Sanctuary Fic: Fix You (PG) 1/1
I wrote something... and yes, I'm still alive.
Title: Fix You
Author: Divine Joker
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: Oh, wow. I still don’t own anything that I write about.
Pairing: Helen/John
Spoilers: Ep. 7 “The Five”
Notes: I haven’t written anything in almost 7 months, but the muse is bound to come around sooner or later for a longer period of time. This, however, is the result of some begging on triciabyrne1978's part, to actually get my fingers to a keyboard.
(start)
It was quiet. She’d always enjoyed the stillness of solitude; so many years of minding the abnormals and the always moving boundaries of science had left her with a desire for the occasional bout of absolutely nothing. Normally, these moments were just that, minutes or possibly hours between abnormal discoveries or attacks. However, today was turning out to be the third day in a silent row.
She loved it.
Ashley was going insane.
“Mom! Here’s one!” she came into the office with a file in her hand, waving it happily and triumphantly. She’d spent the last fifteen hours with Henry on the computer, hunting fruitlessly for something to find, fight or capture. Yesterday had been somewhat of a disappointment for her, having come up with nothing that would have needed even the slightest attention of the Sanctuary.
Indulgently, Helen took the file from her daughter and looked at it with a cursory scan, place, object and profile highlighted and catalogued into her head for easy assessment.
She cocked an eyebrow at Ashley.
“You want to do this?” she asked, surprised. “It’s nothing more than a potentially telekinetic fifteen year-old.”
“Who shoves people into manholes before stealing their stuff? He’s a pickpocket of the worst calibre.”
“Oh, Ashley, you’re stretching it I think.” The file closed and stayed on Helen’s lap, her blue eyes surveying the twitchy nervousness of her housed-in daughter. “You’re trying to find things that aren’t there.”
“Regardless, you agree that he’s telekinetic. There could be more, there couldn’t, but he should be taught some manners.” She cocked her head to the side, daring her mother to argue the point.
“Ashley, I’m not sending you on a hunting trip so that you can bully a fifteen year-old.”
She looked defeated for a short moment and then, “Can you send me on a disciplinary trip?”
“Disciplinary? You?” Helen smiled indulgently, though she shook her head at the same time.
“Me and Will?” she asked, hopefully.
Helen took a deep, steadying breath and looked at the clock on the mantel. Three in the afternoon meant that she would be receiving her tea at any moment.
“Please?” Ashley pleaded in a tone that Helen hadn’t heard since she’d turned ten. That was the point at which she’d learned that if Dr. Helen Magnus said ‘no’, it meant ‘no.’ Incidentally, it was the same point at which Ashley had developed a disturbing habit of doing what she was asking permission for anyway.
“You’re begging?” Helen asked, surprised.
“I’m at my wits end, mom. Seriously. Henry’s bored of me...”
“I highly doubt that...”
“...and no one wants to play with me.”
“You’re pouting?” Even more interesting, Helen thought.
“I’m bored,” she explained, as if that would answer all of Helen’s questions.
It was enough of an explanation that Helen thought that it would be fine for the house to be empty for a few hours while she burned off some excess energy.
“No guns, no explosives and you are not bringing him back with you.” She said with finality, tilting her head to discourage any complaints.
“One gun with tranqs,” Ashley negotiated.
Helen assumed it was better to acquiesce to a compromise than to find out that she had taken a gun anyhow. Waving her hand in dismissal she watched as Ashley smiled charmingly and spun on her toes, dashing out into the hallway. She caught herself on the doorframe and turned a quick corner, calling out to Will.
Helen shook her head in exasperation but turned herself back to her book with satisfaction. It was simple enough and she’d hear the van return in two or three hours. She knew that she would have to prepare herself for an outpouring of grief at the end of the little sojourn, because she knew that it wasn’t going to be enough to gratify Ashley’s rapidly growing addiction to action. Still, it was nice to know that she had a self-sufficient daughter that could fight most of her own battles, but still showed her a level of respect and love that Helen found sorely lacking in today’s kids.
That was something that John would have approved of, if nothing else about the way that she had raised their daughter.
Sighing, she tried to resolve not to think of the image that John had represented in Rome. He had seemed a completely different man; a change of such proportions that she was reminded of the first time she’d noticed him shift personalities.
DECEMBER 22, 1881
OXFORD
She’d been noticing it more, lately. There was a wrong look in his eyes, a dangerous tone in his voice and, more importantly, a mean pressure in his touch. John had always been a gentle soul, a man in tight control of his words and emotions. And now, watching him pace in the entryway to her home, she didn’t know if she could say something to him, to bring it to his attention. She had no way of knowing how he would react to a confrontation like that.
Ever since the five of them had sacrificed themselves in the name of science, he’d withdrawn and clamped down on himself. Nikola, Nigel and James had all had such visible and almost immediate reactions to the injection that both John and herself had felt a little left out of the process. But now, she could feel the difference in herself, had talked to John and James about it. Nikola was hiding himself away, desperate to try and understand himself in light of his vampiric urges. She wrote to him, the only one of the group that felt some responsibility for his transformation.
Looking down on John now from the top of the stairs, she was wondering if something was happening to him because of the injection that he felt he couldn’t tell her about.
It had never happened before, that he would keep things like this from her. He’d known all about Helen’s changes since they’d begun to manifest in her thoughts and actions.
“John.” She called, as she stepped down onto the first step.
He glanced up at her, his eyes shadowed and hollow. John didn’t say anything as he waited for her to reach him.
“John, are you all right?”
“I’m... fine, Helen. Shall we go?”
He was distracted, obviously, but there was something else.
They’d been engaged now for just over three months, a happy, but mainly unproductive span of time that had focused around trying to work with Nigel and James and their abilities. Their wedding had not been discussed, in fact after a cursory announcement to the group - and one short letter to Nikola - it had barely been alluded to.
She wasn’t weak enough to imagine that he no longer cared for her, or that he was getting nervous about the thought of living his life with her, but she received the message from his actions that there was just something more important that he was thinking about. It had always been a problem in their relationship; a tendency to dismiss the other in a wave of discovery and scientific advancement.
Tonight, it was a Christmas party they were to go to; the last one that she would be at this season, and something that she wasn’t looking forward to attending. Her worries over John and herself were leaving her tired and she wasn’t sleeping as much as she would like. Still, she was making leaps of logic in her research that were turning out to be entirely correct, and she didn’t know where the ideas were coming from.
John took her hand, his fingers stiff under the supple leather of his gloves, and helped her into the carriage waiting at the foot of the stairs. He paused before following her in, his face a twist of pain and thought.
“John, if you would rather not attend the...”
“I’m fine, Helen!” he spat harshly, causing her to flinch in reaction. He either did not notice her reaction or did not care, because he continued with equal viciousness and fervour. “There is not a thing in the world that you do not think you can fix, but you cannot fix this.” His voice dropped suddenly and he bent forward, clutching his abdomen and groaning in pain.
Immediately Helen called for the carriage to stop and take them back to her home. She felt the lurch and turn of the horses even as she was moving to get next to him across from her.
“John! Let me...”
“Stay away from...”
In a flash of green flame and burst of heat, he was no longer across from her. Caught completely by surprise and slipping into a state of shock, she did not notice the halt of the carriage and steps of the driver approaching to open the door.
Frightened of the reaction of the driver, she called for him to stop, hoping that her voice wasn’t full of the fear that she felt. Unbelieving, she stared at the empty space across from her and glanced nervously to the still closed door. How could she get the driver to leave her be, for her to figure out how to explain John’s disappearance?
She was just about to order him away when the inside of the carriage was filled again, the burst of colour and heat shocking her.
“John!”
Eyes wide, he stared at her with a glare of hatred and distrust. Speechless for more than a moment, he burst from the carriage. Instead of going into the house, he moved down the street and in a blur of fury and violence, threw his hat into the middle of the street. He turned a corner and was gone.
Frozen in fear and shock, Helen moved into the house with no words. Nothing could explain the panic and confusion in his eyes and there was nothing that she could do to change his sudden and all-consuming hatred of her.
She didn’t think that he would have blamed her for any changes that he underwent because of the injection, but it appeared that was the situation.
He hated her.
Tucked safely back into her home, the door closed and no guests, Helen could feel the hopelessness of the situation crowding into her before she had a chance to battle it. He was changing because of her and he hated her for it.
Then there was a knock at the door.
“Helen?”
His voice was muffled by the heavy oak, but she knew that it was him.
She scrambled to let him in, tears springing to her eyes at the remorse written on his face.
“I am so sorry,” he started, not even daring to enter her home. He stood on her porch with his hands linked together to prevent fidgeting; a habit she’d noticed of him long before anything had developed between them. “I am deeply apologetic for any words that I might have said, and I sincerely ask for your...”
“Of course, John.” She breathed in relief. He was himself again; she saw the deep look of regret in his eyes and reached out to touch him, needing a tactile reassurance. Finally, she pulled him into her home, closing the door and the cold wind that blew along the road.
She looked up at him as he stood with her, his hand at his side and his heart in his eyes.
“Why did you not tell me, John?”
His eyes closed shamefully, his head dipping to the side as he considered the words that he needed to tell her.
“In moments of pure insanity, I could feel myself losing my grip on you; that reality was being changed and I didn’t love you anymore. But I do, Helen! Almost more everyday.” He squeezed her hand where she still held him and took a calming breath. “I could feel a burning inside, a heavy weight that pulled stronger and stronger and the more I pulled the less I could remember myself and the more I fought back the more it hurt... and it hurt so bad, Helen, I couldn’t fight for long and...”
Helen raised a hand to his trembling lips, her lips tight together to hold back the soft sobs wanting to escape. He stopped his lips cold against her fingertips.
“I want to help you,” she said softly.
“I know, but I don’t know what’s wrong yet.”
“So, let me help you figure it out,” she pleaded, not wanting to watch him battle alone against something that wouldn’t have happened if science had never gotten into her blood.
He was tentative in accepting her offer and she talked and argued and persuaded until he allowed her to examine him - test his blood, listen to his heart and lungs and anything else that she could think of. At first, when he was disappearing, he couldn’t control where he showed up, and tried to spin an anecdote of popping up in some market in Spain to make her laugh. She cried and he got agitated and left through the door.
She spent weeks in the darkness of her labs, nights sleepless trying to read into the anomalies in his blood that was right before her. But he would suddenly disappear and reappear and all the worse for his trips into nothing to somewhere else.
She was driven, focused and shattered.
He wasn’t getting any better. There were times when she felt truly afraid of him. His eyes, his words and his tone were designed to drive her mad. The longer she worked to fix his mind, the more of it slipped from her and she couldn’t seem to convince him to stop teleporting...
A last desperate attempt to fix him, a week of euphoric victory and then he was gone.
DECEMBER 24, 2008
OLD CITY
It had taken her eight months to take off his engagement ring, but each time she looked at it, she could see the hatred in his eyes, the utter despair in his face before he disappeared for good. She still thought of those weeks, wondering if there had been anything she could have done differently.
If there was anything that she could have done differently only those few weeks ago.
Swallowing regrets, Helen tried to turn her attention back to her book. She succeeded for a few brief moments before there was a knock on her door.
“Hello?”
The heavy door swung with well-oiled ease and she looked up just as John stepped into the room.
She was up and at her desk, pointing a gun at him, and she was a little shocked that she had made it to the desk. He should have...
“What do you want, John?”
He held his hands up in supplication, his eyes squarely on her, trying not to underestimate her trigger finger. She could see the posture of a begging man.
Yet, he didn’t answer her.
“Why are you here?” she demanded, a little harshly.
“Helen,” his soft supplication almost made her weak at the knees and she cursed herself. She’d never fallen out of love with him, she knew, but she loved herself enough to not let him get away with killing her.
“John,” her voice was the same as his and she could see his eyes flicker to the floor. “What happened to you?”
“After you tried to kill me?” he asked with no hint of anger or remorse in his tone. He eyed her severely as he moved further into the room, only to take on e of the chairs across from the desk.
“I haven’t seen you for all of five minutes since I gave you my blood and I know that there is something different with you.” Helen didn’t let go of her defensive stance, opting to watch him from her feet, her gun still aimed on him. He proved an interesting specimen.
He’d always been an interesting specimen.
“I had something of an epiphany when I left you then. As I lay writhing in pain, I felt something happening that wasn’t... right.” He kept watching her with an intent fascination. Fingering the lapel of his coat, he thought over his words. “I can’t even give you a word to describe the weight of madness, Helen. It had been on me since the very beginning, and I don’t even know why it chose me.”
“John, the first time I gave you my blood, you were riding a high for more than a week. Your detox could have killed you.”
“Is that why you gave me the blood that you did?” he asked purposefully. There was no hint of accusation in his voice, no reprimand.
Helen took a deep breath and assumed that honesty was the best policy. “I couldn’t have you going after Ashley.”
“Yes, I can see that,” he said, matter-of-factly. “Still, it did more this time than it did before. I could feel myself coming out of a fog, Helen,” his voice jumped a little in hidden excitement, “and now it’s completely different.” He leaned forward in his seat, his tall form almost touching the edge of the desk. He reached one hand out to rest against it, his story continuing. “The blood would have killed me, yes, but it killed my madness before it did; and Nikola saved me before trying to kill me himself.”
Helen stared blankly. When John had saved her from Nikola in the catacombs, she’d been beyond words; that Ashley could relay a coherent story of John’s transformation had been even more shocking.
This was something she had not thought possible.
“You were right in the beginning,” he said defeatedly. “The teleportation took my rationale; it left me stumbling in a madness that I couldn’t grasp.” He looked at her with pleading eyes. “I can remember the fear in your eyes, the tears that you thought I couldn’t see.”
“I spent decades running from you, thinking that you would come up from wherever you were and...” she stopped, the emotions of their conversation stalling her for a moment. “All those women...” she breathed.
John’s jaw clenched at her accusation. “I cannot deny it, Helen. I can’t.” He took a deep breath. “I can’t say anything to apologize, because it would never be enough. I just wanted you to know... that I’m different now.” Slowly, he stood up. His arm flexed under the pull of his leather trench coat, but there was nothing else to indicate his direction. He grimaced, cleared his throat and eyed the gun that was still pointed at him. “Hopefully, time will prove me,” he said softly and then turned towards the door.
Just as he was about to pull it open, he turned to her. Dark eyes searched her face and he sighed. “I’ve always loved you, Helen.”
Before she could stop him he was out the door and Helen could hear his heavy footsteps as he made his way down the hall. The shield was still up, still running strong, Helen knew, so he must have broken in - again - and proved that he could have at any point.
He hadn’t done anything.
Tension drained from her form as she moved to and collapsed into her chair. She stared disbelievingly at the door through which he’d left and ran over the words again and again.
“Mom? Are you all right?”
Helen blinked at the form of her daughter in front of her, a quick glance showing that time had flown by. Was she all right?
Maybe. Maybe not.
(end)
Title: Fix You
Author: Divine Joker
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: Oh, wow. I still don’t own anything that I write about.
Pairing: Helen/John
Spoilers: Ep. 7 “The Five”
Notes: I haven’t written anything in almost 7 months, but the muse is bound to come around sooner or later for a longer period of time. This, however, is the result of some begging on triciabyrne1978's part, to actually get my fingers to a keyboard.
(start)
It was quiet. She’d always enjoyed the stillness of solitude; so many years of minding the abnormals and the always moving boundaries of science had left her with a desire for the occasional bout of absolutely nothing. Normally, these moments were just that, minutes or possibly hours between abnormal discoveries or attacks. However, today was turning out to be the third day in a silent row.
She loved it.
Ashley was going insane.
“Mom! Here’s one!” she came into the office with a file in her hand, waving it happily and triumphantly. She’d spent the last fifteen hours with Henry on the computer, hunting fruitlessly for something to find, fight or capture. Yesterday had been somewhat of a disappointment for her, having come up with nothing that would have needed even the slightest attention of the Sanctuary.
Indulgently, Helen took the file from her daughter and looked at it with a cursory scan, place, object and profile highlighted and catalogued into her head for easy assessment.
She cocked an eyebrow at Ashley.
“You want to do this?” she asked, surprised. “It’s nothing more than a potentially telekinetic fifteen year-old.”
“Who shoves people into manholes before stealing their stuff? He’s a pickpocket of the worst calibre.”
“Oh, Ashley, you’re stretching it I think.” The file closed and stayed on Helen’s lap, her blue eyes surveying the twitchy nervousness of her housed-in daughter. “You’re trying to find things that aren’t there.”
“Regardless, you agree that he’s telekinetic. There could be more, there couldn’t, but he should be taught some manners.” She cocked her head to the side, daring her mother to argue the point.
“Ashley, I’m not sending you on a hunting trip so that you can bully a fifteen year-old.”
She looked defeated for a short moment and then, “Can you send me on a disciplinary trip?”
“Disciplinary? You?” Helen smiled indulgently, though she shook her head at the same time.
“Me and Will?” she asked, hopefully.
Helen took a deep, steadying breath and looked at the clock on the mantel. Three in the afternoon meant that she would be receiving her tea at any moment.
“Please?” Ashley pleaded in a tone that Helen hadn’t heard since she’d turned ten. That was the point at which she’d learned that if Dr. Helen Magnus said ‘no’, it meant ‘no.’ Incidentally, it was the same point at which Ashley had developed a disturbing habit of doing what she was asking permission for anyway.
“You’re begging?” Helen asked, surprised.
“I’m at my wits end, mom. Seriously. Henry’s bored of me...”
“I highly doubt that...”
“...and no one wants to play with me.”
“You’re pouting?” Even more interesting, Helen thought.
“I’m bored,” she explained, as if that would answer all of Helen’s questions.
It was enough of an explanation that Helen thought that it would be fine for the house to be empty for a few hours while she burned off some excess energy.
“No guns, no explosives and you are not bringing him back with you.” She said with finality, tilting her head to discourage any complaints.
“One gun with tranqs,” Ashley negotiated.
Helen assumed it was better to acquiesce to a compromise than to find out that she had taken a gun anyhow. Waving her hand in dismissal she watched as Ashley smiled charmingly and spun on her toes, dashing out into the hallway. She caught herself on the doorframe and turned a quick corner, calling out to Will.
Helen shook her head in exasperation but turned herself back to her book with satisfaction. It was simple enough and she’d hear the van return in two or three hours. She knew that she would have to prepare herself for an outpouring of grief at the end of the little sojourn, because she knew that it wasn’t going to be enough to gratify Ashley’s rapidly growing addiction to action. Still, it was nice to know that she had a self-sufficient daughter that could fight most of her own battles, but still showed her a level of respect and love that Helen found sorely lacking in today’s kids.
That was something that John would have approved of, if nothing else about the way that she had raised their daughter.
Sighing, she tried to resolve not to think of the image that John had represented in Rome. He had seemed a completely different man; a change of such proportions that she was reminded of the first time she’d noticed him shift personalities.
DECEMBER 22, 1881
OXFORD
She’d been noticing it more, lately. There was a wrong look in his eyes, a dangerous tone in his voice and, more importantly, a mean pressure in his touch. John had always been a gentle soul, a man in tight control of his words and emotions. And now, watching him pace in the entryway to her home, she didn’t know if she could say something to him, to bring it to his attention. She had no way of knowing how he would react to a confrontation like that.
Ever since the five of them had sacrificed themselves in the name of science, he’d withdrawn and clamped down on himself. Nikola, Nigel and James had all had such visible and almost immediate reactions to the injection that both John and herself had felt a little left out of the process. But now, she could feel the difference in herself, had talked to John and James about it. Nikola was hiding himself away, desperate to try and understand himself in light of his vampiric urges. She wrote to him, the only one of the group that felt some responsibility for his transformation.
Looking down on John now from the top of the stairs, she was wondering if something was happening to him because of the injection that he felt he couldn’t tell her about.
It had never happened before, that he would keep things like this from her. He’d known all about Helen’s changes since they’d begun to manifest in her thoughts and actions.
“John.” She called, as she stepped down onto the first step.
He glanced up at her, his eyes shadowed and hollow. John didn’t say anything as he waited for her to reach him.
“John, are you all right?”
“I’m... fine, Helen. Shall we go?”
He was distracted, obviously, but there was something else.
They’d been engaged now for just over three months, a happy, but mainly unproductive span of time that had focused around trying to work with Nigel and James and their abilities. Their wedding had not been discussed, in fact after a cursory announcement to the group - and one short letter to Nikola - it had barely been alluded to.
She wasn’t weak enough to imagine that he no longer cared for her, or that he was getting nervous about the thought of living his life with her, but she received the message from his actions that there was just something more important that he was thinking about. It had always been a problem in their relationship; a tendency to dismiss the other in a wave of discovery and scientific advancement.
Tonight, it was a Christmas party they were to go to; the last one that she would be at this season, and something that she wasn’t looking forward to attending. Her worries over John and herself were leaving her tired and she wasn’t sleeping as much as she would like. Still, she was making leaps of logic in her research that were turning out to be entirely correct, and she didn’t know where the ideas were coming from.
John took her hand, his fingers stiff under the supple leather of his gloves, and helped her into the carriage waiting at the foot of the stairs. He paused before following her in, his face a twist of pain and thought.
“John, if you would rather not attend the...”
“I’m fine, Helen!” he spat harshly, causing her to flinch in reaction. He either did not notice her reaction or did not care, because he continued with equal viciousness and fervour. “There is not a thing in the world that you do not think you can fix, but you cannot fix this.” His voice dropped suddenly and he bent forward, clutching his abdomen and groaning in pain.
Immediately Helen called for the carriage to stop and take them back to her home. She felt the lurch and turn of the horses even as she was moving to get next to him across from her.
“John! Let me...”
“Stay away from...”
In a flash of green flame and burst of heat, he was no longer across from her. Caught completely by surprise and slipping into a state of shock, she did not notice the halt of the carriage and steps of the driver approaching to open the door.
Frightened of the reaction of the driver, she called for him to stop, hoping that her voice wasn’t full of the fear that she felt. Unbelieving, she stared at the empty space across from her and glanced nervously to the still closed door. How could she get the driver to leave her be, for her to figure out how to explain John’s disappearance?
She was just about to order him away when the inside of the carriage was filled again, the burst of colour and heat shocking her.
“John!”
Eyes wide, he stared at her with a glare of hatred and distrust. Speechless for more than a moment, he burst from the carriage. Instead of going into the house, he moved down the street and in a blur of fury and violence, threw his hat into the middle of the street. He turned a corner and was gone.
Frozen in fear and shock, Helen moved into the house with no words. Nothing could explain the panic and confusion in his eyes and there was nothing that she could do to change his sudden and all-consuming hatred of her.
She didn’t think that he would have blamed her for any changes that he underwent because of the injection, but it appeared that was the situation.
He hated her.
Tucked safely back into her home, the door closed and no guests, Helen could feel the hopelessness of the situation crowding into her before she had a chance to battle it. He was changing because of her and he hated her for it.
Then there was a knock at the door.
“Helen?”
His voice was muffled by the heavy oak, but she knew that it was him.
She scrambled to let him in, tears springing to her eyes at the remorse written on his face.
“I am so sorry,” he started, not even daring to enter her home. He stood on her porch with his hands linked together to prevent fidgeting; a habit she’d noticed of him long before anything had developed between them. “I am deeply apologetic for any words that I might have said, and I sincerely ask for your...”
“Of course, John.” She breathed in relief. He was himself again; she saw the deep look of regret in his eyes and reached out to touch him, needing a tactile reassurance. Finally, she pulled him into her home, closing the door and the cold wind that blew along the road.
She looked up at him as he stood with her, his hand at his side and his heart in his eyes.
“Why did you not tell me, John?”
His eyes closed shamefully, his head dipping to the side as he considered the words that he needed to tell her.
“In moments of pure insanity, I could feel myself losing my grip on you; that reality was being changed and I didn’t love you anymore. But I do, Helen! Almost more everyday.” He squeezed her hand where she still held him and took a calming breath. “I could feel a burning inside, a heavy weight that pulled stronger and stronger and the more I pulled the less I could remember myself and the more I fought back the more it hurt... and it hurt so bad, Helen, I couldn’t fight for long and...”
Helen raised a hand to his trembling lips, her lips tight together to hold back the soft sobs wanting to escape. He stopped his lips cold against her fingertips.
“I want to help you,” she said softly.
“I know, but I don’t know what’s wrong yet.”
“So, let me help you figure it out,” she pleaded, not wanting to watch him battle alone against something that wouldn’t have happened if science had never gotten into her blood.
He was tentative in accepting her offer and she talked and argued and persuaded until he allowed her to examine him - test his blood, listen to his heart and lungs and anything else that she could think of. At first, when he was disappearing, he couldn’t control where he showed up, and tried to spin an anecdote of popping up in some market in Spain to make her laugh. She cried and he got agitated and left through the door.
She spent weeks in the darkness of her labs, nights sleepless trying to read into the anomalies in his blood that was right before her. But he would suddenly disappear and reappear and all the worse for his trips into nothing to somewhere else.
She was driven, focused and shattered.
He wasn’t getting any better. There were times when she felt truly afraid of him. His eyes, his words and his tone were designed to drive her mad. The longer she worked to fix his mind, the more of it slipped from her and she couldn’t seem to convince him to stop teleporting...
A last desperate attempt to fix him, a week of euphoric victory and then he was gone.
DECEMBER 24, 2008
OLD CITY
It had taken her eight months to take off his engagement ring, but each time she looked at it, she could see the hatred in his eyes, the utter despair in his face before he disappeared for good. She still thought of those weeks, wondering if there had been anything she could have done differently.
If there was anything that she could have done differently only those few weeks ago.
Swallowing regrets, Helen tried to turn her attention back to her book. She succeeded for a few brief moments before there was a knock on her door.
“Hello?”
The heavy door swung with well-oiled ease and she looked up just as John stepped into the room.
She was up and at her desk, pointing a gun at him, and she was a little shocked that she had made it to the desk. He should have...
“What do you want, John?”
He held his hands up in supplication, his eyes squarely on her, trying not to underestimate her trigger finger. She could see the posture of a begging man.
Yet, he didn’t answer her.
“Why are you here?” she demanded, a little harshly.
“Helen,” his soft supplication almost made her weak at the knees and she cursed herself. She’d never fallen out of love with him, she knew, but she loved herself enough to not let him get away with killing her.
“John,” her voice was the same as his and she could see his eyes flicker to the floor. “What happened to you?”
“After you tried to kill me?” he asked with no hint of anger or remorse in his tone. He eyed her severely as he moved further into the room, only to take on e of the chairs across from the desk.
“I haven’t seen you for all of five minutes since I gave you my blood and I know that there is something different with you.” Helen didn’t let go of her defensive stance, opting to watch him from her feet, her gun still aimed on him. He proved an interesting specimen.
He’d always been an interesting specimen.
“I had something of an epiphany when I left you then. As I lay writhing in pain, I felt something happening that wasn’t... right.” He kept watching her with an intent fascination. Fingering the lapel of his coat, he thought over his words. “I can’t even give you a word to describe the weight of madness, Helen. It had been on me since the very beginning, and I don’t even know why it chose me.”
“John, the first time I gave you my blood, you were riding a high for more than a week. Your detox could have killed you.”
“Is that why you gave me the blood that you did?” he asked purposefully. There was no hint of accusation in his voice, no reprimand.
Helen took a deep breath and assumed that honesty was the best policy. “I couldn’t have you going after Ashley.”
“Yes, I can see that,” he said, matter-of-factly. “Still, it did more this time than it did before. I could feel myself coming out of a fog, Helen,” his voice jumped a little in hidden excitement, “and now it’s completely different.” He leaned forward in his seat, his tall form almost touching the edge of the desk. He reached one hand out to rest against it, his story continuing. “The blood would have killed me, yes, but it killed my madness before it did; and Nikola saved me before trying to kill me himself.”
Helen stared blankly. When John had saved her from Nikola in the catacombs, she’d been beyond words; that Ashley could relay a coherent story of John’s transformation had been even more shocking.
This was something she had not thought possible.
“You were right in the beginning,” he said defeatedly. “The teleportation took my rationale; it left me stumbling in a madness that I couldn’t grasp.” He looked at her with pleading eyes. “I can remember the fear in your eyes, the tears that you thought I couldn’t see.”
“I spent decades running from you, thinking that you would come up from wherever you were and...” she stopped, the emotions of their conversation stalling her for a moment. “All those women...” she breathed.
John’s jaw clenched at her accusation. “I cannot deny it, Helen. I can’t.” He took a deep breath. “I can’t say anything to apologize, because it would never be enough. I just wanted you to know... that I’m different now.” Slowly, he stood up. His arm flexed under the pull of his leather trench coat, but there was nothing else to indicate his direction. He grimaced, cleared his throat and eyed the gun that was still pointed at him. “Hopefully, time will prove me,” he said softly and then turned towards the door.
Just as he was about to pull it open, he turned to her. Dark eyes searched her face and he sighed. “I’ve always loved you, Helen.”
Before she could stop him he was out the door and Helen could hear his heavy footsteps as he made his way down the hall. The shield was still up, still running strong, Helen knew, so he must have broken in - again - and proved that he could have at any point.
He hadn’t done anything.
Tension drained from her form as she moved to and collapsed into her chair. She stared disbelievingly at the door through which he’d left and ran over the words again and again.
“Mom? Are you all right?”
Helen blinked at the form of her daughter in front of her, a quick glance showing that time had flown by. Was she all right?
Maybe. Maybe not.
(end)