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. :) Title and inspiration for the story are taken from Savage Garden's song of the same name.
A/N: This is what happens when I listen to too many sappy love songs and then sit in front of a Word doc. Also, most of this was written during a sleep-deprived haze so… ye be warned. ;) Song lyrics scattered throughout, hopefully meaningful moments written around them. Spoilers through season three.
I Knew I Loved You (Before I Met You)
Being bronzed was not unlike being buried alive. Stood inside an upright coffin formed from your own mind, immobile but aware in the same way one is aware that they are dreaming. A lucid dream, a lucid existence; the conclusion of her life.
The bronze was as cold and hard as her heart, that much she did remember. She does not remember what it is like to breathe, or blink, or even move her fingers. She does not remember the feel of her tools in her hands, the way metal and wire would mould and become something new under her ministrations. She does not remember the rush of adrenaline that always accompanied an invention's first trial run.
She remembers her daughter, her Christina. She remembers her exuberant and infectious laughter and the way her small frame would cuddle close in her embrace after a bad dream. She remembers the faces of her murderers and how they'd screamed their vocal cords raw in the days after she'd found them. She remembers how warm their blood had felt on her hands.
Time became irrelevant, almost non-existent in its ambiguity and she no longer recalls what it feels like to notice its passing, to notice anything at all. The days turn to weeks and those in turn to months around her, and she does not notice. She does not notice the changing of the scenery around her, nor does she notice the faces of those that wander into and out of the Bronze Sector of Warehouse 13.
Until she came. At first alone, and then alongside other faceless humanoid blurs, trailing light into Helena's darkness; that is her name, she remembers that now too. She'd lost it somewhere along the way. The woman, for Helena does not, cannot, know her name, reminds Helena that she is deserving of a name, that she is human. The realisation spreads the ghost of warmth through her frozen form; the memory of what true warmth had once felt like. She cannot feel her heart beat, but for an instant, she believes she does. And in seeing this woman, this apparition who has appeared before her like a ghost herself, Helena does not feel the world slow down as one who favours romance novels might expect. She has been still for so very long. Instead, everything is suddenly moving before eyes that do not blink but do sightlessly see all. And there is only the woman. And the notion that Helena sees her.
Maybe its intuition
But some things you just don't question
Like in your eyes
I see my future in an instant
And there it goes
I think I've found my best friend
Myka does not recall the exact moment at which it started, but memory of when she realised is as clear as the waters of Peyto Lake.
She remembers standing alone at one of the three bookshelves pressed against the two far walls of her room, running her fingers along the spines of the volumes until the pad of her thumb brushes against that of one she finds herself unable to move past. With a smile, she slides it from its position squeezed between two of its brothers and stares down at its hardback cover. She'd lost herself within the world painted so vividly with the words that filled the book so many times since she'd first read it. Books, the characters within them, they had been her closest friends. The kind that were unwavering in their loyalty. She was closer to these long dead visionaries than she had been with anyone during high school. Although, one of them is actually still very much alive, and Myka can't deny the bond that has formed there.
It doesn't happen until she registers what she's doing; standing in the middle of her room holding her slightly worn and battered copy of 'The Time Machine', fingers of her right hand slowly outlining the letters that are embossed at the bottom of the cover, those that make up the name of the person, the woman, the mind behind the story. Myka traces her name with a reverence that would have been breathtaking in its adoration to behold, had anyone been witness to it. However, the moment is a private one and for that she is grateful. Because when she realises the path her own mind has taken her thoughts along, entirely of its own violation, she can't quite catch the gasp that slips out. Her fingers still against her name and she stares at them, shocked by the way they seem desperate to continue their absent stroking; she can almost feel them tremble with the need.
It is not unlike the way her very soul reaches towards Helena whenever it sees them part. For whatever reason, trifling or vitally important, the reaction is a violent one. She has felt it and continues to do so, but the notion that she might deliberate over the reasoning's had not been one to strike her consciously until that moment in her bedroom, heart pounding within her chest and her grip turning slack upon the book in her hand.
She wonders when she'd first begun to envision what life with Helena beside her might be like. She wonders what that very first thought entailed; artifact retrieval, a second near-death escape by grappling hook, perhaps a discussion over Helena's impetus behind those novels released after her bronzing. She wonders if that thought, or any thoughts since, subconscious or otherwise, had seen Helena as anything other than a friend, to her and to the Warehouse. Myka doesn't think so.
And so, she cannot expect the sudden changes when they come.
I know that it might sound more than
A little crazy but I believe
I knew I loved you before I met you
I think I dreamed you into life
There are moments, sometimes at the Warehouse while they are working together, though Helena thinks the majority of them have taken place during those afternoons and evenings spent at Leena's in comfortable, easy conversation or a silence that is alike in its nature, where she wonders why Fate had seen it fit to tangle the threads of her life so thoroughly. Overlapping, knotting, and making it impossible to discern one from the other and giving a person the impression that the only way to solve the problem it had become was to cleave it in two.
On the very best of days, H.G. Wells finds herself at a crossroads consisting of two very distinct and very different paths that bears a sign post offering her a choice. On the worst, H.G. Wells cannot see the sign post, nor the crossroads itself, and all around her is a barren wasteland. And those moments spent with Myka, they are the parting of clouds to allow sunbeams through, casting light upon her shadowed mind. A soothing balm that eases the screaming of her soul.
But there is not supposed to be any light. There is not supposed to be silence within her. There is to be only rage and retribution, a darkness to descend upon a world that is undeserving of such light.
And yet sometimes, there is Myka.
Her radiance, her brilliance, her unwavering certainty. They sit and converse for what feels like days, endlessly pleasurable days still not long enough, over literature and life and all manner of things. Of love and loss, of her Christina and Myka's Sam, and the unbearable weight of grief. And sometimes, Helena wants to confess all. To prick her heart with the fatally sharp point of truth and spill her secrets as blood upon the floor. Because she cannot bear the thought of losing another.
But those moments are inevitably ones that pass and on this day Helena finds herself spilling different truths as Myka sits curled into an armchair across from her, book balanced against her thighs, finger twisting curls in an adorably absent fashion.
"I dreamed of you." Her voice startles the woman engrossed in her book, causing her hand to still and her vibrant green eyes to widen. Myka says nothing, waiting for the words to register, to sink in so that she might comprehend them. Helena sees it when she does. Sees the uncertain upward tug of Myka's lips and the slight tilt of a head crowned with curls as unruly as they are beautiful. She does not voice her question and Helena supposes that is because she knows she does not need to; Helena hears it anyway. "Though I must admit I'm not entirely certain it was a dream, I feel it must have been for I'm unable to find any other logic to it." Closing her book, Myka folds her hands atop it and allows her smile to finally flourish. It reminds Helena of the instance to which she is referring. "You know, I'm sure, that when one is bronzed they remain aware to a certain extent of their surroundings?" Myka nods. "It is not as one might imagine. It's akin, I feel, to a dream within a dream, in which you are aware that you are dreaming but that is the only detail you recall upon waking." Her breathtaking smile has faltered and for that, Helena is sorry. "When MacPherson roused me from by slumber, I at first only recalled those deeply rooted memories, those planted within me long before I chose to embark upon my own travel through time," and with that reference, a vestige of that smile returns. "But as I wondered through this new world, I felt a growing sense of emptiness that could not be linked to the causes I'd expected." She feels herself frown, her own mind turning traitor as it leads her back along shadowed paths she does not wish to walk at that moment, and she runs her fingers through her hair to swipe the thoughts away. "It was as though something of me, something I could not place, had been left behind in the dust of the Bronze Sector." She allows her dark eyes to scan the planes of Myka's face, searching for something she doesn't know the name of. "When I first saw you in London, I remembered." There is silence then. There is silence for what feels like a small eternity. It stretches between them until even it grows restless and uses hands unseen to jostle Myka where she sits.
"What did you remember?" And Myka's voice is barely above a whisper as speaks the words, uncurling her legs and stretching them down to the floor. Helena does not know if there are lingering effects connected to having your body flash-frozen for a century, but at that moment she fleetingly wonders whether or not the sudden rapid elevation of one's heartbeat might be among them.
"I remembered you." She is unsure which one of them the breath leaves, only knows that the gasp is one of surprise. She does not recall letting loose an unexpected exhalation, but Myka looks as if she has inexplicably forgotten the intricate workings that make up the ability of movement and speech. "In that immobile, dream-like state I saw you as the only clear image against a backdrop of distorted blurs." Her gaze is unfaltering upon Myka, it does not dart or flicker and remains set despite the incessant pull of the darkness within her, striving to tug her attention from the light. And Myka, she returns the gaze, all remnants of her smile giving way to a kind of surprised and uncertain comprehension. Helena wonders if it's that Myka is unsure of how to respond to her words or if she's unsure of what it is exactly she wants Helena's words to mean.
Helena knows, though she purposefully does not voice them in a way that would betray their true meaning. As much as the insistent tugging at her soul is urging her to, she cannot. It would do neither of them any good.
"I remembered those instances with such clarity and with such a sudden force when I saw you again in London that for a moment, I believe I was convinced I'd somehow dreamed you into life." Her words move Myka in a way that is imperceptible to the naked eye, but Helena feels it. She can feel the way they reach toward the other woman and try to coax her from her seat, try to bring her across the small divide between them and press them close together. But something holds Myka back, and all she can do is stare and smile at Helena as though someone just confessed a welcoming undying love for her.
Helena thinks it's for the best.
There's just no rhyme or reason
Only this sense of completion
And in your eyes
I see the missing pieces
I'm searching for
I think I've found my way home
Despite their intelligence, there are many things that do not make sense to either of them. There are things that, for the moment, are far beyond the reach of their comprehension.
For Myka, those things pull at her during her every waking moment and seek her out when she becomes lost in the depths of her dreams. She doesn't understand how this happened, how she didn't see the warning signs and how, looking back, she can't find any glaring indicators as to where this was going to end.
By the time they'd reached the main floor of Warehouse 2, all of those walls that Myka usually kept in place against the forces of friendship had crumbled under Helena's skillful demolition. She was vulnerable in a way she hadn't been in a very long time, and paid dearly for it.
Helena's deception, her betrayal, takes away far more than Myka should have ever allowed. It takes away Myka's home, her happiest place, it takes away the trust she has in herself and her decisions. It takes away her faith in people, in friendship. For a while, it turns her bitter and resentful, and she locks herself away in her past, among the familiar stacks and beneath the often heavy gaze of her parents. There are calls that urge her to come back, to return to that place that had once been somewhere filled with happy memories but that now held only those she wishes not to revisit. They hurt too much, and Myka doesn't understand.
And then, there is Helena. And Myka is so entirely unprepared for her and her words. Her presence, her expression; there's a tangibility to them all that leaves Myka feeling dazed when she learns that Helena isn't truly there at all.
Her presence remains with Myka regardless. And Myka doesn't understand that either.
But Helena's words reach her in ways no one else's have been able to, some things refuse to change, and the Warehouse remains foreboding only until she's back walking the aisles alongside her friends, her family. And she knows that this is where she belongs. But something is missing. And she knows what it is, but she can't make sense of it.
Because how can she miss someone who has hurt her so deeply? Who combed her soul and gathered her secrets and conveyed such a deep level of kinship to Myka that it blinded her so completely to the coming treachery? She'd never felt a bond like the one she'd shared with Helena and as such had never been victim to such a thorough betrayal.
How can Helena's projected image bring her such a sense of peace, of remembered completion? Because despite everything else, Helena had provided pieces that Myka hadn't realised were missing in her life.
And Myka doesn't understand that either. She can't make sense of these things, the way the ghost of their friendship haunts her. Not yet.
For Helena, it's different. That sense of completion that has clung to her since the very first time she'd been made aware of Myka had made its meaning known to her at the very beginning. She is not unaccustomed to having such feelings directed towards a woman, but this is the first time she's felt the pull so strongly. Even whilst plotting her revenge upon the world, it was there. Begging her to reconsider if only to save the woman she'd come to care for the pain that her actions would inevitably cause, but grief can make a person selfish, can turn them mad, and the moments during which Helena does not care or consider anything beyond the sating of her dark desires are enough to bring her plans to fruition. Though she would be destined to never complete them.
It seems as though Myka is her eternal undoing, even when Helena's form is non-corporeal and there are no lingering touches to fuel the flames. Flames that have no right to be stoked.
The memories of Yellowstone haunt her, whether she's alone in her empty prison or standing in a room of 'Bering and Son's, a mere suggestion of her former self. Myka presence is both a pleasure and a torment and though Helena knows her untrusting is just, that her own hand has inflicted these mortal wounds upon herself, there is no denying the want for things to be different.
She thinks, during moments when she is able to do so, that she would do anything to turn back the hands of time and change the events leading up to that fateful day. She had not been blind before, she'd understood what the ramifications of her actions would be, but the simple fact is that she'd not considered being alive to deal with them. Had Myka not been the person forcing a gun into her hand, Helena can't be certain she would still be living. If that was what you could call her current state of being.
But no good can come of impossible wishes and yet somehow she finds herself reunited with Myka once more and it seems as though time, to a certain extent, has healed some of the agent's wounds. There are moments reminiscent of that before time, when things were easy and meaningful between them. And words of the bond they'd shared and the longing for things to have been realised sooner are voiced, and when Helena is once more confined to her prison, thoughts of Myka that are not so terribly marred by sadness and distrust follow her. Lighting her darkness once more, and reminding her that the road home might not be entirely inaccessible.
A thousand angels dance around you
There is darkness and desolation, destruction all about them. Within them. The remnants of the Warehouse smoke and smoulder and crumble around their protective bubble, and air that is surprisingly cold rushes in once the remaining vestiges of danger dissipate.
There is a silent scream that howls amidst the debris and its gnarled and painfully frigid fingers claw at Myka's skin until they breach the surface and reach for her soul. It begs her to join it, to grab the darkness deep inside her and let it out with a scream of unbridled anger and grief. The temptation is overwhelming; to lose herself to despair, the blackness of it, to let her heartbreak spill that blackness into her veins until it consumes her.
There's a want to deny this, all of this, because she doesn't think she can cope with it. With all that has happened that day, the level of sacrifice she's just bore witness too. She can't live with the memory of Helena's face in those last few moments. She can't live with the knowledge those moments instilled her with.
And she rages against herself. Because there's so much of her that hurts and aches and wants desperately for Helena to be beside her, but there's also a part that realises that there is peace in death. Perhaps this is the only way Helena is able to achieve hers, be it by way of an endless and pleasantly dark and empty abyss, or by being reunited with her daughter.
Time passes, though she is only aware of it because she is told, and she's reminded of a conversation held an eternity ago in which Helena had explained how it felt to be a living corpse within the Bronze Sector. The memory fractures her already fragile state, and Myka withdraws further into the shadows that call to her. Their hands, though cold and frightening, sooth her. But her soul will not stop screaming.
I am complete now that I've found you
She is not ready for it when it comes. The sudden ability to feel again after being numb for so very long is a pain that reaches her on both physical and mental levels, and it almost cripples her. The only reason she does not crumble to the floor of the H.G. Wells Section is because Pete had anticipated it and is poised and ready to catch her as she sways. She does not faint, though for a second she swims in and out of consciousness, her eyes turning unfocused against the vision before her as if they're uncertain as to whether or not they'll survive it.
But her opinion of survival has been so incredibly redefined this day.
She grips Pete's forearm, her fingers feeling stiff and frozen as she gives him a reassuring squeeze, but he doesn't let go until she's moving away from him. She meets her halfway and they stop a foot or so away from one another, H.G. Well's Time Machine beside them as an oddly fitting spectator.
"Myka." Her name has never been spoken with such a quiet, breathless tone; it's as if the speaker is afraid that the very idea of speech will shatter this impossible illusion, but at the sound of it, Myka feels the dark bleakness that had taken firm root inside of her recede. Helena's presences brushes it away with nothing more than a brief wave of her hand, such is her command and ownership of Myka's soul and the moment cements the thought; for it is Helena's and Helena's alone. And it has been for far longer than Myka had previously realised. But Helena had known, had long ago given up her heart and soul to the other woman and Myka had never truly realised she held them in her grasp. Until now.
The revelation breaks down walls with an ease similar to that which Helena had shown during their initial friendship, and then there are quiet tears and the tentative touch of Myka's hand on Helena's cheek. There is warmth beneath her palm, there is life. Missing pieces that had been found and lost are found again, and there is an unimaginable completion in their finding.
And there is no need for words.
I knew I loved you before I met you
I think I dreamed you into life
I knew I loved you before I met you
I have been waiting all my life
There is a closeness that goes so very far beyond the physical press of one body to another. It stretches beyond the field of comprehension and into waters uncharted and unimagined. There's a connection that can never be broken, not now, not by anything that they might see in life or by the separation of death. They lie as one, wrapped in one another's embrace above the bedcovers, fully clothed and yet they are more naked than they have ever appeared before another person. Souls are bared before that first slip of skin, and the knowledge that there is time has finally eased that initial desperation, though their hands still move as they press ever closer. Souls and hearts striving to meet, to become one, unable to comprehend that they already have. And there is silence as they gaze at one another, committing every detail of the face they thought they'd never see again to memory. And then, Helena speaks.
"I dreamed of you." And Myka's eyes slide closed, a single tear escaping to traverse the smooth plane of her cheek. Helena's thumb catches it, brushing it away before it can reach its jumping point and Myka sighs at the touch, watery green eyes opening and stunning Helena with their brilliance. Her confession that she did not dream, that the incentive to do so had left with Helena, does not spill from her lips at that instance. It can wait.
They have time.