Chapter Text
1898
Time travel is an absurdly funny, yet cruel thing, according to Helen Magnus. What shouldn't have been possible has now unfathomably happened to her. Being stuck 113 years in the past has inevitably forced her to take a step back and analyze this 'new' old reality that she's in.
Shortly after the incident with Adam Worth, Helen found herself in a small flat in the South of London near Kennington Park. She's been quietly receiving a small allowance from James Watson for the past couple of weeks to rent the place. She knows she can't keep depending on James for too much longer, a financial issue she is keenly aware of, but at the moment, she has more profound outlook on her mind.
Due to the huge change in time zones, Helen has been very slow in adjusting to her new sleep-wake cycle. Since the first night she arrived back in 1898 London, she is still wide awake in the middle of the night as she lay on her bed staring up at the ceiling, with a cold cup of tea sitting long forgotten on the nearby nightstand. Helen didn't mind not sleeping much through the night, as she knew her circadian rhythm would eventually get used to the new routine. What troubled her again this night, like all the rest, were her thoughts going back to what Adam had tried to do and her unwillingness to participate.
Over and over again, she faces the greatest of all temptations. At some point in everyone's life they are asked the big 'what if' question: "If you could go back in time, would you change anything?". For Helen, and like most others, after quick thought would come to a conclusion and say "no" as they understood their past and accepted it, the bad and the good, as it essentially made them who they are. Also, because they knew wishful thinking can't change the past and that they had no choice but to move on. Only now, it's not 'wishful thinking' anymore as Helen is literally stuck in the past and could actually change things. Night after night she is plagued with memories of the past 113 years of her life, going over every major turning point in her history that she could remember; focusing on the outcomes of certain decisions she'd made, whether they fell in favor or not and if anything could be done about the less than favorable choices she's made. It gave her a baseline to contemplate.
She knows she'd be a massive hypocrite to allow herself to reap the benefits of time travel, while denying Adam the same pleasure; however unlike Adam, she ultimately still didn't want to change anything. Helen was very wary about the dangers of time travel and what it could mean if anything happened differently to the way history was supposed to write itself. James even understood that essential detail; the farther out you are from when you came, the bigger the ripple effect.
There was one thing Helen was certain of and it was that she absolutely could not directly interfere with the Helen Magnus of this era in any way. Of all the possibly causalities she could create by messing with the past, the most damning outcome would be to be stuck living in an alternate world where her daughter isn't a part of it, and that simply could not happen, ever.
This left her stuck. Like any human, the great Helen Magnus as stoic as she is, she couldn't pass up the opportunity to fantasize about capitalizing on her losses in life. She scrupulously thought over every detail and how any change could impact all lives, not just hers. The trouble she faced was in how she was going to pull off being a smoke-and-mirror character if she eventually acted on any event at all; to be an independent third party that takes advantage of the 'good ending' without being noticed while simultaneously not at all changing the 'bad ending' the other Helen gets. Even though Helen has an exceptional memory, she couldn't possibly remember exactly where she was every single minute of every single day for the past 113 years. In order to effectively keep a safe distance from her younger self, she would need to enlist James's help in dutifully keeping tabs.
But when and where to start? Adam wasn't wrong in the fact as time period is a simpler more elegant time. Compared to the future from whence she came, it is easier and less complicated to move around unnoticed as the biggest reprieve of this era is that it is a pre-digital age where your movements aren't tracked by cameras almost everywhere you went. It was also a time where records were easier to falsify.
This led her thoughts to circle back around to her current financial situation. Whatever she'll eventually do or not do, it's definitely going to need to be bankrolled if she is going to have to 'hide in the shadows' for the next 113 years, costing more than James can support. This is where Helen decided to start first and focus her efforts around.
1900
With James secretly by her side, Helen took the advice he first gave to her back in 1898 to heart; to sit back and reevaluate her position. It granted her the unique opportunity to see where she had been initially short sighted in her life the first go-around; not that she could have known so at those particular times. Hindsight is a wonderful tool to have, especially in this case where it's now become her foresight. To some people, it would be an amazing gift to know where the road of their life was leading, to others, maybe not so much. Helen could only hope that her earlier escapade with Worth didn't derail her younger self's path, diverting it from its ultimate destination as that was the only map she was following. So far, she hadn't seen any ill effects.
Over the last two years, Helen Magnus now going by Helen Bancroft, carefully constructed her plan and narrowed her focus. As daunting of a task navigating time travel initially seemed be, to figure out how to proceed was revealed to be quite simple. On a rare sunny London afternoon, she decided to go back to the basics, feeling somewhat like a school girl again. After pretty much getting nowhere since establishing a small cash flow with a rudimentary financial network, it finally dawned on her to take her own advice. Something had clicked in her mind when she had read her last telegram from James about her other self's travels relating to the Sanctuary in regards to a new patient, prompting her to remember when she had helped James get back on track in solving the Spring-Heeled Jack case; the Sanctuary's newest resident at the time.
Following a philosophy exercise, she mentally stripped herself to her core. What made her, what was her purpose, her passion, what does she want, etc. Without a doubt, the top three things that came to her mind was that she was a mother, a doctor, and the leader of the Sanctuary Network. Her passion was medicine with a deep rooted innate desire to care for others of all kinds and to help bring the world together. That she possessed vast quantities of curiosity to learn about things that are hidden, wanting to help spread compassion for and knowledge about these creatures as they are often harmed out of fear and ignorance because they are simply misunderstood. She wanted to be a light, a beacon, a sanctuary.
Looking back at the history of the Sanctuary and trying to look forward at the way it was and would be heading after she rejoined the timeline gave Helen the firm foundation that she needed to establish her plan. A major problem that she found was that she didn't like how the Sanctuary got wrapped up in global politics and came under governmental oversights as the years passed by. With each passing abnormal incident, more interference took place, not just from outside organizations, but also from inside the structure of the Sanctuary Network itself. As much as Helen Magnus didn't fit the common mold of who society expected her to be, she unfortunately had to conform to the way the world worked around her; the Sanctuary wouldn't have been able to continue to exist if she hadn't. She absolutely loathed bureaucratic nonsense, but had to put up with it in order to secure funding and standing. She also noted that she created her own mistake by instating the Sanctuary charter. At the time it was created, it was based on rules from an era that she didn't know anything different from. As time passed by, the world changed and the Sanctuary grew, but the charter did not.
Remembering her youth, she recalled already being tired of being forced at an early age into social constructs and dreamed of a world in which she could be free to follow her pursuits without any constraints holding her back. Now, with the aid of time travel, she was liberated. Even though she's having to relive the past, she certainly doesn't belong to this world anymore and its restrictions. This time around, she knows that there's so much more she can do. She knows of which windfalls to grab and which pitfalls to avoid. Before, she could only take what was given to her, but now, she's going to take what she wants. What Helen wants is freedom for the Sanctuary. And why not? With it being the turn of the century, 'anything's possible'.