To be honest, James had expected Helen's emotional distance.

He'd learned decades ago that it was how she dealt with hardship, with events she could not make sense of. She'd withdrawn from him, and the rest of the world, when John's madness had taken control of him. But even then, he had been able to pull her out of her state, and he was confident that this too would pass, so long as he refused to let her sink too far into herself.

What he did not expect, however, was the experience of coming home one afternoon from tending to an emergency at the newly founded sanctuary, only to find his oldest friend collapsed on the floor in a dead faint. And he surely didn't expect to find her not breathing.

He had been lucky enough to keep his wits about him long enough to relieve her corset—propriety be damned—upon which she immediately began to cough for air. Unlike his literary namesake, James was not a medical doctor, but even he had known the harsh, wracking coughs that left Helen breathless were not a good sign.

A physician had been called in, and all it took was a touch of her fevered brow and the sound of her labored breathing for him to diagnose pneumonia.

The moment the word passed the man's lips, James' heart had twisted in fear. Pneumonia was veritably unknown, and untreatable. All he knew was that death came slow, and painfully, as the patient inevitably drowned in the fluid filling their lungs.

Suddenly, the concept of Helen dying was thrust in his face once more. He'd thought he'd dodged a bullet when she had somehow survived the disaster at sea—he should have known better. For one purportedly adept at seeing the unseeable, he'd been hopelessly blind in regards to her potential for contracting an illness.

But Helen was the physician—and she hadn't said a word about her distress. She'd been silent and reserved since he had retrieved her from the Carpathia, and he had attributed her pale visage to her shock. A discernable physical malady hadn't even crossed his mind.

And now he was a permanent figure at Helen's bedside, watching helplessly as her condition steadily worsened.

Over the course of a week, her temperature had skyrocketed, and her ever-thinning frame was tormented by bone-rattling coughs that yielded bloody sputum. Her breath came short and rapid, shallow as they tried to pull in enough air. It broke his heart, seeing her in such distress.

But as much as it pained him to see her suffering, he refused to leave her, and he patiently, adoringly cared for her the best he could.

He mopped the damp from her brow, and held her hand through the fever-induced nightmares, as she thrashed beneath her blankets muttering pleas for mercy and the ominous utterances of John's name. The doctor had inserted an intravenous line into a vein in Helen's hand, to help ward off dehydration, but even so he pressed a glass of water to her lips every now and then, when he believed her strong enough to stomach it.

More often than not the water came up later when she retched, and in those moments he helped her to sit upright, and pulled her hair out of the way for her. By that point she had weakened past the point of recognizing him, or even acknowledging his aid. But he held her anyway, bracing her trembling form with his own.

He tried not to dwell on her deathly pallor, or on the disquieting rattle he could hear in her chest with each breath she took.

When simply looking at her became too painful, he took to reading aloud, his voice loud enough to be discerned above her labored breathing. He even stooped to reading the mysteries of Sherlock Holmes, if only in the hope she would become coherent enough to give the wry smirk she always gave when the subject was mentioned.

She'd never fully understood why he'd insisted that Holmes' character not bear his own name. But, true to form, she'd always claimed Watson was far more astute than Holmes ever gave him credit for in any case. The sidekick was her preferred character of the two, never mind that Holmes was the true Watson.

It drove him mad, but then, she knew that. And thus it was the source of her delight in the whole thing.

But even that wasn't enough to ease her suffering. He continued to watch as her health deteriorated. Eventually, he turned to their work for answers. He called for all of their notes, all of their studies to be brought to him, and he pored through the tomes, searching for any hint, any whisper of a treatment, elixir, or Abnormal that could help.

He found none, nothing that could be obtained in time.

She was fading too quickly, her unique physiology doing nothing to help her. They'd already discerned the Blood had not enhanced her healing abilities, had known for over a decade now. He'd always known this outcome was possible—even probable with the work they did—but still he had already become attached, reliant on the idea that she would be with him through the ages.

And now he was faced with the inevitable reality of being alone.

John was dead as far as they knew. Nigel was already aged, and had been out of contact with them for years. And Nikola… well, James didn't much care where the vampire was. He'd been insufferable enough as a human, and his less than endearing qualities had only been amplified by the effects of the Source blood. And as they'd all slipped away through the years, only Helen had remained a constant.

A constant he was now terrified of losing.

But just as he'd resigned himself to being the one to bury Helen Magnus, he was surprised once again.

He hadn't expected to wake up one morning, nearly three weeks after the sinking of the Titanic, to hear absolutely nothing. His heart had twisted painfully when he no longer heard the tortuous wheezes, the gasps for air… And when he'd seen her lying so still on the bed, so perfectly peaceful, he was sure that she was finally gone.

And he was surprised when he felt relief mingled with the ache. Relief that she was no longer suffering, no longer faced with the curse of longevity. She hadn't said anything, but he'd seen the toll it had begun to take on her—the realization that the opportunity to live forever meant more than being ageless, more than staying young.

It meant being static, while the world changed around you. It meant being an observer, the witness to the world as events came and went, affecting all but you, because you knew from experience that the next one was right around the corner.

He had seen the shadow in her eyes, before he'd left London for the new American Sanctuary. Even when she had smiled and teased him to not pine too much before she came and joined him, he'd seen the bittersweet truth.

He would never have to pine her, or mourn her. He'd believed she would always be there.

How wrong he had been.

Finally, as the growing light of dawn threw sparkling shafts of light through the gaps in the curtains, James looked to the bed, where Helen lay still as stone.

Her skin was pale, and her features lax in peaceful repose. A slender hand lay motionless on the bedspread, cushioned by the thick duvet. Her eyes, thankfully, were closed—he wasn't sure he could have kept himself together had he seen her beautiful blue eyes glassy and lifeless.

And as much as he'd tried to prepare himself for this very eventuality, James felt his eyes begin to burn. His vision wavered, the image of Helen's body distorting to the point that he almost missed seeing the small flicker of movement as her fingers flexed ever so slightly.

In an instant, his eyes cleared, and he was sitting beside her on the bed, gathering her hand in both of his. Sharp eyes scoured her for any other signs of life, and then, after a long, breathless moment, he saw her chest rise.

She was breathing.

Elation lifted his heart as his fingers pressed lightly against her neck, and when the soft flutter of that reassuring beat made itself stubbornly known, he nearly laughed in relief.

True relief, this time.

True, complete, utter relief.

His fingers left her neck to cup her cheek gently. To his delight, she turned into his touch with a quiet murmur. Her skin was damp with sweat, as were the sheets around her, but the fever had broken. Now that he was listening more carefully, he could hear that her breath still rasped slightly, but it was still a vast improvement from even the night before.

The worst had passed.

She had survived.

"Dear god, Helen," he said softly. "Open your eyes." He tried not to plead, but was not successful, and ultimately he didn't care. "Please, Helen." He stroked her cheek tenderly. "Look at me."

He watched her lashes flutter at his persistence, and then, finally, blue eyes emerged from their slumber. The last of the tension abandoned his body when they shone up at him, blessedly clear of the feverish haze that had clouded them for so long.

After a moment of struggle, she managed to focus on him.

"James…"

Her voice was hoarse, as he'd expected it should be, and he could hear the last of her congestion in the thickness of her tone. But even so, the sound of it was like music to his ears.

"Oh, Helen," he breathed in relief. He pressed a kiss to her fingers, which he had yet to relinquish. "Thank god." He smoothed a tendril of curls from her brow. "Are you in any pain?" he asked carefully.

She blinked tiredly. "So cold…"

Not quite the answer he'd been expecting. But she was obviously still disoriented for all her vast improvement, and he supposed that in her currently drenched bedclothes, she could feel the slightest of drafts.

When he felt her begin to shiver, he blindly groped for the throw that lay at the foot of the bed, and pulled it closer to cover her trembling frame.

"There," he voiced softly. He watched her eyes grow heavy, and knew it wouldn't be long before she drifted off to sleep once more. But even he, non-physician as he is, knew that sleep could only do her good. She needed rest, the sooner the better.

"James…" His name sounded on her lips once again, and he gave her fingers a comforting squeeze.

"Sleep now, Helen," he encouraged. "I'll be here when you wake."

Her eyes drifted shut, and James felt satisfaction fill him. She would be all right. And he would wait for her, with her, as he had since collecting her at the docks.

Because now, once again, they had all the time in the world.