"We're not doing this anymore."
The words came quietly. Pleading. Raw. The pain in the younger agent's voice caused the other woman to wince inwardly. Her face, impossible to read, was further obscured by the shadows cast by the poplar tree visible from the bay window. It trembled wildly in the wind as violent gusts threatened to expose it bare. Shadow leaves danced across her face. She clutched at her locket to ground herself as she felt a chill sweeping across her body.
The storm battled outside while the air between them disappeared entirely. Myka felt faint but steeled her heart to continue in the face of the eerie silence almost palpably emanating from Helena. She steeled her heart to continue. Her right hand clenched and unclenched. The words came slowly. With hurt. With resolve. Each word delivered up like a prayer. "We need to talk about it. We never talked about it."
The mute woman before her, veiled in flickers of darkness ran fingers through her hair, still clutching her locket with her other hand. She nodded, unable to find her voice.
Myka leaned against the 19th century Rosewood writing table, palms clutching the edges, ghosting the crescents of her pale knuckles. "I need to say something. Some things I'm not sure you want to hear." Her voice dropped again in confession. Just then a memory flitted across her forehead and her words grew sure. She continued in the dark, dark silence.
She faltered, hesitation and resolve warring for supremacy. But something about the way Helena was holding herself, something about her demeanor flashed back to that day in Boone, the two of them standing in Nate's kitchen. "I—I remember what happened. What happened the first time. Before Artie-"
Goosebumps appeared at the nape of Helena's neck. Still she did not speak. She hardly breathed. The sounds of the chaos outside invaded the front room. Torrential rain was hammering the double-glazed windows as one of the tree's branches grazed the house repeatedly. Firetrucks sped past and a not too distant ambulance followed.
"Four months ago when Pete and I were in Edinburgh investigating an artifact we thought had something to do with the former psychiatric hospital at Craiglockhart, I accidentally came in contact with it. With the artifact in a second hand bookstore…it was a copy of an edition of The Hydra…"
She waved her hand as if dismissing the detail she was offering…"featuring one of Seigfried Sassoon's poems." She took a deep breath.
"It essentially causes a form of PTSD. Takes your mind back to the most traumatic moment of your life and keeps you there, lost there in panic-"
The woman's bright eyes were glimmering with unshed tears-
"It was- Well it wasn't the moment I lost Sam." She said more to herself as if she was just realizing it for the first time.
"It was when Sykes." She paused again curling her lips into a tight line before exhaling.
"Helena, I remember the Warehouse being destroyed. I remember everything."
Myka's lips quivered as she said, "You."
"I remember you."
"Dying." She whispered.
"I- I can't stop remembering it."
"Myka…" Helena breathed her name. The other woman shook her head as if to preempt an interruption. Curls bounced with the motion and the other woman's heart did a similar turn at the sight of her distress. She longed to breach the distance between them. To cross ten feet and bridge the gulf that had separated them since that day. One admittedly of her own fashioning.
Myka hugged herself momentarily and after taking a deep breath continued.
"When you called me I had only recently stopped suffering from the after-effects. Even after the artifact was neutralized, that day would haunt my dreams. I relived your death night after night after night-." She fell silent as her voice started to break. Grasping the desk tighter, holding on as if her very life depended on it lest she be swept away by an unseen current.
"Abigail was helping me come to terms with it. She helped me hold on to you by not focusing on what happened…but why. Because I did remember that."
"I remembered why."
"You died to save me." It was wonderment and it was gratitude and it was reverence.
"You said it was the only thing you could think to save me. You saved the Warehouse, everything, all of us…for me."
Her words resonated with awe afresh. Her bright eyes growing brighter with that truth.
"In that moment I was important to you. To you…brilliant, beautiful you. In that moment, for you." She shook her head in disbelief. "I was the most important thing in the world."
A small mirthless laugh escaped her as she said the next words."And then you called. And then Boone."
And Helena's heart if she had any awareness as to where it had plummeted, if she could venture a guess felt stripped from her and tossed into some bottomless pit. She had not known then, had not known that Boone would be the site of her greatest crime.
"You were gone for so long. And then you undid everything."
Myka wiped stray tears from her cheeks, "You were cruel that day."
For the first time since she started speaking Myka looked Helena in the eyes. The shadows had stilled and the street lamp illuminated the woman's face. No longer attempting to hide the pain written there, the younger woman saw the effects of her words having chipped away at the Time-Traveller's well-constructed veneer of impassivity.
"Not deliberately. But you were. You negated everything. Everything we'd been through."
"You said that for the first time you felt like you belonged…"
Still incredulous, Myka looked utterly bewildered as she recounted Helena's words back to her. "How could you say that?"
"How could you just—?"
"When you looked at me with those blank eyes, those flippant words-"
"When you looked at me it was like none of it was true. Everything we'd been through together. Like we'd never been a team, never been family—"
"Like it wasn't true that I had seen you looking at me with-with a look of such love and peace and happiness that you had saved me."
"In Boone, none of that was true."
Myka's words would not be contained. Her words came harder, angry, confused, bitter and oh so naked. So totally naked. She looked out the window, staring absently at the shivering poplar tree, frail leaves adorning the window pane now instead.
Her voice when it came back to her was tiny and forlorn, "I'm sorry I pushed you. You had your reasons for running away." She shrugged. "For wanting to get away. But I was too wrapped up in losing you all over again. Only this time without the comfort of knowing why. Or being able to hold onto some bigger truth."
She nodded to herself like she understood. Emphasizing that she had understood.
"Because for you it never happened."
"You were never in that moment. You never saved the Warehouse, the world…any of it. And certainly not for me."
"You never faced that moment where you lo-loved me so much that you would-"
Her tears were now flowing without restraint.
"I'm sorry," she said again when she could speak. "I needed to tell you. To finally say it."
"I realized too late I guess."
"That I loved you. Was in love with you."
"Always in love with you." She said it again but quiet.
"And now I have nothing to hold on to."
"There was a timeline where you loved me too." Her shoulders shook as she struggled to breathe through the tears.
"The rest…none of it is true…"
"Except for me it is. Because I'm still in love with you." Myka's tears would not be contained as she struggled to breathe.
"I don't know how I'm supposed to let go of you." She dug her palms into her eyes, as if trying to obliterate the vision of such a future.
"Myka-" Helena closed the ten feet between them. She closed the gap between them and placed her hands tenderly on either side of the woman's tear-stained face after gently lowering Myka's hands. Wiping her tears away while caressing her cheeks. Myka in turn reached up to grasp Helena's thin wrists in her hands. Crescent moons ghosting into knuckles.
"Please don't. Please it's ok. It's hard for me to wrap my head around it.
But it's the truth and I have to face it. I just. I just needed you to hear it.
Selfish or not, I needed you to know."
"I'm sorry…" She collapsed into sobs that wracked her body. Helena held her. Moved her into herself. Holding her tightly. Her own tears drenching the crown of Myka's head. Wetting much loved curls.
Helena kissed the top of her head, kissed her forehead and drew the younger woman's face up to meet hers. The saddest smile tugging at her lips as she used the back of her sleeve to wipe Myka's nose. And then softly kissed her nose, once, twice, three times before placing a featherlight kiss on still quivering lips.
"Myka."
Helena dipped into another kiss before pulling away so she could look fully into the other's eyes.
"Now you listen to me. Listen carefully Darling."
"Myka, do I have your full attention?" She nodded. Her green eyes bright and glistening and wide. She nodded again. Helena's lips eased into a smile at the intensity of the woman's gaze, rapt, she had her full attention.
"Myka, I love you. I am in love with you. Always."
"I'm ever so sorry Darling that I caused you to doubt it. To doubt yourself."
Can this be true? The words escaped Myka's lips as if in prayer.
"It is true. It is our truth. You my love are terribly important to me. The most important thing." Helena's heart returned to her as she felt Myka exhale, as her breathing settled, as she breathed her in. Her heart returned to her chest the warmth flooding back as she settled between Myka's thighs and pulled her into a kiss. This time parting her lips and seeking more. When they finally came up for air. Helena worshipped Myka's face with light kisses. Her nose, her eyelids, her cheeks, her forehead, her temple, her lips. "I love you. I will always be in love with you."
"I had only thought to protect you. To spare you by trying to let you go. It might have been misjudged and foolish. Impossible even but it wasn't because I didn't love you. I always have Myka."
"Never doubt that."
"Do you understand?"
Myka shook her head, tempestuous curls flicking side to side.
Helena laughed softly, "No?"
"Then I must explain more thoroughly, mustn't I Darling?"
Myka blushed profusely, her hot skin warming the hands that still cupped her face. Biting her bottom lip, the younger woman slowly nodded yes.