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Sunday afternoons are reserved for family. Helen, Henry, Ashley, and their old friend all gather on the couch, cuddled together as tightly as possible. It’s a much more tactile world than the one they lived in when she and Biggie started this tradition so many years before, and she thinks most of her employees would understand, but she never invites them. It would throw off the careful balance she’s curated, and she dreads the thought of complicating this precious time.
It isn’t surprising, then, that Will is the one who changes this. He’s special, has been from the start, and while she can’t yet identify the warmth she feels when she looks at him (the warmth of a mentor to a protégé? The warmth of a friend? Something else entirely?), she catches herself letting down walls for him that she has for few employees.
So when he finds them all one Sunday afternoon, snuggled up on the couch, she already knows what she’ll do.
It’s rather amusing, the way he takes in the scene: mouth falling open slightly, eyes darting between them. Their positions haven’t changed much over the years; Henry is still tucked in between her and her old friend, though she once feared he’d object to this as he grew older. Biggie’s arm still rests around her shoulder, keeping her safe and warm. Ashley no longer fits well on Helen’s lap (though she’s made a point of proving that she can fit), so instead she takes the spot on the other side of Helen, draping her legs across both Helen’s and Henry’s. She’s still not as much of a cuddler as the others, and she’s often scrolling Facebook while the rest of them soak in the moment, but she does seem to enjoy it in her own way.
Will doesn’t seem to know what to say, so Helen opens her mouth to issue an invitation. To her surprise, Ashley beats her to it.
“You coming?” She doesn’t look up from her phone, just arches a brow and waits.
Will hesitates. “I, uh, I’m not sure-”
“Sundays are for family.” Biggie’s voice leaves no room for argument. “Come.”
Helen cannot help but smile, and Henry chuckles quietly beside her. Ashley simply rolls her eyes, as if she’s not sure why Will is being so dramatic about the whole thing (pot, kettle, darling).
“Okay… Where should I-” His cheeks take on a rather adorable shade of pink, and he scans the couch for the best place to fit himself in. After a beat, Henry scoots closer to Helen, patting the spot between him and Biggie.
“Here you go, dude.”
Will complies, still looking more than a little unsure, and settles in between them. For a few seconds he’s tense-too tense-and Helen wonders if they’ve pushed him too far, too fast. Then he tentatively leans against Biggie, and after a beat, relaxes. He’s been alone more than he hasn’t over the years; perhaps he needs this as much as any of them.
It takes a couple of Sundays, but soon, he’s as quick as any of them to join the pile.
-
Kate’s… Complicated. Helen still isn’t sure how to feel about the girl. (She worked for the Cabal, her actions led-however indirectly-to Ashley’s death, and she’s spent her life looking out for herself and herself alone. She saved Helen’s life, ran headfirst into a fight that could have easily killed her, and stayed when she could have run.)
But the longer she stays at the Sanctuary, the more she worms her way into the hole Ashley left in Helen’s heart. She cannot fill the hole, not completely; no one ever could. But she reminds her so much of her lost daughter, and even more of herself. It’s a hard thing to accept, but she trusts her judgment, and she trusts Will’s (Will, who tells her without hesitation that Kate is one of them, that she’s exactly what the team needs).
So Kate is part of her family (and no generation of Sanctuary employees have come to be family in quite this way, but perhaps there’s something special about this one; the ones who knew Ashley, however briefly).
Inviting her to Sunday afternoons is another matter entirely. Will brings it up, twice, never pushing but always mentioning it as a possibility. And Helen… Is surprised to find she isn’t entirely opposed. Still, though, the thought of taking that leap, issuing that invitation, is more than a little overwhelming. It feels final, somehow, like a last step in forgiving the girl. Besides, there’s Henry and Biggie’s comforts to think about.
It’s several months before she’s able to do it, before she knows they’re all ready to allow it.
Kate finds them all gathered, much like Will did, and squints at them in confusion. She’s not as speechless as Will once was, though. “What are you guys doing?”
Henry scoffs. “It’s called cuddling. Maybe you’ve heard of it.”
“Well, yeah, but… You guys cuddle?”
“No, you’re hallucinating.” Henry says dryly, and his annoyance is mostly performative at this point-he and Kate bicker as often as he and Ashley once did, though Helen has yet to determine if the feelings are quite as sibling-like-but still, she knows the moment is here, and she doesn’t want them to derail it with their banter.
“Every Sunday afternoon,” she cuts in, giving Kate a look that is hopefully reassuring. “You’re welcome to join us if you like.”
No one breathes as Kate processes the invitation, tilting her head to the side and studying Helen as if she expects some kind of trick. When Helen only holds her gaze, she nods slowly, taking a tentative step toward them, then another. She takes the empty spot at the end, going to drape her legs over Helen’s lap, and-oh-Helen didn’t consider this.
“No!” She snaps before she can stop herself, and Kate freezes, wide-eyed. Helen’s stomach churns in guilt, but she doesn’t know quite how to say-how to explain-that’s Ashley’s position, and no one else can take it.
Thankfully, Will is there. He and Henry have taken to rotating spots, based on who is colder and more in need of her old friend’s warmth that day, and today, he’s right by her side, a steady and assuring presence. “Not like that,” he says simply, so gentle Helen could hug him. “Different position.”
Realization dawns on Kate’s face, along with the understanding of why so many people are crammed into one side of the couch when there’s a huge empty spot here. Slow and tentative, she turns, reclining back against Helen’s side. She’s tense, as if she half-expects Helen to snap at her again, and Helen exhales, deliberately reaching her free arm out and draping it over Kate’s, half-holding her.
Almost immediately, Kate relaxes, and Helen very nearly laughs. How does she always manage to bring the most touch-starved strays home? (Perhaps that’s a reflection on her, not that she cares to think about that.)
Still, with Kate’s warm weight against one side and Will deliberately leaning against the other, the tips of her old friend’s fingers resting against the back of her neck, the sound of Henry’s steady breaths nearby, she feels remarkably safe and comfortable once more.
-
John never joins them, and she doesn’t offer. His gaze lingers on them sometimes, and the words burn on her lips, but she cannot force them out, and he always looks away. She doesn’t think he’d accept, in any case; he’d feel the darkness in him would ruin the ease of the embraces (dreadfully, she thinks he’d be right).
Later, it will just be one more regret to add to her list when it comes to him.
-
Nikola is… Dramatic about it. Of course he is. He finds them cuddling and starts a dry running commentary about snuggles, humanity, and happy moments that grates Helen to her bones. She can tolerate his ridiculousness to a point, but this is different-private-and for him to make such a mockery of it is infuriating. She opens her mouth to kick him out, but Henry speaks first.
“Look, if you want to join us, why don’t you just say so?”
Whether Henry is sincere or just trying to get under Nikola’s skin, she isn’t quite certain; personally, she leans toward the latter. Nonetheless, as soon as the words are out, a strange expression crosses Nikola’s face: painful vulnerability, as if Henry has ripped apart every façade, every carefully-curated guard Nikola has tried to hide himself beneath, and seen right through him. The look is there and gone in a heartbeat, but Helen saw it, and she knows she isn’t the only one.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Nikola says stiffly, but Helen can hear the edge beneath it now, and it sends an odd warmth through her. Perhaps he is still human in his own way, after all. “Vampires don’t cuddle; we have more important things to-”
“Oh, for goodness’ sake, Nikola, get over here,” she mutters, and he stills.
Then, with a smirk so clearly put-upon that Helen cannot begin to take it seriously, he replies. “Well, never let it be said that I’d turn down such an invitation from you, my dear. Though really, we could send the others away; I think it’d be much more comfortable.”
She simply arches a brow at him, waiting, and after a beat, he closes the distance between them, surveying the couch for the best spot (beside her, of course). Kate defiantly snuggles in, leaving him with only one option: the space between her and Henry (today it is Will who has taken up residence against Biggie’s fur).
He plops down without hesitation, draping an arm around her, drawing so close that he scarcely touches Henry. Ridiculous, ridiculous man. To her surprise, Henry deliberately relaxes, half-leaning against Nikola. Nikola freezes almost comically, like he’s not quite sure what to do with this, before slowly exhaling, settling into the moment.
(As they make room for more people, they edge closer and closer to that spot on the couch; Kate’s already crammed into a space far smaller than Ashley ever sat. Helen’s trying not to think about that. Ashley isn’t coming back, and they don’t need to leave room for her.)
-
It takes a few Sundays for Nikola to find an acceptable spot. On days when Henry is closest to Helen, it’s fine, but when it’s Will… Neither vampire nor profiler tolerate that well, and it leads to a terribly uncomfortable afternoon, one of few to actually be cut short. After that, Nikola tries beating Kate to the spot by Helen, which leaves Kate floundering for a place to sit. (She ends up tucked against Biggie’s other side, which works well enough, but Helen knows instinctively that it will not be a long-term solution. Kate isn’t about to let Nikola steal her spot.)
When Kate takes to arriving even earlier, Nikola scowls, and spends one Sunday between Biggie and the edge of the couch. That, too, is unacceptable.
Finally, it’s Henry who finds the solution. “What if you sat on the other side of Kate, and Kate just sort of-”
Kate seems to follow his line of thinking, because after a moment, she nods. “Yeah, that could work. Okay, Sparky,” she says when Nikola doesn’t move, “come here.”
Nikola’s disdain is clear; he isn’t a fan of any version of this where he isn’t cuddling Helen. Still, when everyone watches him expectantly, he gives a put-upon sigh, making his way to the spot. Rather than properly move out of the way, Kate simply scoots toward the front of the couch, and raises her legs, waiting patiently. Helen realizes where this is going, and an amused grin tugs at her lips.
After a beat, Nikola sits, and Kate drapes her legs over his lap, leaning back against Helen once more. It takes Nikola just a few seconds to make sense of it all, but when he does, he smirks, scooting a bit closer to Helen. Perhaps not as close as he would like-tragic-but close enough that he can reach out, draping his arm along the back of the couch. In a show of… Graciousness, really, Helen leans back against the arm (and, well, he is rather comfortable).
So, at last, they have their positions.
And then Abby arrives.
-
Abigail Corrigan is sweet as they come, and more clever than people give her credit for by half. She doesn’t live in the Sanctuary, but these days it feels rather like she does; she’s in it as often as she’s elsewhere, a familiar ray of sunshine in the dark castle.
Will wants to invite her to Sunday afternoons almost from the start, of course. He wants to rush into that the way he’s rushing into everything else with this romance. But it’s far too soon; Helen hardly knows the girl, and inviting her into the family gathering sounds unbearably awkward. So she firmly asks him to give it time, and he obeys, though he never stops asking.
At last, she relents. She’s running out of excuses, and it’s becoming clear that Abby is more than a passing fancy on Will’s part, so she’ll be welcomed into every part of their lives.
She’s far less hesitant than any of the others have been; none since young Henry have been so quick to join the pile of cuddles, on just a simple invitation. Rather than spending a great deal of time debating her spot, she immediately pushes herself in between Will and Magnus, wrapping her arms around the former and resting her head on his shoulder.
And yet… She presses her legs against Helen’s, and somehow, her presence in the afternoon cuddle pile feels a little more okay (why she was so hesitant in the first place, she doesn’t care to dwell on; she’s taken too long to make sense of her own feelings for Will, and now it’s far too late for it to matter).
Still, the couch is now full. It hardly holds all of them, even pressed together as tightly as they are, and she knows they’re out of room. So when Henry starts talking about his new HAP beloved, Helen closes her eyes and wonders what on earth she’s going to do.
-
113 years without those precious Sunday afternoons are almost unbearable. Often on those days she’ll wrap herself in blankets, staring at the ceiling and cherishing the fond memories for as long as she can bear it. Rarely is that more than ten or fifteen minutes, however, before the absence is too great, and she throws herself back into her work.
Still, it gives her time to think. If she does have to destroy the Sanctuary, which she suspects she will, the couch will be far too heavy for her to transport. But perhaps, just perhaps, she can put a couch in the Hollow Earth Sanctuary that will work just as well.
Perhaps she can even find one that’s better.
The couch she chooses is L-shaped, and takes up most of the corner of her office. It can hold perhaps twice as many as the one in Old City, and she wonders if it’ll ever have the chance to do so.
-
She doesn’t return on a Sunday; it’s a Saturday afternoon, and it’s filled with a thousand frantic moves as they try to put Falllon’s plan to a stop. After, she’s beyond relieved to find herself alone in her office with Will, regaling him with tales of her time in the past. There was a time she might have been open with him, but now there’s Abby, and she will not ask for more than he should give. So she keeps her stories light-hearted, amusing him with silly tales of hiding from herself and startling James with her more modern vocabulary. He laughs through it all and she relishes it, letting it ease the pain of more than a century.
But when Abby comes to collect him-because of course she does-Will tells her what happened. Because of course he does.
And Abigail… Abigail takes one look at her, and sees right through the laughter, the wine, and the easy demeanor. “You were alone for 113 years?” She asks, and it cuts through everything Helen’s been clinging to, leaving her struggling to remember how to breathe.
Will falters, as if the implications of the story are just now dawning on him. “Well, I-she’s Magnus,” he quips, but it’s uncertain, awkward. “If anyone could handle it, right?”
Abby doesn’t even crack a smile. Helen wonders, briefly, when Will stopped seeing her (but then again, she knows; she remembers even now her harsh words, her reminder that I’m a hundred and fifty-nine years old, and you’ve known me for three. He began withdrawing from her then, deliberately holding back from seeing right through her, and apparently, he’s quite good at blinding himself. She should be grateful for that, she thinks. It should be what she wants).
At last, Helen nods slowly. “It was difficult at times,” she admits, because she knows Abby won’t let this go. “But I kept myself busy. And I always knew I’d come back to you lot eventually.”
The last part is more or less a blatant lie; she spent every moment in fear that she’d mess up the timeline so severely that the ones she loved would simply cease to exist. But it seems to ease Abby’s concern, at least a bit, so she doesn’t regret it.
After a beat, Abby glances at her watch. “It’s after midnight,” she says, and Helen thinks it’s a subtle way of telling Will it’s time to go, until she continues. “Be right back.”
She’s gone only a few minutes, returning with Henry and Biggie in tow. It’s not clear what she has or hasn’t told them, but her intention is suddenly obvious.
“It’s technically Sunday,” Abby says, and Helen’s heart twists. It’s only five lifetimes of honing self-control that keeps her from tears. “I know it isn’t the afternoon yet, but-”
Understanding dawns on all of them at once, and they all settle on the couch, snuggling as close as possible. Rather than taking their normal places, Abby sits where Kate often does, snuggling against Helen’s side. Will sits on the other side of Abby, arm around her, but fingers a steady weight against Helen’s arm. Henry scoots as close to Helen as he can, and her old friend wraps an arm around all of them he can reach, drawing them to his chest. At last, she is home, and though Kate and Nikola’s absences are nearly as tangible as Ashley’s, the couch feels far from empty.
-
It’s a surprising sort of vulnerability, showing the others the couch in Hollow Earth. She doesn't expect it to reveal so much of her heart, but judging by the mix of surprise and understanding written across everyone’s faces when they see it, it does just that.
Kate’s the first to move, launching herself onto the couch and settling in. Automatically, Helen follows suit, and Abby and Will take their places on her other side. Henry sits next to Will, and Biggie sits as well, but a new figure squeezes in between him and Henry: Erika, who looks just a little reserved about the whole situation, but snuggles against Henry all the same. She’s now quite far along, and for only a heartbeat, Helen’s mind is drawn back to the days when she was pregnant with Ashley, when Henry whispered away to the little girl. Now, again, he whispers to a child not yet born, but now the child is his, and it’s enough to steal Helen’s breath.
Nikola is the last holdout, taking in the scene with a skeptical eye. It’s been so long-so very long-since he’s joined in on a moment like this, and Helen knows they’ll have to talk about… Certain events sooner rather than later. But just at the moment, all she wants is her whole family gathered in one place, holding each other close.
“Nikola,” she says quietly, and he swallows.
“I thought you were dead.”
“I’m not.”
She’s hyper-aware of the others watching them, waiting without a breath to see what will come of this, but she keeps her gaze fixed on Nikola, silently pleading with him to set aside whatever pride, whatever concern, whatever anger is holding him back and just join them.
“You blew up your wine collection.”
Her lips twitch weakly. “I did.”
“A tragedy, really.”
“I know.”
Short, simple responses, waiting him out. At last he sighs, running a hand through his hair. “Fine, then. Scoot over, Katie.”
Helen doesn’t look at Kate, but she feels her annoyed sigh before she complies, scooting over and raising her legs. Nikola takes his position, and as Kate settles her legs across his lap, all is right with the world.
Certainly, they’re miles below the earth, and her home of more than a century is gone, but her family is here.
-
When Alice is born, she spends her time between her mother’s lap and her father’s at first, but she’s a curious child, and soon she’s crawling back and forth across everyone, exploring this pile of cuddling people. Her eyes are bright, and she’s already terribly clever; she reminds Helen so much of Ashley that it aches some days.
Then, one day, she starts her trek across laps, and lands on Helen’s. Rather than continue on, she stops, snuggling up without hesitation. And oh, for a moment, Helen can’t breathe. This spot still belongs to exactly one, and she cannot-she cannot-
But she’s half-aware of the others holding their breaths, waiting to see how she’ll react (even those who don’t know, like Abby and Erika, seem to sense the weight of this moment). And when Alice looks up at her with trusting eyes, blinking sweetly, a knot in Helen’s chest untangles.
“Comfy?” She murmurs, and Alice giggles quietly, drawing a smile to Helen’s face that she’s helpless to fight. “Very good, then. You’re alright now.”
Alice closes her eyes, and Helen suspects she’ll be asleep within seconds, but the rest of the room is wide-awake. And it-it hurts, somehow, even now. She won’t deny that. That spot should belong to Ashley and Ashley alone. And yet… Ashley’s gone, and she won’t be coming back. And somehow, Helen thinks she’d want her to make room in her life-and in her embrace-for as many as she can hold.