Helena stepped out into the night. Winter air from the north hit her in the face chilling her down to the bone. The cold was jolting to her senses, walking to get home against the wind. Helena's eyes were watering there was nothing to do but squint them tightly shut. To try and make it through the frigid air. As she walked, it made her feel like the day she was torn from the bronze by McPherson. It triggered something deep. A feeling that sent her mind racing back to the chaos. Flashes of everything that ensued from that moment and her fragile mental state. She hated how her emotions and mind betrayed her and how much it had cost her. She knew what she had been ready to do. Wreak havoc for what happened to Christina. She was better, but she had to wrestle against guilt which was at times like this blinding cold.
Helena grasped at her locket and seemed calm, as she felt a wave of panic overwhelm her.
"Just remember what Abigail told you to do, ground yourself, remember you have a normal life now," and Helena's least favorite piece of advice, "Buck up, You can do this."
She could feel her panic ease, as she steered her thoughts toward her work. The magnificent clock with all the gears.
"Thank God for the distractions of work." with a new resolve Helena continued to walk into the acid, cold wind.
Helena was thankful the regents provided her with a cover that established her business. She was working custom designs; mostly, steampunk and Victorian, the work came in steady. She also talked to Abigail Cho regularly; they both felt she had shown progress. Being a designer and engineer, allowed for whatever missteps might be made to be passed over. People were willing to assume artistic eccentricity if she slipped. No one seemed to question her. Not Giselle or Cheevers, the man she hired to help with her business endeavors.
It was isolation again, different from the bronze. Helena could not share her real life with anyone.
Out of a doorway, a man in disheveled clothes stepped toward her. Helena felt adrenaline course through her body, and her heart pounded. All the while her calm facade never caved.
"Do you have a dollar?" He reached his dirty hand toward her.
He reeked of cheap alcohol and body odor.
She looked around quickly and when she felt it was not a trap she gave him a dollar. Then pulled her long coat around her tighter. The streets of New York reminded her of London of old. It was a comfort an illusion of familiarity. As she rounded the corner, she saw Giselle's building just up ahead.
There were throngs of commuters walking home from work. In the distance a woman appeared curly brown hair, slender, all legs and for a brief second she would have sworn it was Myka. Helena's heart skipped a beat and a smile formed on her lips.
"Myka!" She breathed in.
She stopped and kept looking. In an instant, all the panic and ache fell away. Then the woman turned around, and she saw it was not Myka. Helena clasped her locket and started walking again, but she entertained what if it had been Myka.
The longer Helena had been away, the crueler the words Mrs. F. told her the day she left the Warehouse became. She had gone with the Astrolabe never thinking it would be a life sentence. Abigail was right she wasn't protecting Myka. She had not been noble in Boone it was her old base instincts that always had saved her. So here she was again. Nothing would help her forget Myka and yet why would Myka have her back. She turned back facing the wind and walked towards Giselle's building clutching her locket.
TBC