The story of H.G. Wells, before and after the bronze. It will be canon-compliant through the end of season 4 (with liberties taken for the Victorian timeline because that's not even canon-compliant with itself) and then jossed all to hell by season 5, because in my universes HG always gets Myka. Yes, she will in this one, too, but it'll take awhile to get there.
This one's for hermitstull.
I got it making flowers grow in hearts of stone
I got it 'cause I always took the long way home.
/
It's Sunday afternoon, and a young man is standing in the entryway of the Bethlem Hospital.
The trip from his flat in South Kensington to the hospital in Southwark has taken him a half-day by horse-tram and Hansom cab.
"Can I help you, sir?" asks the nurse behind the glass.
The man nervously smooths his hair into place with one hand, and lifts his satchel higher on his shoulder with the other. He steps closer to the counter.
"Yes, please. I'm here to—to see, to visit, ah, uhm, I do believe that my… my…" He trails off.
The nurse tilts her head to the side and smiles, not unkindly. "Your…?"
"My sister," he says, looking down. "I believe she has, er, been given residence here."
The man swallows and shifts his satchel again. It's full of things he knows she likes. A small chess set (his chess set, which he never uses; never cared for the game). A needlepoint cushion, embroidered by their mother with an image of a rabbit and a flower. A crisp red apple. And books—three of them, physics and biology texts and journals from his previous term's courses at the university.
The nurse opens the patient registry on the desk in front of her. "Your sister's name, please, sir?"
/
Fifteen minutes later, the man is following a different nurse through long, grey corridors. He holds an apple in one hand and a needlepoint cushion in the other.
"Is she your younger sister, then?" the nurse asks.
Charles chuckles nervously. "Only by about ten minutes," he says.
"You're twins?" the nurse glances back over her shoulder at him. "How unusual!"
"Indeed," Charles shrugs.
Eventually, the nurse turns a corner and leads him through a doorway into a sprawling, manicured garden. Men and women in simple, grey clothing walk slowly along garden paths, accompanied by nurses. Charles spots one man near the far hedge, conversing vigorously with an invisible companion; another runs his hand shamelessly over his own body, seemingly unaware of the company around him. Two women grasp hands and jump up and down, shrieking and giggling like schoolchildren.
"Is my sister quite safe here, with all of these… people…" he waves his hand vaguely toward the yard.
"Oh yes, sir," the nurse says. She points to a large man in a dark uniform who strolls through the yard alone. "We have several guards who supervise the patients during their time out-of-doors. They intervene at the slightest hint of anything untoward. Now, as for your sister…"
"There," he says, pointing. "By that flowerbed, kneeling down."
"There she is indeed, sir."
He wants to run across the garden to her, but propriety indicates that he must follow the nurse. And since lack of propriety is probably the reason they've found themselves in this mess… well. He won't have the doctor thinking it runs in the family.
So he follows the nurse down the path to the garden bed where his sister kneels, puzzling intently over a rose blossom, plucked and held up to the light. Her head cocks a little to the side.
"It's fascinating," she says, without looking up, as they approach. "I never noticed that the flowers of roses have both stamen and pistil. I wonder if that means they can pollinate themselves? Surely this has been researched. If you could help me gain access to the appropriate publications…"
For the first time all day, the man feels able to exhale fully.
"Helena," he says.
Her head snaps up and to the side, and as soon as she lays eyes on him she smiles broadly and stands.
"Charles," she says, pulling him into a warm hug. "I'm sorry, I thought you were a nurse."
As Helena steps back, Charles' chaperone reaches for her hand and gently unwraps it from the stem of the rose she had plucked.
"Now, now, Miss Wells," she says, "We mustn't pick the flowers. We must leave them for everyone to enjoy. And these have thorns that are quite prickly, we wouldn't want to scratch ourselves!"
Charles watches the moment of shine fade from Helena's eyes. "Indeed we wouldn't," she says.
/
After the nurse has excused herself, Charles and Helena stroll slowly through the yard. No sooner has Charles handed Helena the apple than she bites into it, the juice running down her fingers.
"The food here is terrible," she says. "Tough meat and soggy vegetables."
"How long must you stay, Helena?" Charles asks.
Helena shrugs. "Until they consider me cured, I suppose."
"Cured… cured of what? Who on earth would be mad enough to think you belonged in bloody Bedlam?"
Helena pauses, waits for her brother to turn and face her.
"Do you know what's become of Tina?" she asks quietly, almost timidly.
Charles furrows his eyebrows. "Tina? You mean Christina Taylor?" he asks.
Helena nods.
Charles tips his head to the side. "Funny you should ask," he says. "In the same letter where Papa told me you were here, he told me that the Taylors have made plans to move to Manchester, to live with Mrs. Taylor's brother."
Helena's eyes are fixed on the grass. When she looks up again, her eyes are wet, glistening, tears threatening to fall. She sniffs.
"Helena," Charles says. Gently, he grips her shoulder and guides her to a nearby bench. "What's the matter?"
"Goodness, I'm sorry, Charles, but have you a handkerchief? We aren't permitted to carry them in here."
He pats around his jacket until he finds it and hands it to her; she dabs at her nose and the corners of her eyes. "Thank you."
"What's wrong, Helena?" Charles asks, again.
She glances up at him, then looks back down at where she's wringing his handkerchief in her lap. "Papa didn't tell you, then."
"I… apparently not? Tell me what?"
"Tina and me, we were… caught. By her father."
"Caught?"
"Caught. In her bedroom. Together."
Charles blinks once. Twice. Then his head falls forward into his upturned hands, elbows resting on his knees.
"Oh, Helena," he says. "You didn't."
"I didn't what?" she asks loudly, defensively, before catching herself and glancing around furtively. She leans forward and continues in a harsh whisper: "I didn't fall in love with a wonderful girl? I didn't kiss her? I didn't wish, desperately, that I might have been a man, that I could marry her and work every day to give her the life she deserved? Because I did all of those things, and for the life of me, brother, I can't determine why any of it was wrong."
But Charles is shaking his head, and finally he lifts it from his hands and looks at her. "You were caught," he says. "I wish you hadn't gotten caught."
Helena sits up straighter; sighs. She clutches her mother's cushion to her chest. "Me, too," she says.
/
Charles returns to the doctor's office to pick up his satchel on his way out of the hospital.
"I'm glad you've come to visit," Dr. Austin says. "Women with Helena's condition benefit from the presence of strong male figures in their lives."
Charles nods. "I'll come again, sir. As often as I can make the trip."
"Good, good. I'm terribly sorry I couldn't let you bring her those gifts. It's imperative that Helena's focus and energy be diverted to calming, feminine pastimes. Excessive attention to masculine intellectual and scholarly activities is almost undoubtedly part of the reason why she developed her, eh, deviancy."
Charles bites the inside of his cheek. "Yes, sir," he says, as he hoists the bag to his shoulder, still heavy with the weight of the books and the chess set.
"Items like the embroidered cushion are perfect. They will remind her of the security of the home, and the influence of a maternal figure."
"Yes, sir," Charles repeats, and then excuses himself from the office before the rage can drive him to pierce his own skin with his teeth.
/
"She threw a bit of a tantrum last evening," the nurse says, as she leads him through the corridors a fortnight later. "We've given her a sedative. Nothing too serious; Dr. Austin prescribed a light opiate. So if she seems somewhat… unlike herself? That's why."
Distantly, Charles hears a cry; a hoarse, masculine voice.
"Here we are, then," the nurse says. "She's in the common room this afternoon."
Helena sits in a rocking chair near the corner. Behind her, the window overlooks the palatial gardens, empty now in the grey and the drizzle. She rocks slowly, pushing with her toes against the tile, gaze fixed somewhere on the floor.
Charles thanks the nurse, then picks up a chair from an unoccupied card table and places it opposite Helena. Helena jumps a little when the wood clacks loudly against the tile, and then looks up and watches him as he sits.
"Charles," she says. Her eyebrows come together as though she's just remembered something, and her lips pull slowly outward across her cheeks. It looks vaguely like a smile, Charles thinks. Like she's trying to smile for him. "How marvelous to see you," she says.
"Yes, Helena." He swallows and glances to the side, and back again. "It's lovely to see you too. I, er…" He reaches into the pocket of his jacket. "I brought you another apple," he says. It's a green one, a little bruised from the journey but still shiny. He holds it out to her and she eyes it warily for a moment.
"Here," Charles says. He reaches over, picks up her hand where it rests on her lap, and presses the apple to her palm. After a moment's hesitation, she wraps her fingers around it.
"Thank you, Charles," she says. "You're so kind to me." She contemplates the shine on the green skin for a moment, and then slowly, almost as an afterthought, brings it to her lips.
Charles leans forward and rests his elbows on his knees. "I have some news, Helena. I thought you might like to hear it."
All of Helena's movements are slow, Charles realizes, as though she's pressing through water. Like a drifting boat, she turns to face him. "What is it?"
"Do you remember when I was home for Christmas, that night we stayed up late talking by the hearth?" Charles asks. Helena's face is not responsive. She takes another bite of her apple.
Charles looks at her with what he hopes is an eager expression. "You were blathering on, as you do, about—a connection between time and space? Some kind of… continuum? Am I remembering that correctly?"
Helena glances heavenward, recollecting, as she chews and swallows. She tilts her head to the side. "I do remember that conversation," she says. "You were bored with it, until I managed to reframe my theories into a story of sorts. A narrative. And then, of course, you were suddenly rapt."
"It was a marvelous story, Helena! I'd never heard the likes of it. Travelling in time! And, well, that's what I wanted to talk to you about."
Charles pulls a folded magazine from the inside pocket of his jacket. He hands it to Helena, who accepts it without reaction.
"Look at the cover, Helena."
She unfolds it with one hand, the other carefully holding her apple core, and her eyes move slowly down the page, until—
"But Charles, I didn't write this." Her fingers linger over the headline near the bottom of the page.
Short Fiction: The Chronic Argonauts, by H.G. Wells.
"It's your story, Helena," Charles says. "I was merely the scribe."
Slowly, Helena opens the magazine and turns the pages one at a time until she finds it. Charles watches her eyes, watches the pupils dilate and then narrow, watches her gaze skip haphazardly about the page.
"May I keep this?" she asks, finally. "I'm afraid I can't… I can't seem to focus on the words right now, but perhaps tomorrow...?"
Charles thinks of Dr. Austin, and says, "I don't think that's a good idea."
Helena closes the magazine and holds it out to him. "Perhaps you're right."
Charles takes the magazine before he can think consciously about his actions, and rolls it nervously between his hands. Helena's forearms have come to rest on the arms of the chair, hands dangling limp from the wrist, an apple core held loosely between her fingers.
"I would love to hear about your studies," Helena says, quietly. " I have so many questions. But I can't think of any of them, right now. I find myself so very… tired."
Charles makes a decision, and opens the magazine on his lap. "Shall I read the story to you?"
She turns her head, slides her gaze into his, and for a moment, just for a flash, he can see Helena looking out at him, through the haze of the sedative. "That would be wonderful. Thank you."
Charles sits up straighter and takes a breath. "About half-a-mile outside the village of Llyddwdd by the road that goes up over the eastern flank of the mountain called Pen-y-pwll to Rwstog is a large farm-building known as the Manse.…"
H.G. Wells sits tall and stiff in the back seat of the car, a blanket wrapped around her head.
She looks like some kind of Bedouin rider bundled against a sandstorm, James thinks.
"You can lie down across the bench, if you like," he says. "It's perfectly safe."
She doesn't move.
"My name is James," he says. "James McPherson. I'm hoping we can become great associates."
She doesn't respond.
He gives up on talking; it won't do to have her becoming frustrated with him at this early stage of their partnership. As he turns onto the interstate he switches on the radio, fiddles with the knob until he finds a classical station. He recognizes the aria; it's from Tosca.
A few seconds later, something moves in his rear-view mirror. He glances back to see Wells shifting, leaning over to rest against the doorframe.
Progress, he thinks.
There's a brief stretch along the drive where they pull out of range of that classical station and are not in range of another; he fiddles with the dial again and finds news. A mortar shell has erupted in the Afghan village of Sangin, killing fifty residents, including many children.
He shakes his head. "Do you hear this?" he asks, tentatively. "Destroying itself, humanity is. But together, we'll acquire the means to stop it. And we'll make ourselves rich in the process."
Behind him, H.G. Wells doesn't move.
As they drive closer to Minneapolis, McPherson fiddles with the dial again and finds another classical station. In the rearview, Wells sags deeper against the door as the melancholy strains of O Sole Mio fill the car in Pavarotti's rich tenor.
Their journey ends, finally, at a low-rent motel near the airport at Minneapolis-St. Paul. James turns off the car and lets it settle, for a moment, into silence.
"Wait here," he says. "I'll go and check us in, and then I'll come and fetch you."
She doesn't respond. He has stopped expecting that she might.
When he returns from the check-in desk, he starts the car again and drives it around the side of the building to a parking spot near the external stairway closest to their room.
"You'll want to sit up now," he says, "or you'll fall when I open the door."
In the first evidence that she's listening to him, and that she can respond, she sits up straighter. McPherson retrieves his overnight bag from the trunk. When he opens Wells's door, he does so slowly, one arm extended to catch her if she falls. She doesn't, though, so he reaches forward until he can touch her shoulder.
"Please forgive my familiarity," he says; "I imagine it's awfully untoward, by the standards you're used to. But I hope you can tolerate it awhile longer, since we have to keep your eyes protected from the light until tomorrow."
She does not respond, but she does follow his hand as he guides her slowly out of the vehicle. He leads her up the steps with an arm around the shoulders, and then guides her to the battered chair near the desk in the room.
With the door closed, the sliver of light coming through the blinds from the open-air walkway outside is all that illuminates the space.
"I'm going to uncover your head," he says. "I think it's dark enough for your eyes, but keep them closed, just to be safe."
He doesn't expect an answer, so he finds the edge of the blanket and begins to lift.
She is, he's surprised to note, quite beautiful. Extraordinarily so, in fact. He saw her bronzed form, of course, but somehow it didn't capture the height of her cheekbones, the angle of her jaw. Or, of course, her complexion: black hair, fair skin, the opposite of his wife but so differently stunning. Her hair is knotted into a chignon, and he thinks he would have been a happier man living in Victorian England if all women wore such beautifully tailored attire.
He shakes his head. She's likely young enough to be his daughter. By some measures of age, at least. He laughs inwardly. Still, he would do well enough to remember that.
"All right," he says. "Let's have a go at opening your eyes."
He sees her take a deep breath, her lips coming to rest slightly apart, and then slowly she raises her lids. She blinks once, twice, and dark, expressionless eyes slide up toward his face.
"Hello, Miss Wells," he says. "Welcome to the year 2010."
/
He instructs her on the use of the toilet and the faucets, and then hands her a bag of clothing he had Leena order based on measurements she took of Helena's bronzed form.
"These are for relaxation and sleeping," he says, pulling a t-shirt and a pair of long cotton trousers from the bag.
She emerges from the bathroom with her blanket still wrapped around her shoulders, her leather shoes peeking out from beneath the pyjama pants.
Oh, hell, MacPherson thinks, of course I forgot to have her order shoes.
"There we are," he says. "You must surely be more comfortable like that."
Wells tugs the blanket tighter around her shoulders, pulling it together at her throat as a modest woman might clutch at the neckline of her shirt. For a moment, her mouth opens and closes, like a fish's.
"I'm quite hungry," she says, finally, her voice raspy from disuse. She swallows. "How does one go about acquiring food in 2010?"
MacPherson smiles broadly. "I'm famished myself. Come, there's an extensive assortment of delivery menus here. I'm sure we can find something to suit your nineteenth-century palate."
They order sandwiches from an Italian deli and James unwraps them on the room's small table. H.G. picks hers up and eyes it for a moment, the mayonnaise seeping out along a leaf of lettuce, and then takes a cautious bite from one corner. She chews once, twice, carefully, as though he's asked her to take a bite of an insect instead of a meal, but as she swallows he sees her eyes flutter upward in a moment of orgiastic pleasure. She takes another, much larger bite and sets the sandwich back down on the paper and then extends her hands before her, flexing and fisting them, watching them move.
"This is real," she breathes after swallowing, almost too soft to hear.
"Pardon me?"
"I'm truly here," she says, louder this time. She looks up and meets his eyes in the shadows. "I'm truly free of the bronze."
MacPherson's eyebrows come together. "Well, yes?"
"Forgive me." H.G. watches her hands open and close once more. "After so many years—goodness, a century—in one's own mind, occupied by nothing but one's own thoughts and hallucinations, it becomes difficult to trust one's senses."
"I know," MacPherson says. "I was bronzed, too. Not as long as you were, but…" he shrugs and takes another bite of his dinner. Sure, he was bronzed for a scarce few minutes, but there's nothing wrong with a little lie by omission in the interest of a greater good. He's making her feel she has a friend in this new century. That's all it is.
H.G. eyes him sidelong from under knit brows. "You're not a regent, then."
MacPherson inhales sharply to laugh and promptly chokes on his food; H.G. eyes him impassively as he coughs and sputters.
"No," he says finally, "I am most certainly not a regent. Those old fools would have left you to rot another five centuries, I'm sure."
"You've freed me illicitly," she says. When he nods, she continues: "Have you done it, then? Have you found a way to reverse death?"
He does not know why she asks the question but it's clearly very important; something in her eyes is frantic, her pupils wide and the vein in her neck pounding wildly, her fist clenched so tightly her fingernails must be gouging into her palm.
"No," he says quietly. "I'm sorry. We haven't."
H.G.'s white-knuckled fist loosens and she looks down, but not fast enough to guard him from the fleeting look of despair.
"Why am I here, then?" she asks.
MacPherson swallows the remains of his sandwich and notices she has still only taken two bites of hers. "Please, enjoy your supper, and I'll tell you the whole story," he says.
Obligingly she lifts the sandwich to her lips and takes a bite. MacPherson leans back in his chair and begins to talk about the profits they could share if they could find and sell the Minoan Trident.
"I know you found a piece of it during your tenure at Warehouse 12," he says, "but it's never been shelved. I searched in your house in London—we're in America now, by the way—and never found it, so I thought I'd simply come straight to the source. And then, by our considerable combined wit, we can track down the remainder of the artifact and make ourselves very, very rich."
When MacPherson meets her eyes again, they are dark, her countenance stern. She chews slowly.
"We shall have to return to London, first," she says, "but not for the trident. There's something else I'll need." The fingernails of one hand scrape slowly across the skin of the base of her throat.
MacPherson grins. "Fortunately, my dear, I've already booked us on a flight tomorrow."
H.G.'s eyes widen. "A flight?"
MacPherson nods. "You have much to learn, and I'll do my best to teach you before we touch down at Heathrow. Just follow my lead."
H.G. is grinning now and she shakes her head, incredulous. "Flying machines," she said. "Tesla finally did it."
"I'm afraid it wasn't Tesla, my dear, but a pair of American brothers…"
Later that night, as he lays in one bed and hears H.G. breathing deeply in the other, he resolves to take great care around the woman and to eliminate her as soon as her usefulness has expired.
There's something off, something terribly sinister, about her, and he has no desire to find out the hard way what it is.
/
Myka and Pete have a short hop to Philadelphia before the transatlantic flight into Gatwick. Myka's tired—exhausted, really—after the insanity of the past few days, but she resolves to stay awake on the first leg of the flight so that she can sleep through the second.
To her right, Pete has his headphones plugged in and is watching the in-flight broadcast of Two and a Half Men.
Myka reaches into her bag and pulls out a book. The Warehouse's copy of this particular text was a hard-back, so she's thankful that she had her own paperback to carry, instead. What better way to try to work her way into the mind of H.G. Wells than to reread some of his fiction?
She settles back in her seat and peels back the well-worn cover. When all else fails, start at the beginning, and the beginning, in this case, is Wells's first published story, The Chronic Argonauts.
Eyes and ears open, Slim, she thinks, as she begins to read: "About half-a-mile outside the village of Llyddwdd by the road that goes up over the eastern flank of the mountain called Pen-y-pwll to Rwstog is a large farm-building known as the Manse.…"