dr. нelen мagnυѕ. (daretobelievein) wrote in hopenblackholes, @ 2011-01-02 02:07:00 |
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Entry tags: | # ( inbetween ficlets ), & ( location ) earth: london, & ( time ) 1800s, ( char ) helen magnus, ( char ) the doctor |
→ ❛ there's a mark you leave, like a love heart carved in a tree. ❜
Her ear pressed into the pillow as she stared at the wall, grip tight on the sheets as the heavy winter blankets pressed down onto her frame. The wind howled softly outside, but she could still hear the locks when they opened on the door below. He had gone out hours ago, surely he would be home soon.
And maybe - just maybe - he would tell her this time. Tell her of those things that made people shout at him and talk behind his back.
The doors unlocked. Her head raised off the pillow slightly, curled blond hair falling off her shoulder as she caught her breath and waited. Voices from downstairs, her father's, and the one of the man with an accent she still could not place.
'I'm from the North,' she overheard him say to her father.
As quietly as she could, she slipped into her bedroom slippers and sank onto the floor, keeping as close to it as she moved to her own door. It was hardly good manners for a young woman, fourteen years of age, but she was most certainly not, a normal young woman.
Her hand twisted the doorknob. The floor creaked beneath her feet and she winced for a moment, eye cracking open. There was no sound of footsteps or a sign that the talking down below had stopped. With a deep breath she pushed herself out of the door, sticking to the wall, and moving to the staircase. Her hands gripped around the white handles, leaning over a fraction to see where the source of the voices were.
Her father's study, of course.
She sank down behind the banister, hands curled in her night dress, watching the floor below. They sounded so pleased with what they had accomplished. It had been so long since she heard her father so happy with a man that walked into their home. It brought a smile to her face. It seemed as if there was nothing she could do to make her father smile.
The doors from her father's study opened and she pressed herself back against the wall, her head peaking out just enough in order to see the stranger head to the door, her father behind him.
He was so determined to keep her from meeting this man. The tall man with hardly any hair on his head, and certainly not the attire of someone to be considered properly dressed. The stranger stopped at the door, turned and looked back at her father. Thet wo shared a smile and laugh, shaking hands once more. Then quickly, the stranger glanced up at her as if he had known she was there all along.
She pressed herself back against the wall and hoped he hadn't seen her. Yet, the door opened, and closed without a word being said. She waited until her father's footsteps led back to his office and the doors closed.
This was perhaps the only chance she would have to see what her father did behind closed doors.
With determination, she pushed herself off the floor and quietly snuck down the stairs, grabbing the heaviest winter coat she could grab. She gracefully threw it around her body - her father's coat so it was far too big for her - and tossed her hair from under the collar. Then she took a deep breath, yet again, and threw open the door and slammed it behind her, hopping down the small set of stairs and darting after the footprints that went opposite of the others.
Her hand grabbed the black iron fence, pushing off to give herself momentum as she heard the door open from down the quiet Victorian street. It was winter, nearly the Christmas season, leaving fresh snow to fall from the clouds above and her breath coming out as a white vapor as she ran after the footprints.
"Helen!"
She ignored her father's shouting, running with her hair wipping into her face. She stumbled a few times, sliding on the ice in just her bedroom slippers, but quickly regained her balance and kept up her pace. Her feet were screaming from the cold, as was her hands, but she hardly let it bother her.
It could be her one chance to see what her father saw.
That was worth the scolding and pain from the cold.
An odd sound filled the air, a wheezing one, but not one from a horse or a human. Her head turned sharply as she ran down a snow covered ally, stopping as it turned to a street. A light bounced from the candle street lanters and she turned her head again. For a moment she thought she had seen something, a box of some sort, but then it was gone.
As if nothing had ever been there.
Her heart sank to the bottom of her chest so fast that the tears stung her eyes in the cold gentle breeze.
All of the momentum was gone, all of the determination, as she walked to where she knew something had been present. Her feet stopped her short of where a large indentation was in the snow, as if something heavy had been pressed inside of it. She hiked up the coat and her night dress, kneeling down in the snow and staring at it.
Hesitantly, she reached out and touched the snow, fingers trailing through it. She had been so close to seeing it. What had made her father so happy, so filled with purpose to continue his most private research. The things that he kept hidden away and refused to show her. It had all been in front of her and then slipped away as if she were holding water in her hands.
She sat back on her ankles and hung her head, brushing away at the tears that ran down her cheeks.
"Helen."
"Go away!" she shouted, hiding her face in her hands.
Her father's strong grip came to her shoulders in a comforting manner as he knelt down beside her. He said nothing, which was a shock to her, despite the feeling of defeat that weighed down inside of her. Her father pulled her close, wrapping his own coat around her, allowing her to cry out her frustration and anger.
It was a memory that she had honestly forgotten; the disappointment and rejection from that one night. She hadn't remembered it until she was going through her father's affects, reading through the journals he had left behind when he disappeared to Mecca. She had read them all before, of course, but with the recent events, something tugged at her to read them again.
She looked up from the leather bound book in her hands, ankles crossed, leaning against her desk. Her eyes drifted to the wooden blue box that stood in her lab. She slowly placed her father's journal down, the stories of finding such amazing beings through the world, and standing. She crossed to the box, letting her fingers run down the brilliant blue colored doors.
New and ancient at the same time, he said.
Even through the doors, she gained a feeling of recongition and sadness, almost as if the living ship knew what she was feeling at that moment. Her fingers traced the golden handles before pressing her hand completely against the door, having found a connection that was older than any of her Sanctuaries.
Then she turned and quickly left her lab in search of the owner of the blue box.
She knew where to find him, of course, he had told her while she was studying her father's journals. Her hand went to the doorknob as she quietly pushed it open, her head peaking into her own room. He was asleep for once, nearly a miracle in itself, half of his face pressed into the pillows with his shoes and jacket at the end of the bed, red bracers hanging off at his sides.
The door didn't close all the way as she walked into the room, gently sitting on the bed beside him, waiting to make sure he wouldn't wake from the few hours of sleep he managed to find while his companion was sleeping inside his ship. Her eyes moved over him again, picking up one of his arms as she laid down against him, wrapping both of his arms around her. She only let herself exhale once he seemingly adapted in his sleep, his nose brushing against her hair and his hands pulling her close, as if he recognized her despite being asleep.
She brushed her thumbs against his as her eyes fell shut, tears sliding down her face. Her father kept everything away from her. His work, his life, even him, the man that meant so much to her that it physically hurt when he left. The only man that made her wish to live longer to be with him. Her father kept all of that away from her as if she had never become an adult.
Helen squeezed his hands tightly and hoped he wouldn't wake. He kept everything about himself, who he was really, even his name from her. It was as if she were a child all over again. The entire act was selfish, but, she wanted this moment to herself, something that he would never know about her.
The fact that she could have traveled with him so long ago to see the stars without needing to ever come home.
word count: 1,581