Disclaimer: The characters from 'Warehouse 13' don't belong to me, I'm just borrowing them for a while. I'll put them back once I'm done. :)
A/N: So tumblr broke me today. Here there be angst. So much angst. And no redeeming factor whatsoever. As always, your comments are greatly appreciated!
The grass was green beneath her feet and as she walked the short distance between the designated path and her destination point, she wondered why the grass in England never seemed to wither and die beneath the frostbitten feet of winter like it did back home. The changing of the seasons didn't seem to have much of an effect; the leaves would change colours and die slow, graceful deaths as they fluttered toward the ground, but the grass was always green. That, Myka could depend on.
The early morning dew dappled the toes of her black shoes; sensible ankle boots that were suitable for traversing sodden ground. She'd come prepared, she'd had to. Her strides were purposeful but tentative as she walked, left hand jammed into the pocket of a heavier leather jacket she'd donned in the hopes of battling the sharp breeze that had started to blow sometime around three a.m. that morning.
Even though this was only the second time she'd visited, the first since the funeral, she easily picked out the headstone among the others. It lay as a stark white square against the shadow of the tree sat beside it. All smooth marble and gold letters, the top cut into a wave to symbolise the untameable beauty whose name the headstone bore. She stopped before it, her feet sinking into the wet earth just a little, and let her eyes traverse its surface. It seemed so unreal, to read her name alongside a date of death. The year of her birth had, of course, been fabricated, but she'd arranged that sometime before being reinstated at the Warehouse. Staring down at the cool stone, Myka couldn't believe how long ago that seemed now. And yet they hadn't had enough time.
Taking a shaky breath and shifting on unsteady feet, Myka closed the distance and knelt before the headstone. Heedless of the wet grass and how the cold dampness seeped into the material of her pants, she lifted her hand to press two fingers to her lips and then reached out to press them against golden letters. Her eyes had filled sometime between leaving the path and kneeling and it always startled her a little when she realised she somehow had more tears left in her to cry.
"Hi, Helena." Though the words are tremulous and her lips quiver with the threat of tears, it hurt less to say her name here. In the privacy of a graveyard thousands of miles from the place that had seen the inventor's last stand, knelt before a monument that could never truly do the woman it honoured justice. Flattening her palm against the damp stone, Myka brushed her thumb along the slim line of an 'H' and her lips curled up ever so slightly at the corners. "You know, I always thought you had a beautiful name." It took a second, but when her own words finally registered, that ghost of a smile vanished. "Of course you didn't know." And her mouth turned down under the weight of bitter regret. Sparkling eyes turned a brilliant green in the early morning sun disappeared as she closed them, a single tear escaping like a tomb raider sliding beneath a booby-trapped door at the last possible second. The thought was like a knife to her heart and the sudden pain caused her to release a bark of mirthless laughter.
Memories of Cairo came with all the force of a flood, but only those that represented the Helena she'd known; not the ones that depicted the dark shadow grief had turned her into. Her Helena had been light and clever wit, charm and brilliance. Her Helena had been strong enough to overcome that grief, in the end. Had been strong enough to….
"This isn't fair." Her thought broke against the strength of her keening wail, as sorrow rose up like a tidal wave inside her and threatened to destroy everything in its path to freedom. Her heart hammered dully in her chest, feeling like a foreign entity as it thudded against her ribs, one that was trying to escape a place it no longer felt as though it belonged. She felt herself begin to shake and leaned forward, resting her arm along the top of Helena's curved headstone and pressing her forehead against it. "I'm not the brave one." She whispered, her mind showing her a peaceful woodland clearing and the determined and beautifully sorrowful face of a woman insisting that her demise is the only way. Myka had lost count of how many times she'd begged her brain, herself, to stop showing her those memories. She'd browsed both her mental and the physical catalogue of artifacts and found that there was one that could erase isolated memories. It was only then that she had truly been able to understand Helena's temptation over the Minoan Trident.
The breezed surged around her, brushing the arms of her jacket and tousling her hair. Myka sniffed and swept the back of her hand along the underside of her eyes, knowing it wouldn't stall the tears any. Inside her pocket, her fingers moved to gently tangle themselves around the thin, pliable chain. A heaving sob left her as she pulled Helena's locket free and rubbed the pad of her thumb across its surface. It hurt so much to look at it, but Myka couldn't let it go.
"Did you know?" She whispered, the question lying somewhere between desperate and pleading and conveying both. Her frown was one of pain; brows knitted together as she stared hard at the headstone and gripped the locket tightly in her hand. "That something was going to happen? To you? Is that why you left it for me?" Myka knew there would never be any answers to her questions, but the need to voice them was an explosive one that threatened to destroy her with every passing minute. If she didn't get all the questions, all the thoughts, all of her dreams out of her, she thought she'd go crazy having to hear them, live them, inside of her head. "I've been afraid to put it on." She confessed, gaze turning down to caress the necklace in her hand. Her features became pinched and the angle of her head cast light upon the bags beneath her eyes and betrayed the sleepless nights she'd tried to keep hidden. "I feel like once I do, I'd be admitting that you're gone." Carefully, Myka opened the locket, her eyes tracing the young face of Christina Wells before shifting to gaze upon the features of the woman she might have grown up to resemble. Claudia had added the picture for her, after Myka had destroyed the first two in fits of shaking hands and teary-eyed blindness. Mother and daughter, together at last. "But you are gone."
The breeze died down, her statement seeming to surprise it. Defeat it. Myka's fingers fiddled with the clasps and she lifted trembling hands with a force and speed that screamed hesitation, but then the necklace was swinging to rest against her breastbone and it was done. Fingers that had forced a gun into the hands of the woman now lying beneath her absently ran along the edges of the locket as she spoke, voice thick with tears and breaking every so often under the weight of her grief.
"And I'll never get to thank you," her breath stuttered and she found herself gasping quietly for air, "for everything you did for me." Tears swelled and fell from her eyes, like dreamless wretches tossing themselves from cliff tops because they couldn't stand the emptiness of their lives anymore. "I'll never get to make you really weak tea that you turn your nose up at but drink anyway." Her hand curled around the locket, grasping it in the way that Helena used to. "And you'll never get to teach Claudia another new way to blow something up." The memories gave the impression that they wanted to make her smile, that their intent was pure, but everything turned sour the second it was given life. Myka pressed her fist against her chest with enough pressure to hurt, perhaps even to bruise. Then at least her outward appearance would match her insides. "I'll never get to tell you the things I should have told you when you were here." Her eyes slid shut again and she tried to take deep, steadying breaths. "Things I didn't know I needed to tell you until it was too late." But her voice cracked and the air left her as sobs wracked her body. She let her body slump against the side of the headstone as everything became too much for her to hold onto. "Did you know?" She cried, words almost unintelligible beneath her tears and she shook her head, ignoring the sharp edge of the marble as it rubbed against the side of it. "Because I think you did and I just…" she sniffed, "I wish you would have told me. Maybe things could have been different. If we'd just- if we'd made different choices then maybe…." Her sentence tapered off, disappearing behind a strangled sob. "I might be talking to you instead of your gravestone." There were so very many things left unsaid, things that made Myka dream of a place where Helena wasn't gone and she could tell her everything, and then take her in her arms. Those dreams kept her up at night, made her afraid to go to sleep. "But I need to tell you, I need you to know," she shook her head again, "or for me at least to believe you know." Her thumb brushed the surface of the locket again and she closed her eyes against the image of Helena's form, smiling and shimmering through the exterior of the protective bubble she'd all but conjured into being around Pete, Artie and Myka.
"It was the only way I could think to save you."
But no one had been able to save Helena.
"I love you." The words seemed so empty without any possibility of them being returned.
The sun glittered through the leaves overhead, sending shadows to play across the surface of the headstone below it. It would rise in the sky and the day would move on regardless of the broken shell of a woman pouring her heart and soul into the soil beneath her. Life would indeed go on around her, but for Myka some kind of internal clock had stalled and stopped. And though she'd leave wearing a memento of the person that had sacrificed herself to save her, Myka knew she would be leaving part of herself behind in that cemetery. Propped against the gravestone of a woman she hadn't realised she loved until it was too late.