Fic: Relics 3/4 (Sanctuary)
Mar. 31st, 2011 06:40 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
grav_ityMeta and Notes
Teaser and Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
1895
“It wasn’t supposed to make you cry,” Helena said. She crossed her legs under her skirt so that she sat on Helen’s bed.
“It just surprised me, that’s all,” Helen said.
She had retired early to finish the novel, and when Caleb sensed her distress, he had discreetly informed Helena. Helena, who had been preparing to depart for the Warehouse, had gone up to Helen’s sitting room instead, only to find her friend tucked in bed with a number of handkerchiefs at hand.
“I’m now a little bit curious, however,” Helena said. “Is it because I twisted poor Nigel so badly? He rather thought it was funny.”
“No, it’s not Nigel,” Helen said. “Though I can see how he would be amused.”
She paused and blew her nose in a most unladylike fashion. Helena smiled. She was quite glad that she had been introduced to Helen Magnus. They were rather kindred spirits in many regards, for all their natures differed.
“When you discovered you were pregnant, were you afraid?” Helen said, somewhat unexpectedly.
“Not particularly,” Helena said. “I had no reputation to speak of, and my family was more concerned with its own survival than my purity.”
“You never considered marriage?” Helen asked.
“Of course I did,” Helena replied. “Christina’s father is a suitable enough man, I suppose, but there was never a tremendous amount of passion between us.”
“Then how,” Helen began before she stopped and turned pink.
“Really, Helen, at your age,” Helena said, laughing. “It was more along the lines of experimentation.”
“That much I do understand,” Helen said.
“My dear Helen,” Helena said. “That much even James understands.”
They laughed together at that, and Helen felt the weight of the feelings the book had so unexpectedly evoked lessen.
“I was terrified,” Helen said. “When I found out, I mean.”
It hung there for a moment between them, Helena staring at her face and Helen looking down at the bedspread, fiddling with loose threads. When she looked up, though, her expression was as confident as Helena had ever seen it.
“When?” Helena said quietly.
“It was in 1888,” Helen said. “My daughter, or son, would be the same age as your Christina, if…” she trailed away.
“Did you miscarry?” Helena asked as gently as possible.
“No,” Helen said. “Not exactly. It was complicated.”
“Because of your station?”
“Because I discovered I was pregnant shortly after I discovered the baby’s father was in fact Jack the Ripper.”
“Oh, Helen,” Helena said, leaning forward to take the other woman’s hand. “I – he’s the one, isn’t he? The one none of you will ever talk about. Your fifth.”
“Yes,” Helen said. “He could move instantaneously from place to place in a flash of brimstone. He could even take others with him. That’s how he avoided the police, not to mention James, and how he evaded the bullet when I shot him.”
“You shot him?” Helena said, surprised that even Helen would go that far.
“Yes, and I would do it again,” Helen said. She looked away, though, and Helena doubted her.
“What happened to your child?” Helena said, hoping to steer the conversation somewhere else.
“Once I talked him out of marrying me, James and I developed a way to extract it, before my seventh week,” Helen said, as though it had been as simple as collecting a blood sample. “It’s in the basement, in a special flask inside a box of Nikola’s design, frozen until I decide what to do. James, and you now, are the only ones who know.”
For one of the few times in her life, Helena found herself completely bereft of words. She lay down on the pillow beside Helen instead, as though they were sisters in one of those insipid novels that Jane Austen wrote. Their fingers still twisted together on top of the bedspread.
“It was the blood, I think,” Helen said finally. “It made him unstable. He was never cruel before.”
“It wasn’t you fault,” Helena said.
“It was my experiment,” Helen said. “I held the needle myself.”
“And his actions were his own,” Helena said. “Like Griffin’s were, my Griffin, not yours. He allowed himself to be taken over, and he needed to be stopped.”
“I’m not sure I stopped him,” Helen said. “We hear about murders every now and then. James thinks it’s him.”
“You will stop him, though,” Helena said. “One way or another.”
“I will,” Helen said.
“I thought about having Kemp save Griffin, you know. Appealing to his better nature,” Helena said. “I decided it was a better story if he died.”
“That’s the way a man would tell it,” Helen said.
“As far as anyone knows, a man does tell it,” Helena said, a bit sad, but not truly regretful.
“I’m glad I’m not in one of your books,” Helen said. “Or one of Doyle’s, even. I have no desire for immortality.”
“I wonder if that’s why you got it?” Helena said thoughtfully.
Helen said nothing in reply, but held more tightly to her hand. When Caleb walked past the doorway thirty minutes later, making his final rounds of the evening and ensuring that everyone in the house was safely in bed, they were both asleep.
+++
Present Day
Nikola rapped his nails on the glass. It was a sharp sound, no less so than if he’d still had claws, but one that was quiet enough that she could ignore it if she chose. She didn’t.
“They’ve gone then, the Regents.” Helena never asked questions when she didn’t have to. It was one of the reasons he’d liked her so much.
“Yes, they’ve gone,” he said. “Disappeared back to whatever run of mill jobs they do when they’re not orchestrating world events. I still can’t believe you picked them over us all those years ago.”
“I may have regretted it a few times, myself,” Helena said. Nikola managed not to wince. “I might have guessed you’d still be alive.”
“Not for lack of other people trying to kill me, I assure you,” Nikola said lightly. “And most recently some very unpleasant bugs. But yes, I am still alive.”
“The Regents would probably love to get their hands on you,” Helena said. She’d kept his secret all those years before, even when he was working alongside her, even after he’d stolen the Tesla and named it for himself. He wondered if that loyalty had changed too.
“James is dead,” he said softly instead, hoping to change the subject. “Nigel too.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. Her words were cold, and he knew she didn’t actually care. Or at least that she was pretending not to.
“James made sure all your novels got published,” Nikola went on as though he hadn’t noticed. “Even hired someone to pose as the male you.”
“James hated my books,” Helena said flatly.
“No, James hated you,” Nikola corrected. “He hated you because he spent his whole life pretending to be something he wasn’t, and you never did. If it makes you feel any better, he despised Oscar Wilde for much the same reason, syphilis and all.”
Helena approached the glass, looking intrigued but still deathly angry with him.
“An actor called Orson Welles did a radio play of “War of the Worlds” in the late ‘30s.” Nikola laughed at the memory. “Helen and I listened together. They thought it was real. There was panic in New York. It was hilarious.”
“I’m sorry I missed it,” Helena said. If he hadn’t known her better, Nikola might have thought she was relaxing into the talk with him. But he did know better, and knew that this was Helena at her most dangerous.
“It was a sight,” he acknowledged. “Did they tell you much about the World Wars?”
“Yes,” she said. “I’m sorry, Nikola.”
This time she really did sound like she meant it, and he hardened his heart.
“I went a bit crazy for a while there,” he said cautiously. “During the war and after it. Attacking Germans in the woods and so on. And then I spent half a century trying to take over the world and restore the glory of Sanguine Vampiris.”
“And dear Helen stopped you,” Helena guessed.
“Of course she did,” Nikola snorted. “I never expected otherwise. But that didn’t stop me from trying.”
“Is this the part where you tell me that you’ve changed and I can change too?” The false sincerity in Helena’s voice cut through any kind feelings he might have been starting to have towards her.
“I haven’t changed a bit,” he said. “Well, I have, but that’s a long story and it’s not really important. My point is that if I thought I could take over the world, I’d be back at it in a moment.”
“You always used to think you could do anything,” she said.
“I still do, more or less,” he said, a smile creeping across his face for the first time since he’d decided to come here. “I merely find that my priorities have shifted.”
“Mine have not,” Helena said, and her face hardened.
“The problem with being Bronzed, I think, is that all you can do is sit there and contemplate things. You can’t actually do anything,” Nikola mused.
His apparent change of subject caught Helena off guard. Her eyebrows went up as she tried to follow his train of thought.
“That’s why it’s a punishment, Nikola,” she said.
“Not a very good one,” he said. “And it certainly doesn’t lend itself to rehabilitation. I don’t understand why they didn’t just kill you and have done with it.”
“I don’t pretend to understand the Regents,” Helena said. “But if it makes any sense, I think the Warehouse itself might have liked me.”
“Now, making you watch, unable to help or prevent anything from happening to the people you care about,’ Nikola drawled as if she hadn’t said anything at all, leaning his forehead against the glass and looking straight into her eyes, “That’s punishment.”
“Did she forgive you?” Helena said quietly, glancing down at the floor and then back to meet his gaze once more.
“More or less,” he said. “I think she’s come to understand it, anyway. The real trick is getting her to forgive herself for not stopping you.”
Helena pressed her forehead to the glass and closed her eyes as though she could feel him, as though he was a comfort to her. They had been friends, colleagues and competitors in a way more friendly than any of his other rivals. She had been a dreamer, like he was, determined to make things happen because she saw them in her visions and willed them to come to pass. They had always been the same, except she had loved another person and he had loved his work. It had made them both a little mad, in the end, but he had more or less healed.
“How does one do that?”
“You let her stop you,” he said. Then he turned and walked away from her before he did something stupid.
+++
“Did you talk to her?”
“Of course. I couldn’t just let her sit down there all alone. Besides, it scared young William away.”
“I told him not to talk to her.”
“Which is probably exactly why he’s trying to. Have you learned nothing in all your years?”
“I’m really not in the mood for that right now. Do you think there’s a chance?”
“You’re Helen Magnus. There’s always a chance.”
+++
Chapter 4
Teaser and Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
1895
“It wasn’t supposed to make you cry,” Helena said. She crossed her legs under her skirt so that she sat on Helen’s bed.
“It just surprised me, that’s all,” Helen said.
She had retired early to finish the novel, and when Caleb sensed her distress, he had discreetly informed Helena. Helena, who had been preparing to depart for the Warehouse, had gone up to Helen’s sitting room instead, only to find her friend tucked in bed with a number of handkerchiefs at hand.
“I’m now a little bit curious, however,” Helena said. “Is it because I twisted poor Nigel so badly? He rather thought it was funny.”
“No, it’s not Nigel,” Helen said. “Though I can see how he would be amused.”
She paused and blew her nose in a most unladylike fashion. Helena smiled. She was quite glad that she had been introduced to Helen Magnus. They were rather kindred spirits in many regards, for all their natures differed.
“When you discovered you were pregnant, were you afraid?” Helen said, somewhat unexpectedly.
“Not particularly,” Helena said. “I had no reputation to speak of, and my family was more concerned with its own survival than my purity.”
“You never considered marriage?” Helen asked.
“Of course I did,” Helena replied. “Christina’s father is a suitable enough man, I suppose, but there was never a tremendous amount of passion between us.”
“Then how,” Helen began before she stopped and turned pink.
“Really, Helen, at your age,” Helena said, laughing. “It was more along the lines of experimentation.”
“That much I do understand,” Helen said.
“My dear Helen,” Helena said. “That much even James understands.”
They laughed together at that, and Helen felt the weight of the feelings the book had so unexpectedly evoked lessen.
“I was terrified,” Helen said. “When I found out, I mean.”
It hung there for a moment between them, Helena staring at her face and Helen looking down at the bedspread, fiddling with loose threads. When she looked up, though, her expression was as confident as Helena had ever seen it.
“When?” Helena said quietly.
“It was in 1888,” Helen said. “My daughter, or son, would be the same age as your Christina, if…” she trailed away.
“Did you miscarry?” Helena asked as gently as possible.
“No,” Helen said. “Not exactly. It was complicated.”
“Because of your station?”
“Because I discovered I was pregnant shortly after I discovered the baby’s father was in fact Jack the Ripper.”
“Oh, Helen,” Helena said, leaning forward to take the other woman’s hand. “I – he’s the one, isn’t he? The one none of you will ever talk about. Your fifth.”
“Yes,” Helen said. “He could move instantaneously from place to place in a flash of brimstone. He could even take others with him. That’s how he avoided the police, not to mention James, and how he evaded the bullet when I shot him.”
“You shot him?” Helena said, surprised that even Helen would go that far.
“Yes, and I would do it again,” Helen said. She looked away, though, and Helena doubted her.
“What happened to your child?” Helena said, hoping to steer the conversation somewhere else.
“Once I talked him out of marrying me, James and I developed a way to extract it, before my seventh week,” Helen said, as though it had been as simple as collecting a blood sample. “It’s in the basement, in a special flask inside a box of Nikola’s design, frozen until I decide what to do. James, and you now, are the only ones who know.”
For one of the few times in her life, Helena found herself completely bereft of words. She lay down on the pillow beside Helen instead, as though they were sisters in one of those insipid novels that Jane Austen wrote. Their fingers still twisted together on top of the bedspread.
“It was the blood, I think,” Helen said finally. “It made him unstable. He was never cruel before.”
“It wasn’t you fault,” Helena said.
“It was my experiment,” Helen said. “I held the needle myself.”
“And his actions were his own,” Helena said. “Like Griffin’s were, my Griffin, not yours. He allowed himself to be taken over, and he needed to be stopped.”
“I’m not sure I stopped him,” Helen said. “We hear about murders every now and then. James thinks it’s him.”
“You will stop him, though,” Helena said. “One way or another.”
“I will,” Helen said.
“I thought about having Kemp save Griffin, you know. Appealing to his better nature,” Helena said. “I decided it was a better story if he died.”
“That’s the way a man would tell it,” Helen said.
“As far as anyone knows, a man does tell it,” Helena said, a bit sad, but not truly regretful.
“I’m glad I’m not in one of your books,” Helen said. “Or one of Doyle’s, even. I have no desire for immortality.”
“I wonder if that’s why you got it?” Helena said thoughtfully.
Helen said nothing in reply, but held more tightly to her hand. When Caleb walked past the doorway thirty minutes later, making his final rounds of the evening and ensuring that everyone in the house was safely in bed, they were both asleep.
+++
Present Day
Nikola rapped his nails on the glass. It was a sharp sound, no less so than if he’d still had claws, but one that was quiet enough that she could ignore it if she chose. She didn’t.
“They’ve gone then, the Regents.” Helena never asked questions when she didn’t have to. It was one of the reasons he’d liked her so much.
“Yes, they’ve gone,” he said. “Disappeared back to whatever run of mill jobs they do when they’re not orchestrating world events. I still can’t believe you picked them over us all those years ago.”
“I may have regretted it a few times, myself,” Helena said. Nikola managed not to wince. “I might have guessed you’d still be alive.”
“Not for lack of other people trying to kill me, I assure you,” Nikola said lightly. “And most recently some very unpleasant bugs. But yes, I am still alive.”
“The Regents would probably love to get their hands on you,” Helena said. She’d kept his secret all those years before, even when he was working alongside her, even after he’d stolen the Tesla and named it for himself. He wondered if that loyalty had changed too.
“James is dead,” he said softly instead, hoping to change the subject. “Nigel too.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. Her words were cold, and he knew she didn’t actually care. Or at least that she was pretending not to.
“James made sure all your novels got published,” Nikola went on as though he hadn’t noticed. “Even hired someone to pose as the male you.”
“James hated my books,” Helena said flatly.
“No, James hated you,” Nikola corrected. “He hated you because he spent his whole life pretending to be something he wasn’t, and you never did. If it makes you feel any better, he despised Oscar Wilde for much the same reason, syphilis and all.”
Helena approached the glass, looking intrigued but still deathly angry with him.
“An actor called Orson Welles did a radio play of “War of the Worlds” in the late ‘30s.” Nikola laughed at the memory. “Helen and I listened together. They thought it was real. There was panic in New York. It was hilarious.”
“I’m sorry I missed it,” Helena said. If he hadn’t known her better, Nikola might have thought she was relaxing into the talk with him. But he did know better, and knew that this was Helena at her most dangerous.
“It was a sight,” he acknowledged. “Did they tell you much about the World Wars?”
“Yes,” she said. “I’m sorry, Nikola.”
This time she really did sound like she meant it, and he hardened his heart.
“I went a bit crazy for a while there,” he said cautiously. “During the war and after it. Attacking Germans in the woods and so on. And then I spent half a century trying to take over the world and restore the glory of Sanguine Vampiris.”
“And dear Helen stopped you,” Helena guessed.
“Of course she did,” Nikola snorted. “I never expected otherwise. But that didn’t stop me from trying.”
“Is this the part where you tell me that you’ve changed and I can change too?” The false sincerity in Helena’s voice cut through any kind feelings he might have been starting to have towards her.
“I haven’t changed a bit,” he said. “Well, I have, but that’s a long story and it’s not really important. My point is that if I thought I could take over the world, I’d be back at it in a moment.”
“You always used to think you could do anything,” she said.
“I still do, more or less,” he said, a smile creeping across his face for the first time since he’d decided to come here. “I merely find that my priorities have shifted.”
“Mine have not,” Helena said, and her face hardened.
“The problem with being Bronzed, I think, is that all you can do is sit there and contemplate things. You can’t actually do anything,” Nikola mused.
His apparent change of subject caught Helena off guard. Her eyebrows went up as she tried to follow his train of thought.
“That’s why it’s a punishment, Nikola,” she said.
“Not a very good one,” he said. “And it certainly doesn’t lend itself to rehabilitation. I don’t understand why they didn’t just kill you and have done with it.”
“I don’t pretend to understand the Regents,” Helena said. “But if it makes any sense, I think the Warehouse itself might have liked me.”
“Now, making you watch, unable to help or prevent anything from happening to the people you care about,’ Nikola drawled as if she hadn’t said anything at all, leaning his forehead against the glass and looking straight into her eyes, “That’s punishment.”
“Did she forgive you?” Helena said quietly, glancing down at the floor and then back to meet his gaze once more.
“More or less,” he said. “I think she’s come to understand it, anyway. The real trick is getting her to forgive herself for not stopping you.”
Helena pressed her forehead to the glass and closed her eyes as though she could feel him, as though he was a comfort to her. They had been friends, colleagues and competitors in a way more friendly than any of his other rivals. She had been a dreamer, like he was, determined to make things happen because she saw them in her visions and willed them to come to pass. They had always been the same, except she had loved another person and he had loved his work. It had made them both a little mad, in the end, but he had more or less healed.
“How does one do that?”
“You let her stop you,” he said. Then he turned and walked away from her before he did something stupid.
+++
“Did you talk to her?”
“Of course. I couldn’t just let her sit down there all alone. Besides, it scared young William away.”
“I told him not to talk to her.”
“Which is probably exactly why he’s trying to. Have you learned nothing in all your years?”
“I’m really not in the mood for that right now. Do you think there’s a chance?”
“You’re Helen Magnus. There’s always a chance.”
+++
Chapter 4
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2011-03-31 01:19 pm (UTC)No, really, this was tragic and sinister and sweet all at the same time. Particularly liked the conversation between H.G. and Nikola.
no subject
Date: 2011-03-31 01:55 pm (UTC)I have a feeling that the conversation between Helena and Nikola might be everyone's favourite...;)
ETA: See below. *whistles innocently*
no subject
Date: 2011-03-31 01:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-31 02:03 pm (UTC)Speaking of!
There were any number of reasons for him to walk through the SHU. He worked in the Sanctuary, after all, and it was his business to know what was going on. And even though Magnus had told him specifically...well, he was a professional. He would do his job.
Will came around the corner and saw that Nikola had beaten him to the punch. He took in the ex-vampire's hunched shoulders and maudlin expression, the real pain in the man's eyes, and decided this was not a conversation he wanted to eavesdrop on, no matter how helpful it might be when he had his own talk with their guest. He retreated back upstairs, tuned his security screen to watch that cell, and waited.
He had time, after all. It's not like H.G. Wells was going anywhere.
no subject
Date: 2011-03-31 06:08 pm (UTC)“He hated you because he spent his whole life pretending to be something he wasn’t, and you never did. If it makes you feel any better, he despised Oscar Wilde for much the same reason, syphilis and all.” -- Are you saying that in this verse James was gay? And what are you saying about H.G.?
Love this: “Did she forgive you?” [...]
“More or less,” he said. “I think she’s come to understand it, anyway. The real trick is getting her to forgive herself for not stopping you.”
[...]
“How does one do that?”
“You let her stop you,”
no subject
Date: 2011-03-31 06:17 pm (UTC)Er, yes. That would be my personal canon seeping through. I didn't invent the idea, but I do work it into most of my stuff (I got it from the scene in my icon, which absolutely broke my heart). Also, HG was canonically bisexual ("Several of my lovers have been women"), but even leaving that aside, she pretty much did whatever the heck she wanted in terms of defying social conventions wrt her gender, not to mention her socialist tendencies, and I think James kind of sympathized, but because of his position had to stand against her on principle.
I'm really glad you liked that part! I shifted it all around so that the "you let her stop you" came last (originally, it was in an entirely different order, and the long paragraph wasn't there, and I really didn't think they were connecting...). It's always nice when someone mentions something I did on purpose. :p
Thanks for the review!
no subject
Date: 2011-03-31 07:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-31 07:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-31 07:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-31 08:01 pm (UTC)I talk about it here. (http://grav-ity.livejournal.com/1220907.html)
no subject
Date: 2011-03-31 08:59 pm (UTC)Feeling all melancholy now...
no subject
Date: 2011-03-31 09:03 pm (UTC)Hopefully the next chapter will help everyone fell less melancholy.
no subject
Date: 2011-04-04 12:46 am (UTC)My favorite part was probably Helena and Nikola discussing James though, and the line “You let her stop you,” he said. Then he turned and walked away from her before he did something stupid.
no subject
Date: 2011-04-04 01:05 am (UTC)