Disclaimer: I don't own Warehouse 13, etc. etc.

Bering and Wells are proving delightfully annoying lately and I cannot seem to get them out of my mind. Let me know what y'all think.

She isn't quite sure how she's come to be where she is, seated on this wooden bench in the middle of the park, her arms wrapped tightly around her torso. She wasn't aware of where she was going when she'd left the house that afternoon, knowing only that she needed to get out, get away from the shadows and the lingering whispers. When she blinks, it is almost a surprise that the grass, the trees waving their leaves softly above her head, the solidness of the wood beneath her, these sensations do not vanish. Things have a tendency to disappear in front of her these days, slipping away before she can fully capture them. Her hands have become weak and useless. She can no longer trust her senses, the smells and sounds and sights reaching her.

But not, today. Today, the chill bite of an early autumn wind does not turn into the stifling stillness of her empty house. Today, the shrill shrieks of children on the nearby playground do not fade away into half remembered chiming laughter or the crystalline voices of young girls in the backyard. Today, she blinks slowly, heavily, and the world swims blearily into focus just as it was a moment ago. Today she is present. She hates it.

She would much rather remain unaware, wrapped in her own mind, her own memories. But that place is also terrifying and dangerous, and she finds that her greatest desire while trapped there is to flee. But this: being aware, comes with its own heartaches. She wonders, idly, why her body has dragged her to this place, so near to the playground. Each call of young voices, each yelp of joy, pierces her skin, sliding easily and painfully inside her to cause her heart to shrink back in fear and agony.

"Mummy, watch!"

"I'm watching, darling." She waves lazily in the direction of the young girl, attention focused on the papers in her lap. She should have graded them the night before, but Christina insisted on three bedtime stories, and by the time the young girl's breathing had evened out, she'd found herself drifting off to sleep as well, lulled into oblivion by the warmth of the small, perfect body curled into her own.

"Did you see? Did you see me fly?" the seven year old is panting in excitement as she skids to a stop beside the blanket her mother is sitting on.

"I did," Helena pauses to beam up at the smiling face blocking the sun.

Christina grins at her, all cocky charm and self-confidence. Her mother can't help but give herself a rueful shake. The headstrong nature of her daughter will surely come back to bite her someday, when Christina is old enough to feel embarrassed of her mother as all teenagers eventually do. "Oh! There's, Paul!" and the young girl lifts an arm to wave wildly in the direction of a boy her own age. He shouts hullo and gestures for her to join him on the play structure. "May I?" she clasps her small hands together sweetly.

Helena laughs gaily. "Fifteen more minutes. Go on then," and she reaches out as though to give the child a good natured push towards her friend, but the lithe form has already danced away, racing down the hill with her arms flailing. The mother holds in the desire to shout after her reckless child, 'Be careful! You are not invincible, my darling.' But, she's just a girl. She'll learn soon enough. And for now, it is enough to know that if she does stumble and fall, she'll still allow her mother to run to her and pick her up, kissing away the ache of a bruised knee. For now, it is enough that she is as free as a bird. Caution will come later. So, instead, the brunette watches her daughter flying down the hill, arms pinwheeling, not a care in the world, and she smiles at the wondrous sight.

She hears the shouting of the children, and although she cannot see them, she feels the cracks in her heart tremble at the uninhibited noise. She should not have come here. She clenches her hand into a fist, not releasing until she feels her nails break the skin. The pain grounds her, allows her to focus on something other than the sounds echoing over the hill. She does not understand why she has come, why her feet have dragged her here while her thoughts were elsewhere. But she finds that she cannot leave. And she realizes that this is the third...fourth?...day in a row that she has taken a seat on this bench. She does not have the strength to stand and make her way back along the boisterous streets, full of sights, and sounds, and people going about their daily routines. People living. She feels her stomach physically clench at the thought of returning to the house that was once her home. That empty shell of a building, where memories hide under rugs, tripping her up unexpectedly, coming out of opened cupboard doors or forgotten books lying half-read in the library. She cannot stand that place.

The telltale sign of imminent tears arrives: a prickling at the edges of her vision, the horrible lump in her throat, the ever present ache in her chest grows until it feels as though gravity has suddenly increased its hold on her. She refuses to give in, staring unseeingly at some far off place until the prickling recedes. She does not cry. She has not cried. Not once. It is not normal, perhaps. But, she refuses to allow the tears to fall. Refuses to allow the salt water to meet the open air, instead letting it to trickle down, back inside her, filling up her heart and her lungs, until she's drowning from the inside out, silently painful, but much less messy. It's easier this way. She thinks it is. Or perhaps its that much more difficult. Either way, she refuses to allow the hurt in her chest to manifest itself in such a physical way. That would be giving in, something she will absolutely not do.

Instead, she counts her heartbeats and examines the patterns of spidery veins on the leaves at her feet. Instead, she studiously ignores the pounding feet on pavement which signal a runner or walker passing her by. Instead, she welcomes the solidity of the old wood she is resting upon. Instead of tears, she allows herself to indulge in memories of autumns long past.

The two year old is bundled up tightly, ladybug hat snuggled firmly down over her brown curls. Her cheeks are glowing in the late afternoon sunlight. It's nearly dusk, and perhaps they should be inside, having bath time and getting ready for bed, but she couldn't ignore the brisk autumn chill. It is officially fall: her favorite season, when the trees shed their leaves in reds and oranges, and the earth gets hard and cold in preparation for impending snow. When blankets pile up at the foot of the bed, and windows are cracked at night to let in the smell of frozen precipitation that tends to hang over the town like an old friend. Fall is the time of tea and lazy mornings, of pancakes and syrup. Fall is the ground holding its breath before the storm, waiting in anticipation for hibernation. Fall is pumpkins, chubby and round, and apples. Fall is perfect.

So she has layered her daughter in a warm coat and leggings, mittens, hat, scarf, and the black shiny tap shoes which the toddler refuses to take off. And they are outside, welcoming the change of seasons with open arms. She's scooped up a pile of the golden leaves under the old oak tree in the back corner of the lawn and Christina has been throwing herself into them with the uncoordinated delight possessed only by those still a bit wobbly on their legs.

"Spin, momma," she orders. Helena grabs the pudgy hands in her own, spinning them in circles, as the colors merge into a kaleidoscope of greens, yellows, and the purple of the sky in the periphery of her vision. Until they collapse, giggling and out of breath in the bed of fallen leaves. Christina clambers up to straddle her mother and, one hand now free of its woolen protection, she pokes the adult on the cheek. "Pretty," she giggles. Her new favorite word.

Helena does not know where she's learned it, perhaps at daycare. But, she repeats it back to the young child. "Pretty," she says softly, sweeping an errant lock of hair from her daughter's porcelain skin. "You're my pretty darling," and she wrestles the toddler back into her embrace, tickling the squirming, squealing two year old until they are both laughing in delight.

With a jolt, she is back in the park. The grass is turning brown. She'd never realized how dead everything looks in the fall. How dull it all grows. Stifling a shiver, she tucks her hands into the pocket of her old hoodie. The nights reach below freezing temperatures these days, and perhaps she ought to have dressed more appropriately, but she finds that it is a welcome discomfort. So she remains still.

Glancing up, she tracks the progress of a woman running along the path, iPod plugged in, her long strides eating up the pavement beneath her feet. And, there is a father jogging, a stroller pushed in front of him, the waving arms of an infant poking up over the side. She bites back the jealousy that rises in her gut, and turns away, shifting her focus in the other direction.

There she is. Its the same woman every day at exactly this time. She passes the stationary woman quickly, her gaze fixed straight ahead, unseeing. She does not listen to music while she runs, and Helena wonders what she is so completely focused on. She wonders what color the woman's eyes are, always looking so far away, so determined. The woman's raucously curly hair is pulled back, her back straight as she passes, her stride long and lean, but there is the hint there of barely controlled motion, as though gangly limbs are aching to fall out of place and move in all directions. It is a graceful, disassociated movement. There remains in her stride the hint of an awkward, fumbling girl, who grew into her body too quickly, and has yet to settle herself into the way her feet connect with the ground and the way she passes through the air. She finds that her entire concentration is focused on this woman, entranced by the way her body slides through the atmosphere, eyes drawn to the steady set of the shoulders, the heavy, inward gaze. She is fascinated, and has been for the past several days.

This woman provides a momentary distraction from her own inward thoughts. And Helena follows the stranger's trajectory, as one might a shooting star streaking across the heavens. Today, however, she does not escape unnoticed, because just as the runner is coming upon the bench, she kicks a small stone, and as it skitters out of her way, her concentration is shaken. She glances down, as though to reassure herself that she is in fact still in motion, and when she looks back up, she meets the watchful gaze of the woman on the bench.

Her eyes are green, Helena realizes. The green of sunlight through a blade of grass. The green of the moss creeping along the forgotten remnants of an old foundation in the middle of the forest. Green which makes one think of half-buried, growing things poking shyly out of the earth's brown skin.

A flash of green so brilliant it reminds Helena for a moment what singing used to sound like. Before.

Well.

Before.

A flash and then it's gone, but not before the woman, gives her a smile. Soft and fleeting, and she thinks that maybe she could smile back. Maybe. If she could only recall how. And then the green is gone, and with it, the remembrance of the warmth of spring, and the woman is gone, running on and on, forever onwards, past her, seated and unable to rise. She presses one hand to her chest, forcibly reminding herself of the feeling of her own body, her own flesh and the blood moving sluggishly beneath a thin veneer of control and calm.

She does not see the glance the runner throws over her shoulder one hundred yards later. She does not see the way the brunette stumbles, elbows askew, as she loses control of her body for a moment to look back. She does not see the wonder in those green eyes. The realization that this woman, seated on a bench, has been there before. She does not notice that the runner has suddenly deduced her emptiness, is now curious about the sadness that rolls off of her, unknowingly, in waves.

All she sees is a child, laughing in the green grass of the summertime.

"Mummy," there is awe in that tiny voice.

"Mmm?" she murmurs in response, the heat of the day making her sleepy.

"Mummy, I can hear it. I can hear it beating."

"Yes, darling."

"That's your heart," and a small head lifts to look at her mother seriously, brown eyes meeting twinkling brown.

"How's it sound, my love?"

"Strong."

"Well, that's a relief," she sighs into the sunshine.

Her daughter giggles and taps her on the chest. "Does my heart sound like that? Tha-thump. Tha-thump. Like that?"

"Well, let's see shall we?" The mother sits and rolls them, placing her ear delicately to the little chest beneath her. She waits several seconds, originally playing along, but finding herself actually listening. Reveling in the pulsing of her daughter's heart.

"How's it sound, mummy?"

"Strong," she whispers and then clears her throat. "Strong and steady, sweets," she grins broadly at her child, whose stomach takes that opportunity to growl loudly. "As does your tummy. Lunch time," she orders gaily, allowing the tiny human to pull her to her feet.

"Grilled cheese? Oh, please, please, please!"

She couldn't resist that look even if she so desired. "Grilled cheese it shall be. Lead on, fair one." Her heart beats in time to the smaller one as the child slips a hand innocently into her mother's firm grasp. "Lead on."

It is nearly dark before she forces herself to move, rising stiffly from the bench, whose wood now feels hard and unforgiving against her sore muscles. She shuffles off, thankful for the darkness cloaking her in its anonymity, for the way it spreads over everything, dampening the sounds of folks making their way home after a long day, of the cars on the street. She enjoys this time now. This hush. The droning hum of the earth settling into itself as night makes its way in, racing on the heels of a sedately setting sun. It helps to tune out the memories still attempting to force themselves onto her consciousness, still trying to make her feel. To hurt her.

She revels in the fading daylight. In the way everything about her begins to slow down, even as the earth never ceases in its endless rotation. As she exits the park, she looks over her shoulder, just able to make out the silhouette of the empty bench. She heaves a heavy sigh. Tomorrow. She'll be back tomorrow, no matter how hard she attempts to avoid it. This is the place she runs to. The place she returns to. It is both peaceful and hurtful, and she cannot stay away. But there is nowhere else to go, no place else to be, no place to sit, free from the pitying looks of those who know her, knew her. No where free from the words whispered around coffee mugs, the consoling pats on the shoulder that make her desire a scalding shower and a new, unfeeling skin. Tomorrow. Yes, she'll be back tomorrow.

She shuffles home. Although now it is simply a house that sits, windows glaring out into the empty street, with a forlorn porch swing swaying in some nonexistent breeze, and a few numbers on the door that proclaim that someone occupies its halls. Although occupation might be stretching it a bit far, she thinks ruefully, flipping the lock behind her and moving through the rooms without bothering to flip on a light. Occupying space suggests living, suggests breathing and feeling and seeing, none of which she consciously bothers with any longer. It's been months since she's actively considered the ramifications of what it means to take the title 'living' for herself, but she is quite certain that she no longer belongs in that category. Not since.

No. Not since then.

Now she is simply matter. Taking up space. With weight and mass. Although some days she even finds herself questioning that. On days when she feels lighter than air, floating above the floor, on those days she questions even the idea of her atomic structure. She is familiar with atoms, with molecules, how they work and associate. Once upon a time she might have been considered brilliant. But she no longer believes in the properties of matter, because the truth that it can be neither created nor destroyed is a lie. It is a lie. Because she is both created and destroyed on a daily basis. With every breath she continues to take she is both present and not, lighter than she might be on the moon, but buckling under the pressure of more than ten kilometers of salt water. And if it were true that matter could be neither created nor destroyed, if this wasn't just some foolish dream of scientists and people hoping for absolution and searching for peace, then that brown haired, brown eyed girl would still be curled up on the sofa, asleep in all her innocent perfection.

Therefore, it must be a lie. A wish fools tell themselves late at night under the cover of a million stars, but a fact she refutes with every beat of her heart and pulse of blue blood through her veins. Matter can be destroyed. If one is careless, fumbling. It is more delicate than one might imagine. And its permanence is fleeting. She knows that to be a truth more honest than any other. Nothing is immortal. Not even matter.

She glides on silent feet through the kitchen. There is food available, but the light from the fridge is harsh and intruding in the blackness of the house, and so she bypasses it. She strips unreservedly and slides naked between sheets, the cool white cotton accepting her skin as one might accept the bite of snow down one's jacket. It is not relief that she feels here. It is agony in its purest form. Because now, now that she is protected from the glare of the world, she prepares herself for the onslaught of emotion that accompanies the night, pulled to her aching heart as the moon pulls the waves upon the sand.

There is the pitter patter of size 4 feet on wooden floorboards which portends the slow opening of her bedroom door. "Bad dream?" she lets out softly and feels rather than sees her daughter's nod from across the room. "Come on then," and she pats the mattress, pulling back covers to give the small child entrance. She'd promised herself she wouldn't be the type of parent who allowed her child to sleep in her bed, but that had gone the way of most of her fervent parenting style promises. "Cold," she mutters at the feeling of icy toes on her warm leg. The little one doesn't respond, but wraps herself around her mother, grip surprisingly tight for one so small. "Shhhh," she soothes automatically, rubbing a hand along a small back, knowing better than to ask what the dream was about. Little minds don't work well this late at night.

She places a feather light kiss on messy curls, and holds her daughter tighter to her chest. After nightmares, her arms are transformed in order to become stronger than any armor and more powerful than dragons. Her chest is the softest pillow. Her voice the best lullaby. She did not recognize the power of a mother's body until her daughter cried for her after bad dreams. She did not realize that along with the title 'mummy' came the ability to banish bad guys and hold the evil forces at bay for years at a time. She was not prepared for the role of protector and fairy godmother rolled into one, and although it is terrifying to know that your child pictures you as home base and your arms as both her safety net and her kite string, it is also one of the most wonderful feelings in all the world.

To fall asleep with the heavy weight of a content, sleeping, safe child in your arms and to awaken just the same. To find bright eyes staring back at you, delighted simply that the sun has risen once more and the birds have come out to play and because, "It's Saturday, mummy! Cartoons!" To fall asleep whole and awaken fuller than before sits lightly upon the soul in all the right ways. So she presses her daughter to her chest gently, removing invading nightmares with one sweep of her fearsome paw, and welcoming the entrance of easy sleep and peaceful dreams, before falling once more into her own imaginative oblivion.

When she jerks awake, breathing hard, sheets now tangled around her legs, trapping her, the clock reads just past four, but there will be no more nightmares this night. She scrambles off the bed quickly, hating the way her skin is clammy and uncomfortable, and it is with practiced madness that she enters the shower when it is still freezing cold. The gasp that shudders throughout her entire body is a welcome reprieve from the images still clinging desperately to the edges of her mind, trailing out from sleep's fierce hold. But it is the pounding of the spray against her temples which reminds her that although those nightmares were once real, they are past terrors, and the now is here, with water sharper than knives and colder than ice. It is another day already, and although time seems to speed and slow at will, although sleep passes in an agony of seconds, this is a new day. She opens her eyes to stare at the white wall of the shower, but all she can see is red. It was red once. That day. No. She closes her eyes. Reopens them. White. Porcelain. That's better. Yes. The shower is white. Not red. Slowly, she turns the knob of the faucet until the water jetting from the nozzle is hot against her chilled skin, until she is burning beneath its downfall. But that is better than seeing the red. With the heat, she can focus on the white walls and hold them steady. White: a combination of all the colors of the visible spectrum. The walls of the shower are white, and it is another day. Already.

AN: What'd y'all think? Continue? This one is just ready and waiting to make its way out onto the page.