A/N: I don't own Warehouse 13 nor the characters. This is a little drabble that's been hanging out on my hard drive - just train of thought musing on an interesting pairing.
Claudia had a crush, and it was pretty bad. Pretty stupid. It didn't really make sense, either. She was all for sexual equality – really, who was she to deny anyone who they wanted? – but she just… Well… Hadn't ever figured herself for the questioning kind.
But she undeniably had a crush, and it sucked. It'd snuck up on her pretty quickly, too, like sucky things tended to do.
She couldn't quite tell when it had exactly happened, of course, but the seeds had definitely been sewn as she sat in her bed of ice cubes, combusting. H.G. Wells had leant over her, tenderly administering the foul tasting antidote, her face full of concern. Through the fear and pain and uncomfortable muscle shifting, Claudia had focused on H.G.'s dark eyes, her furrowed brow, soothing voice… And that had been that.
At first she figured it was some kind of misplaced hero worship, like her brain was trying to wrap around the murderer saving her. But after H.G. was reinstated as a Warehouse agent, it became pretty clear that her pounding heart and shaking hands weren't solely out of fear – at least not the afraid for her life kind. When the Englishwoman asked her if she was nervous, Claudia knew she had no idea the full extent of her emotion.
And Claudia was a coward. She buried herself in memories of Todd, ashamed that as soon as he had left she'd found someone to replace him in her thoughts. When that tight-chested-light-headed feeling around H.G. continued cropping up, Claudia'd put it down as transference; heck, H.G. was a gorgeous woman, and so mysterious. Not the exact kind of mysterious Todd had when she was trying to figure out if he was trying kill her or infiltrate the Warehouse, and though the Witness Protection Program and mobsters had a definite taste of danger around them, H.G.'s mystery was dangerous and scary and epic and intriguing and… Dare she say it? Sexy.
In a 'I tracked down and seriously maimed or tortured or killed the men who killed my daughter' kind of way. And that should have mortified her and put her off, but Claudia was realistic. Though she hated gray area, it seemed to cling around H.G. Avenging her daughter's murder? It was brutal and harsh and creepy… But it was also Victorian justice. It wasn't like she hadn't thought about killing Artie if he hadn't been willing to help her get her brother back.
She'd pushed that thought down, of course, denied its existence – even in her worst days in the asylum. But to be uber truthful, she'd had those dark thoughts. Family was family, and the parent-child bond…? Claudia didn't care if H.G. thought the men experienced the worst pain, because she knew it wasn't true. Over 110 years later, the woman was still suffering.
But Claudia was getting ahead of herself.
She had the crush, fine. She could finally admit that. And that was okay. She could live with it. She knew nothing would come of it, nothing could come of it.
But…
It still hurt when she realized Myka and H.G. were falling for each other.