Chapter Text
Chapter1
Notes: this fic is basically pre-canon-divergence, in that Helena has been de-bronzed earlier, around 1995 maybe, at the same time as Myka is still studying medicine, before she switched to a career in the secret service. Also different than in canon, Helena has given up on any plans for revenge while in the bronze - yes, she has had those thoughts, but it's been so long and over time she... well, not mellowed, but it just all seemed so pointless? Everyone who was at fault is long dead, anyway. So when she's finally able to live and move and explore the world around her again, she wants to do just that instead of living in the past. She scams McPherson into helping her get a new identity in return for her help with his plans - betraying him at the first opportunity, maybe ending his life much as she does in canon. While she doesn't want to be a villain, she can't leave him as a loose end as he knows her new identity, and figures he had it coming anyway. Free and on her own, Helena gets away from the Warehouse and reinvents herself. She wants to get a university degree - as she's now allowed to, without needing permission from any man - and she needs professional credentials in this new world, but also because all the new research and discoveries are genuinely fascinating to her and she enjoys to delve into 20th/21st century academia.
I should be happy, Helena thinks as she makes her way over the campus, leaving footprints behind in the fresh snow. Her plan has worked perfectly, she has a new legal identity and now she is getting the kind of education she has always dreamed of, and not in secret but because women are allowed to do that kind of thing nowadays. The recent developments in modern medicine are utterly breathtaking, and she truly can't wait to learn all about it, and then perhaps get a second degree in another field of science or engineering, or perhaps focus on literature or politics, just because it would be interesting.
The snowfall has stopped early in the morning, and the winter sun leaves everything in a blue-white glow. Her new coat leaves her warm despite the sub-zero temperatures. It's a beautiful day, and she has almost everything she could have ever dreamed of.
And yet, Helena can't stop the unease from crawling under her skin, the grim knowledge that she doesn't fit in, the ever underlying grief for her daughter, and for a life lost to centuries and bronze.
She had decided to stop lingering on the past, to dive headfirst into the future... but it is one thing to make an honest resolution, and quite another to actually live it. She has stayed in America, far away from the places she had known in the past, in the hopes that she could ignore all that history and focus entirely on the here and now, but it is proving to be a lot more difficult than that.
It's one thing to want to focus on the present and on the positives, quite another to be swept away in her grief when she least expects it.
One thing, to want to be a part of the modern world, to make a space for herself where she fits and can get used to her new life - another, to find how difficult it is to connect with other people, because she is so different, used to different things, an entirely different culture and different social norms, and how is she ever going to fit in when she can't even greet a fellow university student without being looked at like she is so very odd, so incredibly out of place?
Her academic advisor (and how novel, to have an official position specifically to watch out for students' well-being) had suggested early on that perhaps she would more easily connect with others if she moved onto campus, but Helena has no plans to move into one of the shared dorms. While she does regret missing out on the experience of a modern college dorm, she isn't sure how well she could manage when surrounded by her fellow students at every hour of the day, never able to quite let her guard down and risk someone figuring out what, or even just that, something is wrong with her... And, even more importantly, never before in her life had she been able to live entirely on her own - no family, no co-workers, no servants. A place entirely her own.
In her little flat, Helena can relax - there, she knows that no-one is listening at the bedroom door, that when she goes into the kitchen at midnight she won't be surprised by anyone, she can walk naked from the bathroom back to her wardrobe without a care in the world.
It doesn't stop the loneliness, of course. And when she is left to her own devices, more often than not she ends up consumed by grief and memories.
Helena grimaces when she remembers her latest chat with the student advisor. While useful for rearranging her schedule and introducing her to the university life under the guise of things being 'so very different compared to what she is used to from England', having someone getting all up in her personal business is not very comfortable for her.
Helena kicks the snow on the footpath as she wonders whether she could have avoided the conversation by putting some make-up on. She believes the advisor noticed the growing dark circles under her eyes, it must be why she had asked her whether everything was alright, whether her workload had gotten too much for Helena...
Of course, Helena had assured her that it was not the workload at all, that in fact if she can just work all day, she at least has a chance to sleep from sheer exhaustion. She doesn't know why she had told the woman that detail, they have only met a handful of times and while that makes her one of the people Helena has spoken to the most since she has arrived her, they are still near-strangers, she can't even remember the woman's first name... and the advisor must be dealing with dozens or hundreds of students' problems each day, it's not as if she has a particular connection to Helena... It might be a sign showing that her strategies to beat insomnia have not been working very well as of late, if she is too exhausted to control what her words reveal about herself, Helena thinks and angrily kicks her shoes against the front stoop more viciously than really necessary to get rid of the mud and snow.
"It sounds like you might be running away from your problems," the advisor had replied oh so kindly. "And problems one runs away from have a way of catching up with you... and once they do, you're out of breath from all the running, and not a step closer to solving those problems you were running from. Don't you think you might want to tell me what you are dealing with instead, so we can try and work through it? Or talk to someone else, it can just be a trusted friend, or there is always the option of therapy..."
Therapy.
Helena had tried not to react too visibly, when really, she wants nothing better than to run as far and as fast as she can. She can't afford to accept or deny a potential resource before she researches the matter a little - for surely, the sweet woman who has been so helpful regarding her eclectic academic schedule would not earnestly suggest therapy if it still meant the asylums and so-called treatments of the 1800s - well, presumably if Helena told someone that she is actually world renowned author H.G. Wells having been frozen in bronze since the 19th century, they might still lock her away, but that would also call the attention of the Warehouse to her so she would have much worse to worry about in that case.
She'll have to look up the current methods of psychiatry and therapy - at the very least, being a medical student should allow her to do so without giving off any red flags about her own mental status.