New Sanctuary Fic: "Home"
Yeah, everyone in the fandom is going to write one of these, but I couldn't stop myself. LOL
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.:)
TITLE: HOME
RATING: Teen
CATEGORIES: Angst, a bit of Helen/James, bits of Helen/OC
SPOILERS: Through "Tempus"
Beta love to helenhighwater7 and choraii.
HOME
by
Rowan Darkstar
Copyright (c) 2011
She never did favor vacations.
For a while, she learns the advantages of letting go. Of not being responsible for the fate of the world (save in the negative sense of needing to stay out of it to keep things right), of being able to focus on Helen as much as Helen's Responsibilities. She plants flowers and goes for long walks along the cliffs. She stares into the unfathomable power of the waves crashing the shore and contemplates being tossed about in time by some grand master power of the universe. She finds herself contemplating religion, again. Something she hasn't had time...or perhaps courage...to face in a long time. After a decade or two she comes to some conclusions of her own. Nothing of her thoughts fits with any of the doctrines of the world, only the universe according to Helen Magnus. She knows there is margin for error, inevitability of change.
She misses work. She misses the discipline. She paints landscapes and sells her work to tourists for grocery money. James has quietly moved some of the Magnus Funds into places accessible for her without...her knowledge. She uses only what is absolutely necessary.
She writes endless pages, by fountain pen and ink jar, recording all the daily details she can remember of her life in Old City, of her friends, of her habits. A hundred years is a long time, and she knows she will forget. She cannot imagine this now, but she knows it to be true. She writes down silly things like how the elevator works, and how the button for the fourth floor tends to stick.
Helen Magnus thinks of herself as purpose driven. She once told her protégé she did not believe the occasional bout of loneliness was too high a price to do the work they did. She still believes this. But the loneliness isn't "occasional" any longer. It is minute to minute, hour to hour, a way of life. She is living a century without anyone she has ever counted on or loved.
She makes friends in the small village nearby. She has to. Even Helen Magnus realizes no woman is an island, and she cannot keep her sanity for a century without people to love and to love her back. She hopes she is not altering the course of history too much. But the locals rarely leave the island, and she hopes things will stay that way until she can disappear and restore the status quo.
She takes the occasional tourist to her bed. Best to choose those who will not stay in her circle of influence, those who will not base their choices and actions on one isolated fling.
Twice in the century she falls in love. Real love. Once with a writer who comes to the island to escape the darkness eating away at his life. She spends a decade with him at her cottage, and it is the best decade of the century. He dies in her arms, in the tall grass at the top of the cliffs, and she curses this fucking twist of history, because she has the goddamned equipment to save him at her Old City Sanctuary in 2011.
Helen has dogs. Lots of dogs. And a few cats. The warm bodies warm her days. They sleep at her feet and get paint in their fur. The dogs walk the cliffs at her side and get tangled in her skirts and leave mud prints on the lace and finish off the last of her casseroles. One of them is not the customary canine variety. No one notices.
1944 is the dark night of Helen's soul. She hears the bombs and remembers passion and fighting and love and need. She can't do it. She can't take it, anymore. She can't be cut off from all she knows, all she has been, all she loves. She needs to be looked at as Helen Magnus, looked at by someone from the world she has always known. She uses the forbidden emergency channels and contacts James. She takes the boat to the even more remote island down the chain, and he's waiting there for her under the thin light of the moon, standing on the icy, windy knoll with rain splattering his coat and the machine on his chest flashing and gleaming in the light from her lamp. She stands for a moment, squinting at her friend and wondering if he is a ghost or a premonition. Then she sets down the lantern and throws herself into his arms and cries as she has not since the day she left for her vacation.
James holds on for dear life.
"You're together, right? You're with her?" she says through her tears.
"With her. Yes. With...you," James says, kindness and pain and confusion mixed up in his eyes. "Helen, are you all right? What's happened? What is it, darling?"
She shakes her head and says only, "I've been here a long time."
She bites her lip and he strokes her hair and holds her eyes like a lifeline.
"You knew we would be lovers," he says at last.
"I knew we had been, in my life."
"You didn't tell me." He knows the rules of time travel. Nothing here speaks of temporal equanimity. Only of years of uncertainty and longing and different definitions of love.
He is so warm, and his machine is so cold, and the rain is like ice down the back of her coat, but there is nowhere to go for shelter. There is nowhere to go for shelter.
"Let me come back with you." James' eyes burn like lanterns in the moonlight and she drinks of him with her soul.
Helen shakes her head, rain splattering from her hair. "Go home, James," she says. Then she kisses him. For a long time. Like he is the last drop of water and she's crawling, broken and parched, through the heart of the Sahara. She shakes like the grass at their feet in the swirling wind.
He holds her like he will never see her again if he lets go.
He is sort of right.
She takes the boat back to her island without a word. She can almost make out his silhouette on the shadowy knoll when she finally glances over her shoulder. She rows on. She never sees him again.
The second time Helen Magnus falls in love in her century secluded, it is with a woman. A young art student of the Beatles and peace and love generation, taking a summer to find who she is as an artist. They paint the ocean together, listen to John Lennon and grow certain plants in the yard that enhance their vision quests. She is light and life and new beginnings, and friendship and mentorship turn to a kind of golden understanding rare in Helen Magnus's life. Her love is an old soul in the body of a young girl. There isn't much physical in their affair, but enough to make it more than a friendship. The love is unquestioned.
The girl grows up and moves off the island. Scarves blowing as she walks away, the girl cries as she hikes down the road, away from her "beautiful crazy lady" in the cottage on the cliffs, and Helen tries not to shake as she makes tea for one. She stubbornly refuses to have dinner in town. Two weeks later, she ambles down for the autumn festival, and brings some of her paintings to display. She dances with Mr. Hemmingworth from the apothecary, and she agrees to have lunch with the woman who runs the post office.
Back in her cottage, she reads Dickens until she falls asleep.
She wants to be a doctor, a healer, to the people on this island. But she cannot save lives. She cannot let those who would die find more life by her hand.
She paints. She reads up on nuclear engineering. She plays with the dogs and lets the young ones chew on her chair legs.
On one still night in 1985 she lies in her bed and stares at the ceiling and feels the universe tear at all that is inside of her. She closes her eyes and listens to the winds of ether for Ashley's first cries in the universe.
Twenty-three years later, she kneels in her garden and tries to keep breathing while the world falls dark.
Helen Magnus prepares with great discipline and precision for her return. She hooks up a satellite to the roof of her cottage and buys herself a laptop and the necessary cables for internet access. She reads up on the world at large and tries to remember the woman she used to be. She buys a few suits and some pairs of high heels. She hasn't walked in anything but boots or sandals in too long, she's out of practice. She puts on more make-up and is more precise with her hair. She resumes her morning martial arts practice. She hangs a punching bag on the back deck and beats the crap out of it on a daily basis. She throws knives into patterns on the tree in the corner of her garden. She uses what contacts she retains to get a real gun back in her hand, something with more power and precision than the sole rifle on her mantle. She hikes out far from civilization and shoots until the weapon is once again an extension of her arm. Until she can take out the tiniest limbs at distances that would make her father proud.
She reads her journals over and over and over again. The paper is crumbling.
On the last day, she burns it all.
Will's voice is a bit deeper than she remembers. Kate smells sharper. Her Old Friend seems to touch her a bit more often.
She cannot tell shifts in the timeline from the fallibility of memory.
Nikola is like warm tea on a chill night.
She forgets where she kept her stapler, which light switch works the hallway lamps on the second floor, and she has lost her taste for her favorite Bordeaux.
The delivery comes two weeks after her return. Just as she planned.
She opens the package when she is alone, hangs the painting with care, steps back several times to scope the wall and get the positioning just right. She lights a fire and stares at the water, at the cliffs, at the tiny cottage in the distance.
Home.
**
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.:)
TITLE: HOME
RATING: Teen
CATEGORIES: Angst, a bit of Helen/James, bits of Helen/OC
SPOILERS: Through "Tempus"
Beta love to helenhighwater7 and choraii.
HOME
by
Rowan Darkstar
Copyright (c) 2011
She never did favor vacations.
For a while, she learns the advantages of letting go. Of not being responsible for the fate of the world (save in the negative sense of needing to stay out of it to keep things right), of being able to focus on Helen as much as Helen's Responsibilities. She plants flowers and goes for long walks along the cliffs. She stares into the unfathomable power of the waves crashing the shore and contemplates being tossed about in time by some grand master power of the universe. She finds herself contemplating religion, again. Something she hasn't had time...or perhaps courage...to face in a long time. After a decade or two she comes to some conclusions of her own. Nothing of her thoughts fits with any of the doctrines of the world, only the universe according to Helen Magnus. She knows there is margin for error, inevitability of change.
She misses work. She misses the discipline. She paints landscapes and sells her work to tourists for grocery money. James has quietly moved some of the Magnus Funds into places accessible for her without...her knowledge. She uses only what is absolutely necessary.
She writes endless pages, by fountain pen and ink jar, recording all the daily details she can remember of her life in Old City, of her friends, of her habits. A hundred years is a long time, and she knows she will forget. She cannot imagine this now, but she knows it to be true. She writes down silly things like how the elevator works, and how the button for the fourth floor tends to stick.
Helen Magnus thinks of herself as purpose driven. She once told her protégé she did not believe the occasional bout of loneliness was too high a price to do the work they did. She still believes this. But the loneliness isn't "occasional" any longer. It is minute to minute, hour to hour, a way of life. She is living a century without anyone she has ever counted on or loved.
She makes friends in the small village nearby. She has to. Even Helen Magnus realizes no woman is an island, and she cannot keep her sanity for a century without people to love and to love her back. She hopes she is not altering the course of history too much. But the locals rarely leave the island, and she hopes things will stay that way until she can disappear and restore the status quo.
She takes the occasional tourist to her bed. Best to choose those who will not stay in her circle of influence, those who will not base their choices and actions on one isolated fling.
Twice in the century she falls in love. Real love. Once with a writer who comes to the island to escape the darkness eating away at his life. She spends a decade with him at her cottage, and it is the best decade of the century. He dies in her arms, in the tall grass at the top of the cliffs, and she curses this fucking twist of history, because she has the goddamned equipment to save him at her Old City Sanctuary in 2011.
Helen has dogs. Lots of dogs. And a few cats. The warm bodies warm her days. They sleep at her feet and get paint in their fur. The dogs walk the cliffs at her side and get tangled in her skirts and leave mud prints on the lace and finish off the last of her casseroles. One of them is not the customary canine variety. No one notices.
1944 is the dark night of Helen's soul. She hears the bombs and remembers passion and fighting and love and need. She can't do it. She can't take it, anymore. She can't be cut off from all she knows, all she has been, all she loves. She needs to be looked at as Helen Magnus, looked at by someone from the world she has always known. She uses the forbidden emergency channels and contacts James. She takes the boat to the even more remote island down the chain, and he's waiting there for her under the thin light of the moon, standing on the icy, windy knoll with rain splattering his coat and the machine on his chest flashing and gleaming in the light from her lamp. She stands for a moment, squinting at her friend and wondering if he is a ghost or a premonition. Then she sets down the lantern and throws herself into his arms and cries as she has not since the day she left for her vacation.
James holds on for dear life.
"You're together, right? You're with her?" she says through her tears.
"With her. Yes. With...you," James says, kindness and pain and confusion mixed up in his eyes. "Helen, are you all right? What's happened? What is it, darling?"
She shakes her head and says only, "I've been here a long time."
She bites her lip and he strokes her hair and holds her eyes like a lifeline.
"You knew we would be lovers," he says at last.
"I knew we had been, in my life."
"You didn't tell me." He knows the rules of time travel. Nothing here speaks of temporal equanimity. Only of years of uncertainty and longing and different definitions of love.
He is so warm, and his machine is so cold, and the rain is like ice down the back of her coat, but there is nowhere to go for shelter. There is nowhere to go for shelter.
"Let me come back with you." James' eyes burn like lanterns in the moonlight and she drinks of him with her soul.
Helen shakes her head, rain splattering from her hair. "Go home, James," she says. Then she kisses him. For a long time. Like he is the last drop of water and she's crawling, broken and parched, through the heart of the Sahara. She shakes like the grass at their feet in the swirling wind.
He holds her like he will never see her again if he lets go.
He is sort of right.
She takes the boat back to her island without a word. She can almost make out his silhouette on the shadowy knoll when she finally glances over her shoulder. She rows on. She never sees him again.
The second time Helen Magnus falls in love in her century secluded, it is with a woman. A young art student of the Beatles and peace and love generation, taking a summer to find who she is as an artist. They paint the ocean together, listen to John Lennon and grow certain plants in the yard that enhance their vision quests. She is light and life and new beginnings, and friendship and mentorship turn to a kind of golden understanding rare in Helen Magnus's life. Her love is an old soul in the body of a young girl. There isn't much physical in their affair, but enough to make it more than a friendship. The love is unquestioned.
The girl grows up and moves off the island. Scarves blowing as she walks away, the girl cries as she hikes down the road, away from her "beautiful crazy lady" in the cottage on the cliffs, and Helen tries not to shake as she makes tea for one. She stubbornly refuses to have dinner in town. Two weeks later, she ambles down for the autumn festival, and brings some of her paintings to display. She dances with Mr. Hemmingworth from the apothecary, and she agrees to have lunch with the woman who runs the post office.
Back in her cottage, she reads Dickens until she falls asleep.
She wants to be a doctor, a healer, to the people on this island. But she cannot save lives. She cannot let those who would die find more life by her hand.
She paints. She reads up on nuclear engineering. She plays with the dogs and lets the young ones chew on her chair legs.
On one still night in 1985 she lies in her bed and stares at the ceiling and feels the universe tear at all that is inside of her. She closes her eyes and listens to the winds of ether for Ashley's first cries in the universe.
Twenty-three years later, she kneels in her garden and tries to keep breathing while the world falls dark.
Helen Magnus prepares with great discipline and precision for her return. She hooks up a satellite to the roof of her cottage and buys herself a laptop and the necessary cables for internet access. She reads up on the world at large and tries to remember the woman she used to be. She buys a few suits and some pairs of high heels. She hasn't walked in anything but boots or sandals in too long, she's out of practice. She puts on more make-up and is more precise with her hair. She resumes her morning martial arts practice. She hangs a punching bag on the back deck and beats the crap out of it on a daily basis. She throws knives into patterns on the tree in the corner of her garden. She uses what contacts she retains to get a real gun back in her hand, something with more power and precision than the sole rifle on her mantle. She hikes out far from civilization and shoots until the weapon is once again an extension of her arm. Until she can take out the tiniest limbs at distances that would make her father proud.
She reads her journals over and over and over again. The paper is crumbling.
On the last day, she burns it all.
Will's voice is a bit deeper than she remembers. Kate smells sharper. Her Old Friend seems to touch her a bit more often.
She cannot tell shifts in the timeline from the fallibility of memory.
Nikola is like warm tea on a chill night.
She forgets where she kept her stapler, which light switch works the hallway lamps on the second floor, and she has lost her taste for her favorite Bordeaux.
The delivery comes two weeks after her return. Just as she planned.
She opens the package when she is alone, hangs the painting with care, steps back several times to scope the wall and get the positioning just right. She lights a fire and stares at the water, at the cliffs, at the tiny cottage in the distance.
Home.
**