FIC: "Beast at Bay" [Sanctuary, Helen/Ashley]
Title: Beast at Bay
Fandom: Sanctuary
Pairing: Helen/Ashley
Rating: Mature
Warning: Dark Fic - incest, rough sex, references to violence
Word Count: 3787
Summary: Ashley‘s more like her father than Helen could have imagined. Ashley’s more like her mother than Helen ever thought possible.
A/N: In this fic, Ashley hasn’t learned who her father is.
**
“Mother!”
The tone in Ashley’s voice went through the phone and sent a shiver down Helen’s spine. “Where are you, Ashley?”
“It’s happened again.”
“Ashley,” she was already grabbing her coat, already heading towards the door. “Tell me where you are.”
**
Helen stepped cautiously up the stairs to the dilapidated and abandoned apartment complex. There were still tenants and the air smelled thick with illegal substances, smoke and stale sex. She stepped over broken glass, discarded needles, used condoms. She passed open doors with passed out bodies on filthy mattresses, open fires in metal pots, users getting fixes, prostitutes servicing johns, the homeless taking shelter from the night. She wondered how their lives were reduced to this - human detrius, tossed away and forgotten.
She didn’t wonder why her daughter was here.
She reached the top floor, hand in pocket cautiously touching the gun in her pocket. There were twelve rooms, eleven of them didn’t have doors. The twelfth was closed, dim light illuminated the floor through the crack on the bottom.
“Ashley?” she called out as her hand gripped the door handle and she slowly opened it.
Ashley stood in the center of the one room apartment, her back to the door, arms slack at her sides. A large hunting knife gripped tightly in her right hand, blood on the blade dripping onto the floor.
“Ashley, darling,” Helen called to her softly.
Ashley turned her head, looked towards her mother with shocked and glazed eyes, her pale face spattered with blood.
“It happened again,” she mumbled.
“I know sweetheart,” Helen reached out, clasped her hand around Ashley’s wrist, the one holding the knife. She gently took it from her, taking out a plastic bag from her pocket and dropping the knife into it.
“I’m sorry,” Ashley whimpered, her bottom lip trembling. Helen placed her hands on Ashley’s shoulders turning her around fully, embracing her, petting the back of Ashley’s head.
“It’s okay,” Helen cooed, feeling her daughter’s body shudder as the tears began to flow. She held Ashley, taking the moment to focus her attentions on just what exactly Ashley had done.. this time.
It was, in a word, a slaughter house. There was one, no, two of them. Male, of that, Helen was certain. But who they’d been before in life, they weren’t now in death. They were nothing but skinned flesh, blood and viscera. Reminiscent from over a century ago, in a place called Whitechapel.
“They thought I was a prostitute,” Ashley mumbled into Helen’s shoulder.
Helen pulled back enough to gaze into her daughter’s eyes. “They thought?”
Ashley wasn’t dressed like a prostitute but she wasn’t dressed like Ashley either. Gone were the black leathers she typically wore when leaving the Sanctuary, replaced with jeans and a tight blouse typically found on the college girls Ashley was forbidden to interact with.
A wolf in sheep’s clothing. Those men, whatever their intentions, never stood a chance.
Ashley cast her eyes downward, shame flushing her cheeks. “I.. Why am I like this?” she asked.
Helen had no answer. At least not one she was willing to verbalize.
**
The ‘cleaners’ were there within a half hour. Always outside contractors and never the same company twice. They were quick and efficient but Helen stayed and observed anyway as they removed the bodies, cleaned the blood from the floor, the walls, the ceiling. No questions asked. Nothing but a few short words and money exchanged.
**
Helen entered Ashley’s bedroom, carrying a tray with a hot kettle and two tea cups. Ashley stood by the window, wearing nothing but a towel. Her hair was damp from the shower, blotches of pink and red on her arms and legs, as if she’d scrubbed herself with a wire brush.
“Ashley,” Helen sighed, setting down the tray on a table. “You should put some clothes on.”
“I’m not cold.”
“I didn’t ask if you were cold.”
Ashley quieted, drawing her arms up over her arms. “It’s getting worse.”
“We’ve made a lot of progress. It’s been over two years since the last time. I’m certain..”
“No,” Ashley cut Helen off. “It’s worse this time. Those men.. They weren’t enough. Not this time. I can feel it inside me, Mother. Even now. I want it so bad I can almost taste it..”
“Ashley,” Helen warned.
“..The look in their eyes when I slit their throats..”
“Enough!” She stepped closer.
“..the blood.. So much blood..”
“I said STOP IT!” Helen quickly thread her fingers into Ashley’s hair and viciously whipped the blonde’s head back into a harsh angle. With her other hand, she wrapped it around Ashley‘s waist, pulling Ashley into her. “I said that‘s enough!”
“Is it?” Ashley purred, licked her lips. “You can’t stop it, Mother. Nobody can.”
“That’s not true.” Her nose nuzzled along the line of Ashley’s neck. It surprised Helen, it always surprised Helen, just not enough to stop herself.
“You have no idea what it feels like,” Ashley began to roll her hips, grinding against Helen’s crotch. “The burn. The desire.”
“Then you don’t know me at all.” Helen tightened the grip holding Ashley’s hair. Her other hand drifted down, sliding between the part in the towel, fingers grazing against smooth skin.
“I’m going to kill again,” Ashley moaned, entranced, as if Helen wasn’t even in the room. “Slice them. Skin them. Bathe in their blood.”
“Ashley,” Helen growled. She was losing her, losing her daughter. Losing herself. Fingers playing across coarse curls, was she keeping the beasts at bay or just stoking the dark fire within? “I’ll stop you.”
“You can try. But, you‘ll fail,” Ashley giggled. “You always fail, Mother.”
“No! Not this time!” With that, she jammed her fingers into Ashley, rough and hard. Very few things quelled Ashley’s urges and Helen’s own dark secret was pushed into the limelight. Pleasure and pain sated Ashley’s beast and Helen gave her both. Ashley was wet and tight around her fingers. She grunted with every hard thrust as if she were exorcising the beast and fighting to release it at the same time.
Helen panted into Ashley’s ear, whispering the crude words she knew would arouse her own flesh and blood. Her face flushed red with desire.. and shame. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. Like she had two children - her child and John’s child. Helen knew how to sate Ashley’s blood lust because she’d known how to sate John’s. And Ashley was more like her father than Helen ever dared admit.
Ashley keened, bucking and writhing in Helen’s arms as she came. Helen released the hold on Ashley’s hair and Ashley leaned forward, pressing her hands on the windowsill. Helen withdrew her fingers, wiping them off on the corner of Ashley’s towel. There would be no afterglow snuggles and post-coital caresses.
Helen stepped backwards, trying to put some distance between herself and her daughter. Between herself and what she’d done, now and then. She watched as Ashley’s pants subsided to heavy breathing to a slow and regulated, wanting to make certain she’d done what needed to be done.
“You should have some tea,” Helen finally spoke.
Ashley, hands planted on windowsill, head bowed between her shoulders, didn’t move. “Yes, Mother.”
**
“Who’s my father?”
Ashley has spent the next couple weeks after her latest ‘episode’ as she typically - by being broody, sullen and anti-social. Still, Helen could sense a change in her daughter, for good or ill, a change she could not decipher.
“Mother!” Ashley spoke with a raised voice.
Helen lifted her eyes from the lenspiece of the microscope, pulling down the goggles over her eyes. “We don’t have time for this, Ashley. Not now.”
“Which is rather ironic, don’t you think?” Ashley folded her arms over her chest, canted her hips. “What with you being an immortal.”
“Ashley,” Helen sighed. She walked around the aisle, approached until they were face to face and planted her hands on Ashley’s shoulders. “When this is done, I swear, we’ll talk.”
“Right,” Ashley snorted. “It’s never *done*, Mother. There’s always some crisis, some emergency, some *thing* that’s more important. Henry needed new computer software is more important. Will needing to clean his glasses is more important.”
“Now you’re just being dramatic.”
“No. Now I’m just being realistic. If you have time to walk away from whatever’s so goddamned important under that microscope, you have time to tell me who my father was.”
“He was a good man,” Helen stepped back, began walking back towards her station. “That’s all you need to know.”
“Good men have names,” Ashley followed her mother, stopping on the other side of the counter. The placed her hands, palms down, on the counter. “Good men have histories, pictures, mementos. Good men don’t have their entire existence erased.”
Helen blinked, turning her gaze away. “That’s not what happened..”
“Do you even know who he is?” Ashley snorted derisively. “Was he some drunken one-night stand you can’t even remember? A hundred and fifty years is a long time..”
Helen slammed her fist on the countertop. “Ashley!”
“The daughters of good men know who their father’s are,” Ashley leaned forward on her hands. “TELL ME HIS NAME!”
“Not when you’re like this.”
“What? Homicidal? Why don‘t you want me to know who this good man is, Mother? Is it because he really isn‘t a good man, or because if I knew how good he was I‘d realize I didn‘t get this thing inside me from him? Maybe..” her eyes flashed hot, pupils dilated until the irises were nothing but a sliver of blue surrounding black. “Maybe, I got it from you.”
Just like that, Ashley was gone. Not stormed off in a huff gone, no, just disappeared. The air pressurized with that feeling before your ears pop, a flash of lightening formed into a ball, bright with yellows and reds and then she was gone.
Disappeared. Just like that.
Helen stared wide-eyed at the space her daughter had filled. “Bloody Hell.”
**
TWO WEEKS LATER
“Ashley,” Helen tried to contain the quaver in her voice as she spoke through the phone. Brought her fingers to her lips only to see them trembling as well. “Where are you?”
“Don’t you mean to ask ‘how many people have you killed?’,” she paused, sighing heavily through the receiver. “None, Mother. I haven’t killed anyone.”
“That’s.. that’s good, Ashley,” she felt her legs go rubbery and suddenly had to sit down. “Where are you?”
“I’m at the Sanctuary.. in Los Angeles. I told them you’d sent me on a secret mission and not to contact you.”
Helen was already up and out of her seat, heading towards the door. “Stay put. I’ll be there within a couple hours.”
“Are you going to tell me who my father is?” Silence filled the line. “Then don’t bother coming.”
The line disconnected.
**
“You wanna talk?”
By the time Helen looked up, Will was already seated across from her, staring at her with his Psych 101 eyes.
“There’s nothing to talk about, really,” Helen sighed, leaning back in her chair. “This isn’t the first time Ashley and I have had a row ending with Ashley running off. She’ll cool down eventually.”
“Will she?” His brows furrowed. “This seemed like a bit more than a row.”
“I’ve known Ashley much longer than you.”
“True, but she’s not a child anymore, Helen.” Will leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees and clasping his hands together. “This is more than a temper tantrum. Maybe you should think about telling her the truth.. About her father.”
“Believe me,” her eyes went to the picture of a six-year-old Ashley sitting on her desk. “That would only make things worse.”
“How much worse can it get?”
**
Helen thrashed violently as she slept, plagued by chaotic dreams both pleasant and traumatic. Dreams of blood, pain and death, slashing blades and silent screams. And she dreamed Ashley as a little girl, blonde hair bounding across the beach, childish laughter.
She dreamed of John, the man she fell in love with, the man who became a monster. Dead prostitutes in dirty flophouses. A restaurant in Venice and a diamond ring. The night she introduced John to leather restraints, blindfolds and crackling whips, introduced him to a world of pleasure and pain.
A pit of blackness with no walls, no ceiling or floors, just blackness. It crushes her, squeezes against her body as if she’s in a too small coffin. She can hear John in the darkness, she can hear Ashley. They’re calling to her, taunting her. This is her legacy - a void filled with emptiness, nothingness. Their voices fade away.
An eternity of loneliness.
Helen screamed.
Her dreams turned once again to Ashley. An older Ashley, parted pink lips and hooded eyes, Helen’s hands sliding across smooth skin, the slip of a finger into delicate folds. Ashley beneath her, bucking and writhing, resisting.. Submitting, acquiescing.
There were hands on Helen, soft and warm, caressing her breast, sliding between her legs. Ashley’s hands but stronger, familiar. And Helen snapped awake as the orgasm crashed over her, realizing the hand between her legs was her own.
She tossed an arm over her head, forearm covering her face. It was one thing for Helen to know how much Ashley needed Helen, it was another for her to face how much she needed Ashley.
**
PHUKET, THAILAND
Helen leaned against a support post in the tiny gym. The air was muggy and hot, thick with the smell of sweat and incense. She watched quietly as Ashley worked the punching bag; hair pulled back in a ponytail, black muscle tee and green satin shorts. She was leaner now, the remaining baby fat replaced completely with muscle.
It had been six months since Helen had seen her daughter. Six months of searching the globe, in a game of cat and mouse, Helen went from one location to the next, finding hints of her daughter’s existence but not the person. There’d been murders, there were always murders, but nothing to lead Helen to believe they’d been caused by her daughter.
For now, Ashley had kept her beast at bay.
“How long are you gonna keep staring?” Ashley broke the silence, continuing to punch the bag.
“You’re pretty good,” Helen put both weight on her feet and casually walked deeper into the gym.
Ashley snorted. “I’d have a belt by now if I actually competed.”
“Why don’t you?”
“I’m not here for the competition.”
“Then why are you here?”
Ashley continued punching the bag, eyeing her mother sideways. “Why are you here?”
“To bring you home.”
“Right,” Ashley rolled her eye. Began punching the bag again. “You gonna tell me who my father is?”
“Yes.”
Ashley froze. She dropped her hands and turned fully towards her mother. “Seriously?”
Something dark and oily snaked its way into the pit of Helen’s stomach. “He was a good man and I loved him with all my heart.” She began a circle around the punching bag, boot heels clacking softly on the cement floor. “But something in him changed. Imperceptible at first but it was there. A darkness in his eyes. At first, I thought he was cheating on me, stealing away in the middle of the night, coming back smelling of perfume and sex. I followed him one night. It’s when I found the first body. Well, the first one that I knew of. Her throat had been slit, her body mutilated. There was blood everywhere..”
“Mother..”
“This is what *you* wanted!” She lunged at Ashley. “’Tell me who my father is‘, you begged me! Now you’re going to listen!” She paused, the corner of her lip curling into a smirk as Ashley cast her eyes away. “I tried to cover it up. I tried to help him but he wouldn’t listen. He thought he could do it all on his own. You want to know who your father was. He was bloody Jack the Ripper, that’s who.”
“I..” her shoulders sagged, her arms dropped limply to her sides. “I just thought.. I just wanted to know.”
“And now you do. You think you can do this on your own? Keep the beast at bay?”
“I’m better now,” Ashley sniffled, wiping the tear welling in her eye with the back of a hand. “I’m better now.”
“Your father said that to me,” she pointed her finger angrily. “Your father tried to go it alone and he failed. How long do you think you’ll last before the urge rises again, before the bodies start piling up.”
Helen paused, quelling her anger. She stepped towards Ashley, cupping her chin and lifting Ashley’s head up. “How can I protect you from yourself? My aegis only extends so far. You know I’m the only one who can help you.”
Like a house built on sand, Ashley crumbled, leaning into Helen and Helen embraced her daughter, cooing soft words as she petted her hair. “It’s okay, darling. I understand.”
**
Helen sat on the edge of the bed as she buttoned her shirt. She found hotels that charged by the hour crude and distasteful but they served their purpose. Cash only. No names, no questions.
Ashley was on her side, back to Helen, skin still slick with drying sweat, still flushed, pink hand marks fading on her ass. Helen licked her lips, she could still taste Ashley, feel her skin on her fingertips. She inhaled a cleansing breath. There would be time for more of.. this. Helen had all the time in the world. “You should take a shower before we leave.”
“Of course,” she huffed. “Wouldn’t want people to know we’re fucking, right?”
“Ashley,” Helen sighed. “Do you think I enjoy this?”
“Actually,” Ashley turned her shoulders, eyes staring at the back of Helen’s head. “I think you do. No one fucks someone for three hours and not enjoy it.”
“Please,” she leaned down to pick up her boots. “Don’t be crude. I don‘t do this for my own pleasure.”
“Yes, Mother, you do.” Ashley rose onto her elbows as Helen turned on the bed to face her daughter. “I’ve been thinking a lot. I’ve been away for six months and not once during that time did I get an ‘urge’. And it got me thinking, what’s the variable here, the one constant above all others. And do you know what conclusion I came to?”
“No.”
“You, Mother. It’s you. I’m not your daughter, I’m an experiment, a plaything. Is it my DNA? Maybe. Or maybe it was the injections. Yes, Mother, I remember the injections. Or the experiments disguised as lessons. The world I lived in that only extended to the edge of whatever property we lived at and inhabited by one other person. You.”
“Ashley, stop it!”
“That’s what I’m doing Mother. I’m stopping this. I *let* you find me because I wanted to know what you’d do, what you’d say *this* time to bring me back, to get me in your bed. You forget, Mother, everything I know I learned from you. You think I didn’t know John Druitt is my father,” she smirked as Helen’s face went pale. “Yes, I know. I’ve known for a long time. I just couldn’t figure out why you wouldn’t tell me.”
“You have to understand..”
“I understand perfectly well. I don’t hate you. I pity you. But I can’t play your game anymore. I won’t. Don’t try to find me again. You, of all people, know exactly what I’m capable of.” Ashley paused, a melancholy smile playing on her lips. “Goodbye Mother.”
A flash of light and Ashley was gone.
**
SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA
“Are you sure, ma’am?” Her name was Gladys. Helen had known Gladys since the day she’d found her, as an abandoned child, wandering the forests of post World War 2 Ireland.
“It’s unfortunate,” Helen sighed, signing her signature to the papers in her hand. “But it must be done.”
“But a ‘kill order’, ma’am?” Gladys tutted. “Such a shame. I thought this one would be better.”
“As did I,” Helen placed the signed papers into a manila folder and set them on the desk. “How’s number four?”
Suddenly, the door to Helen’s study swung open. A small child, blonde hair and blue eyes, bounded into the room.
“MUMMY!” she cried out, rushing into Helen’s open arms and scooped off her feet.
“Ashley,” Helen kissed her on the cheek. “What have I told you about knocking?”
“Aww,” Ashley giggled. “I couldn’t wait to see you.”
“And I couldn’t wait to see you, love. But impatience is no excuse for incivility. Now..” Helen leaned closer to the child’s ear, whispering softly. Ashley’s eyes widened as her smile broadened.
“Really, Mummy?” She wriggled in Helen’s arms until Helen was forced to place her back on the floor. “Can I open it now?”
“Maybe just a peek..”
That was all the confirmation Ashley needed. She was out the door like a shot, footsteps pounding heavily on the staircase and into the kitchen.
Helen sighed, her countenance softening and turning serious. “How is she, Gladys? Any.. aberrations?”
“No, ma’am,” Gladys beamed as if Ashley’s behaviors were from Gladys attentions. “Nothing of the sort.”
“Good. We’ll have to start the injections soon, just in case.”
“Yes ma‘am,” Gladys bowed her head slightly and made her way towards the door. “It’d be a shame if she turned out like the rest. You only have two embryos left.”
Helen nodded courteously as Gladys closed the door behind her. She walked around her desk and sat down in the thick leather chair. Her fingers reached for the manila folder, pulling out and spreading its pages on the surface of the desk.
“I’m sorry Ashley,” her fingers traced around the photograph of Ashley’s face, Ashley number three. She glanced at the other photos, Ashley number one, Ashley number two. Her successes. Her failures.
Number Three was the first to attempt an escape. Number Three was the first to have her father’s power to teleport. Helen made another notation in her notes, a question regarding the changes she’d made to Three’s injections, the changes she’d make to Number Four’s.
Helen had vowed a century ago that she and John would have the perfect child. But John had demons, so did Helen. Demons that manifested in their child’s (children’s) DNA. Helen had waited a long time to create her perfect child. She’d come close with Number Three. Perhaps, with time, she’d come closer with Number Four.
Helen leaned back in her chair and smiled. There was time to create her perfect child. She was an immortal after all.
And she had all the time in the world.
END
A/N: Um, yeah, this went *much* darker than I originally intended. I'd wanted Ashley to be more like her father. But I'd also got to thinking how the Ashley character is kinda fucked up - she can shoot and fight with the best of them but a geek hits on her and she turns into a giggly schoolgirl? So, it went from that idea to maybe Helen being a bit 'darker' than she lets on to those around her, and that darkness being more a contributor to why Ashley is the way she is than mere DNA. Plus, you know, 'incest' which is kinda fucked up to begin with.
Anyway.. um, yeah!
Fandom: Sanctuary
Pairing: Helen/Ashley
Rating: Mature
Warning: Dark Fic - incest, rough sex, references to violence
Word Count: 3787
Summary: Ashley‘s more like her father than Helen could have imagined. Ashley’s more like her mother than Helen ever thought possible.
A/N: In this fic, Ashley hasn’t learned who her father is.
**
“Mother!”
The tone in Ashley’s voice went through the phone and sent a shiver down Helen’s spine. “Where are you, Ashley?”
“It’s happened again.”
“Ashley,” she was already grabbing her coat, already heading towards the door. “Tell me where you are.”
**
Helen stepped cautiously up the stairs to the dilapidated and abandoned apartment complex. There were still tenants and the air smelled thick with illegal substances, smoke and stale sex. She stepped over broken glass, discarded needles, used condoms. She passed open doors with passed out bodies on filthy mattresses, open fires in metal pots, users getting fixes, prostitutes servicing johns, the homeless taking shelter from the night. She wondered how their lives were reduced to this - human detrius, tossed away and forgotten.
She didn’t wonder why her daughter was here.
She reached the top floor, hand in pocket cautiously touching the gun in her pocket. There were twelve rooms, eleven of them didn’t have doors. The twelfth was closed, dim light illuminated the floor through the crack on the bottom.
“Ashley?” she called out as her hand gripped the door handle and she slowly opened it.
Ashley stood in the center of the one room apartment, her back to the door, arms slack at her sides. A large hunting knife gripped tightly in her right hand, blood on the blade dripping onto the floor.
“Ashley, darling,” Helen called to her softly.
Ashley turned her head, looked towards her mother with shocked and glazed eyes, her pale face spattered with blood.
“It happened again,” she mumbled.
“I know sweetheart,” Helen reached out, clasped her hand around Ashley’s wrist, the one holding the knife. She gently took it from her, taking out a plastic bag from her pocket and dropping the knife into it.
“I’m sorry,” Ashley whimpered, her bottom lip trembling. Helen placed her hands on Ashley’s shoulders turning her around fully, embracing her, petting the back of Ashley’s head.
“It’s okay,” Helen cooed, feeling her daughter’s body shudder as the tears began to flow. She held Ashley, taking the moment to focus her attentions on just what exactly Ashley had done.. this time.
It was, in a word, a slaughter house. There was one, no, two of them. Male, of that, Helen was certain. But who they’d been before in life, they weren’t now in death. They were nothing but skinned flesh, blood and viscera. Reminiscent from over a century ago, in a place called Whitechapel.
“They thought I was a prostitute,” Ashley mumbled into Helen’s shoulder.
Helen pulled back enough to gaze into her daughter’s eyes. “They thought?”
Ashley wasn’t dressed like a prostitute but she wasn’t dressed like Ashley either. Gone were the black leathers she typically wore when leaving the Sanctuary, replaced with jeans and a tight blouse typically found on the college girls Ashley was forbidden to interact with.
A wolf in sheep’s clothing. Those men, whatever their intentions, never stood a chance.
Ashley cast her eyes downward, shame flushing her cheeks. “I.. Why am I like this?” she asked.
Helen had no answer. At least not one she was willing to verbalize.
**
The ‘cleaners’ were there within a half hour. Always outside contractors and never the same company twice. They were quick and efficient but Helen stayed and observed anyway as they removed the bodies, cleaned the blood from the floor, the walls, the ceiling. No questions asked. Nothing but a few short words and money exchanged.
**
Helen entered Ashley’s bedroom, carrying a tray with a hot kettle and two tea cups. Ashley stood by the window, wearing nothing but a towel. Her hair was damp from the shower, blotches of pink and red on her arms and legs, as if she’d scrubbed herself with a wire brush.
“Ashley,” Helen sighed, setting down the tray on a table. “You should put some clothes on.”
“I’m not cold.”
“I didn’t ask if you were cold.”
Ashley quieted, drawing her arms up over her arms. “It’s getting worse.”
“We’ve made a lot of progress. It’s been over two years since the last time. I’m certain..”
“No,” Ashley cut Helen off. “It’s worse this time. Those men.. They weren’t enough. Not this time. I can feel it inside me, Mother. Even now. I want it so bad I can almost taste it..”
“Ashley,” Helen warned.
“..The look in their eyes when I slit their throats..”
“Enough!” She stepped closer.
“..the blood.. So much blood..”
“I said STOP IT!” Helen quickly thread her fingers into Ashley’s hair and viciously whipped the blonde’s head back into a harsh angle. With her other hand, she wrapped it around Ashley‘s waist, pulling Ashley into her. “I said that‘s enough!”
“Is it?” Ashley purred, licked her lips. “You can’t stop it, Mother. Nobody can.”
“That’s not true.” Her nose nuzzled along the line of Ashley’s neck. It surprised Helen, it always surprised Helen, just not enough to stop herself.
“You have no idea what it feels like,” Ashley began to roll her hips, grinding against Helen’s crotch. “The burn. The desire.”
“Then you don’t know me at all.” Helen tightened the grip holding Ashley’s hair. Her other hand drifted down, sliding between the part in the towel, fingers grazing against smooth skin.
“I’m going to kill again,” Ashley moaned, entranced, as if Helen wasn’t even in the room. “Slice them. Skin them. Bathe in their blood.”
“Ashley,” Helen growled. She was losing her, losing her daughter. Losing herself. Fingers playing across coarse curls, was she keeping the beasts at bay or just stoking the dark fire within? “I’ll stop you.”
“You can try. But, you‘ll fail,” Ashley giggled. “You always fail, Mother.”
“No! Not this time!” With that, she jammed her fingers into Ashley, rough and hard. Very few things quelled Ashley’s urges and Helen’s own dark secret was pushed into the limelight. Pleasure and pain sated Ashley’s beast and Helen gave her both. Ashley was wet and tight around her fingers. She grunted with every hard thrust as if she were exorcising the beast and fighting to release it at the same time.
Helen panted into Ashley’s ear, whispering the crude words she knew would arouse her own flesh and blood. Her face flushed red with desire.. and shame. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. Like she had two children - her child and John’s child. Helen knew how to sate Ashley’s blood lust because she’d known how to sate John’s. And Ashley was more like her father than Helen ever dared admit.
Ashley keened, bucking and writhing in Helen’s arms as she came. Helen released the hold on Ashley’s hair and Ashley leaned forward, pressing her hands on the windowsill. Helen withdrew her fingers, wiping them off on the corner of Ashley’s towel. There would be no afterglow snuggles and post-coital caresses.
Helen stepped backwards, trying to put some distance between herself and her daughter. Between herself and what she’d done, now and then. She watched as Ashley’s pants subsided to heavy breathing to a slow and regulated, wanting to make certain she’d done what needed to be done.
“You should have some tea,” Helen finally spoke.
Ashley, hands planted on windowsill, head bowed between her shoulders, didn’t move. “Yes, Mother.”
**
“Who’s my father?”
Ashley has spent the next couple weeks after her latest ‘episode’ as she typically - by being broody, sullen and anti-social. Still, Helen could sense a change in her daughter, for good or ill, a change she could not decipher.
“Mother!” Ashley spoke with a raised voice.
Helen lifted her eyes from the lenspiece of the microscope, pulling down the goggles over her eyes. “We don’t have time for this, Ashley. Not now.”
“Which is rather ironic, don’t you think?” Ashley folded her arms over her chest, canted her hips. “What with you being an immortal.”
“Ashley,” Helen sighed. She walked around the aisle, approached until they were face to face and planted her hands on Ashley’s shoulders. “When this is done, I swear, we’ll talk.”
“Right,” Ashley snorted. “It’s never *done*, Mother. There’s always some crisis, some emergency, some *thing* that’s more important. Henry needed new computer software is more important. Will needing to clean his glasses is more important.”
“Now you’re just being dramatic.”
“No. Now I’m just being realistic. If you have time to walk away from whatever’s so goddamned important under that microscope, you have time to tell me who my father was.”
“He was a good man,” Helen stepped back, began walking back towards her station. “That’s all you need to know.”
“Good men have names,” Ashley followed her mother, stopping on the other side of the counter. The placed her hands, palms down, on the counter. “Good men have histories, pictures, mementos. Good men don’t have their entire existence erased.”
Helen blinked, turning her gaze away. “That’s not what happened..”
“Do you even know who he is?” Ashley snorted derisively. “Was he some drunken one-night stand you can’t even remember? A hundred and fifty years is a long time..”
Helen slammed her fist on the countertop. “Ashley!”
“The daughters of good men know who their father’s are,” Ashley leaned forward on her hands. “TELL ME HIS NAME!”
“Not when you’re like this.”
“What? Homicidal? Why don‘t you want me to know who this good man is, Mother? Is it because he really isn‘t a good man, or because if I knew how good he was I‘d realize I didn‘t get this thing inside me from him? Maybe..” her eyes flashed hot, pupils dilated until the irises were nothing but a sliver of blue surrounding black. “Maybe, I got it from you.”
Just like that, Ashley was gone. Not stormed off in a huff gone, no, just disappeared. The air pressurized with that feeling before your ears pop, a flash of lightening formed into a ball, bright with yellows and reds and then she was gone.
Disappeared. Just like that.
Helen stared wide-eyed at the space her daughter had filled. “Bloody Hell.”
**
TWO WEEKS LATER
“Ashley,” Helen tried to contain the quaver in her voice as she spoke through the phone. Brought her fingers to her lips only to see them trembling as well. “Where are you?”
“Don’t you mean to ask ‘how many people have you killed?’,” she paused, sighing heavily through the receiver. “None, Mother. I haven’t killed anyone.”
“That’s.. that’s good, Ashley,” she felt her legs go rubbery and suddenly had to sit down. “Where are you?”
“I’m at the Sanctuary.. in Los Angeles. I told them you’d sent me on a secret mission and not to contact you.”
Helen was already up and out of her seat, heading towards the door. “Stay put. I’ll be there within a couple hours.”
“Are you going to tell me who my father is?” Silence filled the line. “Then don’t bother coming.”
The line disconnected.
**
“You wanna talk?”
By the time Helen looked up, Will was already seated across from her, staring at her with his Psych 101 eyes.
“There’s nothing to talk about, really,” Helen sighed, leaning back in her chair. “This isn’t the first time Ashley and I have had a row ending with Ashley running off. She’ll cool down eventually.”
“Will she?” His brows furrowed. “This seemed like a bit more than a row.”
“I’ve known Ashley much longer than you.”
“True, but she’s not a child anymore, Helen.” Will leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees and clasping his hands together. “This is more than a temper tantrum. Maybe you should think about telling her the truth.. About her father.”
“Believe me,” her eyes went to the picture of a six-year-old Ashley sitting on her desk. “That would only make things worse.”
“How much worse can it get?”
**
Helen thrashed violently as she slept, plagued by chaotic dreams both pleasant and traumatic. Dreams of blood, pain and death, slashing blades and silent screams. And she dreamed Ashley as a little girl, blonde hair bounding across the beach, childish laughter.
She dreamed of John, the man she fell in love with, the man who became a monster. Dead prostitutes in dirty flophouses. A restaurant in Venice and a diamond ring. The night she introduced John to leather restraints, blindfolds and crackling whips, introduced him to a world of pleasure and pain.
A pit of blackness with no walls, no ceiling or floors, just blackness. It crushes her, squeezes against her body as if she’s in a too small coffin. She can hear John in the darkness, she can hear Ashley. They’re calling to her, taunting her. This is her legacy - a void filled with emptiness, nothingness. Their voices fade away.
An eternity of loneliness.
Helen screamed.
Her dreams turned once again to Ashley. An older Ashley, parted pink lips and hooded eyes, Helen’s hands sliding across smooth skin, the slip of a finger into delicate folds. Ashley beneath her, bucking and writhing, resisting.. Submitting, acquiescing.
There were hands on Helen, soft and warm, caressing her breast, sliding between her legs. Ashley’s hands but stronger, familiar. And Helen snapped awake as the orgasm crashed over her, realizing the hand between her legs was her own.
She tossed an arm over her head, forearm covering her face. It was one thing for Helen to know how much Ashley needed Helen, it was another for her to face how much she needed Ashley.
**
PHUKET, THAILAND
Helen leaned against a support post in the tiny gym. The air was muggy and hot, thick with the smell of sweat and incense. She watched quietly as Ashley worked the punching bag; hair pulled back in a ponytail, black muscle tee and green satin shorts. She was leaner now, the remaining baby fat replaced completely with muscle.
It had been six months since Helen had seen her daughter. Six months of searching the globe, in a game of cat and mouse, Helen went from one location to the next, finding hints of her daughter’s existence but not the person. There’d been murders, there were always murders, but nothing to lead Helen to believe they’d been caused by her daughter.
For now, Ashley had kept her beast at bay.
“How long are you gonna keep staring?” Ashley broke the silence, continuing to punch the bag.
“You’re pretty good,” Helen put both weight on her feet and casually walked deeper into the gym.
Ashley snorted. “I’d have a belt by now if I actually competed.”
“Why don’t you?”
“I’m not here for the competition.”
“Then why are you here?”
Ashley continued punching the bag, eyeing her mother sideways. “Why are you here?”
“To bring you home.”
“Right,” Ashley rolled her eye. Began punching the bag again. “You gonna tell me who my father is?”
“Yes.”
Ashley froze. She dropped her hands and turned fully towards her mother. “Seriously?”
Something dark and oily snaked its way into the pit of Helen’s stomach. “He was a good man and I loved him with all my heart.” She began a circle around the punching bag, boot heels clacking softly on the cement floor. “But something in him changed. Imperceptible at first but it was there. A darkness in his eyes. At first, I thought he was cheating on me, stealing away in the middle of the night, coming back smelling of perfume and sex. I followed him one night. It’s when I found the first body. Well, the first one that I knew of. Her throat had been slit, her body mutilated. There was blood everywhere..”
“Mother..”
“This is what *you* wanted!” She lunged at Ashley. “’Tell me who my father is‘, you begged me! Now you’re going to listen!” She paused, the corner of her lip curling into a smirk as Ashley cast her eyes away. “I tried to cover it up. I tried to help him but he wouldn’t listen. He thought he could do it all on his own. You want to know who your father was. He was bloody Jack the Ripper, that’s who.”
“I..” her shoulders sagged, her arms dropped limply to her sides. “I just thought.. I just wanted to know.”
“And now you do. You think you can do this on your own? Keep the beast at bay?”
“I’m better now,” Ashley sniffled, wiping the tear welling in her eye with the back of a hand. “I’m better now.”
“Your father said that to me,” she pointed her finger angrily. “Your father tried to go it alone and he failed. How long do you think you’ll last before the urge rises again, before the bodies start piling up.”
Helen paused, quelling her anger. She stepped towards Ashley, cupping her chin and lifting Ashley’s head up. “How can I protect you from yourself? My aegis only extends so far. You know I’m the only one who can help you.”
Like a house built on sand, Ashley crumbled, leaning into Helen and Helen embraced her daughter, cooing soft words as she petted her hair. “It’s okay, darling. I understand.”
**
Helen sat on the edge of the bed as she buttoned her shirt. She found hotels that charged by the hour crude and distasteful but they served their purpose. Cash only. No names, no questions.
Ashley was on her side, back to Helen, skin still slick with drying sweat, still flushed, pink hand marks fading on her ass. Helen licked her lips, she could still taste Ashley, feel her skin on her fingertips. She inhaled a cleansing breath. There would be time for more of.. this. Helen had all the time in the world. “You should take a shower before we leave.”
“Of course,” she huffed. “Wouldn’t want people to know we’re fucking, right?”
“Ashley,” Helen sighed. “Do you think I enjoy this?”
“Actually,” Ashley turned her shoulders, eyes staring at the back of Helen’s head. “I think you do. No one fucks someone for three hours and not enjoy it.”
“Please,” she leaned down to pick up her boots. “Don’t be crude. I don‘t do this for my own pleasure.”
“Yes, Mother, you do.” Ashley rose onto her elbows as Helen turned on the bed to face her daughter. “I’ve been thinking a lot. I’ve been away for six months and not once during that time did I get an ‘urge’. And it got me thinking, what’s the variable here, the one constant above all others. And do you know what conclusion I came to?”
“No.”
“You, Mother. It’s you. I’m not your daughter, I’m an experiment, a plaything. Is it my DNA? Maybe. Or maybe it was the injections. Yes, Mother, I remember the injections. Or the experiments disguised as lessons. The world I lived in that only extended to the edge of whatever property we lived at and inhabited by one other person. You.”
“Ashley, stop it!”
“That’s what I’m doing Mother. I’m stopping this. I *let* you find me because I wanted to know what you’d do, what you’d say *this* time to bring me back, to get me in your bed. You forget, Mother, everything I know I learned from you. You think I didn’t know John Druitt is my father,” she smirked as Helen’s face went pale. “Yes, I know. I’ve known for a long time. I just couldn’t figure out why you wouldn’t tell me.”
“You have to understand..”
“I understand perfectly well. I don’t hate you. I pity you. But I can’t play your game anymore. I won’t. Don’t try to find me again. You, of all people, know exactly what I’m capable of.” Ashley paused, a melancholy smile playing on her lips. “Goodbye Mother.”
A flash of light and Ashley was gone.
**
SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA
“Are you sure, ma’am?” Her name was Gladys. Helen had known Gladys since the day she’d found her, as an abandoned child, wandering the forests of post World War 2 Ireland.
“It’s unfortunate,” Helen sighed, signing her signature to the papers in her hand. “But it must be done.”
“But a ‘kill order’, ma’am?” Gladys tutted. “Such a shame. I thought this one would be better.”
“As did I,” Helen placed the signed papers into a manila folder and set them on the desk. “How’s number four?”
Suddenly, the door to Helen’s study swung open. A small child, blonde hair and blue eyes, bounded into the room.
“MUMMY!” she cried out, rushing into Helen’s open arms and scooped off her feet.
“Ashley,” Helen kissed her on the cheek. “What have I told you about knocking?”
“Aww,” Ashley giggled. “I couldn’t wait to see you.”
“And I couldn’t wait to see you, love. But impatience is no excuse for incivility. Now..” Helen leaned closer to the child’s ear, whispering softly. Ashley’s eyes widened as her smile broadened.
“Really, Mummy?” She wriggled in Helen’s arms until Helen was forced to place her back on the floor. “Can I open it now?”
“Maybe just a peek..”
That was all the confirmation Ashley needed. She was out the door like a shot, footsteps pounding heavily on the staircase and into the kitchen.
Helen sighed, her countenance softening and turning serious. “How is she, Gladys? Any.. aberrations?”
“No, ma’am,” Gladys beamed as if Ashley’s behaviors were from Gladys attentions. “Nothing of the sort.”
“Good. We’ll have to start the injections soon, just in case.”
“Yes ma‘am,” Gladys bowed her head slightly and made her way towards the door. “It’d be a shame if she turned out like the rest. You only have two embryos left.”
Helen nodded courteously as Gladys closed the door behind her. She walked around her desk and sat down in the thick leather chair. Her fingers reached for the manila folder, pulling out and spreading its pages on the surface of the desk.
“I’m sorry Ashley,” her fingers traced around the photograph of Ashley’s face, Ashley number three. She glanced at the other photos, Ashley number one, Ashley number two. Her successes. Her failures.
Number Three was the first to attempt an escape. Number Three was the first to have her father’s power to teleport. Helen made another notation in her notes, a question regarding the changes she’d made to Three’s injections, the changes she’d make to Number Four’s.
Helen had vowed a century ago that she and John would have the perfect child. But John had demons, so did Helen. Demons that manifested in their child’s (children’s) DNA. Helen had waited a long time to create her perfect child. She’d come close with Number Three. Perhaps, with time, she’d come closer with Number Four.
Helen leaned back in her chair and smiled. There was time to create her perfect child. She was an immortal after all.
And she had all the time in the world.
END
A/N: Um, yeah, this went *much* darker than I originally intended. I'd wanted Ashley to be more like her father. But I'd also got to thinking how the Ashley character is kinda fucked up - she can shoot and fight with the best of them but a geek hits on her and she turns into a giggly schoolgirl? So, it went from that idea to maybe Helen being a bit 'darker' than she lets on to those around her, and that darkness being more a contributor to why Ashley is the way she is than mere DNA. Plus, you know, 'incest' which is kinda fucked up to begin with.
Anyway.. um, yeah!