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This was going to be a difficult mission to pull off and everyone knew it. Tension was running high as they moved through the trees. Helen’s arm was entwined with James’ so she could keep her balance and he did a good job of guiding her, as she had known he would. She trusted him alone to help her, to be her eyes, and he had never given her a reason to regret that. So far they had managed to keep her secret from the French resistance, but she wondered how long that would last.
Carentan. A city practically blockaded by the Nazis. Staying alive would be tricky enough. Keeping her secret… well, they were lucky enough to have kept it this long.
But of course, life was never easy, was it?
No, no it never was.
For his part, James didn’t mind being Helen’s eyes. He’d long since grown into that role, enjoying it for what it was worth. It meant more time with Helen, chances to grow close to her, to help her when she would allow no others to become even half of what he was to her. They would lie in the dead of night and for a few hours, he would understand what every day was like for her.
Now, however, he was making full use of his eyes, arm tightly entwined with hers so he could guide her better. At times he wished she could see, as he knew life would be easier on her, but that would change the person she was and he would never wish for that. Instead, he had quietly accepted who she was, long ago learning to love her for everything that she was, blindness and all. It meant a little extra work, but no one ever said love wasn’t worth working for.
And goodness knew he loved her.
His arm tightened around hers, the cue to slow down and be careful. They had an entire system based on touches and he reveled in their secret language. No one else would ever know it and that made it special. It made her even more special.
All was going well until all hell broke loose. James was barely able to pull Helen to a full stop before he realized they would have to run. Somehow he managed to turn her in the direction they’d just come from without causing her to fall, pushing her towards their other companion once they reached somewhere safe. Helen dropped to the ground at his command and James quickly opened fire to cover the two women. They weren’t dying on his watch.
Nigel’s timely arrival a few minutes later could not have been more welcome. James helped Helen up as best he could as their companion opened the door to the car and slid inside. Helen followed, not quite as quickly as they needed and the grenade thrown as she moved into the car distracted James from getting in himself. He tossed the grenade back, not wanting it to blow up on them as they made their escape, and in doing so, sealed his own fate.
The bullet embedded itself in his leg, just below his knee, shooting pain straight up his body. Down he went. In one last-ditch effort to save the woman he cared so deeply for and protect their mission, he shut the door to the car and yelled at Nigel to get away. Nigel didn’t waste time and for that James was grateful. He did what he could to cover their escape, only surrendering when he found himself out of ammo. Only then did he glance backwards to see how the others were doing.
As the car sped away, leaving James lying in the street for the Nazis to capture like a wounded coyote that knew his time was up, he watched Helen's hands as they pressed against the window. A moment later, she whirled around in the seat, one hand flat against the back window of the car, as though her flexing fingers could scrape away the darkness that clouded her judgment and prevented her from reaching him. He could see her fear in that simple gesture and it nearly killed him to know he was the cause and that there was no guarantee that he would make it out alive.
As long as she completed their mission, he supposed he could live like this. And die for the cause, if necessary.
#
Helen didn’t approve of leaving James behind, but they’d had no choice and as she wasn’t in charge of the car, she’d really had no choice. Sitting on the top of that hill, listening as Nigel announced that they’d taken James inside, she thought not much else could go wrong.
A moment later, she regretted those words as Nigel swore next to her.
“What is it?”
“No… it can’t be.”
Helen paused to listen. Over the years, her other senses had become heightened, to make up for her lack of sight. Her ears in particular were quite good and she could hear an all-too familiar voice speaking not far away. A shiver raced up her spine. “Dear god.”
It had just gotten much worse.
And it would steadily grow further from what they had planned for as the invasion launched without their consent. Something wasn’t right. Not at all. They needed to get James out fast and that meant finding a way into the bunker.
Helen didn’t mind the idea of busting James out. What she minded was the idea that she would have to be the one to get into the café. Her companion would be too well-known. It was too risky for her. But Helen was a non-entity. She could do it.
“I can’t quite see how far it is,” she lied, carefully constructing her story and working with it. “Could you tell me roughly how far it is to the door and in which direction?”
The girl paused for a moment – to stare at her, she was sure – and then gave her as detailed directions as Helen knew she would get. Taking a deep breath, she walked forward as purposefully as she could manage, making each footstep measured and precise. The soldier who stopped her seemed almost kind and as she attempted to trick him to the best of her ability – using facial contortions as her father and James had taught her – she thought she might actually manage her goal.
That was her second mistake and soon enough she found herself inside the bunker. The air was stale in this room and it made all of her senses scream at her. The feeling of darkness pressed in on her, worse than her usual daily darkness, and she struggled harder. At least until she heard her name in that voice, the one she had hoped – prayed, even, to a deity she didn’t believe in – she would never hear again.
Everything fell away and for a moment, she was alone with her worst nightmare.
“Unbelievable.”
It was all she could say, all that needed to be said. One word broke the silence, shattering the moment, and she was free from his hold. The colonel who had captured her started speaking, but Helen wasn’t paying attention to him. She was listening for traces of the person she’d come here to find. Ignoring John, who was standing somewhere about twenty or thirty feet in front of her, she listened for James. He had to be here. If he wasn’t, she didn’t know what she would do.
The sound of a gunshot snapped her out of her thoughts. She couldn’t tell where it had gone, only knew that it had come from the man holding her prisoner. It could have gone anywhere and if it had lodged itself somewhere in James’ body, she would never forgive anyone for it. For one sickening moment, she was afraid she would lose him.
But then the sound of John gasping, the echo of his knee hitting the ground, told her he was the one who had been shot and she didn’t know whether to be happy or even more upset. She still couldn’t be certain if James was really here, didn’t know whether to worry more or be relieved that he had escaped that. For the moment, she remained quiet and listened again.
“And now,” the colonel holding her began, interrupting her attempts to listen for James, “the person I would most like to talk to… is you.”
She shot him what she hoped was a nasty snarl. In response, he shoved her forward, placing the barrel of the gun to her back. James, if he was in here, was in no position to help her and she would have stopped him even if he was. The gun was loaded and could easily shoot both of them in quick succession. They didn’t have time or the ability to dodge close range shots. Now came the time to hope that Nigel and his girl would be able to come break them out.
Maybe it was time to pray again.
She listened as best she could, straining her ears to hear what Colonel Korba was saying and what he wasn’t saying, what was going on outside the bunker if possible, and whether or not James was actually in the room with her. She heard a scuffle soon after and could only surmise that it was he who fought the colonel. Ultimately, she suspected he lost that battle, seeing as Korba was still talking like the foolish fan he was. The idea that he was a fan of her work, that she had somehow inspired him to become what he was now, disgusted and reviled her. It was revolting to imagine and so she tried to push that aside.
Their mission – her mission, assuming James wasn’t there with her – was to find out where the weather machine was and shut it down. With Korba’s blathering on about Abnormals and being a fan of theirs and other things he knew nothing about, she felt the bile rising in her throat. How could her work have inspired someone as horrible as this?
Was this how she would be remembered?
Their ages meant nothing anymore, though apparently that was very important to this man. He could take those questions to his grave for all she cared. She just wanted –
“Your retinas are burned.”
It was the first thing James had spoken, the first real hint Helen had that he was actually in the room with her, and she knew her expression gave her away, as did the slight gasp she gave at the sound of his voice.
“You have a Tunisian Fire Elemental. You needed the weather machine to control it, to keep it calm until you unleash it.”
James’ tone echoed her sense of disbelief, her feeling of defeat. No, that would destroy the entire world. At least the continent of Europe would be utterly burned from existence. Why would they even think of doing such a thing?
“Your monster strike has doomed the Reich and probably the world.”
A clatter from one of Korba’s feet signaled his rise from his chair, taking with it Helen’s relative calm. Fear and worry spiked and she strained her hearing for any sign of where he was moving. She didn’t want to be caught off-guard.
She needn’t have worried about herself. One step took him to James’ side, or where she thought he was based on the sound of his voice moments before.
“What button was it Herr Druitt pressed?” he snapped, causing Helen’s heart to leap straight into her mouth.
“No…”
No, please. Don’t mess with his suit.
James cried out in obvious pain and Helen fought against the leather holding her in place, her mind screaming for Korba to torture her rather than her lover. She would trade places with him in a heartbeat. They both knew her body could handle it. His could not and that was what she feared most.
She could hear the leather creak across the room, knowing it had to be James’ wrists pushing against the bonds that held him in place. A moment later, he yelled out again, the sound ripping straight through her as a hissing noise came from his side. The tubes on his suit – the ones that kept him breathing – must have been disconnected. If left like that, in a matter of minutes he would die.
And a part of her would die with him.
“James! James!”
“Ah, so it is true, the rumor I heard. Dr. Magnus is blind. How fascinating.”
Korba didn’t get another chance to comment, as a call came that they’d been breached, and the sound of his footsteps moving away from them told her he was leaving. She would have paid more attention to him, but James gasping from his side of the room took her entire attention. Nothing else mattered but the man who couldn’t breathe. The most important man in the world to her was across the room from her, suffocating because she couldn’t escape to help.
Tears started welling up in her eyes and she no longer cared who was around to see them.
“James!” she cried out again, as though his name would somehow change his fate. “James, please!” Please be all right.
She wasn’t content to scream and stay where she was, of course, and by the time the door opened again and she heard footsteps inside, she’d managed to turn her chair over. Uncomfortably shuffling on her hands and knees, she’d nearly made it to him – she suspected and hoped – when she heard Nigel call her name.
“Nigel, help James!” she yelled, knowing her lover was far more important than she was at this point. Someone knelt down to untie her – the resistance leader who had kissed Nigel, she imagined – and soon enough she lifted her head, free from her prison. The clicks from the suit and the silence of the tubes once Nigel hooked everything up told her James would be all right. But silence meant she could no longer tell where James was.
“James… darling?”
“I’m here, Helen,” he gasped out and soon she was crawling towards the sound of his voice. Nigel was out of her way by the time she pulled herself up against James’ uninjured leg. Clumsily reaching up towards James’ face, she cupped his cheeks between her hands and tried to ignore the tears streaming down her cheeks.
“Darling, are you all right?” she asked him, unable to keep the note of fear out of her voice. She’d thought she would lose him. He only paused long enough to grip her hands with his and kiss her briefly – his way of telling her that he was all right – before he called for the schematics to the weather machine. They still had their mission, much as Helen wanted to pause it and check on him.
They still had a fire elemental to deal with.
#
After all that, however, Helen could take the time to look after him. Once the fire elemental had been buried, once she’d reached for James and held onto him, and long after the building and weather machine fell apart behind them, they retreated for the privacy of a hotel room. It wasn’t much, especially during the war, but it was enough. It had a bed and bath, both of which Helen would make good use, and that was what mattered.
“I never imagined she was blind.”
The Resistance leader’s words rang through Helen’s mind as she moved to the bed. The young girl had been oblivious to Helen’s condition, surprised that she had been so capable without vision. It was what she’d spent her life trying to accomplish after all, and yet as the mattress sank under her weight, Helen felt as though she’d failed at something.
Because of her inability to see, she hadn’t been able to save James from the horror of –
The door opened, squeaking hinges, and closed with a sharp snap. Helen’s head shot up as she heard the sound of the lock turning in place and she waited to see who had come for her.
“Helen?”
She breathed a sigh of relief at the sound of James’ voice. “Here, darling.” Judging his position in the room by the sound of his footsteps bringing him closer, she met him halfway, standing and moving to embrace him. Her arms wrapped around him as his pulled her tightly against him and she ignored the water droplets dripping from her hair down her back. She didn’t care about that. All she cared about was the man she clung to.
After a moment, she lifted her head as though to look at him. “I thought I’d lost you.”
He pulled her back to him and buried his head in her still-wet hair. One of her hands reached up to his hair and she realized with a start that he was quietly crying against her. He’d been through so much and she’d only seen part of it. She didn’t know what John had done earlier.
And so she just stood there, holding him close, and allowed him to cry his emotions out. Goodness knew he’d let her do the same many a time.
“I almost thought… you’d left me,” he whispered, once he’d finally managed to calm down.
Somehow, in the darkness of her world, Helen found his mouth, pressing hers to his to distract and reassure them both. She felt him cling to her lips as she was clinging to his body, knowing that he felt as lost as she did. They had almost lost each other.
“You are the most important thing in my life,” she told him once she’d broken the kiss. “I will never leave you, darling. Never.”