Helena traces the delicate network of veins along the back of Myka's hand. It's the subtle rise of blue against fragile skin, like ink trailing down parchment, that prompts her to start speaking. It surprises Pete, who is also at Myka's bedside, but he recognizes that Helena isn't addressing him, and remains silent; it is never the time for jokes anymore.
She talks about herself, freely offering Myka all the things she deserved to hear at the start, but Helena was too angry, too broken, too afraid to share. That Pete is inadvertently given that same gift is no longer a deterrent.
Helena begins with perhaps the most essential part of herself.
She is a writer. From the time when she was a child, she's been bursting at the seams with stories to tell - invisible diseases that devoured the heart, fantastical machines that led men from dreams to ruin, elusive animals that held proof of other realms in their crafty paws, webs of lies made tangible and irresistible to its victims, and the vital moment when a person recognizes her own humanity in the context of someone else's hands.
Few listen to her tales - Charles, who would listen to humor her (he only begins to take serious note when her writing matures), and Helena's Aunt Agatha, a woman who unashamedly encourages her niece to: "Write what you wish to know and then, make it so." Helena takes her eccentric aunt's advice when the storytelling becomes so compulsive that she has no choice but to write them down - to save what she is sure someone, someday will treasure. Helena pauses when those words catch in her throat. She's seen Myka's bookshelf. Myka owns almost every novel Helena ever published, each book possessing a worn, faded spine and well-thumbed pages.
She does not understand the latter part of Agatha's little rhyme, at least not until the Warehouse enters her life and cracks open every skeptical thought in her brain. Every possibility and all the wonders of the world lie waiting before her hungry eyes, the tools with which to create (and later, to destroy). Her stories, from then on, take on a decidedly concrete air. Helena knows the world has very few limits, and her readers will know it, too.
After Christina is born, the stories are delayed to the publishing house, but they never stop; they are delivered gently to Christina's sensitive newborn ears, Helena's soft mutterings ushering the child to a peaceful slumber. Many a story is conceived in the dead of night when the child is unable to sleep without the warm presence of her mother and the soothing rhythm of her words. One day, Helena vows, she will write a series of stories centered around a bright, curious little girl who will have the most marvelous experiences. Oh, the adventures she and her little girl will have… In Nate's attic, there is a hidden sheaf of papers outlining the start of Christina's storybook adventures. Adelaide found them once, and asked whether the story was based on her. Helena lied, said she was keeping them for a writer friend, and hid the papers as soon as Adelaide left for school.
After Christina dies - is murdered - Helena finds she cannot write anything but letters. The letters are stories, too, in a way.
"Dear Christina," they always start and, "With Love, Mother," they always end. What is in between is forever shifting like the tides, raging and soothing by turns. She writes to a daughter who will never know the wonders - and horrors - of the world. Would it have been better if Christina had known? Would it have changed anything at all? The endless "what-if's" are answered in various forms on the countless tear-stained pages.
When it occurs to Helena to change the past, an insanity grips her entire being - save for the letters she writes to Christina. The letters serve as a reminders to Helena that life is made of just as many impossibilities and unerring boundaries as it is made of possibilities. Regardless, she is barely tethered to reality, as evidenced by the stripes of blood she accidentally smudges on the letter she writes to Christina the night she takes back her daughter's spilt blood tenfold. That letter is burnt immediately after it is written, and Helena spends the early hours of morning scrubbing her hands raw in a basin of muddied water. Helena's voice, through it all, is steady and unnervingly flat. Pete hunches down in his seat, eyes trained on Myka's still face. He does not want to see the monster sharing Myka's nighttime vigil.
The bronzing is meant to be both punishment and atonement, but she is not yet ready to let go of her hate, and the gesture goes to waste. She convinces herself that the glorious future world in which she wakes up will be punishment enough - what great future could the world possibly hold if it does not contain her darling Christina?
She does not count on remaining conscious during her time encased in bronze. To pass the oozing of time, she creates worlds in her mind. They are no different than the ones she crafts on paper; she tells herself this when she's stuck in the maze of fantasy that is her own creation. Despite the expertly-crafted reality of her created worlds, she is unable - unwilling. rather - to form a fake Christina. Christina was already too true a lie, and there is a limit to Helena's suspension of disbelief.
In the end, the bronzing does nothing but exacerbate the madness that had spawned from Christina's untimely death.
The first time she holds a pen in her hand after she is released from her bronze prison, Helena is overcome by the urge to recreate the countless long (and short) lives she lived in her mind on paper. After one too many failed attempts to release the nib from the plastic casing, she takes apart the utensil in a fury. Ink stains her fingers, smudging the paper in dark blue prints, and she remembers. The Warehouse, an imagined entity in her mind, rages against the unharnessed madness in Helena.
Meeting the Warehouse again - officially, with Myka beaming at her and Artie glaring distrustfully at her back - is nothing short of confusing. When she first steps foot in the Warehouse as a reinstated agent, she is surprised to feel a sense of tentative welcome. There is no scent of apples in the air - she did not expect it - but she feels the familiarity of the Warehouse and is soothed by its acceptance, cautious though it is. Isn't it aware of what she's become? Helena takes this lack of hostility as a twisted sort of permission to follow through with the plans taking shape in her mind. At night, she stays awake through the muffled snores through the wall and the quiet clanging of pots and pans in the kitchen, and makes those plans as concrete as she can without revealing them on paper.
The betrayed, disbelieving look on Myka's face when Helena reveals her plans is enough to birth a dozen tragedies. Helena has made enough mistakes to know that Myka does not deserve the agony of experiencing even one. And Helena is unable to continue. The things she said when Myka confronted her as she lived her imaginary life as she had while bronzed..
"I'm sorry. I was the catalyst - the destructive force in your," Helena's gaze cuts to Pete, quietly extending her apology to him and the absent members of the Warehouse, "life. And who is to say, Myka, that I was not responsible for this as well? A lifetime of creation, only to be marked by—"
"Didn't I tell you to stop that?" Both Pete and Helena jolt to their feet, eyes locked on the weak smile curving Myka's lips, their holds tightening on Myka's hands. The sound of Myka's voice, brittle with disuse, is a balm to two aching souls. "One day, you'll see that I'll always be right when it comes to you."
Helena lifts Myka's hand to her lips and gratefully murmurs, "Righty-ho, then, darling," through a trembling kiss.
Pete snorts, but combined with the tears running down his face, it quickly turns into a sniffle. "What is it with you two and timing, geez Louise!"
It's weak and downright pathetic for a Pete-joke, but it is a joke. And it has Myka wheezing with exhausted, breathy laughter and Helena is turning a familiar smirk on him, and Pete thinks, it's the time for jokes and laughter and love again, even as the nurse bursting into the room is berating them for overexciting the patient.
And so begins another story.