FF: Twice in a Lifetime | Sanctuary | Helen/Charlotte | R 1/7
Helen goes to Nepal at first for what James describes as "the most well deserved vacation in the history of vacations." She stays for three months, not exactly adhering to the Buddhist principles, but meditating and reflecting in her own way. She writes her autobiography - or at least a loose chronology of people and places she will have to avoid. She makes a list of all the things she missed, all the things she always said she'd "get to" and never found the time. All the things that passed her by while she was busy saving the world the first time around.
She has one hundred and thirteen years. It's time to start checking things off the list.
*
There is so much she can change in the timeline, simply by her presence. She could work as a doctor, but what if she saved a life meant to be lost? She could publish research papers, but what if an idea, even the most ludicrous for the time, were to give inspiration too soon? It is too much to risk. Far too much.
It is a fine line, living a half-hearted life. Learning but never acting, doing just enough but never too much.
Instead of tending to the wounded on the front lines of World War I she helps set up symposiums for Albert Einstein, kicking in the last little bit of cash needed to fund his research. Or at least to keep a roof over his head while he works.
She studies, everything, anything she never had the chance to study before. Physics, engineering, biology and zoology. She spends a year in the Amazon studying a rare tree frog with similarities to abnormals.
She makes investments - lots of them. Small amounts here and there, nothing to pique anyone's interest, but enough to provide a comfortable living. The real boom is coming, she knows. Coal, oil, rubber, pharmaceuticals, defense contractors, technology. She has an advantage that will tip every scale, ever, in her favor. Shell companies are created, fake identities made. She becomes a world-class forger, practicing her trade for the time when she will need to make her own documents for her own ends. Her wealth grows as the years pass, little seeds spread across every continent, every country, and with every day that slowly ticks by until she can rejoin her life, she plans exactly how she will overcome her enemies and save her friends, even if, sadly, she cannot save herself.
*
The 1920's roar.
She can't help but get swept away just a little bit in the glamour and style of it all. The first time around she spent most of the Twenties researching polio. This time she listens to jazz in New Orleans and drinks bootleg gin at speakeasies. She has dalliances with dangerous men when she's not in her laboratory studying electrical engineering.
In 1923 she watches Babe Ruth hit three home runs to help the Yankees win their first World Series. As the crowd roars she fights back tears, easily picturing the look on Will's face, the wonder, the joy, wishing desperately that he were there beside her to enjoy it. But the man she's considered her best friend, and even more, her family the last few years, hasn't even been born yet. Neither have Henry or Kate or the Big Guy. She is alone to enjoy this moment, this piece of history, as she will be alone for almost the next 90 years.
She waits outside the stadium, fighting through the crowd to get an autograph. Someday she will give Will and Henry the best birthday presents of their lives.
*
"Where is this scar from," her lover asks, tracing a thin two-inch line that mars the otherwise perfect skin of her upper thigh.
Helen shifts, unused to such scrutiny. It's been a long time since she's taken a lover for more than a night of pleasure. This attachment, this intimacy, is something she hasn't let herself think about in years.
Around the world there is a global depression, but here, in Helen's bedroom on Park Avenue, none of that exists. She's made herself quite comfortable, and if it pains her conscience a bit to know she is taking advantage of the downfall of others, it is soothed to some degree knowing that the robber barons of Wall Street brought it upon themselves.
She looks at the scar, flashes on a memory of Adam attacking her in an abandoned warehouse, of the fighting and nearly dying, and travelling a century into the past. She hates the scar, even as she knows that without it, the plan she has formulated to save her friends, save them all, would never come to fruition.
"A very bad man," she answers vaguely, knowing her lover won't press the issue.
"You know, I would have said once they're all very bad men, but the truth is there's some peaches out there to be found."
"You were married to one, weren't you?" Helen asks, eyebrow raised.
"I was. He was very supportive of my acting. Even when I went out to Hollywood. Of course, none of that matters now. I'm poison. 'Box office poison' as they say."
Helen fights a smile. It isn't often, but every once in a while she runs smack dab into history. Usually she hates it, but tonight, lying in her lover's arms, she revels in the moment. "Oh, Kate, I wouldn't worry too much about it. I have a feeling you're on your way to a glorious come back."
Kate smiles and rolls them both over into the sheets, laughing her throaty, delicious laugh that will grace the silver screen for decades to come. Helen laughs along with her, her cares, for once, completely forgotten.
*
It's 1944, and Helen knows that somewhere in France she is deep inside Nazi territory attempting to dismantle a key communications array. But that is another path, another woman whom she has almost forgotten now after living so long removed from herself. This Helen, the Helen she is now, sits as far away from that terrible war as she can be - Argentina - and sips a glorious mojito in the fading sunset. Perhaps she should be joining in the fight, she thinks. Another assumed name, another assumed life, one of so many paste-board identities she's created over the years. But for once, she just can't find it in herself to give a damn. She's lived through humanities' worst wars twice now and knows there are only more atrocities to come. So no. For once, Helen Magnus has decided to sit this one out. For once, she is giving herself a reprieve from the horror, the bloodshed, the life and death decisions. Tomorrow, the next day maybe, she will rejoin the good fight. But today, when her other self is being captured and tortured for information, she is going to sit out on the veranda and drink until she can't remember anything but this life any more
*
As the industrial defense complex rolls through America, and Europe tries to rebuild, Helen quietly boards a plane, and then a boat, and takes the long journey to New Zealand. Her companies and assets she has left in trust with the few lawyers and accountants she trusts implicitly. Besides which, she knows the end of the story, how the market will behave. There is nothing they will need her for that can't be handled by mail, even several months removed.
When she arrives in New Zealand she has some money, more than enough, and a suit case full of clothes. She buys property - still pristine and untouched by human hands and greedy developers. She has always had a life of relative privilege, and while it has never been easy, it has rarely been physically difficult except by her own choosing. She chooses that difficulty now; a personal quest, to hew something out of the land and call it her own, to delve inside herself and know what she is truly made of.
She hires local Maori to help her tend the land and haul materials, but most of the house she builds herself, stone by stone, plank by plank. It's reminiscent of the earlier American settlers with their one room cabins, except Helen's has indoor plumbing and hot water. She raises some sheep, her own vegetables, and re-learns how to make her own bread. At night she lies out under the canopy of stars and memorizes the constellations of the Southern Hemisphere. During the day she goes for long rides across the land on her chestnut gelding, Hephaestion. The decades have worn against her, making her question her plans, question her purpose, question if she should even rejoin her timeline at all. But here, in the open wild, she finds herself again.
Technical skill with a pencil and paper she has long used to sketch out designs and schematics, she turns inward, taking the time to draw lifelike portraits of friends and family alike. She hangs them around the cabin, and often finds herself chatting at them on cold, winter nights, for company. She tells them her plan and takes their silence for tacit approval. She writes a journal - a real journal - of her daily life and her life history so far. Both versions. Occasionally she takes a lover, male or female depending on her mood, but it is an unusual occurrence and rarely of note.
In the fall of 1959 she gathers together all of her personal belongings, everything she has made, created, built. In the dark of night she sets Hephaestion loose into the wild, giving him her blessing to run free as he was always meant to do. And then, she sets fire to the cabin.
It burns. Every inch of it. And while it burns, Helen makes herself stand and watch as everything she has worked for, everything she has built, turns to ashes and dust in mere minutes. It is a test of strength, for she knows what is to come and what it will cost her. She stands back as the flames devour a decade's worth of living and cries for what she has lost even as she knows the fire is a pale reflection of the inferno to come.
In the morning, with not even a suitcase left, she buys a ticket for America.
The time has come to start building.
*
She buys land, quietly.
While the rest of the country reels from assassinations of presidents and civic leaders, she instructs excavation crews and slicks the palms of local politicians for the right kind of permits. The wars and the upheaval she ignores, her mind entirely focused now on the plan before her.
Only one exception is made: Woodstock.
Helen had missed it the first time around, too busy chasing down a Panamanian basilisk, and had always regretted it.
This time she is there. She weeps as Joan Baez sings "We Shall Overcome" and dances in the rain and mud as Janis Joplin belts out "Ball and Chain." For three days there is nothing but music, and love, and drugs, and sex, and that is enough. She's worked two lifetimes and more saving the world - for this brief span of days she lets herself go and indulges and it is glorious. The excess reminds her of Nicola and she smiles.
When it's over, when Jimi has played the Star Spangled Banner, she hitchhikes her way home, wearing borrowed clothes and more hickey's than she cares to count. And for the first time in longer than she can remember, she remembers why she has been doing this for so many years. Because if 300,000 people can peacefully assemble for a concert against the wishes of just about every form of government, then there may just be hope for humans and abnormals yet.
*
Disco has died, yuppies been born, and an actor runs the United States. Helen Magnus hates every minute of it. Hates the selfish indulgence and the parties, hates the fear of anything "other" that pervades society. On and off she's been able to keep herself busy, keep distracted. She's worked soup lines and quietly, insistently, pushed for AIDS research when most people refused to even utter the word. But today, she is briefly casting off the cloak of her do-gooder persona to take one of those steps that will cement her future, and hopefully, the future of those she loves.
"I'd like to stake your company," she explains, straightening a wrinkle in her business suit. She hates the shoulder pads, but it was the best she could find.
"How much of a stake?"
"Oh, nothing too large... perhaps, five percent? With the eventual stock options, etc. when you take it public."
"We're not quite there yet-" the bearded man blushes.
"We've only got a prototype..."
"Trust me," Helen smiles, "You're going to change the world Mr. Jobs. Every single corner of it."
They shake on the deal, sign the paperwork. No one notices her hand trembles when she writes the date. As soon as she is safely out of the building and in her car, Helen allows herself to succumb to the tears that have threatened all day. Today, in this life, she has helped fund the birth of a revolutionary technology company. A continent away, in another life, her daughter, takes her first breath.
*
Magnus knows exactly how and when the tech bubble will peak and burst. She buys and sells stocks with more zeal than even the most ambitious stock broker. She has thirty-five shell companies around the world, over a hundred different bank accounts, and enough money to buy and sell half the world twice over. A century's worth of wealth she has amassed for one purpose. A purpose which grows in stature and completion every day.
She's heard rumors of a secret facility at Cheyenne Mountain that stretches several levels underground, but she doubts it could be larger or more elaborate than what she is building. Based on Praxian design, some of the more technically advanced elements will have to wait a few more years, but the basic framework is there. Her vision, her life's work - her second life anyway - has begun to take tangible form. That day the Dow Jones closes over 13,000 points and in celebration of both the immense sum of money she's made - and the immense fortune she is about to spend - Helen pops open a bottle of 1995 Krug Clos d'Ambonnay and toasts to second chances.
*
It's not as if Helen hasn't pictured this moment a thousand times in her head, played through the scenarios one by one. It's that she never actually let herself consider for one second going through with it. But there are some things too strong, too instinctive, to ignore.
Reaching out to her child is one of those things.
"Ashley!" Her voice chokes as she says the words, blinking away tears behind her dark Chanel sunglasses.
"Mom, hey! What are you doing here? Aren't you supposed to be in Hong Kong?"
"I decided to take a later flight," Helen lies easily.
In truth, she is already on a plane to Hong Kong, a trip to track down a rare sea abnormal that's been captured and offered to the highest bidder as the world's finest sushi. When she arrives she will go straight to her hotel to sleep off the time difference and in the morning she will end up tracking down the poachers just in time to be in a massive explosion when things go horribly wrong. She knows that she will not remember what flight she took, much less care. For now, she has a window of opportunity in this new timeline and she refuses to let it slip by.
"So you decided to track me down… at the mall?" Ashley is suspicious, as Helen trained her to be. It makes her heart break just a little more if possible.
"I wanted to surprise you. It's been a while since we put a dent in my bank account hasn't it?"
"Way too long," Ashley agrees, and the suspicion is gone as she smiles, her eyes lighting up in conspiracy. "Should we go to the gun range first or the mall?"
Helen laughs, memorizing this moment as best she can. "The mall. I'm having a sudden shoe craving."
"I love when you have shoe cravings," her daughter laughs, easily taking her hand and tugging her toward the nearest subway platform in mid-town.
They spend the afternoon laughing and shopping, drinking coffee and eating frozen yogurt as they browse every store in the mall, some twice. Whatever Ashley wants, Helen buys, until their arms are loaded down with packages.
Finally, it is Ashley that asks, "Mom, don't you need to get to the airport?"
"What? Oh… yes. I guess so."
And just like that her window of opportunity is gone. It isn't the end of course, she still has plenty of time to see her daughter - from a distance - until that fateful day Helen refuses to think about. But the chance to speak with her, hug her? No… this is likely her only chance without interfering with the timeline, something she has vowed not to do.
It takes everything in her will power not to fall to her knees and cling to Ashley for dear life. Not to confess everything, the time travel, the Cabal, the inevitable loss. She thinks of the cabin, remembers watching it burn, and finds some kernel of strength inside herself to cling to instead.
Everything in the last hundred-plus years has been a dream, this moment now, nothing more than a living fantasy. Now, it is time to wake up.
She hands Ashley her packages. "See these safely home for me, will you?"
"Sure."
She slides her arms around her daughter, inhaling deeply, memorizing her scent, the feel of her, the comfort, the bond. "I love you," she whispers.
"I love you too, Mom," Ashley answers in that half-embarrassed, half-proud sort of way children have when their parents show way too much emotion to be cool.
Helen wants to say so many things, all the things she should have said every day Ashley was alive: I'm proud of you; you bring joy into my life just from your existence; there is nothing you could ever do to make me stop loving you; the best thing I have ever done in this world was to have you. But she can't say those things now, it is too late.
"Be safe getting home, all right?"
"I will. Be safe in Hong Kong. Henry said some of those guys were pretty nasty thugs."
"Oh, don't worry," Helen smiles, "I can take care of myself."
"I know you can," Ashley grins cheekily right back, "I've taught you well."
Impulsively, Helen hugs her one last time. "I love you," she says again, not caring the implications of being too effusive in her feelings.
"I love you too," her daughter answers, this time with an eye-roll and long-suffering sigh. She gives Helen a good natured push toward the taxi stand. "Go on. Someone needs to save the world, don't they?"
Helen nods bravely. "I will. I promise. I'll save the world… for you." But Ashley doesn't hear the last uttered words, her attention already drawn to flagging down a cab and all but shoving Helen into it with a laugh. She looks back, waving to Ashley out the back of the cab window, her mind capturing Ashley's last smile and wave until she is finally out of sight.
The cabbie turns around asking, "Where to lady?"
Helen sucks in a shuddering breath, tears falling down her face. "The nearest bar."
*
She doesn't spend the day Ashley dies drinking; she spends the entire month.
Tucked away in a little Mexican town, she drowns herself in tequila and picks fights with the locals who just shake their heads and mutter about the pinche gringa.
Eventually she looks at the date, realizes how much time has passed, how much she still has to do, and sobers up. Because Ashley would want Helen to save the rest of their family even if she couldn't save her.
Part Two