April 13 1912 9:22 am

The weather seemed to mirror Helens mood as she woke the next morning to cooler temperatures. She ate her breakfast mechanically under the clear blue sky. Helen finished the last of her Corn Bread and Black Currant Conserve. Then she began roaming about aimlessly across the deck her mind was a thousand miles away and forty years in the past.

Helen? Might I have a word with you? John had pulled her aside one day just after class. The class he was failing because he spent all his time staring at her.

Tall charming handsome John Druitt pulled her aside one fine spring day. He said her name in his soft smooth velvet voice. Just hearing his voice was decadent.

"Helen?" He had said her name with reverence, lie it was the most perfect word "helen, might I have a word?" He asked it as though he were tasting each word, and everyone was better than the last.

He took her hands in his. Held her hands carefully. Like they were the glass slippers that had carried Cinderella to the ball. The slippers on Cinderella's feet that lead her to the prince who promptly swept her off her feet.

"Helen, you are the most incredible woman I ever met. You are strong independent, beautiful and absolutely brilliant." John smiled up at her as a man in a dream a wonderful dream. One he hoped to never waken from. "You are the most amazing woman I will ever meet. I know I will never see another woman like you. The room lights up the moment you walk in and having you in my life has made me a better man. Knowing this better life, I can't go back Helen."

John smiled and dropped to his knees. Helens heart stopped. 'So thisis what it's like' Helen thought wildly 'to be the princess in a fairytale'

"Might I have leave, Miss Magnus, Doctor to be to court you? "

He looked so soft and vulnerable with just a hint of steel in his eyes. A small hint.

Helen wondered later if it was a glimpse of the towering rage he was capable of. If she had refused him then, said no, would she have been his first victim? Torn open lie a ragdoll? Would he have succumbed to his anger had she not succumbed to his charm? She didn't know.

And it haunted her.

I was easier to blame John. To say the rage was always there. Like the fateful tale of Bluebeard. Always there waiting just below the surface. A hungry alligator in a calm lake waiting waiting waiting... Like the dormant vampire genes swimming through Nikola s blood. That small ancient genetic code ready to bubble up and overcome the human DNA with the slight introduction of her vampire serum.

Easy too to blame the source blood. Teleportation.
How steady could one be if at every moment ones Atoms were ready to blow apart? So easy to say it was the source blood. The blood John took willingly. The blood Nigel injected. The blood James convinced his best friend to try. Even blaming James and Nigel was easier. Or Nikola. Arrogant little Serbian boy who sparred constantly with the others.

Easier to blame Johns rage on the over confidant young Serbian who didn't know the limit. Who pushed them all to their boundaries and pushed John over the edge into murderous madness.

All of that was easier than facing the truth.
But Helen knew

It was her fault.

All her fault.

Notes. .

Cinderella and Blue Beard are both French stories by the Charles Perrault. Considered the Father of the Fairytale Genre

to be technical Cinderella with the fairy godmother and the glass slippers that everyone is familiar with is by Charles Perrault.

It's the story of a young woman who is vastly underestimated by those around her. She is given glass slippers that are molded to fit only her feet and makes the prince fall in love with her. Before she can give her name and phone number, she had to run home and loses one of her shoes.

Lacking a finger print kit, (and proper protocols to prevent athletes foot) the prince goes from house to house trying the shoe on every woman in town. He finally comes to Cinderella s house and the shoe fits.

Some scholars believe the shoes were actually meant to be Fur. Feet were considered the most erotic part of a woman (which kind of makes the prince a pervert looking at the feet of everywoman in the kingdom ^..^)

Bluebeard is a seemingly charming man who is considered kind of eccentric and a loner. He charms a local woman into marrying him and leaves her home alone oneday with a small key and warnings not to open the door it unlocks (So why give her the key right?) the wife disobeys and opens the door anyway. She finds out her husband is an insane serial killer who likes to slice up women. She gets blood on the key and he confronts her, ready to kill her as well when her brothers swoop in and save her.

(In Sanctuary verse this could be Nikola Nigel and Watson; although John only metaphorically kills l Helen)