For Nutty, who prompted:
Suppose the Warehouse remembers ceasing to exist. Suppose it remembers Helena's sacrifice. Suppose the Warehouse needs to let someone else know what had happened.
This is a B&W fix-it - in bit of a roundabout way.
[Spoiler warning, not that I believe anyone here doesn't already know what happens…] This takes place after "No Pain, No Gain" and assumes you know what happens in "Stand" and "A New Hope".
His bones creak less these days.
They creak less frequently, but also less fiercely than they had done in the early days – the days when he was young, and small, and laden with the memories of the others before him, but not his own.
He doesn't need to grow so much these days, because even the slightest growth means immense, exponential growth, due to his current size and reach. His bones are countless and so long, so far-reaching, that expanding a single inch – a single inch in every direction – means nearly 374 miles of new bone throughout his endless skeleton.
He doesn't need to calculate how much space that amounts to. It's much more than they need right now, and probably much more than they will need for at least a number of years to come.
So now that the creaking ceased, he is free again to learn more of those who live within him, those who care for him, those who bring purpose to his existence.
He was so lonely for quite some time: only Mrs. Frederic and the one who had been there far longer than he ought to have been. He thinks his name is Arthur. Artie.
Artie has been with him longer than any other regular human. Artie has spent so much time walking the stacks and passages, learning the secrets he holds so deep within him. Artie has slept, cooked, ate, loved, hurt, missed, composed, created, researched, directed, yelled, sweat, bled, dreamt in him so often, that Artie has become part of him.
He always knows where Artie is, he can always feel him.
Artie is in his office now, teetering on the borders of dreaming. Artie is exhausted, his mind is fraying, unraveling. So he reaches for Artie, taps in.
When he does, he can remember what Artie remembers, and that is an odd memory. Odd because it doesn't quite feel like a memory, but also odd for the story it tells.
You see, Artie remembers his very own demise.
It's odd, because he doesn't remember ending. The very fact he is here, present and very much able to tap into Artie's memories, is testament to him not ending.
So he searches within himself, in the hum of electricity, the pulse of radio waves, the beat of the neutraliser inside the parsecs of pipes and cables that feed him for a fragment of an inkling of a hint of a memory of what Artie remembers, of what had transpired on that day, the day he himself died.
Soon enough, he finds something.
It is rare that one can remember their own death, but he now recalls the flare of the explosion, expanding – like him – in every direction within his belly, expanding fast, so fast, consuming thousands of years' worth of history, burning with it the memories of those who sacrificed their lives to protect him and his treasures, and the world from them.
Burning the memories of the ones that came before him.
And within the licking flames, the raging destruction, within the blinding pain and numbing loss and debilitating helplessness, he feels it:
Love.
Admiration.
Gratitude.
He focuses: he remembers the one standing alone. He remembers her from the memories of the others before him. A fine agent who lost her way, only to wind up amongst those encased in bronze.
He remembers her well now. Wells. He remembers her more as an artefact than he does in service, but that's because she spent far longer in bronze than she did in active duty. And also because his own memories are always far clearer than those of the ones before him.
Wells feels an abundance of love and admiration and gratitude.
She feels it for the one who stands directly opposite her.
He recalls her, the one Wells is looking at, Wells' woman, but not as clearly. She had not been with him long, but had done so much for him. And as she stands in front of Wells, she feels the same as Wells does. She feels the same for Wells.
But Wells is not protected by the shackle's barrier. Wells will soon be consumed by the flames. He is then overwhelmed by the sadness Wells' woman feels, just before his own memory dies with him.
He taps back into Artie's memories (this is much easier now that Artie is fast asleep) and learns of what transpired afterwards. He learns of the young woman being left buried in a wall, of Wells' woman being arrested, of the man dying and of Artie using Magellan's Astrolabe, such a foolish and dangerous thing to do, to save him.
If he had a heart it would be breaking because no one had ever done something like this for him. Not for him, and not for the ones before him.
His heart would be breaking because he knows that Artie's fragmenting psyche is a result of using the Astrolabe. It's a fate worse than death, and Artie doesn't know that yet.
He needs to reach out to the others. He will tap into and awaken their memories, like he did his own, so that they remember what happened to them that day, that day he died, so they can save Artie.
Myka very rarely spends nights at the Warehouse, mostly because the quality of sleep she gets there equates to not having slept at all. So despite this being a long week and despite the bonanza of air miles she racked, she opts to stay the night and win an extra 3 hours to tick off some bureaucracy.
That means that the paperwork for Scott Joplin's cigarette case, Emperor Jimmu's Feather and the Death March Dogtags will be in order. Plus her expenses will be in for the end of the month, and all that means she can go back to Colorado and spend the weekend with her sister.
Just after 1am she switches off the light in Artie's office and heads downstairs to the library, where she can curl up on the worn leather sofa with a book and hopefully have a few hours' worth of sleep. She pulls Norwegian Wood out of her duffle bag, along with a small airplane pillow and a hollow fibre blanket, and changes her jeans to tracksuit pants.
After brushing her teeth and topping up her glass with cold water, she burrows herself into the cold and creaky sofa, curls like a cat under the side light and her blanket, with some pensively sad Japanese storytelling.
She doesn't realise she had fallen asleep when she wakes up with a start, shooting up into a sitting position, her cheeks burning furiously, eyes watering and breaths pushed forcefully through her nose.
From her dream, she can still feel the acidic sting of disinfectant that's dominating her senses. It, and the image of the inside of a prison cell, she thinks, in a police station abroad because the cautions on the walls are in Italian.
What woke her is a feeling that ripped through her guts that someone else had died.
That was such a weird dream, enters her mind as her breathing settles, and then she thinks she doesn't remember putting the book down or falling asleep.
That's because she hasn't.
The light behind the sofa is still on, and the book is on the floor – carelessly tossed, open, face down, the pages folded unto themselves – Myka would never allow that to happen, no matter how tired she was.
She picks up the book, straightens the damaged pages and places it neatly by the duffle bag. She then reaches in the bag and takes out her phone. It's not even 2am. She can't have been asleep for more than 10 minutes, and yet… this dream (that doesn't really feel like a dream) was a whole day's worth of stuff that's happened.
She turns on the sofa so she sits upright, feet placed firmly on the cold floor of the Warehouse. It feels good to have a solid floor underfoot given what's racing through her mind at the minute. She takes a sip of water, closes her eyes and breathes deeply – collecting her memories from this dream:
Helena and her in the Regent's sanctum, crossing over to the Warehouse, eliminating Sykes, finding the bomb, failing to defuse the bomb, and then Helena…
Her breath catches in her throat and her eyes tear open.
"Helena," she mouths as she recalls the calm and the peace in her, the gratitude, the admiration. The love. Tears pool in the corners of her eyes as her mind flashes through the rest of the dream:
A ball of fire consumes Helena and there is a sensation ripping through her guts, like the one that woke her up, because she knows that Helena is gone.
Now the Warehouse is gone too, Pandora's box is open, the whole world is in a whirlpool of despair. Then there's the pocket watch, and France, and the Brotherhood of the Black Diamond, and the Astrolabe but it's missing a piece, and Claudia is trapped in that shaft, and then Italy and she pulls that idiotic stunt to distract the woman in the restaurant so that Artie and Pete could get to tomb of St. Peter, and it takes three police officers to hold her down.
That's how she wound up in that cell.
And that feeling is the last thing she remembers before…
Before she is back in the Warehouse with Helena, bound to Helena by the rigging rope of the Mary Celeste. Bound to Helena who is very much alive.
But this isn't part of her dream. This is what actually happened.
She closes her eyes again and recalls saving the Warehouse: Artie knows there's a bomb. He knows where it is. He even knows what artefact will defuse it. But it doesn't work. And he's angrier than usual. More frustrated.
Then she and Helena suggest it's Sykes that needs defusing, and Artie knows where he is, that he's about to get stuck in the portal, and they make it there in the nick of time to stop Pete from Killing him.
And it works.
But Artie knew. He knew everything. Every single step of the way.
And when Myka plays all that again in her mind, she recalls the exchanges between Artie and Helena and her, and she thinks Helena knows something, too.
She reaches for her phone again and the fact it's 2:26am crosses her mind, but she doesn't care because she needs to find Helena. The only contact she has on her phone who could possibly help her achieve that is Jane Lattimer.
She dials, but it goes straight to voicemail.
She tries again, and it still goes straight to voicemail, and Myka curses, angrily, explicitly, because something is burning inside her and she needs to see Helena.
She tosses the phone on the sofa next to her and doubles over, holds her head in her hands and tries to think about how she could possibly reach her.
"She's in Featherhead," a calm, even voice startles her from across the room. "In a safe house."
Myka looks up to see Mrs. Frederic, of course it's Mrs. Frederic, sitting on the sofa opposite her.
"She's awaiting the Regents' Forum."
"Why?"
"To review her containment, Agent Bering."
"Helena doesn't need to be contained," Myka hisses coldly at the caretaker who screws up a questioning eyebrow in response.
Myka runs both hands through her hair, pushing it back, holding it at the base of her neck. "It's because of her that we're even here, having this conversation," she states, and she knows it's feeling more than fact, but she knows that what she dreamt really happened, she just knows it.
Mrs. Frederic is silent for a moment, studying Myka in her current state. She had only ever seen Myka this agitated after Yellowstone, after she defused Helena and handed in her notice. "What do you know, Agent Bering?" she asks.
Myka looks at her, breathes an airy laugh of disbelief through a wry smile. "I know that she died –" she starts, but chokes on the words, on the memory of Helena burning in front of her.
"And how do you know this?" Mrs. Frederic probes further.
"I just do," she shrugs defiantly.
"Did this knowledge," Mrs. Frederic's tone softens and she leans forward a little, "come to you in the form of a dream?"
"So what if it did?"
"And did you have this dream here?" she gestures to the room they are in, "in the Warehouse?"
Myka can't help but feel like her credibility or even her sanity are being questioned, "I just know that she died saving us," she manages to say the whole thing this time, but gasps sharply at the end of it, holding back the memory and the tears that ensue.
Mrs. Frederic takes another minute to study Myka, determined green irises surrounded by bloodshot eyes, pale face framed by a dark and wild mane of curls, lips pressed together to keep them from trembling. The honesty of the agent's need rings crystal clear to the caretaker.
She reaches silently into her purse and hands Myka a business card with a Featherhead address. "You will find her here."
Myka snatches the card from Mrs. Frederic, reaches for her phone and leaps towards the spiral staircase within the space of a second.
She places a foot on the first step and pauses. "Thank you," she declares to the room, not bothering to turn and check if Mrs. Frederic is still there, because she probably isn't. But she'll say thank you, anyway.
Mrs. Frederic smiles from the sofa as she watches Myka rush up the staircase, two steps at a time, and hears her running across the balcony and into Artie's office.
Myka's convinced that she's way past overtired and way hyper alert, and she's sure her brain is fucking with her, because she swears she smells apples before she rushes out of the umbilicus.
A loud and urgent knock startles Helena. She's in the middle of hacking the GPS logs of a luxury car rental agency in Portugal, looking for a stolen antiques dealer who she believes came into recent contact with the dagger Artie asked her to find.
She looks at the computer's clock, 4:09am.
Before she even has time to contemplate the situation, there is another knock. Louder, more urgent.
She darkens the screen and walks quietly to the front door. She reaches into her coat pocket, and takes out her phone and her Tesla. There is another knock, and a loud cough from whomever is knocking.
"It's me," she's surprised to hear Myka's voice, "Are you there?"
She unlocks her phone and opens a surveillance video app that's linked to the cameras rigged around the safe house.
Myka knocks again.
Helena goes through every single feed from every single camera, and there is no one there, except what looks like Myka on the front porch of the safe house, a safe house no one should know about.
Myka knocks once more. "I know it's late," her voice sounds demanding, "but I really need to talk," and then she knocks yet again.
Helena pockets the phone (but keeps the Tesla drawn) and unlatches the door.
It opens up as far as the security chain will allow.
"Thank god you're here," Myka sighs and moves closer.
"What are you doing here, Myka?" she eyes the tall agent through the crack in the doorway.
"I, uh," she stammers, she looks tired and confused and tense to Helena, "I found something out and I needed to check in with you," she is rubbing the back of her right hand against the palm of her left. "Please."
"Are you here alone?" Helena has to ask.
Myka looks up and nods firmly, and it's now that Helena notices the teary eyes and damp cheeks and red lips.
She pushes the door closed so she can disengage the chain, then opens it fully and steps aside.
Myka takes two long strides in and absorbs the impersonal feel of the house before she turns to face Helena. "I'm sorry it's so late," she whispers.
"That is perfectly alright," Helena locks the door, places the chain back in its track and then puts the Tesla down on the sideboard near the doorway. "Would you like some tea?"
"Are we alone?" is Myka's next question.
Helena nods, and Myka takes a step that closes the gap between them and leans in to kiss Helena, a soft but confident kiss.
Myka's lips are warm and pliant and salted with tears and Helena sighs and reaches her hands up, one to rest on Myka's hip and the other on her shoulder. Myka responds and inches closer, so her body presses the length of Helena's, and she captures her lips again, more firmly, and tastes them with a slow sweep of the tip of her tongue.
Helena shudders and tightens her grip of the agent and pays her back with a mirroring, equally torturous touch of tongue on lip; and all Myka can think is how, on earth, she could've let all this time go by and not do this, not kiss this extraordinary, stunning, brilliant woman who is so good at everything (even kissing) because this feels so much better than she'd ever imagined, that it makes her smile.
Helena's mind, on the other hand, is focused on Myka. On how her nose brushes gently against hers with every movement, how impossibly silky yet firm her lips are, how her breathing is a language all to itself, a language of gasps and pants and hums; How the muscles of her upper back tense and relax as she shifts to cradle Helena in her arms, how her chest glides effortlessly against her own, how warm her abdomen is against hers and how tense her legs grow as they hold each other closer and closer.
And then she feels Myka's lips curl upwards.
Against her own judgement and need she breaks the kiss and pulls back ever so slightly so she can look at Myka, look into her eyes, read her expression, try to fathom what prompted this. It isn't as though she's not welcoming Myka's newly found intimate assertion, but it surprises her that it comes now, at gone 4 o'clock in the morning, weeks after the Sykes ordeal, while she's awaiting the Regents' verdict about her future in this world, and while she's on a secret mission for Artie – a mission which she knows with every fibre of her being is to do with time travel.
"Myka, darling," she breathes and she feels Myka's breath on her wet lips as her smile turns coy and impish and her eyes are no longer crying.
She then feels Myka's fingertips grazing upwards from her neck to her jawline and upwards still, until the delicate skin of Myka's palm is warming her cheek and she leans into this touch.
"I'll explain in a minute," the agent's voice is low and sure and her eyes are a deep green of a river, reflecting the soft light from the kitchen, "I just want—" she starts and leans in again and kisses Helena in a way that takes her breath away.
It takes the artificer a few moments of trading kisses with her tall, insistent counterpart to almost get used to the feel of them against each other, to almost get used to the idea that she will soon be able to kiss Myka as and when she pleases. It is that thought that makes her draw their movements out, lets them meander almost aimlessly as they explore this way of expressing their deep affection for each other, until Myka practically purrs into the kiss.
"I suppose," Myka muses between languid strokes of her lips against Helena's, "I should explain," she traps her inamorata's bottom lip between hers.
Helena sighs. "I'll put the kettle on," she whispers, lets her hands fall from their purchase on Myka, and slide down until they find her hands at the small of her own back. Helena holds those hands and gives them a small, meaningful squeeze. She continues to hold one as she makes her way to the kitchen.
Myka takes her cue and follows, dragged by her hand which Helena holds close to her. While they wait for the kettle to boil, the inventor steps into Myka, wraps her arms around her waist and rests her head on her chest.
"May I?" she seeks Myka's permission after the fact.
Myka beams at the sweetness of both gestures and wraps Helena up in an embrace of her own as an answer. "So long as you never ask for my permission again," she says through a brilliant smile.
They let go of each other so that Helena could make tea, all the while exchanging impatient looks and smiles that make it clear to the both of them that this is the beginning of something they both wanted for so, so long.
When Helena hands Myka her mug of steaming, camomile tea, the agent makes a point of cradling Helena's hands while she's still holding the mug, smiling.
Helena smiles back, a smile Myka had only seen on Helena once before. It's a shy smile, appreciative, grateful.
They walk over to the show-home-like living room and sit on the two-seater, facing each other. Myka regales her dream that didn't feel like a dream and how it bled into what she actually remembers happening.
By the end of it, Helena's expression is grim.
"You knew, didn't you?" she asks the dark haired woman in front of her.
"I made some educated guesses based on my experiences," Helena answers and places her mug on the small, ordinary coffee table. She contemplates her suspicions of Artie's use of the Astrolabe and whether she should tell Myka about the mission with which Artie endowed her. She considers her loyalties to him, to the Warehouse and to Myka.
"You know more," Myka looks into her and places her own mug on the table to their side.
Helena sighs heavily, "I'm under strict instructions to not share this with anyone."
Myka laughs at her reply, which Helena finds a little insulting. "Since when do you follow orders, Helena?"
Helena smirks while glaring at Myka, who obviously knows her far too well, and shares with her what she knows and what she suspects.
They sit quietly for a while and Myka notices just how bland the house is, now that the first rays of sunrise are doing their best to warm up the cold, indifferent design.
"No good will come of any of it if we don't do something about this," Myka exhales eventually.
"Some good has already come of it," Helena smiles shyly again and reaches her fingers to Myka's curls.
Myka's lips stretch into a half-smile. She finds Helena's hand and brings it to her lips, muttering a silent apology for having discounted the new grounds in their relationship.
"I was considering involving Mrs. Frederic," Helena says, "I reckon she is likely to provide the most balanced opinion and most pragmatic course of action."
Myka nods, her gaze fixed into Helena's. Her smile is fading from her lips slowly as her ache for Helena grows, the one she felt when she woke from her dream a few hours ago. "And are we okay?"
"What do you mean?"
"Are we…" Myka holds Helena's hand in both of hers and lets them fall in her lap, her eyes following them, "you and I, are we okay to…" she's not sure how to ask this, "be together?" she finishes quietly.
How endearing, Helena thinks, and her brazen confidence takes over every aspect of her. She leans forward, bracing herself against the armrest and the back of the sofa, flanking Myka where she sits. "I wouldn't have it any other way," she whispers and captures Myka's lips, who submits in an instant and heats the kiss to a searing, passionate declaration.
His bones feel at peace.
He feels loved. He feels love.
Artie's fracturing has been stopped, he is on a safe path to recovery.
Life within him appears to have fallen back to the usual, calm routine that involves filling him up with wonder.
He has no doubt that Mrs. Frederic's timely intervention came about due to his reaching out to Wells' woman and tapping her memories awake. He would like to pay his gratitude to her, for believing him and taking such decisive action.
He finds her in his library.
With Wells.
Myka doesn't mind staying late in the Warehouse so much anymore. She doesn't mind spending the night there, either. She doesn't mind the creaky, old leather sofa she sleeps on because it turns out it's very comfortable once she's curled up on it with Helena.
She's busy tickling Helena's abdomen with her fingertips while trailing nips and kisses between her shoulder and ear when she catches an almost overwhelming scent of apples, a scent she never caught on Helena before. "Did you change your shampoo?" Myka asks from the haze of heated excitement.
"No," Helena gasps impatiently, wondering how Myka could be asking her about her choice of hair care products while she's doing that with her mouth, and that with her fingers and – oh, goodness – she loses her breath and her train of thought as Myka nibbles and sucks on her earlobe.
Helena isn't sure she can contain herself much longer, so she pushes Myka backwards and straddles her, strategically placing herself at the very top of Myka's thighs.
Myka's mouth falls open to shape a perfect 'Oh' as she looks to where her body connects with Helena's, and slowly journeys her gaze up, up her Helena's perfect body, with her hands in tow – from hips to waist to breasts to shoulders to neck, "I just thought I smelled…" she starts, but doesn't care to finish because she would much rather pull Helena down for a kiss.
AN: Again and as always - thank you so much for reading and for writing and for being part of this fandom.
(You are the inspiration).
I'd love to hear your thoughts, whichever they are.
On the technicalities: this is (and will always be) a learning curve. Something I've already learnt is that I'm a terrible proof reader. So - apologies for any mistakes. Please let me know when you stumble upon them and I'll fix asap.