Dr. Helen Magnus

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Now that Helen had hidden herself away from the world, she finally had time to do things that weren't balancing a half dozen governments on her shoulders. Will was more than capable of handling the day-to-day running of the Sanctuary and it left her with more available time than she'd had in recent decades.

It was, in a word, unbearable.

Without something to fill up every waking moment of every day, Helen found herself dwelling on those she'd lost. This time of year, it fell toward Ashley, because her birthday would be in a few weeks and it was a day that always felt empty without her bounding around. Ashley was everything that Helen was not - impetuous, brave, brash and daring. Helen had ever been cautious about her life and had left nothing to chance. Ashley played everything for a lark.

So this particular evening, she wound up deep in the labs and saw only a few tufts of spiked brown hair bent over an unknown project. Nikola. Clearly that was the way to go, for distraction.

"Oi, what are you doing up so late, then? Burning the candle from both ends?" she teased, wanting to get a rise out of him.

Helen had never been away from home without her father and now she was on some strange island with a husband and a baby, neither of which she remembered. She had always prided herself on never fainting but she had come very close when waking up without a stitch of clothing in bed next to a man.

Will had been kind enough to explain that there was a place to get tea and to relax and that was where Helen was now, trying to soothe her jangled nerves. It was terribly awkward, the whole situation, made even worse by this strange technology she did not understand and these people she did not know.

"How much time have I missed? How many years in the future is it now?"

[PB aside, she looks enough like Magnus to be recognizable - just blonde and 17.]

It had been a few days and while Will was far from openly hostile, he wasn't warm and loving in the manner he normally was. Any advances were rebuffed and what little conversation they had was mostly focused on Gregory; while Helen was grateful that Will wasn't cross with her in front of their son, things were still tenser than she'd like.

She had very few people she felt comfortable talking to about this. She wanted to talk to Nikola, of course, but felt it was in poor taste to discuss trouble in her marriage with someone she'd already slept with. Phedre might be a good choice except that she didn't want to spark any jealousy...but Danny, well. He would be perfectly neutral, wouldn't he?

Decision made, she decided to go find him. That proved more difficult than she'd originally thought since Danny was so involved with various island things but she finally caught him near the IPD office.

"Danny? Do you have a moment or two?"

Helen actually found the reels by sheer chance. She was between shifts at the clinic and heading home and Will had the baby (no doubt doing therapy with Gregory on his lap or, more likely, avoiding paperwork with Gregory on his lap) and had a few moments to herself. She'd intended to get a book to read but pulled off the reels instead, thick, heavy things that reminded her of days gone by.

All were labeled 'Sanctuary' and had numbers following: 3.18, 3.19, 3.20, 4.01, 4.06 and so on, through 4.13 where they abruptly stopped. She decided it might be worth a look, at any rate, and cued up the first of the reels. Nothing could have prepared her for seeing her own face, her own world and Will, Kate and Declan as well. She felt a sharp pang for Declan, long since disappeared from the island, and watched instead as she and Will were trapped in some sort of alternate version of Carentan, the town she'd been held in when the SS had found her back in the 1940s.

There were things referenced that she didn't understand and, hoping for clarity, she moved on to the next reel and found herself even more confused. Will was some sort of doctor and she was an artist - neither of which were roles they played in the real world. He was married to some woman named Abby and the world seemed to be falling apart in front of them. The only constant, strangely enough, was the two of them and when they realized that, both of them woke in some sort of stasis tanks and told they were under the influence of some kind of hallucinogenic toxin produced by an Abnormal. She and John went on a madcap chase after Worth, only to discover John's real motive was to erase the past, erase everything Helen had become, simply so he could bed her once again. He sacrificed himself so she could go after Adam but that, she imagined, still wasn't a selfless act.

The shadows had shifted and changed and Helen knew it was late, far past when she should have gone to the psych office to retrieve Gregory and she reluctantly turned off the reel, tucking the cache she'd found out of the way so that perhaps nobody would disturb them. She went back several times over the course of the week, always in moments she could snatch here or there. Sometimes she had Gregory, which was good since she could feed him while watching but most she didn't. She didn't want him to see her upset, even if he was too small to understand.

She went through the reels two and three at a time, learning that she'd apparently hatched some sort of plot that she felt the need to tell nobody about, including Will, who seemed to grow more and more distant from her as time went on. He grew closer to Abby, this FBI agent, and Helen herself appeared to withdraw from everyone except some random woman in Africa (who, oddly, was a brunette with a French surname. Some types never changed). Will asked to be her partner after they very nearly died in some caves a half a world away and Helen held her breath as the Helen on the screen shut him out again and again.

When she finally managed to finish all of it, she had more questions than answers. How had she spent the 113 year gap? Why did she lie to Will about it? Why didn't she think she could trust Will with this knowledge when she'd trusted him with so many things prior to this?

One thing was certain. She would need to tell him about what she'd seen.

Helen wasn't exactly in the interest of keeping her plans for Will's birthday a secret but she imagined he wouldn't want a big party and would prefer to spend it quietly and at home as they'd done for the past two years. That was more than fine with Helen, who was still sleep deprived more often than not, and she took Gregory with her up to the Compound to bake what she felt like was a spectacular cake. It had just a touch of chocolate in the sauce and banana in the cake part - while it wasn't chocolate banana nut bread, it was close enough to the concept while still passing for an actual birthday cake.

She'd dressed Gregory in his little Blue Jays onesie and a teeny baseball cap that she coaxed from the box and, cake done, started going through the machinations to get both cake and baby back down to the hut by the time Will got home. With the stroller, it was quite simple, and she would have to remember to thank Nikola yet again for his generous gift.

Once she got back home, she laid Gregory in his cradle (where he was more than enthralled with the mobile Uncle Nikola had made him) and dressed herself - she could finally fit back in the green dress from St. Patrick's the year before last and she knew it was one of Will's favorites. She spritzed on a bit of her rapidly-dwindling perfume but left her hair loose and simple, just the way Will liked it.

"Today is your daddy's birthday," Helen sing-songed, completely shameless when it came to babytalking around Gregory. "We're going to make sure he has a good time, aren't we? Yes, we are."

Helen had promised to spend a little more time talking one on one with Wanderer when there weren't the concerns of arrival or the bustle of a party to contend with and she'd settled for having tea with her on a Saturday afternoon. She'd brought Gregory along, of course, because she hated to saddle Will with him when she was unoccupied and it seemed that Wanderer had been fond of the baby; Helen was always pleased with people who were interested in her son.

She was a bit early, so she'd snuggled Gregory in his sling across her chest and gone to boil the water for tea, hoping to at least have that done before Wanderer turned up in the kitchen. Whether or not they'd stay in the Compound was up to her - Helen hardly had an opinion - but this part would need to start here.

When she heard a noise behind her, she turned slightly. "Just getting a few things ready for us. Did you want anything in particular?"