sooner or later it comes down to fate, I might as well be the one
She's sipping tea on a porch just outside New Orleans, a suburb with guest houses bigger than mansions and front lawns large enough to play organized sports in when she gets the news. It's the picture that catches her eye and causes her to do a double take, she knows those curls, those lips, those eyes, even in grainy black and white. The article is rubbish, of course, but it hits some nice notes-she's lauded as a hero, a patriot, her record is listed as long and distinguished, her commendations are many. There's mention of a posthumously awarded honour in the workings.
She goes to see Pete Lattimer.
The house is dark and somber but she slips past the defenses with the relative ease she expected, creeps up the stairs cautiously. She knows how old wooden houses creak and squawk. She hesitates in the hallway, then squares her shoulders and walks into Myka Bering's bedroom. It still smells of her, light and airy like spring soap and baby powder deodorant. There's still a book on the bedside table, lying at an angle with a red leather bookmark peeking out the side, a tank top and pajama bottoms folded at the foot of the bed, shoes kicked off and lying strewn across the homesewn rug.
Pete raises his head from where he's sitting in the window seat and glares at her with the weak hatred of paralyzing, exhausting grief.
"What do you want," he snarls, and his palm rests heavy on the grip of the gun at his side.
"To give my condolences, of course," she says coolly, and even gives him a bit of a flinty smile. Pete makes a rocking movement like he'd almost decided to leap to his feet but decided not to at the last minute.
"Liar," he accuses softly, and she doesn't tell him otherwise because it's true.
"What happened?" she asks, and he snorts.
"You don't care," he says, and rests his forehead against the glass of the window, "I should shoot you where you stand."
"Probably," she agrees, and they share another strange silence. She walks over to the window and they look out at together. It's snowing, a gentle shower of light ice and water, and it melts against the window as it hits, runs in twisting rivets down the outside of the glass.
Something small and furry moves in Pete's arms and she jumps before she can regain herself. Pete laughs once in a harsh bark that sounds more like an exclamation of pain than humour.
"She named him Pete," he says hollowly, "and laughed every time she called him." He lapses again, breathing heavily, and she turns to leave. He stops her at the door.
"She really believed in you," he whispers, and his voice breaks, his shoulders shake.
"Yes," she says nuetrally, and leaves him to his grief. Two days later she hacks into the Warehouse again and finds what she needs before that irritatingly rude teenager manages to kick her off. Two days after that she slips around the best security the federal government can offer and shoots three men in the back of the head, quick and clean and relatively painless.
"If we'd met at any other time," she murmurs, looking down at them but seeing moral outrage and dark curls tumbling across soft skin, and then shrugs and leaves as easily as she came.
She thinks she'd like to see Rome again.
t'was brillig and the slithy toves
Myka grabs the trident and pulls back away from Wells so hard she falls backwards, fumbling to snap it into two pieces. Artie groans and she staggers over to him, adrenaline firing sharp and fast in her nerve endings.
"Ow," he says, "I think I'm going to pass out now." She does what preliminary first aid she can, cursing the shake in her fingers, and calls for an ambulance—no way she's hiking back to the car with unconscious Artie, crying wreck HG Wells and Very First weapon of mass destruction pitchfork. A laugh bubbles from her chest when she recalls the math problems she'd done in school the trident can't be left with HG, and HG can't be left with Artie, and HG can't be left alone, but only one item can be carried at a time…
She straightens up from Artie, squares her shoulders and secures her gun, and walks over to Wells.
"Come on," she says softly, and slips handcuffs from under her jacket. Wells looks up at her, and even collapsed on the ground having an emotional breakdown she looks completely composed.
"You have no idea what they're going to do to me," she whispers and there's fear in her eyes, twisting darkly and Myka tries not to fall into it idown the rabbithole/i.
"Beware the jabberwock," she murmurs, and Wells looks up in surprise. She smiles through her tears, and laughs brokenly.
"Will you walk me to the borogroves," she says in a sing song, and Myka leans down to pull her up. Already she can hear the crunch of tires on gravel and she knows the car is here for them. Wells grabs her arm, suddenly, and pulls her close.
"I don't care about the world," she whispers, "I wanted you to stop me from destroying you." Myka jerks back, shock splashed across her face like a blood spatter on a white plaster wall.
"I've always been selfish like that," Wells says, and puts her arms behind her back.
Three months later she hears the slap of the buckles being undone in her bonds and the blindfold is lifted off her eyes. She's in hospital white and lists sideways when she sits up, she's sure she's lost near thirty pounds. Myka looks older not in age but in life, her eyes are a little harder and the lines on her face are a little harsher. She's still her and it's still Myka.
She wakes up in a bed that smells like Myka and a room lined with books, the ones with the love in the creases of their spines. Leena checks her pupils again and nods, leaves.
"Hast thou slayed the jabberwocky?" she slurs, and Myka turns to look at her. Her eyes still crinkle when she smiles.
"I left it dead and took its head," Myka murmurs, and her voice is different as well, slightly more distant, less emotional. "And you came galumphing back," she whispers, and gently touches Wells' arm, sliding fingertip kisses. She turns her palm down and twists their fingers together an eternity knot.
"Callooh, callay," Wells says, and goes back to sleep. Myka's thumb brushes the inside of her wrist and presses down, and she can feel her own pulse and flutter against Myka like a butterfly on a pin.
She rather likes it.
we are all of us bastards
"Just do it," Myka howls, and at least she'll go down like this, going to stop the event she created through her own naïveté and arrogance, killed in the line of duty. Maybe Artie will pull up and shoot her properly before the world ends. Maybe not. Myka believes in the good of the world and in the choice of humankind but she's seen little children scream while their parents lie dead in the morgue with another person's hands pulling violence out of them in bullets and broken blades and she's seen the coldness of the Federal Government, the good guys, the ruthlessness in Artie and the methodical cold listings of the horrors of the Warehouse and the demise of its servants. Who hasn't thought the world could use a reset, at least once.
HG collapses like a puppet with its strings cut and Myka pulls the trident away. Artie sighs in relief to the side. HG looks up at her, and her mascara runs in dark streaks down her face and around her eyelids. She saved Myka's life, once. Artie's life, Claudia's life. She'd been the golden star of the agency, a shining model of an example for the Warehouse. She looks up now with a broken twisted rage that is fading to numbness.
"Well done, Myka," Artie wheezes, and Myka thinks maybe she should help him now. No, she decides, one bit of business first. HG sees it in her eyes and smiles.
"Never thought you'd have it in you," she says, and it's with an admiring wonder. "I always hoped you'd surprise me." Myka can hear Artie shifting around behind her.
"Myka?" he says sharply.
"I wish we could have been partners," HG says softly, and closes her eyes. iave maria, gratia plena, forgive me my trespasses as I forgive those who trespass against me/i, Myka thinks, and clicks her safety off.
"We were," Myka says cleanly, and shoots her between the eyes.