Fatherly Lies

Helena Harkness waited for her father to return. He had gone to fetch and bury the body of Rory Williams, who had been pushed off of a building by Helena herself. Helena was still crying. Three deaths in one week, two times herself being the executioner.

Rory had told Helena to push him, after Amy, his wife, had died. She could still hear the sickening thud of his body hitting the group, bones breaking similtaniously as his last breath was forced out of him. A ghostly Amy and Rory had appeared behind the former's body as Helena held her. Then there was the stranger - the bow-tied man who Helena had found on the brink of death with a slit throat. He'd been alive, but in pain. He had begged Helena to make it stop, and she did, but in no way she wanted to. She stabbed his chest again and he'd died. She felt disgusted with herself. She'd stabbed someone. Helena let out a choking, sobbing noise. She'd wanted none of this to happen, and the memory of it made her sick. But a puzzling thing happened that night on the roof. The Bow-Tie Man's ghost had come to Helena and reassured her that this had been for his and Rory's benefits, and had kissed her forehead as a father would do to his scared daughter.

The door openning woke Helena from her thoughts and she looked up. Jack sat on her bed and Helena sat down. He wrapped his arms around Helena and she buried her head in his chest and cried. Jack rubbed comforting circles on his daughter's back as she shook uncontrollably. "Shh...It's gonna be okay, sweetheart."

But, Helena thought, it's not. She'd killed people, how was it going to be okay? Thinking about the deaths again, Helena wept louder and faster. Images flashed through her vision - the Bow-Tie Man's bloody body writhing in agony. Amy silently promising she'd wait for Rory as she passed away. Rory's hand letting go of her own as he fell and hit the ground. She could almost feel the impact - the final breath of air caught in his airways and the scared almost-whimper that never made it's way out. Helena started hypervantilating. She couldn't deal with this amount of guilt. Jack pried Helena off of him so she could breathe, and when he looked at her face, eyes red and puffy, he knew she felt terrible - worse than he'd expected.

"Helena, look at me," Jack said. He raised her head and looked right into her eyes, "Tell me exactly what happened. It might help if you get it out." He smiled slightly, trying to assure her that it was okay for her to tell him. Helena sniffed, trying desperately to hold back the sobs as she started to tell her father about the Bow-Tie Man, "I- I found him in the park. I was just walking and someone yelled out and I looked in the bush - and he was in a little clearing, with a knife next to him, and I knew someone had stabbed him," She sniffed again, "And I tried to stop him bleeding but I couldn't and he just - just died...but he woke up and he was fine, but then he started yelling again, and he begged me to just take the knife and end it for him...and I did...I just...I stabbed him, Dad!" Her voice trailed off into loud and hard sobs as she leant against Jack's shoulder. She couldn't begin to explain Amy and Rory.

Jack nodded, tightening his grip around Helena's shaking shoulders. His daughter - usually so strong - was in his arms, crying harder than he'd ever seen. "What about Amy and Rory?" He asked, "Come on, Helena, you can tell me, it'll help you."

Helena took a breath, trying to pick where to start. "Me and Rory, we were looking for Amy, cause she'd run off somewhere, and we came to- to the roof, and we found her, and she was nearly dead - someone or something had attacked her...and she just passed away, and Rory told me to push him off the building...and I did...and I heard it when he hit the ground and then waited for him to come back like he said, but he didn't." She sniffed, "And both times the Bow-Tie Man came to me - before I pushed Rory he told me I could do it, and he just assured me and that...but then he kissed my forehead...and then after I - I did that to him, he came and stopped me crying." Jack's face fell. Should he tell her? No - not unless she wanted to know. Helena's sobbing had reached it's loudest, choking noises issued from her as she huddled herself closer to Jack.

They stayed like that for a while, Helena huddled against her father's side and Jack's arm around her shoulders. Helena's crying eventually drained, and was reduced to a soft breathing as she fell asleep. She did need a rest, he thought, in the two days seperating both events, she'd got no sleep. He slowly, trying not to wake her, pulled his arm away from her shoulders and put her into her bed, taking her shoes off and covering her with the blankets.

"Sleep tight, Helena," He whispered, closing the door quietly. She didn't, however. She tossed and turned all night, terrors of the days previous haunting her as she slept.

A particular nightmare plagued Helena's mind the whole night. Her father was telling her something about the Bow-Tie Man - something she couldn't quite hear. At the end of the conversation, she was angry, however, and smashed her hands on the table, walking out, and yelling back at him that she hated him. Then her father turned up dead in the same park that the Bow-Tie Man had been killed at.

Helena woke. It was morning, the birds out her window were singing a merry tune, and she could smell something that smelled particularly like toast, chese and bacon. She fixed herself up, brushing her hair and changing into clean clothes - clothes that didn't remind her of Rory and Amy. She made her way downstairs, and, surely enough, Jack was in the kitchen, preparing her favourite breakfast - toast cover in cheese with a side of bacon. Helena smiled slightly.

When she sat at the table, he turned around, "Morning, Helena," He said, hoping to lighten his daughter's spirits.

"Morning, Dad," She said, rather cheerfully, considering the week's events. She found herself thinking about the Bow-Tie Man again. She swore she'd seen or heard of someone who'd matched his description perfectly before. But where? Another thought hit her - why had he turned out to be alive, even after being stabbed in the chest, straight through his heart? Then it hit her, though not completely clearly. She'd planted the knife in the place opposite where the other wound had been - two hearts. He had two hearts. Like Raggedy, from Amy's stories.

"Dad..." She said quietly, when he placed the plate of food in front of her and he planted himself at the table. She looked up at him, biting her lip unsurely, "Do you know any people with two hearts?"

Oh God, Jack though, she's worked it out. Helena had worked out why the man in the bow-tie hadn't been dead. Helena took a bit of her toast. "Er...Dad?"