1
She puzzled over the shadows darkening the driveway. The ones which reminded her of the measured goodbyes said only moments before. The embrace with Myka had been difficult considering the weight of the words unspoken between them. She had only made things worse by using the word friend and she knew it. Why had she said it? It sounded silly now in retrospect. Not silly, pathetic. But how could she communicate the bond that had formed instantly on their first meeting and only proved inescapable since then? Impossible. That bond pulled her towards the Warehouse and its devotees like a magnet at the most inopportune times. And the result was always the same. Afterwards she always felt as if she had been ripped away from the only person who had ever truly understood her…sometimes by the regents, more often by the vagaries of fate.
The Victorian shifted her weight and leaned against the granite counter of the kitchen which he had bragged so about in cooking class. Her feelings for him certainly seemed insignificant in light of her encounter in the driveway. Yes, he was a solid citizen who prized family and, most of all, his daughter. They had that in common, she supposed. Nate had welcomed her into his home and been unfailingly kind, recognizing the lost soul in her and gravitating towards it, like to like. Her very thoughts betrayed his generosity. And even if she had mentally packed her bags a thousand times, there was Adelaide to consider. Being in the company of the precocious girl was akin to normalcy for her and normal was her watchword…a talisman with which to drive away evil spirits.
Myka had all but begged her. Make this your home, she said. And why shouldn't she? The warehouse had taken so much of her vitality—so much of her intellect. Was it so wrong to want something beyond the reach of the regents? She doubted that she could make a go of it anywhere if not in Boone. It was the kind of iconic American small town where you could still raise a family-a good place to grow up-a good place to take karate lessons.
Helena looked down at the cuticles she had begun to worry with the dull paring knife. Emily Lake urged her to give up the thoughts of Myka in the driveway. But it wasn't Emily standing in the kitchen fantasizing about the tall brunette with the eidetic memory-fantasizing about the smell of Myka. It couldn't have been her shampoo. Helena still wasn't convinced that such things were an improvement over the regimens of her own time. Was it her perfume? She doubted the agent even wore a scent. Too practical by half, Myka would doubtless be the type to prefer her father's shaving lotion. Saddle soap. That's what Myka would have smelled of in her own time, thought Helena. And this made her all the more maddeningly desirable.
She could imagine that the agent was the type to pack so lightly that even Pete was stunned by her economy. Who was she supposed to be impressing anyway? Perhaps a kit bag and a single change for the trip to Boone. After all, her suit was her armor and there was no need to change one's armor every day. It protected her from unwanted attention and advances while allowing her the freedom of movement to save the world, but it was purely a practical consideration.
Helena allowed herself to evoke the form under the armor briefly, strong and lithe and decidedly female. The Englishwoman congratulated herself on recognizing the right moment to clasp Myka to her before the grappling hook had done its work and lifted the two of them off the ground. Granted, she had paid for it dearly and spent a full week concealing her nearly dislocated shoulder before redesigning the handle to ease the load on her next time. In the unlikely event that there was a next time. It was the first time she had held the brunette close to her and she found that once was merely a tantalizing prelude. Despite the role reversal demanded by that scenario, Myka remained her knight in shining armor, protective and understanding at a time when she herself was practically unhinged. But Helena had seen Myka without the armor. Granted, she had been holding a gun to the agent's forehead at the time…but of what concern was that?
Helena was lost in the reverie of those particular thoughts when the doorbell rang.
Nate had fled, excusing himself on the pretense of taking Adelaide to his mother's, offering no assurances of his return. It was past eleven. Her senses were awake to the possibilities, but they were so easily dismissed. Myka could not have returned, with or without her partner. No doubt they were presently boarding a twin engine back to the Dakotas even as the thought entered her mind. The doorbell rang again, with no more insistence than if a delivery were being announced by the UPS man.
Helena walked quickly to the front door, expecting that she would open it to find a sullen Nate standing outside, begging to be admitted to his own home, all apologies for failing to perceive something that he could never have imagined, much less foreseen. But when she opened the door and began to speak, it wasn't to Nate as she had supposed. The agent on the other side had the uneasy look of someone unsure of the reason they had waited so long on the doorstep. Myka Bering's eyes were suddenly dark with tamped down anger and when the Warehouse agent stepped over the threshold, Helena was forced to withdraw into the home she had just hours ago shared with her new family.
The tall brunette jabbed her index finger into Helena as she drove the smaller woman backwards and demanded, "Is that it?"
"Is what it?" responded the shorter woman in confusion.
"Goddammit you know what I am talking about, Helena. Don't play stupid with me," Myka all but shouted, her disheveled countenance closer to her prey than ever before.
"I am so tired of this—this thing—this thing we do. We don't talk about it. We say goodbye and I drive away and you…you don't stop me. Why don't you stop me?"
Helena felt herself being driven into a corner, physically and conversationally, and could only sputter as she attempted to hold off the red-faced, gesticulating agent. Myka was raging like a bacchante, steering Helena to the wall of the same kitchen she had so recently been musing in. When she felt the counter behind her, she grabbed Myka's offending digit with her left hand and threw out her right to stop the agent's advance.
"Myka, stop…I'm sorry but I can't do this. I can't do this with you."
Her attacker appeared shell shocked and blinked back what looked like tears to the trained observer's eyes. "With me? What do you mean you can't do this with me? But you can do it with him…with Nate, or whatever his name is."
Myka knew very well what his name was and searched Helena's eyes for some evidence that her jealous accusation had hit its mark.
"Why can't you do this with me? Tell me, Helena." Myka was pleading now.
In an instant, it was clear to Helena that the agent in front of her was wholly ignorant of the Victorian's thinly veiled feelings for her. It was her turn to be stunned. Could it be that Myka was so oblivious? So unaware of what even casual observers easily detected? Helena refused to believe it.
She had to know.
The sparks between them were visible from space, for god's sake. Even so, she felt an uncontrollable need to say it out loud, and it came out as a simple whisper, barely reaching the Warehouse agent's ear.
"Because I'm in love with you, my dear Myka."