think. Love doesn t make sense. Ever. If I've learned one thing in all my years, it's that. You can't explain why one person over another makes you feel loved, safe, beautiful, in your proper place. It's not as though I'm the easiest person to love. I am a bit of an undertaking, I believe."
The soft smile in her voice, the self-deprecating teasing, pulls at the familiar softness between them, but he can't let go and smile with her yet. Reality holds him too firmly to darker ground.
Helen moves closer, but still doesn't offer the predictable or placating touches another woman might fall back upon. "You are here, Will, because when I crawl into bed beside you, I feel as if...for a little while everything might be...all right. As though maybe I have nothing to prove. That when you say you'll stay...no matter what...that you actually...might. Because you fought for me when I was crazy. When I was high on an ozone beetle and frightened and paranoid, and I threw myself into your arms...you caught me. And you never stopped fighting for me. You're a good man, Will. And that's...more rare and precious in this world than you may ever realize."
"I'm not amazing. I'm full of flaws, just like anyone else."
"I know. I live with you. And you drive me crazy half the time. But that doesn't take away from the good."
He can't find more words to capture the spinning emotions and he lets go of the effort on a heavy sigh.
She waits through the quiet with unnerving patience.
When she does touch, it means the world. She rolls on top of him without giving him so much as a breath to pull away. She props her forearm on his chest and meets his gaze in the moonlight with all the power and intensity of the woman who is Helen Magnus.
Her hand moves to cradle his cheek, and her touch is as much maternal as it is seductive and he has never understood how she so seamlessly blends the two. "You are here," she says, and he hears the first heartbreaking whisper of tears in her voice, "because loving you...is worth the inevitable loss."
He closes his eyes and breathes her. "I'm sorry," he whispers.
She doesn't want to hear it. She never does. She makes sure his words are forgotten in sensation.
88888
"Do you know...why she dyed her hair dark?"
Will blinks at the man on his balcony, certain the man has spoken words, but unable to translate their meaning. "I'm sorry? What was that?"
"Dr. Magnus's hair. It was blonde, when she was young. Do you know...why she dyed it black?"
Will tightens stiff fingers around the balcony railing and gazes out at the lawn dotted with residents soaking in the afternoon sun. "She doesn't dye it," he says.
"She doesn't...what do you mean? Is it a...a wig, or...?"
"Oh, no, no, no. It's her hair. It's just dark."
There is silence beside him for a long moment, and Will lets it stand. He's still reacclimating to the present, caught on the gliding wings of memory. 'God, Will...please...don't stop...anh...'
"I'm sorry," Orman stammers, "I don't...understand..."
Will finally turns and gives an apologetic and indulgent smile. "No, neither did I, at first. It's a story in itself."
Orman lifts an inquiring eyebrow. "Would you?"
"If you walk with me. I have some letters to send out."
Will takes the long way through the winding halls of Whispering Pines. He avoids the more public areas - the game room, the media room, the aviary, the cafeteria. He takes his companion through the residential halls, the administrative wing, past the barber shop (closed today), and the family waiting rooms. His feet don't carry him as swiftly as they once did, but he is in no rush today. There is no urgent mission to be accomplished, no patient awaiting his attention.
"At first I thought she dyed her hair. But I noticed before long that I never caught a glimpse of blonde roots," he says, hands in his pockets as he strolls through the corridors. His letters protrude from the deep pockets of his blazer. "I thought maybe it had been an aspect of her altered physiology, an effect of the source blood. But one day, I just asked."
"Apropos of nothing?"
"Basically, yes. Not all work at the Sanctuary is glamorous. Definitely not all of it is exciting. We had inventory days, paperwork, meetings, inner office memos, broken copy machines, all the usual plagues of modern life. That afternoon we were in what Helen called The Repository and the rest of us called The Dump. It was a room where we kept clothes and miscellany that any of our guests left behind or no longer needed: furniture, clothing, all kinds of items that had belonged to residents or former residents of the Sanctuary. Or things employees donated. You see, our new guests often dropped on us mid-crisis, and it came in handy to have a good stock of necessities to be able to offer. Clothes, bedding, toiletries, a clock radio, crib, cage, tank, feeder, you know...the essentials. Well, sometimes The Dump got out of hand and there was a lot more coming in than going out, and we had to sort through the mess and thin it down to what was likely to be actually useful. This time the job went to Magnus and myself."
###
"It's fine, Will, it'll hold."
His hand lingered around a rung of the aged wooden ladder until Magnus was firmly seated at its top. He remained unwilling to trust the rickety apparatus.
Magnus glanced down at him, eyed his hand and lifted an eyebrow. "It'll hold," she repeated and turned her attention to the shelf before her.
"All right." Will raised his hands in surrender. "If you break your neck, it's not on me."
"It'll be fine," she said distractedly, stretching to retrieve a pile of clothes from the back of the closet.
Will took a seat at an ancient scuffed desk and resumed his exploration of a disintegrating shoebox of trinkets. "How long exactly has it been since someone sorted through this stuff?" he prompted as he rummaged.
"A while," Magnus offered vaguely.
"A while as in last year or as in I might not have been born yet?"
"Somewhere in between, I think."
"Hmm."
The ladder beside Will swayed alarmingly and he looked up to see Magnus fishing through her pockets. "What have you lost?" he asked against the precarious rocking.
"My hair band," she said, then she pointed down at the desktop before him. "Can you toss me that rubber band?"
"Yeah, sure." It crossed his mind briefly to shoot it at her like a slingshot, but then he thought better of making her dodge from her precarious perch and merely tossed the band upward.
Magnus snatched it skillfully out of the air and proceeded to wrangle her mass of curls into a knot at the base of her neck.
As Will watched the swift practiced motion of her fingers, it struck him how the tumble of curls spilling across aged photographs had lasted a century and a half. But the color, the splash of blonde, was gone. And truthfully, he still didn't know why.
He didn't realize he'd been staring until Magnus looked down from the pile of colored garments spread over her lap and asked bluntly, "What?"
Will felt his skin flush, and lowered his gaze to the desk. "I'm sorry, I was just...I never asked you..."
Magnus's hands dropped to her cloth-layered thighs. "Asked me what?" Just enough softness threaded into her brisk tone to encourage him forward.
"Well...about your hair. It used to be blonde. Yet, you don't seem to dye it, so..."
Her eyes narrowed and the slightest hint of a feisty smile pulled at her mouth. "Ever the observer. You do remind me of James, sometimes. Took you long enough to ask, though."
"I don't think it takes a James Watson to notice blonde turning to brown."
She fell into an indulgent smile. "No, but it takes some attention to notice the lack of roots."
Will tilted his head in consent. "Perhaps."
"At least for a man." The sparkle in her eye pre-empted any pretense of offense. She turned back to her sorting and drew a slow breath. He could feel the thoughts shifting behind her pale eyes.
Will returned to his study of the box in front of him, fished out two marbles, a magnifying glass, and a Happy Meal toy. Sometimes just letting the silences ride brought more from Magnus than all the questions in the world. She had been known to answer his questions minutes later. Or hours. Or on rare occasion, weeks, with no preamble to remind him what he'd asked.
Today it took only a few moments for her to speak. "It wasn't a side effect of the serum," she said to his unspoken question, folding a rather gaudy pink sweater and dropping it into a box at the foot of the ladder. Will hoped that was the giveaway pile. "In the early days of building the Sanctuary, of trying to actualize what my father began, things didn't run as...neatly and smoothly as they do now."
"Things run smoothly now?" Will snorted.
"By comparison, yes," she replied without humor. "No well-placed security systems or long established containment protocols back then. A lot of what we take for granted now was learned by trial and error in the beginning."
"No doubt. It's not like they had a course at Oxford Med on the handling of toxic abnormals."
"Exactly. The whole field of study was utterly untapped. Not to mentioned we didn't even have electricity on our side back then, Nikola's gifts aside," she added wryly.
"So, what happened?"
Magnus hefted another large pile of clothing onto her lap and Will surreptitiously stretched a hand out to steady the ladder. "We were sheltering a chameleopath. There was a parti-"
"I'm sorry, a what?"
"A chameleopath. It's a humanoid creature with both empathic and corresponding chameleon-like qualities. A chameleopath expresses his or her internal emotions through changes to her outward appearance. Skin tone, height, eye color, hair length."
"Like a walking mood ring."
Helen gave a notably irritated sigh, annoyed by the comparison, but unable to refute its accuracy. She clearly struggled with the word, "Yes. Sort of. But they're also empathic. And if the emotions of a person in the room with a chameleopath prove stronger than their own, the physical change will reflect the other person's emotions."
"Interesting. Like a living lie detector."
"In some cases, yes, though it's certainly not an exact science. Nothing can verify the source of the emotion."
"So, you were harboring this chamelapath-"
"Cham-e-le-o-path-"
"Chameleopath. Was she in danger?"
"She was. Felis Praedatorius, commonly known as the grimalkin. A massive cat-like creature that acts as the chameleopath's natural predator. They feed off certain elements in the nervous system fluids."
"Okay, eeiiww."
"It is rather horrifying, yes. Anyhow, grimalkin are very intelligent and unbelievably skilled trackers. We did our best to keep Akasha safe, but her hunter was a formidable foe. And as I said, security was not what it is now."
Will took a wooden kaleidoscope from the box, held it up to his eye and turned toward the window. "Why do I get the feeling this story doesn't have a happy ending?" he said as he watched the wondrous shifting of the colored crystals.
"Actually, it's all right." Magnus dropped another ragged and brightly colored sweater to the bottom of the ladder and Will felt pleasantly reassured this must indeed be the giveaway pile. "Akasha went on to live a normal life span. But we did have a rather nasty close call. The grimalkin broke into our Sanctuary and caused general mayhem and terror as you can imagine. I was the first one to reach Akasha, but had little back-up, and as fate would have it, the one weapon I had on my person jammed. Akasha was terrified, and it was all really rather cinematic - we were pressed into a corner, me having placed my body between predator and prey, and at the last moment James fired off a rifle from the opposite doorway and took down the Grimalkin mid-pounce. It dropped to the floor at our feet, shaking the whole room with its weight. One of James's more notably heroic moments," she finished with a smile.
"Impressive. But you were still blonde."
"Right." Magnus held a silk blouse up to the light for inspection. Studied the garment a moment too long. "In rare moments of extremely heightened emotion, particularly fear, chameleopaths can actually transfer their physical transformative effects to others upon touch. But the effect on the other person doesn't reflect the chameleopath's emotion, but rather the person's own prevailing state of mind. And assuming the other person doesn't have chamleopathic skills of his or her own, giving him the ability to return to center, the changes are permanent. As the creature was pouncing, Akasha's fear was so great, that when I threw myself against her to offer shelter, the contact prompted the transfer. It felt as though an electrical charge had traveled under my skin followed by a...rush of warm liquid. And a kind of flash before my eyes that I tried blame on the gunshot, but that wasn't it at all. And in that instant...my hair went dark."
"As an expression of your fear."
"Ah. Well, actually...no. There was a...stronger, prevailing emotion. Akasha knew, I saw it in her eyes in the moment after the transfer. She must have felt it in the exchange. Her hair matched mine for a while. Chameleopaths don't speak, but they are quite intelligent and communicative in other ways. Sign language mostly, but they also have a very highly developed sense of... " Magnus faded out, falling silent for a long moment, recognizing as much as Will her default escape into scientific diatribe. One of the blouses on her lap slipped unnoticed to catch on a lower rung of the ladder. Will watched with quiet breaths. The wood creaked. "It was a reflection of my prevailing emotions at the time," Helen said softly. "I was...in mourning. For John. For all I'd lost," she finished quietly.
Will's breath stopped.
And the ladder collapsed.
"Magnus!"
###
"Oh, my God, she fell?"
Will nods, a soft chuckle on his lips. "She did. Largely on me, and some really ugly sweaters, but... We were fine, just bruised a bit. Her ego was by far the most injured part of her anatomy. And don't think I let her forget the incident any time soon," he finishes, still grinning.
Orman gives a hesitant laugh, studying Will's expression with an incredulous air. Will has seen this look before. The one that says the person behind it can't imagine laughing at the likes of Helen Magnus, can't imagine she is like other mere mortals. Can't fathom how one might tease her or call her on her flaws or excesses of ego. Oddly enough, Will himself can't remember ever falling on that side of the experience. Extraordinary and strange as she might have seemed, Helen Magnus was a woman to him from the day they met. He often wonders if this is why she hired him all those years ago.
"This is our turn," Will says, stepping in front of his companion to lead the way out a set of double doors into a side courtyard.
Out on the pathway, a tall man with dark skin and shagged hair watches from a few yards away. Will gives the man a small nod as he and Orman emerge into the sunlight, and the man approaches. He moves with a grace that makes him almost indistinguishable from the shifting of the grass and the trees.
Orman remains silent and observant.
"Nathaniel," Will says with a smile of greeting as the lithe man approaches.
"The usual?" Nathaniel asks, and Will nods.
"Two today. Both the same." Will reaches back and pulls the letters from his pocket. He hands them off to Nathaniel, ever aware of the look of curiosity and confusion on Orman's face. Will knows Orman assumed they were heading toward a post office or a drop box.
Nathaniel gives a single nod of acknowledgement and tucks the letters inside his shirt.
"Thanks, again," Will says as he turns to go. He starts back toward the building and feels the reluctant, dragging steps of his companion. Will sees the retreating figure of Nathaniel out of the corner of his eye. He feels the light rise in the wind and catches the flicker of rising motion.
He keeps his focus on the brick path back as he sees Orman's double glance.
Wings flap overhead.
Orman gives a soft, choked sound, and Will glances his way. "Did you...did you see...did he just..." Orman stammers.
Will lifts his eyebrows as he holds the door for the younger man. "Just what?"
Orman opens and closes his mouth once or twice, then shakes his head. "Nothing. Never mind." He steps through the open door, and Will follows with a hidden smile. "Welcome to the Sanctuary."
88888
"May I ask you something?"
Will fails to suppress a grin as he passes the salad dressing to his dinner companion. "Have you been holding back thus far?"
Orman acquiesces with a look of chagrin. "Of a slightly different nature," he amends. "Dr. Zimmerman, you've made it clear how difficult a life this has been for Dr. Magnus, the tolls taken. But I feel I should point out, you yourself were living this life beside her for a good many years. I should like to hear...a bit about your own experience. The darker side, if you'll allow, of life at the Sanctuary. It can't have been an easy choice, to follow the path you've lived."
Will chews the thought along with his salad. "Naturally. Sometimes it got...really hard. Especially in the early years. Before I'd adapted my perspectives, found a new way of looking at things, of keeping my centered ground on new terrain. In that first year...everything changed for me. Not just about my present, but about my past."
"You can change the past?" Orman asks around a bite of fruit salad, teasing clear in his voice.
"Well, now, that's a tale for another day. But suffice to say that this time I'm talking about changing what you believe. Changing what you think you know about the past. And how it informs your choices in the present."
The two men eat in silence for a bit. Will has brought Orman to the penthouse dining room tonight. An extra fee is required for most residents to use this room. It's more of a public restaurant, meant for the convenience of dinner with visiting family and friends. Will is afforded...certain privileges in this place.
The second course has arrived when Will says, "I think the hardest night came the first year. Worse things happened to me after that, certainly, but I was...more equipped to deal with them."
"Understandable," Orman says sincerely, and Will is again gratified by the man's perceptiveness.
"Several months after I began my work at the Sanctuary, a woman and her young son came to us for help. The woman had telepathic abilities. Rather formidable ones. Life hadn't treated her very well, and she'd gotten involved with some very bad people in the underground abnormal community. But she was a good woman. Just trying to do all she could for her son." He takes a bite of glazed chicken and lets the sauce slide over his tongue.
"Slow down," she says.
"What?"
"Slow down, Will. This is the one area in life where I have more patience than you do. You eat like a fire alarm is going off. How do you even taste what's in your mouth? I'm paying for this, you know. You should stop and taste it, once in a while."
"We tried to protect her," he says "We offered her a place at the Sanctuary. She accepted the help, and she stayed for a week or two. We got to know them. I spent a fair amount of time with the boy, drawing him out, trying to make him feel secure. I don't think he'd ever felt secure in his life. But his mother delayed them moving in more permanently. She insisted there were a few last things she wanted to take care of. So she and the boy went back to spend a few more nights at their place. We placed a guard, but..."
"But it didn't help," Orman finishes.
"Not enough. We should have tried harder to get her to stay with us from the first night. We thought the guard would be enough. We underestimated the determination of her enemies. It was a judgment call. We couldn't make her our prisoner if she didn't want to stay, but... Magnus wasn't much more comfortable with it than I was, and we had actually already gotten on the road to drive over and pick them up when we got the emergency signal from the guard. Telekinetic hitman had blasted into the apartment, taken out our own guards, permanently in one case, and killed the mother. Only the boy survived. And only because our man threw himself in the way and put a bullet in the attacker's head as they both went down."
"Dear God. Did the boy see it all?"
Will tries to swallow his meat, finds the memory from so long ago too fresh. "He did. We arrived just moments after the fact. The boy was huddled on the floor in the corner. Like a frightened animal."
"I'm sorry," Orman says and rests his fork idly against the side of his plate.
"I just...I wasn't expecting it, you know? I don't know why, I should have been but...I just hadn't seen it coming. Not like that. I thought I knew how it would go."
###
He hardly remembered the trip from the West Side to the Sanctuary. He remembered Magnus carrying the child from the car on her hip, even though the boy was nearly ten years old. Will had trailed her heels as she carried the boy up the stairs to what was to be to his room for some time, settled him for the night, then left him in the care of an empath in residence at the Sanctuary.
Magnus had met Will's eyes for a long moment on her way out of the boy's room, but she hadn't spoken.
She had told everyone to get cleaned up and meet in her office in twenty minutes.
She joined the group, freshened up and out of her field clothes and into an elegant dress, a narrow scarf at her throat. Will gathered around the table with the others, and the normally chill and brisk air of the room pressed on his skin like a cloak. Taylor, an abnormal the others had known and worked with for many years, was dead. A tragic and heroic loss in the line of duty. The boy's mother, whom they had all just started to think of as potentially one of their own, was gone. Will could hardly hear Magnus's words over the roaring in his ears. The others around him seemed to be taking refuge in routine. In security plans and practical steps forward. In picking up the pieces and planning for the next hours and days for the boy. But he couldn't hold onto any of this. All he could grasp was the woman on the floor of her apartment like a limp pile of bloodied rags and the wide-eyed horror in the eyes of the child.
"Will." The word was a command. Insistent. He must have missed her first address.
"What?"
"I need you to work with Henry. We should start as soon as possible running a full assessment on the boy. We need to know what his inherited abilities might be, what precautions we might need to be taking when he's in such a heightened state of emotion."
"No."
Magnus's eyebrow rose. "I'm sorry?"
Will could feel all sets of eyes turn to him around the worktable.
"No. I'm not testing that kid. He just went through hell, I'm not adding fuel to the fire."
"We're not trying to hurt him, Will," she said calmly, open hands propped on the tabletop. "We're trying to help him. If he has inherited even a fraction of his mother's abilities, their enemies will have picked up on this. And that means that we can no longer protect him if-"
Will's vision blurred and the blood in his veins flared like fire. He shoved a stack of file folders from the table, causing Ashley to unfold her arms and take a defensive step backward. Henry uttered a soft curse but remained where he stood. "We couldn't protect him the first time!" Will shouted. Angry. Angry at the universe, angry at Magnus, angry at himself.
"Will, we..." Magnus began, but the warning look in Will's eyes silenced her argument. His last impression was the intensity of her narrowed blue eyes and the wide-eyed expressions surrounding her as he turned and stumbled blindly out of the air that was drawing like soot through his lungs.
The wind buffeted his ears until the roar was lost in more natural sound. He hadn't planned to come here; he had let his steps lead him randomly away. To anywhere, anywhere open, anywhere far away. Anywhere he might not see the blood or the woman or the boy. Far from the guest wing and the child he knew lay curled in a safe cocoon in which he would never again believe.
The wind rushed too loud for Will to hear the door or the click of her approaching steps, but he felt her behind him like an encroaching storm. She had given him time. Just enough. Not enough.
He gripped the stone blocks of the North Tower until the rough surface stung his fingertips. He called over his shoulder into the turbulent night. "Magnus, I don't want to hear it!"
He felt her shadow. He caught just enough in the edges of his vision to know she had little protection against the night's icy wind. A thin shawl wrapped haphazardly around her arms, over the thin silk of her dress. "You want to blame me, don't you," she said simply. Her commanding voice pierced the gathering storm.
"What?" He looked over his shoulder despite his determination. Her words had caught him off guard. "Why would I blame you? This was my job as much as yours. My mistake. I let her go."
"You've blamed me all these years."
The words were so simple, left no space for dissention. He should have known, should have realized she knew even before he understood himself.
"I didn't-" He couldn't finish. Wordless anger flared in his guts. Jumbled memories and wind-torn nights of pain tangled with the present and a little boy in a Sanctuary blanket.
Magnus watched him with uncanny stillness.
Will wanted to shatter her calm, scream at her, shake her, force her to move so he could escape the moment. He wanted to remind her the world was as cruel on the outside as it felt in his head tonight. "You didn't save her!" he shouted, his voice strong enough to silence the wind.
He turned now, stared her down where she stood like another turret to her tower. This woman at his back; the vision of his dreams and the ghost of his nightmares, beautiful and pale, dark hair mixing with the strokes of the night.
Her blue gaze wouldn't waver, wouldn't give. In a surge of uncharacteristic vulnerability, Will's stomach twisted with the desire to have her as his friend again. She was all he had to fight and push against and he didn't want to let that go. He didn't know how to pull the two realities into one.
"You can't look at it quite the same anymore, can you?" she said, reading through him once again.
He closed his eyes and focused on his breathing. He felt dizzy and wished he weren't standing quite so close to the edge.
Her voice remained strong and even. "Because you're in my place, now. It must have been easier to hate me."
Will dropped his hands to his sides and let his weight fall back against the half wall. The cold stone stung his hips, but he welcomed the pain. He was losing focus. "I didn't...hate you, I..."
"Yes. You did."
"I didn't..." He struggled to catch the words, to put long buried images and sensation into concrete language. And when the whole notion began to feel like having his guts ripped out and laid on display for the world, he discovered a new kinship with his patients. Always hardest to swallow your own medicine. "As long as I believed there was something else you could have done...that if you'd tried harder, it could have been stopped...that she could have been saved...then it was...it was still..."
"Something under your control. Something in your realm of understanding. Something you could defend yourself against. And your mother."
He shoved off the wall and let the anger consume him again, desperate to drown the ache. "We promised! We promised to help that little boy! And now it's over. It's happened, the worst has happened, and he's going to live his life just like I lived mine. And there's not a damned thing we can do to change it."
Magnus took a step closer and the icy wind fluttered her thin layers, making him colder just watching her. "You're right we can't change things. But you never broke your promise. You didn't promise you could fix everything. You promised you would help. And you did. You did all you could. Her life was still her own. Her choices hers to make. And without you, without your help, that little boy wouldn't be alive."
Will cringed and looked away. He shook his head. "It's not enough. It's not enough."
"It never is," Magnus said softly.
He met her gaze, then, unwilling. As they held the silent communion, Helen tilted her head just a fraction, softened her eyes just a trace, and gave him all the understanding and shared hurt he was resisting with all he had.
"Oh, God...he's such a little kid..." Will's voice cracked and he turned his back on her, pulled off his glasses and the world blurred into dark shadows and flaring stars. Three nights ago the boy had curled in his lap as Will read to him from Treasure Island. In a last surge of anger to fight the encroaching tears, he moved to hurl his glasses off the tower. A firm hand caught his and slipped the precious object from his fingers. The determined tenderness in the gesture ripped at the last of his walls. "Goddammit, Magnus..." He smacked at the stone with the flat of his bare hand, scuffing the skin, too numb to care in the cold. "Goddammit", he whispered, but the thickness in his voice betrayed him. He hadn't cried in years, hadn't cried in front of anyone since his childhood days in the hospital after his mother's death. But it was all tumbling in on him and ripping open everything he had learned to keep boxed and hidden and cold.
Before he fully understood or admitted what was happening, she was there. Her arms wrapped around his huddled form, her shawl spread over them both like the wings of a mother bird, and his face was pressed to her chest, tears trailing her pale skin to sink beneath her dress.
He clung to her for long moments, letting her be the one thing holding still in the frantic and fearful night, just as she had been a lifetime ago. Just as she had been for that little boy tonight. The two realities pulled together in his heart and mind.
The knot in his chest untangled a fraction, and the wind once again took precedence to the roaring in his ears. Will whispered into his mentor's breast, "I never hated you."
Magnus didn't reply, but he felt the movement of a slight nod where her chin rested on the back of his bent head. She cleared her throat, and he realized she was fighting tears as well, and the sound nearly broke his heart.
He started to straighten. "Magnus..."
"Ssshh..." she whispered. He let it go.
They stood together a long time. Shifted position until they were both staring out at the beauty and the horror and the wonder of Old City. They huddled close for warmth. Will moved his hands to warm Magnus's upper arms. She let him.
"What happened to your mother?" he asked softly.
"Not tonight," she said.
"But you loved her?"
"Deeply."
"Do you still miss her?"
"Almost constantly."
They stood a while longer. Then Magnus looked at him in the moonlight, touched the backs of her fingers feather light to his cheek, said, "Tell him goodnight," then turned and vanished inside the Sanctuary. Leaving him to find his solid ground, alone. Giving him what she herself would have wanted. The chance to leave this on the tower. To walk back into her office like nothing had ever happened.
He felt her lingering warmth against his side.
###
The silence at the dinner table is not unlike that of the North Tower in memory.
Orman does not speak, does not attempt to carry Will's train of thought further.
Will takes a sip of the exquisite white wine, swirls it over his tongue, and returns his goblet to the table. "Usually," he says, "she was the one incapable of letting others take care of her. The one you had to ask the same question of a dozen times before you got the real answer. The one who snapped at the wrong people and chose anger over confession. It took...a long time before she ever let me take care of her. That night things were the other way around. And she's very skilled at flipping your own psychology on you," he added, with the first hints of a wry smile to shift the mood. "It wouldn't be the first or last time she pointed out to me that for all my talk and encouragement in teaching others how to open up and accept support, in fact, I was...well, far more like her than I would ever admit. At least back then."
"Things have changed?"
Will spins his spoon in his fingers, watching the flickered reflection of candlelight and listening to the soft murmurs around them. "In the beginning, I thought I knew everything. Or at least a lot more than I did."
"Much like my daughters."
Will chuckles. "Yeah, I would imagine. I thought I knew what was best for her, what was the healthiest approach psychologically. I thought I was the trained professional, the authority. And sometimes my approach was right. But perhaps the biggest lesson I learned from Helen Magnus, was that sometimes...sometimes it was okay to just let her be...Magnus. To let her keep her sense of self, let her do it all alone. Or she wouldn't be who she is. We were always there for her if needed, and she knew that. I think that's what mattered in the end."
"I think that's what matters to most of us in the end."
Will nodded. "Some of us learn faster than others," he says with a raise of his glass.
88888
"Do you still feel that way?"
"What?"
His fingers slide once again through the softness of her hair as the tails blow across his own shoulder. "Your prevailing emotion." He holds the dark curls higher for her view.
She looks at the dark locks for a moment, then lifts her gaze to hold his. "No. Not like I did, then. Not without hope. I've seen too much beauty in the world. Loved too many good people."
He watches her for a beat. "But you let your hair stay dark."
"I don't really have a way of permanently changing it back, you know. There are hardly chameleopaths on every corner, they're nearly extinct, since the attack in-"
"You've never even tried to dye it."
She is quiet, gazing out across the deepening twilight. He can feel it. He has no abnormal abilities. He doesn't need them.
Will says, "It's not enough, is it? It wouldn't change back even if she touched you again. Because you still feel it. It's still the right color, isn't it?"
The quiet remains. Then, "If it wasn't before...which...it probably was, but...now...after Ashley..." They breathe together for a beat before she says, "I am who I am."
He stands beside her. It's all he can do.
888
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Credit for the story behind Magnus's hair must be given in part to Geonn Cannon. When a group of us were brainstorming ideas to explain the color change (and whether it was real or dyed), Geonn Cannon suggested Helen went dark as a symbol of eternal mourning for John. I had already come up with the idea of the encounter with the abnormal, so the two ideas got pressed together to form the version that appears in this story. So, thanks, Geonn!:D