Commentary: Communication (Sanctuary Fic)

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penknife requested Communication, on the grounds that it is "a lot of dysfunction in a tiny package". That is, as you say, not wrong. :)

(The fic is rated M, I suppose I should mention)



She’s not exactly sure when they stopped talking about this.

Okay, so here's the thing: writing porn makes me uncomfortable. So when the porn battle came up this year, I was all "Gosh darn it, I am going to make it happen this time" (because last time was a total wash). So I tried to do one ficlet every day. And it nearly killed me. I solved the problem by turning them all into character studies, on the basis that I was going to need to know how they operated when I started writing my other stories. So nearly all of the plot points will appear in other stories, along with the character development...but probably not the sex.

There’s a murder in Edinburgh that no one can solve. James stays awake for three days, never leaving his office and doing more and more cocaine until Helen finally breaks the lock on the door and throws every note and newspaper clipping on his desk into the fireplace. He doesn’t even get up from his chair until she turns back to face him, and then he’s pushing her up against the mantelpiece and pulling at her dress, and she breaks her own rule about avoiding him when he’s high and reaches for his trousers.

Ah, Italics! One of my favourite tricks. I typically fall back on them when I have written a story that isn't long enough (or, as is the case here, when I haven't actually put any porn into a porn battle ficlet). It's completely a cheater's move, but it doubles so nicely as style that barely anyone ever calls me on it. Plus it usually means I get to play with verb tenses, and that's always fun. What this means is that I wrote the straight text first, realized I had no idea what I was doing, when back to add the italics, and stumbled on to the Point of the Story.

Of course, they’ve never precisely ever talked about it. But they’ve stopped pretending that they should. Somewhere after bustles fell out of fashion and collars became less stiffly starched, but before they agreed to murder for hire, they just ceased to pretend that they had anything but complete and utter understanding for one another.

Setting the time: this is a flashback within a flashback (from two different POVs, even), except for the first and last lines which are in the present (uh, Helen's present. Because now even I'm confused). Basically this paragraph's entire purpose is to illustrate that I think James and Helen spent most of the 1890s trying to figure out what the hell was going on, and wishing somewhat desperately that the other would just TELL THEM ALREADY so they could both move on with their lives.

When it becomes apparent that Gregory is never coming back, Helen’s grief mostly channels itself into fury that he hadn’t taken her with him. James weathers the worst of it, taking mercy on the staff and sending as many of them as possible away. After a week, he refuses to avoid her any more and simply invites himself into her bed. She lets him cosset her, which very nearly destroys him, but even then he can’t bring himself to leave her there, and wraps himself around her in the dark.

Because if Helen is letting you take care of her, something is terribly, terribly wrong. And James is way too smart not to know that.

Sometimes, particularly when she finds herself whispering the wrong name as a hand runs through her hair, or when he pulls her onto her stomach and covers her from behind, she wishes it was something more than simple understanding. She wishes for the passion she felt when it was another’s hand between her legs, someone else’s fingers fumbling with the fastenings on her clothing. She knows that he wishes the same thing.

They're both in love with John Druitt. And they both kind of hate the part where there in love with John Druitt. And they both kind of wish that they loved each other in that way because it would solve about 80% of their problems. But they don't. Instead they orbit one another FOR MORE THAN A CENTURY, and never say anything they should, because they kind of don't need to, but also because they think they're being perfectly clear.

James finds a box in the basement that he can’t open. He knows it’s hers and he knows it has its own energy source and he suspects it’s keeping something frozen and he knows that Nikola must have built it for her, which makes him unreasonably jealous. He is completely unprepared for her reaction when he asks about it. She is desperately angry with him and he has no idea why, and she is bent over the desk with her skirts flared out around her before he realizes that he’s not sure which of them is misleading the other.

I was trying out a pet theory that Helen managed to freeze Ashley without James knowing. He finds out, of course, but later and not until she's good and ready to tell him. Or something. I kind of like it.

It was easier, before. When they had each other as friends and someone else to fill the gap between them. Then, affection came simply enough and never needed to extend any further. After, they’d both been so uniquely devastated by their own separate failures that she felt they deserved one another. It’s months before she wakes up in his bed one morning and realizes that she is no longer punishing herself. It’s a long time before she realizes that he never does.

And then I wrote this paragraph and realized what they hell was going on. Because James and Helen wanted to be friends. And they were friends, as much as they could be, as much as society let them be. And with John in between them, and that special understanding the Five all shared (in particular their own little subgroup within it), they were fine. But then they lost John, and they had to start from scratch except they didn't think they were so they never actually talked, and now they're just pretty much screwed.

The first year Helen is in America, James barely sleeps at all. Instead he spends long nights trying not to remember that he used her to forget, and mourns for a friendship that might never have existed in the way they always thought it did. He never tells her, and never suspects that she endures the same thing.

Oh, THEM! I'm pretty sure Helen left because she just couldn't STAND to live with James any more. Neither of them were really healing, and they really, really need to start having sex with other people (besides Nikola). I think Helen goes because she realizes that she is going to live FOREVER, but that doesn't mean she should stay the same forever, and James clings to the past, even though he kind of hates it, who it made him be and what it made him conceal, because it made him who he is. And he needs to be who he is.

More and more often, Helen finds herself wishing that James would use the telephone so that they could just talk.

I think it's interesting that the show seems to portray Helen and James as having the most stable relationship, and I seem to be all over them being INCREDIBLY screwed up.  I'm not sure what that says about me.

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