Helena came back. After the travesty that was her life with Nate and Adelaide, her dalliance with Giselle and New York, her attempts to live a 'normal' life away from the Warehouse – she came back. The Warehouse was still in a state of potential transition; negotiations had been held between the Regents and authorities in several countries, but no agreement had yet been made. China was vying for the opportunity to be the new location, but the US was still very much in the running, as was Canada. There were talks of moving to Alaska or Arizona, or any number of places in the empty spaces of Canada. But for now, it remained in South Dakota.
Without Leena, the Bed and Breakfast was as pretty as ever, but that sense of welcome, of love, of home – that was gone. Doubly so now that Myka was – well, she was half of Myka-and-Pete, now. She was no longer Helena's Myka. She was polite, caring as always, and professional. Since Helena's return, Myka had saved her life exactly four times, once even taking a bullet meant for Helena. In the leg, but a bullet nonetheless. But once the mission was done, she wrapped herself up in Pete, or a book - anything but Helena.
Their conversation upon Helena's return was friendly, but void of anything other than the sentiment of two old friends – people who used to mean something to one another, but no longer did. Before Boone, Myka had been unable to hide her feelings from Helena – her blushes, her sharp intakes of breath when Helena stepped too close – and Helena had wondered if any of those old feelings existed anymore. It was plainly evident once she returned to the Warehouse that they did not – either that, or Myka had mastered the art of hiding her emotions. When Helena experimentally allowed herself to approach Myka's personal space, there was no blushing, no dilation of her pupils. Just polite disinterest and a hint – just a tiny hint – of contempt.
"When she came back from Boone, she was like a shell. She did her job, but her spark, her joy – all of it was gone, Helena. Leena's death hurt her, but what you did that day – it broke her. And now she's moved on. That's what you wanted, right? To break your bonds with the Warehouse, with all of us? Well, congratulations. You did it."
Claudia's answer to her attempt at a circumspect enquiry as to Myka's wellbeing on day three of her return cleared matters up rather quickly. Claudia herself was growing into the amazing young woman that Helena had known she would. She would be a wonderful Caretaker – her intuition, her intelligence, her spark – they would last for centuries, perhaps. (Helena was never quite sure how long a Caretaker could live. Mrs Frederic had not yet been Caretaker when Helena herself was born, but she believed that the Caretaker of her time had passed when the Warehouse moved to the Americas.) For now, Claudia was an Agent – a frighteningly competent one – but no longer a friend. She watched Helena with thinly veiled contempt (sometimes omitting the veil entirely), brightening up only when they discussed technical matters. She was teaching Helena a great deal about computers and some of the newer technologies that Helena still hadn't come to grips with since her unBronzing, and together they had invented some 'nifty' devices, as Claudia put it – devices that had made life in the Warehouse much easier. But Claudia's eyes narrowed as they followed Helena – not warily, for Helena was no longer any sort of threat to anyone – but as if wondering how quickly she would flee, this time, from her responsibilities. Helena didn't blame her. She saw that same look in her own eyes most mornings in the bathroom mirror.
To Helena's surprise, her closest friends now were Pete, Steve and Arthur. Pete did not hold grudges – he didn't need to, now that he and Myka were so happy together and Kelly Hernandez was but a distant memory – and he had a great deal of respect for Helena's willingness to sacrifice herself for the Warehouse and for the team. Discussing comic books and monster trucks, however, did not fulfil Helena's needs for intelligent discourse, and she yearned for the days when she and Myka would sit up late into the night before the fire in the small library, discussing literature or philosophy or history. But for now, midichlorians and adamantium were the topics on offer (and how it galled her that she knew in detail what both of those words meant). Steve was a bastion of serenity, a wonderful, pleasant soul to spend time with. His allegiance was with Claudia for the most part but he did not share Claudia's antipathy to Helena, preferring to make his own judgements, apparently. Arthur was surprisingly soft and friendly now, after all that had gone before. He still grumbled and needled her endlessly, but that was their 'thing', as Pete termed it. They communicated in grumpy monosyllables and chess games that stretched for weeks at a time. She thought that even Caturanga might have found Arthur a challenge in the game – he was a shrewd opponent, and, once he had let his guard down enough with her to show her his true mastery of the game, one that she had so far been unable to best. The talents he had employed at the NSA were evident in his chess game – he thought more steps ahead than even Helena herself was able to. It was little wonder that he had been able to see through her so thoroughly back in the beginning. She shook her head in disbelief, occasionally, at her arrogance in believing she could blithely talk her way into their lives back then without attracting suspicion. She had severely underestimated these people; not only Myka, who had thwarted her at Yellowstone with a weapon so simple as love, but also Pete, whose seemingly shallow exterior hid a shrewd mind. Leena – dear, sweet Leena – with her beautiful eyes, had seen straight through Helena's dissembling to the pain beneath. She had tried to help Helena, back then, sitting up with her in the early hours of the morning, never speaking unless Helena spoke to her, just offering silent comfort and endless cups of tea. Helena had been so bitter back then that she was unable to accept the comfort or to open up as Leena so clearly wanted her to. She wondered, sometimes, what would have happened if she had ever, once, trusted these people to help her. She also wondered what could have been had she taken what Myka had so plainly offered on that driveway in Wisconsin rather than hiding in a suburban life with Nate and Adelaide. But there was nothing to be done for that now; her cowardice had consequences, and the pain of watching Myka so happy and content with Pete was exactly what she deserved.
"You know, she's strong," Leena said, as she studied Helena's aura carefully.
"Who?" Helena asked, one eyebrow raised.
They were sitting in the library and Leena had come to join Helena, bringing tea and her calming presence.
"Myka. She's strong, but it's brittle, her strength. She doesn't talk about it much, but I think her father… I think she built up her defences against him, and it left her a little… fragile. So she's strong, but I think that if she took a hit in the wrong place, or from the wrong person," she paused to take a sip of her tea, gazing at Helena calmly through lowered lashes, "she would shatter. So be careful of her, won't you?"
Helena stared at her, wide-eyed. It was hard to tell how much Leena could see, with her skill for reading auras. Was she saying that she knew what Helena had planned? Would Helena need to take steps to deal with her? She did not want to hurt the young woman – she had done nothing wrong – but in the circumstances, she was going to perish with the rest of the world anyway. Would it be such a bad thing, to put the innkeeper out of her misery earlier, in order to reach her goal?
Leena coughed politely to regain her attention. If she knew the direction of Helena's thoughts, she made no comment on them.
"She cares about you a lot, HG. She just got over Sam's death. Just – just be careful of her, please."
Leena stood and touched her arm for a long moment, looking closely at her aura. Helena tensed. She did not want to hurt this wonderful young woman. However, Leena simply squeezed her arm and smiled sympathetically at whatever she saw in Helena's aura, and then went off to bed. Helena breathed a silent sigh of relief.
It was only later, after Yellowstone and after Boone, that she remembered Leena's words. In her Regent prison, she had no way to work through those issues or think anything through. But the night Myka told her to make Boone her home, she cried herself to sleep in the guest room in Nathan's house. She had done exactly what Leena had said she would; she had shattered Myka Bering.
Abigail Cho was a godsend – not only a friend but a counsellor, a wise and clever woman who had, in the past eight months, untwisted Helena's mind to such an extent that she almost felt like she had adjusted to this time. She almost felt normal when it came to matters other than her relationship with Myka. Normal, however, was a word that she could barely think nowadays, without being overcome with shame and bitterness at her own cowardice. A 'normal' life – the words she had thrown at Myka, the words that had forever ruined anything they could have had together. The sheer unadulterated pain in Myka's face when Helena told her that she felt like she belonged for the first time in a century – it still featured in her nightmares. The lie in that statement would have hit Steve so hard he'd have doubled over. The only place she'd felt at home? She knew, and Myka knew, exactly where she felt at home. In Myka's arms. With Myka's lips on hers, with the warmth of her tall body pressed against Helena's. Of all the evils Helena Wells had inflicted upon the world, upon other people, somehow that one cruel line was the worst. She had dismissed the most significant relationship of her life with those words. She had apologised to Myka a thousand times in her head for that line, but could never make the words come out of her mouth, not in the face of Myka's contentment with Pete, in the face of Claudia's contempt, of Pete's well-meaning friendship. It was too late now, and when she heard Myka cry out her release in Pete's arms through the thin walls of the B&B, she bore the pain stoically, as the consequence of her cowardice.
So Helena tinkered. She built, she learned, and she created. She was beginning to earn fairly large sums of money from inventions and innovations she'd created since her return to the Warehouse. Since Boone, she had written several mystery novels under the name of Emily Lake. It was as good a name as any other, given that she could not use hers, and when she saw Myka pick up and then drop one of her review copies with a look of disgust on her face, the pain Helena experienced felt real, deserved – righteous.
Abigail told her off for this line of thought repeatedly, her self-flagellation. She had made her penance, and any pain she had caused Myka was in the past, it appeared. So why not make her peace and move on? Myka and Pete were planning a move to Denver once the Warehouse's fate was agreed. They were planning to return to the Secret Service, to take on less active roles - perhaps in the investigation of counterfeiting - and to start a family. Myka didn't meet Helena's eyes when Peter announced that little gem one morning at breakfast – Helena knew it was nothing to do with any sort of shame about her relationship with Peter but more to do with the fact that Helena was well aware that Myka did not want children. They had talked about the subject at length one night after Helena had opened up to Myka about Christina. Myka had said clearly that she didn't hate children, but was, in fact, mostly annoyed by the little buggers and had no desire to create any more. Pete did want children, however, and it was plain that Myka had capitulated to his wishes. A decision made in love, Helena was sure. But it still felt like a betrayal of everything that Myka was, and Helena suddenly felt as if she understood how Myka felt, that day in Boone. Because Myka had known that Helena was hiding, was lying about who she was, and now here Myka was, doing the same while Helena watched helplessly. (She had almost, following their little announcement, asked them if they smelled fudge. It seemed more likely to Helena that an artefact would have caused Myka to want children than that she had simply changed her mind because of her love for Pete. Steve had caught Helena's eye that day, seeing the incredulous look on her face, and shook his head almost imperceptibly. So she smoothed her face, plastered a smile on it and wished them every happiness. Then she went to her room and cried herself to sleep silently.)
Helena worked hard in the service of the Warehouse, and smelled apples almost all the time she spent within its walls. The Regents had talked about adding her to their ranks, and it was to be discussed at some sort of annual general meeting later in the year. Helena thought she might be rather more likely to end up as the new Artie, in the new Warehouse. A position that Myka might once have filled, before her more recent revelations about raising a brood of Bering-Lattimer children. Helena would go wherever the Warehouse went, simply because she had nowhere else to go. She had no-one. It was a bitter pill to swallow, to have come to this time and to have nothing to show for it.
It had been eight months since her return, and this most recent case was a puzzle that she and Myka were working on together. Something was causing people to disappear in Scotland, near the site of the Lockerbie air crash. There was an unusual component to it – all of the disappeared, before their disappearances, had begun to speak an archaic form of Gaelic before wandering off, never to be seen again. Since Helena was the only person in the Warehouse with even a smattering of Gaelic, she and Myka had been sent off to investigate. Myka was, as usual, perfectly prepared and knowledgeable about the area, which had been the location of an infamous plane crash in 1988. The plane was blown up in a terrorist attack. Myka had encyclopaedic knowledge of the crash of course, just in case it was related to the artefact, and she had read all of the police and witness reports concerning the disappearances. On the flight on the way over, she had entertained Helena with a recounting of the Battle of Dryfe Sands that occurred in 1593 close to Lockerbie. The conversation had ended quickly, however, when Helena suggested timidly that perhaps they might do some sight-seeing once the case was over. Myka's face, so animated when she was talking about the clan battles of the 16th century in this part of Scotland, had smoothed and become that hateful blank that Helena so despised and deserved.
"I think I'd rather get back home. Pete will be missing me."
"Of course," Helena had murmured, her blunt fingernails digging into her palms so hard that she drew blood in a line of perfect crescents. The remainder of their flight was silent. Helena feigned sleep, leaning as far away from Myka as she reasonably could. Myka remained oblivious, reading and making notes for the last three hours of the flight. The scratch of her pen against the paper of her notepad was both soothing and irritating. That she could be so oblivious, could be so happy – it hurt, it stung Helena deeply, but she knew she was deserving of such dismissal. She had turned her back on even a friendship with Myka, the person who she desired more fiercely than any other in the world – the person who she needed more than any other – so she had no cause to complain about Myka's lack of interest in any sort of a relationship with her.
Their investigation was not going well. Two more people – children, this time - had disappeared since their arrival here in Lockerbie. The people were close-mouthed, uninterested in discussing the disappearances with Sassenachs. People in this area had long memories, and Helena's accent in particular offended some of them greatly. The fact that the referendum for Scottish independence had failed recently had increased anti-English sentiment somewhat, and she had caught more than a few mutters and filthy looks directed her way. She had been tempted to try her Emily Lake accent again to avoid any further difficulties, but Myka's look of amused derision when she suggested it had headed that one off rather quickly. (Surely it hadn't been that bad?)
Helena sighed. They were ensconced in a bed and breakfast on the high street and it was obvious that they weren't going to get anywhere for the rest of the day. A storm was heading in from the Irish Sea and the owner, Mrs Carruthers, had advised them to stay indoors for now, as storms in the area could be a little fierce for outsiders. Helena watched as Myka calmly settled herself on the chair at the room's only desk with her laptop. She was soon typing at speed, probably emailing Claudia or Abigail or chatting with Pete on one of those live chat applications that Claudia had taught Helena about. Helena's head was buzzing with ideas and theories about what kind of an artefact could have caused the disappearances, but Myka was clearly not in the mood for conversation – or at least not with Helena. Helena picked up her coat and muttered something about clearing her head as she left. Myka's head barely lifted, and she waved a hand dismissively, continuing to type with the other. As Helena turned the collar of her trench coat up against the damp air, she thought that she deserved that wave just as much as she deserved every other dismissal she'd endured at Myka's hands over this last eight months. She made herself sick with it all, the guilt, the self-flagellation, and her yearning for the opportunity she'd thrown away. She told herself that it was perhaps time to move on and try to embrace her new life at the Warehouse. There were people in the world other than Myka Bering, and perhaps one of them could be someone who could make Helena happy, the way that Pete made Myka happy. It was a thought to hold on to as she reeled from the gut shot that was Myka's airy, preoccupied wave.
She walked through some of the back streets until concrete gave way to neatly trimmed lawn and then the rough grasses of the Scottish countryside. She pulled her coat more tightly around her as the chill in the air grew more pronounced. The change in the air pressure was tangible – it was clear that this storm was going to be severe. She welcomed it – any chance to feel cleansed right now would be wonderful. She wondered if Myka would notice if she came back drenched. Probably not, she reasoned. Her partner for this investigation was focused intently on her future with Pete and the Bering-Lattimer babies. Helena felt herself grimace and walked more quickly across fields, climbing over small fences and becoming more and more lost by the second. She couldn't possibly have cared less.
A short time later she found herself on the banks of a Loch – Castle Loch, if she remembered correctly from her quick perusal of a map on the plane. She spotted the ruins of the castle nearby –she couldn't remember the name. Myka would, she thought bitterly. She decided that the ruins were as good a place as any to wait out the storm. Perhaps when she returned Myka would be asleep and she wouldn't have to bear the weight of the woman's relentless indifference. She found a convenient section of wall to sit on and hummed a tune as she watched the waves on the Loch swell with the rising wind. Had she listened to herself instead of obsessing over Myka, she might have noticed that her half-sung, half-whispered words were not in English, but in Gaelic.