Disclaimer: I don't own anything.
AN: A super-late fill for a prompt given by the fabulous Journaliar. My goal was to write a song inspired by "Sleeping Sickness" by City and Colour. I think I kind of did that? Things got weird. Oh well.
She spends the first night in Big Timber, Montana because she is fatigued from driving and it feels a safe enough distance away. The hotel is just off the highway right outside of town, she selects it because it's a name she recognizes. She hopes that through choosing a chain, she will be able to retain some degree of anonymity, but the attendant is intrigued by her accent, asks too many questions.
Helena is too exhausted for artful evasions; she fumbles her way through some fiction about a sick relative and almost sighs aloud in relief when she's presented her room key.
"Do you need any help with your luggage, miss?" the attendant calls to her retreating back.
She has the astrolabe, locked in an artifact-proof case, tucked into a pocket on the inside of her coat. She can feel the press of it against her breast if she inhales deeply, so she measures her breaths carefully. She has a cellular phone, given to her by Mrs. Frederic, to keep her near to the Regents, no matter how far she might roam.
She has no country, the England of Victoria is now a novelty, a distant memory, a subject of lectures and textbooks.
She has no family. Charles, her dear Christina, there is nothing left of them but a deception of history and her own breathtakingly inadequate memory.
She has nothing.
"Miss?" the attendant prompts her again, shaking her from her reverie.
"No," she answers after a moment, smiling tersely over her shoulder. "I have everything I need, for the moment."
Another fiction.
x.x.x
The second night, she stays in Boise.
Modern cities are terrible things.
It's not the noise she's unused to, or the constant rush of people. London, even in her own time, made a moderately sized city like Boise seem positively diminutive. She's quite at home amidst bustle and squalor, has always preferred the honesty of desperate men to the careful fabrications of the privileged and complacent.
It was the utter foreignness of modern cities that unnerves her. Lights everywhere, advertisements plastered on every surface, the constant rush of traffic, everything bright, everything flashing, even in the deepest hours of night.
Helena turns away from the window of her hotel room and draws the blinds. She feels her heartbeat slow as darkness overtakes the room, feels the tension in her shoulders drain uneasily from the muscles of her shoulders.
Solitude and darkness are all that are left to her, here in exile.
She crosses the room slowly, bare feet leaden and clumsy, weighed down by sorrow, numbed by the cold. She sits down on the edge of the bed and opens the case of the astrolabe on her lap almost before she knows what she's doing.
A simple thing, mostly unadorned.
With this, Artie changed the world.
With this...
Her fingers itch, and she closes the case, places it in the drawer of the bedside table and lays back on the bed, fights to catch her breath.
It's true, she knows, that the Warehouse is safer without her.
Temptation sings in her blood, whizzes across her eyelids as they drift shut. And with each seductive, terrible thought, comes the sickening wave of realization; that she is a traitor, in her bones. That she fails them, even now. That each and every time, she will fail them.
Mrs. Frederic knew this. The Regents knew this.
In the dark of a hotel room in Idaho, alone with no one left to pretend for, Helena knows this too.
x.x.x
The third night, she wakes alone in a Colorado Springs hotel, gasping, choking, vision blurred with tears.
The sensation of drowning is overwhelming. Her lungs rattle as she takes hasty gulps of air, instinct alone moving her body upright, as her foggy mind clings to the remnants of her dream.
The tears intensify as the dream flees her mind. She keens pathetically, fingers rubbing the tears from her eyes, as if restoring her sight would also restore the dream to her.
All she has are fragments. Myka's face, her voice, the brilliance of her laugh, the warmth of her skin. And then emptiness, cold, the rush of waves.
It was a mistake to come here.
But on the morning of the second day in exile, without a word from the Regents, she had been unable to resist. She left Boise early, drove 12 hours to the place where Myka grew up. It was a foolish thing to do, and selfish, but she was always weak where Myka was concerned.
She visited the bookstore. She chatted pleasantly with Myka's parents, and when Mrs. Bering asked if she was alright, Helena brushed away the wetness in her eyes and commented on the dreadfulness of chronic allergies. She solicited their suggestions for a hotel and rented a room.
And then, naked under the pounding spray of the hotel showerhead, she fell to pieces and wept like she hadn't since the death of her daughter.
As her breathing returned to normal, Helena brushed the final tears of frustration from her eyes and rose from the bed on shaky legs.
She rinses her face in the adjoined water closet, fighting back a wave of instinctual terror at the sensation of cold water over her mouth and nose. She flicked on the overhead light, wincing at the sudden brightness, but childish fears of nightmares had no place in the harsh light of the waking world.
The bed is cold and uninviting, and despite the ache of exhaustion, she resolves not to remand herself to its sheets.
It's a difficult place to be: unwilling to sleep for fear of the dreams lurking in her subconscious, yet terrified of the thoughts of her waking mind.
She pulls a chair in front of the wide window on the north facing wall, and draws back the curtains, resolving to watch the city until sunrise.
Exposure therapy, the Regents had called it, the practice of facing one's fears until they were overcome. She had heard the term along with many others while she had been in their care, before they settled on the Janus Coin as her punishment. Prior to deciding on imprisonment, the notion of rehabilitation had been considered. She thinks they were wise to forgo it, then.
She gazes out at the sea of lights and movement, feeling the familiar sting of anxiety, the mounting pressure against her sternum and anxiety swept through her.
Out there, murderers walked free. The poor starved in the streets, wasted away in illness, while the wealthy stole their futures saw themselves rewarded. War, murder, poverty, rape. So little had changed.
But there were crisis centers, there were charities, there were good things. There was beauty. She now lived in a world where a woman like Myka could achieve her full potential, could live a life of fulfillment and agency. Not every woman, but some of them. A world where stunning medical breakthroughs gave new hope to people who would have been doomed in her time. A world where art could be created and shared with millions in an instant. There were wonders that existed beyond her wildest imaginings. Progress had been made, not nearly enough, but progress overall.
It will do.
It will have to do.
x.x.x
On the third morning, the phone chirps on the table in front of her.
Her throat seizes up and her chest tightens as she pushes a plate of pancakes away, tossing money down for the tip and answering the phone as she slides out of the bright red diner booth..
"Hello?" her voice is steady, even though her body trembles slightly.
"Agent Wells," Mrs. Frederic's tone is businesslike, but not unkind. "Are you ready to serve the Warehouse?"
"Yes," Helena answers without hesitation, reaching up and pressing a palm to the faint outline of the astrolabe's case through her coat. "Yes."