A little post-4x15 introspection one-shot. This is my contribution to the mass group therapy session Myka/HG shippers find ourselves in the midst of *group hug* Title and excerpts from Pablo Neruda's 'Sonnet XVII' and 'And Because Love Battles', and A.E. Housman's "He Would Not Stay For Me, And Who's To Wonder'
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved, / in secret, between the shadow and the soul. / I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. / I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride; / so I love you because I know no other way
She says 'fight for him' because even though every fibre of her being is screaming at her to hold on, to fight for this aching, broken woman in front of her, Myka knows that this battle is already lost. She knew it from the moment she saw Adelaide's face at the door and realised that in those long, painful months since Sykes and the astrolabe and HG's abrupt departure, while she had been learning to sit with the familiar, bittersweet sentimentality that the other woman's absence caused, Helena herself had found a way to fill the void that Myka had been floundering in.
She knew, when Helena spoke about feeling like she belonged for the first time, that she was lost to her - that Helena had moved herself beyond the constant pull of silent forces that had kept them orbiting each other all these years. This Emily Lake, moreso even than her previous, memoryless incarnation, was a stranger to Myka. It is cold comfort now as they embrace each other for, somehow, the first time, to think that maybe she is also a stranger to herself. That maybe, somewhere underneath this mutual self-sacrifice for the other's happiness, her Helena still lives, still cares for her, still harbours that careless, quick grin that sets Myka aflame. In the midst of this awful, gut-twisting awkwardness, she holds on to the sliver of hope that tells her somewhere behind this facade (she can't think of it as anything else) is the woman who charmed and fought and clawed and smirked her way into Myka's heart.
It is cold comfort, but she clings to it all the same. On the drive back, all the way through Pete's alternating sympathetic silences and attempts at reassuring humour, she thinks about the Bronze sector, about a cold and frozen figure whose heart still beats underneath.
And good, this danger / is danger of love, of complete love / for all life, / for all lives, / and if this love brings us / the death and the prisons, / I am sure that your big eyes, / as when I kiss them, / will then close with pride.
She says 'you will never lose this friend' because the weight of what she wants to say is so enormous, so crushing, so beyond the scope of anything she knows how to express that to even consider it makes her world tilt in unexpected directions. Helena considers it one of life's great ironies that she who has always relied so heavily on words, used them as both weapons and tools, swords and ploughshares, should find that words fail her every time when it comes to Myka.
There is no way she can make the other woman understand that yes, she was right when she accused Helena of latching onto these two equally damaged souls as a salve of sorts for all she had lost; she was wrong though, in thinking that it was an effort to reclaim some last vestige of her dead daughter. Helena wraps Nate and Adelaide around her, not as a shield but as a reminder. This is safe, this is normal. Losing this will not break you.
After Christina, after the fact of her death gouged all the love right out of Helena's heart, she was convinced that no-one and nothing could ever touch her that deeply again. There were people who mattered to her, work that she took pleasure and solace in but she was certain that she would never again feel so intently, or love with a passion tinged with wild, desperate fear at the prospect of losing that love. For a century she believed that, and then Myka Bering pulled Helena's gun to her own head and proved her wrong.
Helena has always put stock in that old Delphic motto 'know thyself'. She knows that years in Bronze with only her own fragmented, pain-filled thoughts for company have scarred her. She knows the rage and anger that flare up occasionally are a worry to those around her, and a potential danger to many more. She knows what she is capable of.
When she lost her daughter she tried to reset the world. If she were to risk admitting what it is she feels for Myka, if she were to try and name this thing between them, if she were to risk her heart again only to have it rebroken... Helena thinks that this time she would tear the world down to watch it burn, and salt the earth afterwards.
As she watches the car drive away she remembers two things, never far from her thoughts. The first is the look in Myka's eyes as she was being lead away from the Warehouse in handcuffs. She remembers the heart-rending look of hurt and anger and guilt, and the sickening realisation that she had put it there. The second is the promise she made to herself in that moment, that she would never again cause Myka that sort of pain.
She knows that all of her talk about Nate and cookery class and 'trying something new' had hurt Myka. She tells herself that it was the kindest way to do so, that it was a cushioned blow compared to what could happen if she were to lose control of herself again. So instead of risking the untold damage that she knows she could cause in Myka's life, she wraps her arms around herself to stave off the ache of letting her go, and sends her heart away with her, back to Univille and the Warehouse and the prospect of endless wonder.
Behind her lies the house that she has made a home, the people that she has made a family, the life that she had almost, until a prisoner's body had shifted under her hands, convinced herself was the one she wanted. She will turn now and walk back in, and they will welcome her with open arms and easy hearts, and she will pour a glass of wine and talk things through with Nate, get them back on track again. It all waits for her, just feet away.
She stands in the garden for a long while.
He would not stay for me, and who can wonder? / He would not stay for me to stand and gaze. / I shook his hand, and tore my heart in sunder, / And went with half my life about my ways.