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I.
She knows Will doesn’t understand it, why he finds her perched up here night after night, darkness at her back and the street flowing by many stories and a deadly fall below. She can feel him stopping, watching, his profiler’s mind ticking over the what (the smallest of pushes, a strong gust of wind, that’s all it would take), the why. Wondering what it adds up to. Not liking the sum – of course not, with his mayfly life she can imagine how it must seem to him.
For days, they talk about inconsequential things, about other consequential things, about work , before he can bring himself to ask. He almost hoists himself up beside her, thinks better of it, looks at her contemplatively. “Why is it that you come –“ his hand gestures wide, implying all the words he doesn’t want to say, the thoughts he fears to invoke (as if he might inspire her to leap with the wrong words!) “ – here?”
Helen wants to tell him that it is only here, with nothing between her and the end but a short fall, the embrace of the wind, and a bit of luck, only here where two hundred years might be over in an instant, only here where her life hangs in the balance as much as any mortal’s, that she remembers how to be human.
Instead, she says, “It gives me perspective.”
After all, it is not Will’s fault that he is a mayfly, his life over in a handful of bright-burning seconds.
She wishes he could understand.
She is glad for him that he doesn’t.
II.
Their conversations are punctuated by the tales of the people she has known – Einstein, both Roosevelts, Truman and Thatcher and Golda Meir. Unsinkable Molly Brown. Twain and Eisenhower and Dr. King.
Will watches her curiously, old-young eyes studying, probing, mind relentlessly turning.
Helen does not know if she is afraid that he will someday see through her, or if she hopes that he already does. Has he noticed already that these are the familiar, well-worn paths that she flees to when he brushes too close to something uncomfortably personal, when he comes to close to being friend rather than protégé? When perhaps her thoughts might turn to him being something else, something more?
Too close, too close. She tells herself that she wants to protect him from the pain of watching himself grow old while she remains ageless, from feeling hurt or jealous of what he cannot share. (But perhaps, whispers a tiny voice, ruthlessly squelched, it is Helen Magnus that is jealous, it is the goddess that envies the mortal).
She conjures the numberless armies of history between them, digs a gulf of years to divide them.
When he asks, she tells him, “I want you to understand the experiences that have made me who I am.” (I am different. Alien. Stay away, stay away.)
He looks at her, too kind, too knowing. Says nothing. Gathers himself to leap the distance between them. She looks away, pretends she does not see.
III.
Helen Magnus stitches the cut above Dr. Zimmerman’s eye with gentle hands and clinical precision. Four stitches, clean wound, little danger of infection. “This should heal without a scar,” she tells him. The rest is just scrapes and minor contusions; though he looks bruised and battered and much the worse for wear.
Her heart is pounding, her hands inches from trembling. She feels ill, eyes assaulted by the too-bright lights of the infirmary. Like the Victorian lady she once was, Helen feels an overwhelming need to lie down.
It makes no sense. Cuts and bruises (and sometimes worse) are a hazard of the job. She has bandaged Henry and Ashley dozens of times, seen them through far worse with nothing more than a flash of concern. Ashley, blood of her blood, and dear Henry who might as well be a son.
(But it does make sense. Henry and Ashley are strong. Will, Will with the lovely eyes and unruly hair, Will with his keen mind who reminds her so much of a young Watson, is merely – mortal).
Will smiles wryly. “Thanks for pulling me out of there, Doc. That was close.”
(Please stay with me. I am not ready to lose you yet. I am not ready to lose you ever.) “Next time you have to capture a dangerous Abnormal in close quarters, let Ashley or Henry go in first,” she tells him sternly.
IV.
Her heart thuds painfully, erratically in her chest, skipping, misstepping, until it shakily finds a measured beat.
Air rushes into aching lungs.
The blackness recedes.
She is wet and cold and her chest aches and there is icy metal pressing into her back and her buttocks and her head feels like it is going to split open.
It is the best feeling in the world.
When she had told Will to do what he had to do, she had thought the darkness would be welcome. She had thought it was what she had been seeking, felt it there waiting for her, felt the prospect of an ending at last. She tried to embrace it, tried to welcome mortality, but at the last minute had found herself clawing desperately back toward the light. (Back toward him, that traitorous voice whispers.).
There was so much left to do.
So many people left to love.
So she breathes, and feels her heart beat, and savors it, even though it hurts. (She knows she should tell him. She knows it would set his mind at ease about her. She is just not ready to say it. Maybe she never will be.)
“Thank you Will, that will be quite enough,” Helen Magnus says instead.
V.
Helen holds the source blood in trembling hands, the precious vial won at such a terrible price. Nigel gone. Watson gone. Ashley missing. Through the fog of her grief, the vial whispers to her of immortality, of permanence, of companionship. It might save them all, but for a moment, that is not what she thinks of.
Will leans against a wall, trembling, exhausted, face smudged with dirt and tight with strain. He is beautiful in his fragility, beautiful in his vulnerability to every passing second. Her heart contracts painfully. Someday, she will lose him too.
The vial in her hands feels pregnant with possibilities.
I could keep you forever, dear Will.
(But you must not, whispers an inner voice).
Helen Magnus says nothing. They emerge once again into the sunlight.