Against All Odds

by Redlance-ck

When Mrs Frederic sends H.G. on her way with the astrolabe, she also sends her off with very explicit instructions. But Helena's never been all that good at following orders. [One-shot}

Disclaimer: Warehouse 13, the world and the characters that inhabit it do not belong to me in any way, though sometimes I lie awake at night wishing that they did and what I'd do with them if they did. And then I write those thoughts down.

A/N: Right then, here it is. The smut that would not end has finally found the finish line. I don't usually ask for people to leave reviews or anything, but this fic has been kicking my backside for months now (actual months. I mean, I started it when the episode aired!) and I'd really love to know what you think. So even if you just drop me a private message or something, it would really mean a lot.

A huge, HUGE thank you to winged-mammal for beta reading this and pointing out the stuff that didn't make sense. And an equally large thank you to Aurora and K for the constant encouragement.

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Myka's feet dragged as she ascended the staircase, toes catching on the top step and causing her to stumble. She recovered with a frustrated sigh and a shake of her head; it had been a long day at the office. Between running all over Dalton, West Virginia, trying to pry the truth out of numerous suspects and clotheslining a guy, she was positively bone-weary. Add the emotional toll of the day to all of that, and she'd already decided that showering could wait until after she'd collapsed into bed and lain motionless for eight hours.

She let herself into her room and breezed by the light switch without sparing it a single glance, opting in favour of shuffling her way, nearly blindly, towards the area in which she believed her closet to be. Groping for the door handle, she eventually caught it and gave a lacklustre tug, shifting one of the two sliding doors on its rail and opening up the built-in wardrobe. She bent to open the top drawer of the single white unit sitting inside and reached in to retrieve her sleep clothes. She shoved the drawer closed once more and dropped the plain blue t-shirt and mismatched shorts on top.

Her job was always tough; but it was a known fact that she rarely, if ever, complained about. The harder something was, the more fulfilled you felt at the completion or conquering of it. That had been one of the few lessons her father had taught her that she had put any stock in, that still rang true even now. But regardless of that knowledge, it didn't get any easier, and the addition of family ties and emotions only served to make the whole thing ten times more complex and draining. Shrugging out of her shirt, Myka frowned as she thought, not for the first time that day, how Cody must have felt when he'd overheard her and Pete. When he'd realised he was the reason people were dying around him, that saving his own father's life had triggered whatever was making people rust.

Luckily, everything had worked out. No one had died and they'd managed to neutralize the artifact before Pete had turned into a walking, talking rusticle. But it had been close. They'd gotten lucky. They didn't always save people in time.

Letting out another sigh, Myka tossed the shirt into the laundry basket one-handed and then reached around to finger the clasps on her bra.

"I should probably stop you sometime around here." She jerked violently at the voice, almost giving herself a headache as she whirled in the direction of where she thought it was coming from. Not that she needed to lay eyes upon the intruder to discern the identity of the speaker.

"Helena?" The name left her as a strained whisper, almost frightened, most definitely annoyed. Blinking rapidly into the darkness of the room, her gaze flitted about as they continued to adjust to the low light and then stilled upon the svelte outline of a body lying across her bed. Myka took a breath, trying in vain to clam the furious beating of her heart, and then let out her unexpected uprising of questions in a rush. "What the hell, why are, what are you doing here?" The body on her bed shifted, sitting up and swivelling to throw her legs over the side with a low chuckle. The moonlight stretching in through the window caught her as she moved into it, illuminating her face and giving it an ethereal glow.

"I'm not here." The inventor said, white teeth flashing in the dimness of the room and pale light glinting off the mischief dancing in dark eyes. "At least, I'm not supposed to be." She let out a breath, running her fingers through her hair as she darted her gaze to the window and spoke with a vacant airiness. "Was given rather explicit instructions to the contrary, actually." Lost somewhere between confusion and excitement, Myka could only stare at the woman before her as H.G. turned her attention back in the agent's direction and wrinkled her nose. "I've never been terribly good at following rules."

"What are you talking about?" She asked slowly, feeling like the only kid in Math class who couldn't figure out the answer to the equation. Eyes turned almost black in the darkness slipped from their place focused on green, sweeping down over Myka's form in a way the other woman could practically feel. Slow and pointed, warm like a Summer breeze; entirely pleasant and, eventually, enlightening. Myka started, arms coming up to cross over her torso in an attempt to cover her bare skin and gaze going everywhere in search of something better suited to the job. "And I'm naked." Crossing one leg over the other at the knee, Helena let out another rumbling chuckle as their eyes met once more.

"Hardly." She drawled with an archly raised eyebrow, all easy seduction and coquettish teasing. The inventor tilted her head, expression thoughtful, and her hair spilled over her shoulder like a curtain of inky silk. "Though had I given in to darker desires..." A moment of silence befell them at that, charged by the words Helena had avoided speaking. Intense with the knowledge that they lingered, as always, beneath the surface.

Like they'd been lingering since the very beginning. Lurking in the periphery of the mind, dancing just out of coherence's reach, ever elusive and yet always present. The spark of kinship had flickered the very day they met, despite the circumstances, and had effortlessly burned into a friendship unlike any other she'd garnered over a timespan that was frighteningly short in length when one considered the level of emotional attachment reached within it.

And maybe it had been the books, instilling a feeling of familiarity towards the other woman before Myka had even known she was a woman. Maybe hero-worship had played its part a little too well. Maybe H.G. had been liberated from her bronze prison at exactly the right time and everything that had followed had been fated to do so since the very dawn of time itself. Why else would a brilliant but broken woman be delivered to the one person capable of stopping her from wreaking her vengeance on a world deemed unworthy of the life her daughter was robbed of? Of course, a person could argue that the same Fate that had brought them together had been ripping them apart ever since, but Myka didn't like to think of it like that. She didn't like to think about that at all.

And maybe all of those thoughts were far too introspective for the moment.

Myka blinked, sweeping them away for the time being. Helena was still staring at her, watching her, dark eyes unmoving as they searched the planes of Myka's face and seemed to peel back layers until the gaze grazed her very soul.

It never failed to surprise her, the ease with which the inventor unwrapped her. Left her raw and open and bare.

The one person who knew her better than anyone else.

"Promise me you won't tell anyone?" The question poked holes in the silence, sifting out the intensity, but Myka's brow gently furrowed at its presence and Helena smiled at her confusion. "About my being here tonight."

"Oh," her frown began to smooth, "yeah. I mean, no." She sighed, and H.G.'s lips lifted higher at the corners. Myka felt herself returning the smile unbidden; Helena's always had been infectious. "I won't say anything." A dark head bowed in thanks, giving Myka the break needed in order to remind herself to breathe and that she was still quite perilously close to being topless. Manoeuvring so that her back was to the inventor, she grabbed her sleep shirt and quickly tugged it over her head. She turned back, lifting her hand to tuck wayward curls behind her ears with a tentative smile.

"So," she took a breath, "why are you not here?" And as her voice lowered and was jerked brokenly across the words, betraying every ounce of insecurity she'd wished to conceal, she felt something inside her crack further still at the way Helena was looking at her. "Why now?" Where have you been? Why didn't you call? What took you so long to come back to me? These questions, Myka did not ask. She simply stood unmoving as H.G. regarded her with gentle eyes, her gaze contemplative.

"Do you ever wonder," she spoke in a slow, calculated tone, as if choosing her every word with the utmost care. Something that usually seemed to come with the greatest of ease. "Why Fate seems so intent on keeping us apart?" Myka felt the air leave her lungs, the unexpected query pulling it from her as though it were a humongous magnet attracting it with an unyielding force.

Fate, it seemed, had its place in both their thoughts.

Helena did not wait for a reply and for that Myka was thankful.

"I've pondered over the possible reasons many times, and a history of trial and error has proven that the answers to even the most perplexing questions are often the most simple." And she smiled at that, some ghost of sadness weighting the corners and keeping it from meeting her eyes. "Yet I find myself unable to accept the one deemed most likely to be the cause." Myka's fingers came up to absently knead the muscles at the base of her neck.

"And what's that?" H.G. rose to her feet in one fluid movement, not a stitch of inelegance anywhere in sight, and crossed the space between them in a few short steps. Myka's breath hitched at her approach and she swallowed nervously, attempting to resist the urge to roll her eyes at herself or, heaven forbid, take a step back. But Helena always was too good at watching her, noticing her idiosyncrasies. She let her hand fall from her neck as the woman came to a stop before her. Cast in shadows by the pale moonlight, the angles of her face cut too perfectly to be real.

"That we simply aren't meant to be together." Voice like liquid silk and warm honey. It sank into Myka, trickled through her body to touch all ends and nestle itself against her heart. Helena's voice was not something easily ignored or forgotten, not that she'd ever truly wished to do either. Her words however, they brought about an undeniable worry that did nothing but fester. Like an old wound that wouldn't heal.

Because Myka Bering had never believed in Fate.

Before.

And now here was the woman who had made her question its existence standing before her, telling her that Fate might be the very thing forcing them apart. The chasm that forever lingered between them. And there were many things about their situation that were so monstrously unfair.

"But you don't believe that?" She asked, voice hushed, the timbre of it swaying back and forth between inquisitive and uncertain. Something about her question seemed to amuse the inventor and she released a wry chuckle with a roll of her eyes. She clasped her hands in front of her body, gesturing without reason toward Myka.

"Fate is a fickle mistress." She said, smiling as though she were talking of an old friend who'd proved over time to be a fair-weather one at best. "One whose desires come and go with the changing of the winds. And there are times when I put as little stock in her as she would put in me."

"Comes and goes like the wind," Myka's lips quirked in a half-hearted smile and she watched as Helena's faded almost completely, leaving only an imprint, an echo of it behind, and part of her mourned its loss. Desperately wished that she could say something to bring it back, make it full and real and vibrant like the ones before. The ones that had captured her so completely. The ones she was still feeling the effects of. But another part, the one that shivered and whimpered and hurt, needed to know why. "Sounds a lot like someone else." Someone she'd used to know, thought she had. And yes, they'd talked about past transgressions and Myka had forgiven her in every way a person could forgive the holographic projection of a woman who meant more to you than you'd ever put into words. But simply because the fire had been doused, that didn't mean the burn did not still linger, and Myka was still sore.

Helena's eyes shimmered, reflected moonlight bouncing off the glass doors of the bookshelf beside Myka's closet and making them glitter like the star-dashed heavens beyond the window.

"Myka, if there'd been any way-" Green orbs disappeared as Myka's eyelids fluttered closed and she lifted her hand to stave off the remainder of H.G.'s sentence, and taken aback by the look of dismay that flickered across the taller woman's face, the inventor fell silent.

And for an instant, it was all too much.

A dam filled to the brim with myriad emotions, walled high and kept secure over months of seemingly empty fretting, broken by something as simple as the utterance of a name.

"You don't need to-" she began, skipping tracks halfway through, "it-it's okay." Frustration flashed to life, lighting darkened features, and Helena turned from her, resting her hands on her hips and squeezing her annoyance into the bone beneath them.

"Do you never tire of hearing the same words pass my lips? Those I owe you a thousand times over and yet will still never be enough?" For an instant Myka was confused, beyond that exasperation swiftly set in.

"Owe me?" Her question spun the long absent woman around again and the shadows of suffering clung to Helena like insidious whispers. Refusing to float away upon the breeze of affirmation, remaining despite sternly stated truths. Because Myka had seen a variation of that look before, in a Regent Sanctum deep beneath the streets of Hong Kong, where another apology in a recent string of them had been heard with no less acceptance, uttered with no less heartfelt honesty, and had been stopped dead in its tracks. Because Myka hadn't needed to hear it again. "You don't owe me anything, Helena." There was a rush of anger or fury or some cousin to both behind the inventor's eyes and she darted forward, bringing them close.

"I owe you everything." Close enough for Myka to see fire burning in black eyes, close enough for her to feel the words against her face. Close enough to feel the presence of H.G. Wells and know it was no mere holographic projection flickering across molecules of light and air before her. Close enough to see the slight crease between her brows as she frowned and hear the faint exasperation before it came. "Do you not know that?"

There were many things Myka Bering was sure of and though she'd thought herself sure of many more before Warehouse 13 had become such an integral part of her life, a measure of certainty still remained. But there were elements of the inventor that left her mystified, even now. After all they'd been through. And so she could do nothing but remain silent as they regarded one another.

"You deserve so much more than simple apologies." Helena said, voice quiet and filled with a pained shame. "But I fear they are all I have to give." And there was more, buried beneath the words. Just like always. Fear and hope and a million unnamed things that would likely remain as such. Because Myka had searched through a hundred alphabets in a hundred different languages, and every time she tried to label one it rang hollow in her ears. Helena's features softened and smoothed, and she inclined her head slightly as she spoke. "And tonight I would offer another, and hope the meaning has not been lost through overuse." The cold and clammy hands of realization swept over Myka like a wave, sending rivulets of unease trickling to all end of her body. Churning against her stomach and leaving the back of her neck damp. She took a breath and almost choked on it, the well-practised action suddenly arduous as she stared into a face she'd seen more in her dreams than in reality as of late. A face that would once more vanish from her life, and soon.

"You're here to say goodbye." Her voice broke on the last word, just a little, and she forced herself to blink away the moisture gathering in her eyes. Incredulously, Helena smiled. Not a real, joyous smile – though those always had been few and far between – it was one born of sad circumstance, one that sorrow clung to and hope hid in the shadows of.

"We do not say goodbye, you and I." And it was as though all breathable air fled from the room. Myka felt her lungs freeze within her chest and momentarily refused to work, and she blinked rapidly as she tried to remain focused on the inventor and her words. She had said goodbye to Helena, only once. And the word had never been returned. She hadn't thought much of that at the time. "Perhaps that is why Fate sees us as such willing pawns." But maybe there really was a reason for everything. "We lean towards the creative, seek to carve out our own destinies and forge our own paths." Maybe the future truly was what you made it. A place made up of choices, right and wrong, and of people. Those given second chances and those not. "We do not need Fate to guide us because we have the ability to break away, guide ourselves." And it seemed the further Myka strode towards her own future, the more likely it seemed that Helena would always be part of it. In some way.

"Is that what you're doing here tonight?" She asked, almost fearful of the question with no understanding as to why. "Breaking away?" With her hands in the pockets of her trousers, Helena offered a small shrug and a smile to match.

"I suppose." She drawled, airily. "Though I prefer to think of it as dismissing a plan set before me that I have no want to follow." Despite the distant roiling against the pit of her stomach, Myka quirked her eyebrows.

"You sure it's not just a manifestation of your penchant for defying authority figures?" And like the dawning rays of sun after the longest night, or a thunderstorm dousing parched soil, a short burst of true laughter parted the inventor's lips. Drenching Myka in joy, a kind she'd not been host to in too long.

"You do know me so terribly well." Her eyes crinkled at the corners, white teeth flashing against the dark of the room before they disappeared once more behind a more gentle smile. "Better than anyone else."

Time spent alone, just the two of them, had always been charged with some unseen tension, whether born from a dutiful mistrust or built upon the backs of lingering glances and the heartfelt sentiment that sat just below the surface of memories shared. They were always intense, near world-ending at times, all consuming. It was as though they didn't know how to communicate any other way, as if this was simply how they were wired to work together.

As if registering their closeness, Helena took a breath and stepped back, stiff movements uncharacteristic and conveying an undeniable difficultly. As if forcibly putting distance between herself and Myka brought forth an agony strong enough to embed itself into even the slightest of motions. And Myka watched with bated breath as H.G. lifted her hand and grasped the ornate necklace at her throat between her thumb and forefinger, another tell-tale sign of discomfort.

"Oh." The captive air rushed from her lips, the word falling from them almost absently along with it as a memory flickered to life. "I have..." Her statement trailed away to nothing as she moved towards the nightstand beside her bed, ignoring the feeling of static electricity reaching thin fingers towards her as she brushed by H.G., and stooped to wiggle open the top drawer. Within it, there resided nothing but a plain faced leather-bound book and the item which she had come in search of. Straightening, she nudged the drawer back into place with the flat of her thigh and turned back to the inventor. Bathed in moonlight by their changing positions, the pale luminescence that clung to Helena's skin made her look ghost-like and the notion that that was exactly what the woman had become to her over the last few months hit Myka hard enough to jostle the next carefully crafted sentence from the tip of her tongue.

Because while Myka knew that H.G. had let her see glimpses of her true self, what they'd been before was tainted by lies. And since then there'd only been half conversations with a person who wasn't there and a limbo heavy with emptiness. Helena had never been real.

Until now.

Standing before Myka, flesh and blood just like before but this time so very different. There were no more lies between them, all of the deceit and betrayal had been stripped away, leaving Myka with healing wounds and Helena as close as she'd come to the woman she'd once been in over a century. And underneath it all, they were the same people who had met at gunpoint in London, but they were also host to numerous changes.

And all of that left them at the same dusty crossroads they'd been landing at since the threads of their lives had first been twisted together. Only now there was more light upon their trail, the paths were more defined, and the sign posts were actually named. They were not as blind as they'd once been.

Maybe that was Fate too. Leading them in circles until the circle broke and they finally picked a different road to travel.

She felt H.G.'s gaze trail lazily from her face, along her neck and over her torso, until it came to rest on the object grasped delicately in her hand and trailing a gold chain. There was a sharp intake of breath and Myka's feet automatically began moving her in the direction of the sound. She came to a stop in front of Helena and met dark eyes for a long moment before they looked down in unison.

Unfolding her fingers, she spread her palm flat to reveal the treasured book-shaped remembrance locket that had been left as their only clue to Sykes', and H.G.'s, whereabouts. Had been left for Myka to find, because Helena had had enough faith in her to risk losing something that she'd braved the Escher vault in order to obtain. Something that was a last remaining link to her daughter.

"With everything that happened, I forgot I had it until after you were gone." Myka admitted with a frown, looking pained. "But you're here now. Guess I should give it back to you before you..." She let the sentence die as she glanced back up, allowing the 'leave again' to go unsaid. Though the expression darkening Helena's face told her that it was heard regardless. H.G. held her gaze in silence, stare soft and yet somehow burning with its intensity. As though she were desperately trying to restrain herself. And then with motions rigidly controlled, she reached towards Myka's outstretched hand and with a gentle pressure, folded the taller woman's fingers back over the locket, eyes never leaving hers. Not for a moment.

"Something to remember me by." Her smile was tremulous, tone hushed. "While I'm away." And as Helena's face flickered between emotions, Myka furrowed her brow. Looking utterly, painfully confused by the inventor's words. As though she could not fathom their meaning if given a hundred years to ponder over it. And when she spoke, it was with the same broken quality that Helena remembered hearing in a small woodland clearing, entire worlds away from where they were now. When they'd been saying goodbye, without speaking the word, for what they'd thought would be the last time.

"How could I possibly forget?" Helena's fingers still cupped her hand, warming Myka's skin in a way that felt foreign. Because for all their closeness, physical contact between them was a rarity. There had always been some kind of barrier in the way, a lack of solidity being the most prevalent. Now, the touch was as soothing as it was startling. The realization that one enjoyed the thrill of an electric shock, companied with the daunting prospect of yearning for more now that the desire had been unlocked. And Helena was looking at her as though the touch was the only thing grounding her, keeping her tethered and safe in the moment. Stopping her from drifting too far out, where she'd be tossed against rocks by the waves of her own threatening tears.

"We never say goodbye." She spoke, the words seeming sudden and unexpected to Myka who blinked a few times in rapid succession in order to gain her bearings, the breaking of her reverie startling her. Helena's expression changed only slightly as she continued, lines of light and shadow playing across her features to betray every ounce of vulnerability she kept so studiously concealed from most. But not Myka. Even in darker days, she'd never hidden it. Only used it to get what she wanted. "It's unspoken," and she smiled, for an instant, shooting for perhaps bravado and falling flat as the next words left her lips, "like so many things between us." Myka felt her heart thud against her ribcage and it was as though every inch of skin on her body jumped as Helena moved. The thrill of anticipation or trepidation, maybe both, ran through her, seeming to make her nerves vibrate and her skin tingle as she waited, poised on the precipice of a single endless second that refused to return to the normal stream of time. And Helena's eyes spoke before the woman herself had chance to. "I would give voice to them now." And her hand was moving over Myka's hand, sliding slowly over her loose fist and along her arm as she stepped closer.

There was ample time for Myka to pull back. To lift her free hand and halt Helena's movements.

But there was not one single reason she could conceive of for doing either. Not one instant in which retreat was considered.

For once, Myka's mind, body and heart were all in concordance.

And then they themselves moved in sync, forms shifting with motions that became almost infinitesimal as they grew close enough to be within millimetres of the flush press of their bodies. Close enough to feel the other's breath upon their lips as the moment kept them suspended with its intensity and all at once Myka found herself caught between wanting it to end so that they could finally move forward and wishing it would last forever. Because while this moment seemed to herald the end to their beginning, she knew all that could come after was the beginning of their end.

It was the hand Fate had dealt them. And yet, as she felt the intoxicating buzz of the other woman's nearness and the almost tangible pull on her heart and soul, a thought drifted unbidden through Myka's mind.

Perhaps Helena was her wild card. Unexpected and unpredictable. A game changer. Destined to flip their hand on its head. It wouldn't be the first time Helena had changed the rules. For her. Myka could practically feel everything changing, shifting about them as Helena slipped into her space like she belonged there.

Just like she belonged there.

Myka ducked her head ever so slightly as H.G. tipped hers back, and they hovered there in the moment, swinging on the hands of suspended time. Drinking in the closeness, breathing the other in, savouring the spark and the headiness and the way the room seemed to spin around them. Myka could feel the suggestion of H.G.'s lips, a hair's breadth from her own and holding, and she already felt so impossibly intoxicated. It burned through her like a potent spirit as they danced without moving, hovering so close but not touching, and Myka could almost taste how Helena was going to drive her to the very edge of insanity. Or perhaps the sating of a long-felt desire might be the thing to make her sane. The outcome didn't seem to matter much at that moment – everything important had boiled down to Helena's lips and the way Myka could feel them just out of reach. It was a moment that lasted a lifetime, and it burned itself into Myka's memory like a brand. Owned her in that everlasting instant, and maybe Helena felt it all too. Maybe that was what tipped her over that precipice, tugged her forward.

It was a firm but entirely unobtrusive pressure, a test of boundaries, as though Helena were gauging her own ability to control herself. As though she'd waited for the moment too long to rush it and risk losing things along the way. She felt herself being pulled, though she moved not one muscle as she stood and accepted the kiss that was barely a kiss at all, and beneath the thump of her own heart Myka could hear crashing waves and eternal silence. Felt the pressure of the locket in her palm and gripped it tighter, assuring herself of its solidity. And then she felt Helena begin to retreat and panic rose, sudden and unexpected, like a convict making a break for freedom. Because Helena had already slipped through her fingers so many times before.

This time, Myka gave chase, dipping her head to catch fleeing lips and halt the woman's movements. And the sigh that escaped H.G. was one born from equal amounts relief and surprise, and any questions that might have entered her head at the sight of Myka's pursuit evaporated in the face of the woman's need. Myka could feel it leaving her in waves, leaping from her like sparks, lacing the kiss as she pressed closer and allowed her tongue to beg for entrance. And Myka could practically taste the way Helena's carefully contained control snapped under the pressure of her probing tongue, but then hands were at her hips and she was being clung to as though she were the only thing left grounding the inventor to this plane of existence. And Myka lifted her free hand to grip a forearm, and anchor herself. Their mouths met again and again, slowly losing their tentative, hesitant edge, and Myka felt fire and ice waging war somewhere at the pit of her stomach, sending it rolling and skimming shivers along her spine. Helena's kiss was soft and sure, burning Myka with a passion well-practised and questionably contained. She could feel the other woman's need, her desperation, all but boiling over in some attempt to reach Myka's own. To meet its kindred spirit, and know it wasn't alone.

Emotion surged, welling up from some dark pit, where it had been cast in order for her to escape its maddening pull. But now, standing stock still with all her guards lying broken at her feet, Myka was helpless, and though it pained her to do so, she wrenched her mouth away to pull in a gasping, shuddering breath, and pressed her forehead to the other woman's. Helena said nothing, asked nothing, and she wondered if the inventor's thoughts were as muddled at her own. Questions regarding fate and destiny spun like tops in her mind, knocking into one another and making her dizzy.

"Myka." And just like that, the world stopped spinning. Myka didn't open her eyes, knew Helena's own would still be closed, but she didn't need to see her face to know that trepidation would be written across it. Not birthed from uncertainty, but that constant and omnipresent fear of loss that followed H.G. Wells like a shadow. She'd lost so much, they both had. Myka wouldn't allow them to lose this too.

Like moths to flames, their lips met again, only now all pretence of tentative patience had been thrown to the darkness behind them as they finally moved forward towards the light. Myka sank into the kiss, let its depth swallow her whole, consume her until she felt almost non-existent. Unreal. It seemed to her as though she'd been waiting a lifetime for this one endless moment. A moment that would be over too soon and then she'd be saying goodbye to Helena once more, too afraid to breathe the words. Myka pushed at the thought, shoving it away. She wouldn't think about that now, now there was only Helena. Form solid and yielding under Myka's touch.

She eased forward, her persistence cracking Helena's now brittle stubborn streak, and with an absent-minded caution she guided the woman back in the direction she believed the bed lay in. Their shuffle was inelegant and imperfect, but Myka could no more break the kiss than she could open her eyes to gauge their distance and when H.G. halted abruptly, Myka somehow found the presence of mind to stop them both before they toppled down onto the bedspread. With an effort, the evidence of which left her as a low hum, she pulled back from the kiss only far enough for their foreheads to touch once more. She licked her lips, twisting her head as if working out a kink in her neck, and then exhaled shakily. A tendril of fear had slipped in, winding around her chest in a way that had been imperceptible until it had tightened, and she couldn't recall the last time she'd been so afraid to open her eyes.

Because she'd had dreams like this before.

But the hands at her hips were real, so too were the thumbs rubbing maddening circles just above the waistline of her pants, and she could hear the ragged edge to H.G.'s breathing.

"Myka." And that time it sounded more like a question, but it wasn't one that she could answer. At least, not with words. Blindly, she reached out, brushing the top of the bedside table with her knuckles and then gently placed the locket on its surface. She brought her hand back, resting it parallel to the other on Helena's opposite arm, and swallowed down the few errant wisps of nervousness, before she slid her hands up until they were cradling the face of the woman before her and Myka brought their lips together again.

She felt the tension leave Helena, in the way her shoulders eased and she fell into the kiss. Myka felt it and brushed the pads of her thumbs across high cheekbones in some silent thanks that she'd never find the words to explain. Wouldn't trust her voice to speak them even if she could. Because that emotion was still there, tumultuous and volatile, threatening to break the surface. Helena's arms curled around her, the flats of her hands pressing against the muscles of Myka's back, holding her close. And it took nothing more than the silent, urgent voice inside her head to convince Myka's fingers to sink into thick hair the colour of night. Behind their lids, her eyes rolled at the feel of silk between them, the burn at her back, the warmth and impossible familiarity at her lips.

And it was as though a switch was flipped, illuminating what was right in front of her and throwing out any and all reservations as to what might have been hiding in the dark. They were finally here, and it had taken them so very long. Myka didn't want to wait any longer.

She slipped her fingers free, resting her palms against Helena's collarbone and letting an index finger stroke along the flesh at the hollow of her throat. Then slowly, Myka brought her hands up in unison, easing them beneath the leather collar of the woman's jacket. Helena broke the kiss immediately, her hands clenching not quite into fists at Myka's back, and she blinked dark eyes at those turned the shade of shadowed leaves before her. And Myka answered the silent question in kind, sliding her hands further into the jacket and easing it from the inventor's shoulders. Her eyes danced over the planes of Helena's face, taking in every narrow line and artful curve, the way her lips – reddened and swollen – were parted to drag air into her lungs, her black and burning gaze. She mapped every inch as the jacket dropped out of view and Helena watched her with an intensity that might have otherwise caused Myka to shy away, might have turned her cheeks red at one time, a few scant years before. Now, as Myka tugged the thin slip of material from around a slender neck and let it pool beside their feet, it prompted reflexive swallowing and stoked the low burning fire in the pit of Myka's stomach. She glanced away, watching the fingers of her left hand as they danced across a bare forearm and then slid downward, eventually drifting across to thumb the hem of the thin shirt Helena was wearing.

"I don't remember..." She furrowed her brow as the words she was searching for escaped her, eyes remaining downcast as she tried again. "I feel like I've wanted this forever." She finally managed, bringing her attention back up to the other woman's face as her lips began to curve, amusement over her own words making her feel just the slightest bit self-conscious. "You know?" But the look on Helena's face alleviated her anxiety, obliterated it. The inventor's laughter slipped out as a tremulous sigh and the slight but wondering shake of her head said more than words ever could.

"I do." But Helena was not someone easily kept silent and the thought itself was almost enough to make Myka chuckle. But the moment had her gripped too fiercely and then it was as simple as sliding her hand into a perfectly fitted glove; it disappeared beneath thin fabric and her fingertips brushed warm, bare flesh and she'd never felt a longing quite like this before. It seemed to trickle through her like those water wall garden features that Pete was fascinated with, she could feel it in her bones, coating her skin, could feel it reaching towards the deepest parts of herself. And, no longer having the strength or want to close the door on it again, she let it in. The hem of the shirt caught at the junction of her thumb and forefinger and she barely missed a beat before allowing her hand to continue upward, dragging the shirt along. Their gaze was broken by a flimsy white barrier for all of two rapid heartbeats and then Myka was standing at the edge of her bed before a half-naked H.G. Wells, and exactly when had all this been set in motion? When exactly had Fate played that first card? That day in London, perhaps. Or maybe it had been before then, when Macpherson's greed had started to grow. Maybe it had started even further in the past, in the back room of a Mom and Pop bookshop. Not that it really mattered when it had all began; all roads led here. To this moment, this room, this precise date and time. And Myka didn't think she'd change any of it.

Well, there were some things. Maybe. Hindsight was twenty-twenty, and now that they'd started, Myka wondered if a do-over might encourage her to 'start things' a little quicker. But she banished the thought, not wanting to dwell on the possibility of having to start anew again with the woman before her. The woman staring at her with dark eyes and wearing an expanse of pale skin like some ethereal moonlit cloak.

Myka reached out, gentle fingers lightly touching the locket at Helena's neck. She trailed the pad of her finger along the thin chain and then over the purple stone, then let it drop off the edge. Her eyes tracked her movements as she pressed her hand to soft flesh, like she was witnessing some miraculous event, unable to tear them away even as the other woman's gasp found her ears. Freckle-dashed and dappled with goosebumps, H.G.'s skin was like silk or satin or velvet or some unearthly hybrid. Her hand drifted to the side, thumb purposefully brushing the underside of a bra-clad breast before fingers fanned out across a ribcage, and still Myka stared. Utterly mesmerized by what she'd uncovered. But the longer she stared, the hotter her blood seemed to boil, and the longer she waited, the more she was reminded that she shouldn't waste another second. She curved her hands over the slight swell of the shorter woman's hips and then her head was dipping, their lips were meeting once more, only this time there was not a wisp of tentativeness to the kiss.

She felt, rather than heard, Helena whimper into her mouth before Myka's tongue stole the sound away, felt nimble fingers grasping at her t-shirt as her own wandered over the smooth slopes of ribs. Then nimble fingers turned frantic, began to tug and pull until Myka had no choice but to lift her arms and pull back from the kiss, albeit for only a second as the shirt was pulled over her head and then dropped, instantly forgotten. Myka leaned in, intent on continuing as though the kiss had never been broken, but a hand against her shoulder stopped her short. She blinked dazedly, the fog of desire that surrounded them clearing just enough for her to make out H.G. staring at her. Again. And Myka's whole body was suddenly awash with some distant and far more pleasant relative of pins and needles. Like her skin was alive, tingling with a previously unknown electricity that seemed to chase Helena's hand as it followed the line of her collarbone and then drifted down over the curve of her breast, eventually resting over the approximate spot where her heart lay. And the notion that she'd never before felt so adored or longed for skipped by her not entirely unnoticed and her heart beat a little bit faster at the idea that H.G. Wells was looking at Myka – clad in jeans and perhaps the plainest bra she owned – as if she were the answer to an equation that had been eluding her for the better part of a century.

And then her heart leapt into her throat as that particular train of thought rocked unsteadily on its tracks, sending sparks that glittered like danger into the air as it became a little bit too much to handle. So, searching for a distraction, she reached around to finger the clasp of her bra and found one in the movement of Helena's hand as it came up to ease a strap down over her shoulder. Then there was only a held breath and a few dozen rapid beats of her heart before the bra fell away. She felt her anxiety spike as she heard the garment hit the floor, but Helena's sharp intake of breath and the way she was wearing a look that could only be described as 'hungry' shattered every last remnant of nervousness. Then hands were at her breasts and thumbs were brushing over their peaks and Myka began to fracture in a different way. The sound that left her was too guttural to be accurately described as a gasp, springing from somewhere at the back of her throat, but she wasn't destined for dwelling on it. Soon enough, they were moving again.

Their bodies met atop the cool comforter of Myka's bed on which they lay side by side, legs twining with an ease that made it seem as though they'd practised this a thousand times before. An ease that betrayed a level of comfort and rightness and knowing that had both no reason and every reason to exist. Trying to make sense of it was as maddening to Myka as the way slender fingers brushed the edge of her breast as they ran laps along the side of her body. Back and forth and back again as lips crashed and fused together, then were torn apart only so that they could feel the delicious anticipatory thrill of meeting once more.

She felt a gentle pressure at her hips only moments before H.G. bodily rolled them over, disentangling their legs and bringing hers up so that one lay on either side of Myka's hips. Her jet black hair was lightly tousled and perfect, her lips showing signs of every kiss they'd shared up until that point. Her eyes roamed Myka's body with an unabashed desire, seemed to drink in every inch of her in a way that Myka could feel pulling at her gut. But her nails scratched against the material still concealing Helena's legs as her hands came to rest atop the inventor's thighs and Myka could feel her stomach muscles tightening under the scrutiny. She felt bare, in a way that went so far beyond the flimsy boundaries of clothing, and Helena's gaze seemed to sink in through her skin and reach for her soul as though it were something tangible to be grasped. As though she didn't possess it already.

Then Helena's hands were skirting the side of her rib cage, fingers drifting inwards to brush along the undersides of her breasts, and Myka screwed her eyes shut as need tore through her and she forgot how to breathe. The pads of Helena's thumbs travelled up over their swell and swept across the hardened peaks of her nipples in a motion so gentle, Myka could hardly feel it, and yet every brush was electric, sending a jolt through her, and her legs shifted mindlessly beneath the weight of Helena's body. Finally, gently calloused hands closed around her breasts and Myka bit the inside of her lip to hold in the whimper that was determined to escape regardless of her efforts. Her upper body twitched, arcing ever so slightly into the touch, and she let out the breath she'd been holding after a few seconds, as Helena's hands remained still. And when Myka opened her eyes again, she found herself being regarded with such a longing-laced tender wonder, she felt her heart ache in knowing sympathy.

Because their road had been long and winding, treacherous at points, and though they'd drifted, they'd travelled it together.

They were the same.

And their road still stretched for miles before them.

Helena moved her hands, pressing them into the bedspread on either side of Myka as she lowered herself until she was close enough to replace her palms with her mouth. Myka's entire body seemed to jerk at the first touch of lips to the side of her right breast; a feather-light kiss, nothing more, yet it was enough to cause an eruption of heat within her chest. It seemed to swell and crash like an unexpected wave as warm wetness enveloped her nipple, and she gasped, hands clenching into fists atop Helena's thighs. But the contact was not destined for any great length, at least not at that moment, and all too soon the inventor was pulling back, the absence of her mouth making Myka shiver. H.G. pressed her forehead to the flat of Myka's chest, above her breast and close to her heart, and she felt the woman's eyelashes tickle her skin as her eyes blinked once, twice, and then closed. She could feel Helena's deep breaths, wondered what was running through her mind and wished she could peek inside. Ease any worry or anxiety, on both their parts.

"I do not know," Helena began, whispering against Myka's skin, "how I'm to manage this." Myka moved trembling hands around to comb her fingers through coal-black hair, each hand taking its turn at brushing thick locks back across her crown.

"What?" For a few dozen rapid heartbeats, there came no reply, but Myka's ministrations never faltered. Not until Helena's head shifted beneath them and the woman above her sat up once more. Myka's body mourned the contact, but she said nothing as she let her hands fall to rest against the thighs bridging her legs, too intent on the expression that had settled over the inventor's face. She watched twin eyebrows fall to form a frown

"When I awoke, I thought my purpose clear." And Myka knew she wasn't talking about that morning, or the one before, but that cold and empty break of day that had seen her delivered into a world she did not recognise. "And you so effortlessly muddled everything I'd come to know about the place in which I'd found myself. You were the key," at that she paused, her words catching to tangle in her throat in a manner entirely uncharacteristic, "to all I thought I wanted." Behind Myka's eyes there was a flash of harsh rock and the blinding rage and sorrow of the woman before her now, the phantom feel of steel in her hand and an all too real flare of agony at her breast. But the edges of the memories were softer now, far less painful than they had been under the roof of a small Mom and Pop book store, and Myka pushed them away with ease as Helena continued. "And you became everything I'd never dreamed of needing." Dark eyes glinted, like fireflies against a clouded night sky, and Myka imagined herself flying through it. Propelled by a grappling hook and held safely in the arms of a person she hadn't known, and yet who had never been a stranger. "Now here you are, quite exactly where I've longed to have you, and I fear I've no hope of making it through this whole and intact." Myka's eyes remained opened and fixed, even as Helena's hand drifted in to cup her cheek and the urge to allow them to flutter closed gripped her. "For I believe I loved you long before I recalled the true meaning of the word, and how is one to cope with being offered all that they desire in the world?" And the words drifted back to her across time and memory.

"I wish I knew." But they would find out together.

Myka straightened, hands reaching for H.G.'s hips to steady and anchor herself as she sat up, and she fleetingly registered that, kneeling as she was, Helena was taller than her for once. Then she was tilting her head upward, eyes closing at the feel of Helena's fingers sweeping tenderly across her cheeks to disappear into her tangle of curls, and losing herself in another kiss. A kiss that was so much more than just a meeting of mouths, of brushing tongues; a kiss that penetrated so deeply, she felt it nudge her heart into pounding even harder. Felt it touch her soul, and make it sing.

Myka's hands moved without conscious thought, roaming warm skin and mapping every curve and dip and line of muscle she could find. She felt Helena's breath hitch as her palms skirted the sides of her breasts, the contact still jolting her even through the material of her bra, and Myka heard the snap as though it were something tangible. Something she could have grasped and held onto and somehow stopped from breaking. But there was nothing that could have stopped it. It was inevitable.

Like so many things that had come to pass between them.

Her last remnant of composure gone, lying broken amid the clothing scattered across the floor, Myka's fingers reaching around to trace patterns across Helena's back. Patterns that turned sharp as her lip was caught between quick teeth and she dug her nails into the flesh at H.G.'s shoulders in response, clawing at the woman's back. A groan was released into Myka's mouth, swallowed by the kiss, and every nerve in her body seemed to surge, vibrate, throb at the sound of it. The feel of it, alongside the press of breasts against her own as Helena arched at the harsh touch. Then her fingers were groping blindly for the hooks that held the inventor's bra in place, tugging with impatient futility after a few seconds of unsuccessful toying. Distracted, Helena was able to break the kiss, and she pulled back with a throaty chuckle that made Myka ache between her legs. And she felt, eyes still closed, Helena's own hand reach around, wordlessly urging hers away, to fiddle with the clasp.

"With all the years of practise you are able to lord over me, one would think you'd be a tad more proficient at removing such things." Her breath was warm against Myka's lips, lips that were still close enough for Myka to almost feel the way they shaped the words, and she clung to slender hips for fear of falling.

"Kinda different when you're taking them off someone else." She replied, voice breathless. "Which is something I've definitely not had a lot of practise with." Another chuckle rose from the shadows behind her eyes, sweeping up to circle her, pull her down and drown her in bliss. She'd go willingly.

"Something we shall have to amend." Helena shifted and the soft sounds of material against skin brought about images of the inventor shedding the last barrier of clothing between their upper bodies, and Myka so wanted to open her eyes. To watch, cement the moment in her memory forever. But some part of her, inexorable and overwhelming, wouldn't allow it. Had her so utterly convinced that if she gazed upon that which she'd imagined to be as close to perfection as any mortal being could hope to grasp, she might simply cease to exist. It wasn't until she heard the quiet sound of the garment joining the other clothes scattered about the floor that her desire broke the chains of trepidation and she blinked hungry eyes open.

She drank in the pale luminescence of Helena's form as if it were the only thing keeping her from dying of thirst, a small and uncontrollable whimper working its way free of her throat. She lifted her hands, felt them shake their impatience at her slow trek, and found herself stalled inches from perfect skin, unable to descend or retreat. Caught in an endless moment of hesitant hovering. A moment that was broken only when H.G.'s fingers curled around Myka's wrists and tugged her hands forward. A surprised gasp fled her parted lips as her hands closed around soft flesh that yielded beneath her palms as her fingers flexed and contracted with experimental purpose. She heard Helena inhale sharply, felt her arousal spike at the sound, then warm breath caress her face as her thumbs flicked across hardened peaks. A low murmur of approval was sifted from Helena by Myka's fingers, tentative touches turning bolder with every utterance until the sound of them became too much, yet not nearly enough. Still, she fell back to the mattress, too dazed to remain upright, but her hands refused to follow her fall, instead choosing to linger about the woman's smoothly toned stomach. Fingers following dips and the rise of curves, gaze riveted.

But for all her intense focus, her hands fell away without protest as Helena's came up to sweep them aside and trace lines of ice and fire along Myka's bare skin. Her stomach muscles fluttered and twitched beneath the attention and she was torn between watching the movement of deft fingers and the smile forming on the inventor's lips. The smile won out and Myka found herself captured by how entranced the woman above her appeared. How content, happy even. A shiver slid along her spine, stretching tendrils of shaky pleasure to both sides of her body as H.G.'s fingers danced along the edge of her ribs and drifted down, sweeping along the waistband of Myka's pants until they lay still on either side of the button. Myka's breathing, steady and deep, hitched slightly and their eyes found one another in the darkness. She sucked her lower lip between her teeth, worrying it absently, and waited, saying nothing. Because the silence was permeated with the sounds of acceptance, stretched taught with yearning, and held steady with the desire for the moment to last indefinitely.

But the sun would rise eventually and it was the reminder that time had not stopped, despite how their hearts had vehemently vowed that it had, that drove Helena to work the button free of its hole. And Myka held her breath as she lifted her hips and H.G. shuffled backwards in a way that would have been inelegant had it been attempted by anyone else, but it came across as nothing less than flawless. Just like everything else about the woman. Then Myka was bending her knees and the last remaining barriers of her own clothing were removed, leaving her to lie naked against the comforter. And Helena stopped, resting on her haunches, and seemed to simply take a minute. To stare, to memorize, eyes wandering slowly until Myka's body hummed with anticipation. Then she was moving forward once more, draping her body atop Myka's so that their hips touched and their legs twined, and the press of their breasts and skin against skin made their heads spin. Helena's lips found her neck and Myka's eyes closed against the feel of them, mapping a trail of kisses from the hollow of her throat up to the base of her ear. A tongue flicked out to tease the lobe, tip grazing the underside before H.G's control slipped and she snared it between flat teeth, drawing it into her mouth to soothe the burn of the bite. Myka's hips canted without consent, her mouth falling open to release a groan that straddled the border between pleasure and pain, then she was left to whimper without rhythm as lips returned to her neck. Her nose brushed Helena's forearm where it rested next to her head as she turned it to the side, granting the other woman easier access, and she was helpless to stop the hiss that whistled past her teeth when Helena's own joined her tongue and found her thumping pulse point. Lightning flashed behind her closed eyelids, striking white hot between her thighs. Her fingers threaded through dark tresses, grasping and tugging as Helena's mouth sent waves pleasure rippling through her body. She was aware, however vaguely, of her hips moving – trying to move – beneath Helena's form. Some primal part of her desperate for any kind of friction, relief, and when the inventor's mouth finally left her marked skin, she was surprised to hear the sound of her own voice.

"Take..." To find her hands at Helena's hips, tugging at the material of her pants with a fervour that was perilously close to manic. "Take these off." Then lips were brushing hers and she was being denied further contact as H.G. removed herself from the bed with the grace of a jungle cat. And Myka would wonder, much later, whether Helena's movements had been as slow as she remembered, or if the part of her brain that processed such things had sputtered and stalled and all but ceased functioning for the time it took the inventor to render herself naked, entirely, before Myka's unabashedly wide-eyed gaze. It was, Myka had the fleeting presence of mind to think, like staring at a dream. Some imagined figure of perfection that should vanish beneath her touch.

The breath she hadn't realised she was holding leapt from her then, expelled from her in a rush of shaky air, and she licked suddenly dry lips as she wordlessly reached out towards the woman, wanting to test her solidity once more. She was rewarded with flesh and bone, their bodies meeting properly, deliciously, for the first time, but no longer was Myka content with lying back. With waiting, despite how glorious that had been. She needed to touch every inch of Helena until she was certain every part of her was real, was there in the room, was Myka's and Myka's alone. And she'd never been possessive, but she'd almost lost the woman too many times already and she was tired of being afraid. Afraid that they'd missed their chance, that their time had passed, that next time H.G. Wells might disappear for good. And while she knew the inventor would have to leave alongside the shadows come morning, she was finally going to make sure Helena knew that she had something to come back for.

With a firm insistence, Myka urged the other woman onto her back and, with nerves fluttering at the pit of her stomach, rolled onto her side so that she was facing her. She propped herself up on one arm and let her eyes wander, as the fingers of her hand tapped an uneven rhythm against her own leg.

"You've no reason to be nervous." Helena's words pulled a laugh of wry disbelief from Myka, but said nothing as she shook her head, swallowing thickly. "Touch me." She watched as H.G's hand reached for her, fingers slipping between her palm and the skin of her leg, and then drew Myka's hand forward. "I shan't break." Only it wasn't Helena breaking that concerned her. "It's you that holds me together." And like the vibrations that preceded an earthquake, Myka trembled as Helena guided her hand to rest against her stomach and then released it. She found freedom in those words, and in that freedom she found her footing. And so it was with a sure hand and an unsteady heart that she found the places dotting H.G.'s torso that made the inventor twitch and chuckle, gasp and moan. Her hand drifted to bare legs that called out for her touch now that they'd been liberated and her lips curved into a mischievous yet awed smile as her fingertips brushed the underside of a knee and Helena jerked her leg away as though she'd been shocked. Then brought it back and forced herself to remain still, fistfuls of comforter clutched in her hands, as Myka mapped slow and feather-light trails across the same patch of skin. Then up and around, until her fingers curved slightly around Helena's thigh and her hand stilled. She dropped her head to press a kiss to the other woman's shoulder, let her lips linger at the shallow intake of breath, then allowed her mouth to be guided by the firm line of a collarbone. Her thumb traced circles as her teeth grazed flesh that pulled taut with the arching of the body it covered, and in a move that surprised them both, Myka's hand found warm wetness between soft thighs.

She pulled her mouth back from Helena's skin with a gasp, darkened green eyes disappearing behind closed lids as her brow furrowed in a way that might convey either pain or an over-abundance of pleasure. Helena's quiet moan was muffled but audible over the sound of her heart singing in her ears and for a long, long moment, time held itself still around them. And then the same undeniable need that had so swiftly swayed her hand towards its new resting place surged again, and Myka's fingers parted slick folds for the first time and she was lost in liquid heat. Helena moaned again, low and broken, and Myka's lips parted to form silent words of thanks or prayer. She drew in a ragged breath and then pressed open-mouthed kisses to the inventor's neck, as the thrill of intoxication coursed through her.

"You feel..." She tapered off, voice rough and hot against H.G.'s throat. She felt the woman swallow beneath her lips, felt her hips cant reflexively as she shifted against the bed, and wondered how in the world she'd held back for so long. "You're wet." She croaked, words fit to burst with dreamy amazement, the notion that she was the reason for Helena's current state enough to make her head spin. Too much, almost. Helena's laugh was throaty, her voice a breathless whisper.

"You sound surprised." But that wasn't enough, didn't accurately convey even an ounce of what Myka felt. Still, she didn't argue, her only response coming in the form of probing fingertips. She drew a slow line with them, dragging them upward until they slid over a small bundle of nerves that had Helena's hips rising from the bed and tore a hitched moan from between parted lips.

And it was like someone had slipped a needle beneath Myka's skin and delivered her a shot of something so powerfully and painfully addictive, she knew in an instant she'd been ruined for life. Would spend the rest of her days wanting more and then never being sated once she'd received it. She opened her eyes, pulling her head back, and watched Helena's hands clench and flex atop the bedspread as her fingers moved in tight circles over slippery skin. Watched as the woman drew in breath after heaving breath, dark eyes fixed on her face. Myka bit her lip, the tip of her tongue moving rapidly over snared flesh as she focused, just for a moment, on the yearning of her own desire. The sickly-sweet voice whispering need into her ear. Then her hand was moving again and she was bringing her mouth to Helena's in order to stifle the moan that would surely stretch throughout the household as she slipped a finger into molten fire.

They hung there for a moment, mouths open and touching, but frozen as heat suffused Myka's body and pleasure shocked Helena's spine rigid. Her inventor's hand had shot out, groping at Myka's arm in a way that was purposeless and pointed, and it was only when nails dug in to leave lines along her forearm that Myka finally began to move within her. She let Helena kiss her, mind focused on the way she could feel the woman clench around her finger as she withdrew. On just the feel of her, silken and warm and exquisite. She pushed in again, sliding deeper this time, and Helena's head dropped back to the pillow as the heel of Myka's hand brushed against a tight bundle of nerves. Fingers digging into the flesh of her arm, her hips rocked to meet Myka's hand as a slow and steady pace was set, and Myka stared down at her as though she'd never seen another woman before. Though she supposed she never had, not like this. She was mesmerized by the reactions her touch elicited, amazed at how her hands had brought Helena to such a state.

"I-" The rest of H.G.'s sentence was torn away under the cover of a groan as Myka carefully curled her finger and watched, fixated. Hips rocked against her hand, urging Myka to move faster, deeper, the feel of it pulling arousal down through her stomach to pool between her thighs. "More." And it was too much, too fast, and yet at every touch, Myka knew it wasn't enough. Helena's grabbing, clawing of her arm was desperate boarding on frantic and she could feel control slipping away. The need to take her time and draw out every second in order to remember it perfectly fading fast, being torn asunder and left in ragged pieces. Still, she clung to them. Through silently whispered words of futility and even knowing, undeniably, that it couldn't last, she clung to them.

Helena's groan was a potent mixture of pleasure and frustration as Myka eased a second finger in alongside the first, and the sound reverberated through her like the crash of symbols. Seemed to shake her to her core. Their lips brushed, the touch feather-light and brief but repeated, and Myka found she had to focus hard in order to keep up the motions of both her hand and mouth. Eventually though, it became too much for her to handle and she pulled back enough to rest her forehead against Helena's. She could feel the small crease between the other woman's brows and followed an invisible line alongside an elegant nose to watch as breath after ragged breath was pulled in past parted lips.

"Open your eyes." Helena's eyelids fluttered but didn't open at the plea and, unexpectedly emboldened by that small and unintended act of defiance, Myka's tactics abruptly changed. Without warning her fingers stilled, but the way Helena's hips chased movement that was no longer there was almost enough to make her instantly break her resolve. But she held fast, and still. The need to remain in the moment and have the woman beneath her with her too steadying her. "Please, Helena." And she had Helena's compliance then, though she wasn't at all ready for what she received; dark eyes glistening with unshed tears and no small measure of wonder and hope and fear, and love, swimming in their depths. For a second, it was almost too much. Pressure swelled within Myka's chest, became near unbearable for a heartbeat. Then she was curling her fingers once more and Helena's eyes were disappearing behind pale lids again. And Myka allowed it, turned her attention back to the way Helena felt around her, beneath her. She let herself be captured by the rocking of the other woman's hips, harsher now, urging Myka's touch deeper. A veritable litany of mismatched words flowed from between Helena's parted lips, too quiet for Myka to catch. It was only her own name that she was able to make out, as Helena's nails sank into the skin of the underside of her forearm and the jerking of her hips began to lose their already thin rhythm. Hot breath warmed her skin and green eyes slipped closed as Myka tried to take it all in. Every thought and every feeling coursing through her at that second, and the next, and the next, until the breath on her face suddenly ceased and pulled Myka's eyes back open.

And she watched as Helena came apart beneath her for the first time.

Trembling without control, back arching without consent and angling suddenly stilled hips downwards, head tilted back to spill onyx black hair over the pillow like ink. Transfixed was not the word and Myka gazed down unabashed as she brought Helena to the edge and tipped her over. Watched as the woman quaked and quivered and released a single strangled gasp that sounded so very much like a name. She stilled her fingers as the grip on her wrist eased and a surge of arousal slid through her like a snake as Helena's hips began to gently rock once more, riding the wave until the aftershocks began to fade. Then Helena's body fell limp and all was still, save for Myka's heart, and in those few breathless moments she was free to wonder how it could possibly beat so fast without bursting. How being with someone could feel so soul-shakily right.

At Helena's gentle insistence, Myka began to slowly withdraw her fingers, pulling soft whimpers from the inventor, and she found that she instantly missed the warmth. The simple, miraculous feeling of touching someone so intimately. With a deep sigh, she rested her hand against the curve of H.G.'s hip and dipped her head to press chaste kisses along the length of a pale neck. Heartbeat fluttering beneath her lips, Myka sighed again.

"Not a sound of disappointment I hope." Helena's voice was rough and low in a way that made Myka ache impossibly further, but she pushed her desire aside for the moment, instead focusing on what the other woman had said. It was Helena's way, she supposed. Using humour to defuse an intense situation in a way that Pete had never truly mastered, and usually Myka could let it go. But not this time. Tilting her head so that her lips just barely brushed the rim of Helena's ear, she whispered her words of defiance.

"You've never disappointed me." And she pulled back in time to see emotion glittering in dark eyes like stardust. Helena's parted lips quirked as if she were readying herself to speak. No sound came.

Though there was undoubtedly so much more to say.

Another time, perhaps.

Then Helena was moving, blurring Myka's vision until she was eased down onto the mattress with a tender insistence and pressing a kiss to her lips that said more than words ever could at that moment. It spoke of relief, profound and almost earth-shattering, and it spoke of love, though those were words yet to be voiced.

But then, love was so much more to Myka than the word itself.

She threaded her fingers through thick raven hair and let herself drift, swept out into fathomless depths by soft lips that were becoming achingly familiar. Helena kissed her with a slowness that stoked the fire curling within her, left her with phantom scarring that she could feel reshaping her insides. With every brush of lips and every sure press of her tongue, there was a subtle and yet utterly irrevocable change.

With a dizzying awareness, Myka felt legs twine with her own as Helena carefully distributed her weight atop the reclining woman as though she might be in danger of breaking her. Tentative fingers skipped across the back of the inventor's ribs and Myka luxuriated in the feel soft skin as a warm mouth continued to claim her in what was perhaps the least possessive way Myka had ever experienced, though that didn't negate the intent any. Helena was claiming her. Mind, body and soul.

Myka let it all go willingly.

Slim fingers absently brushed the curls back from her forehead before mapping the angle of her jaw and drifting along her neck. Then Helena was pulling back to gaze at her in a way that Myka could not hope to describe.

"Such beauty could turn the very sun pale." Not that she would have the words or the ability to coerce them into a sentence should she wish to try.

"Are you..." she started, failed with a long and drawn out exhale, and then tried again with a shaky smile. "Do you ever turn it off?" Helena's brow furrowed and she tilted her head a little to one side. The strength of Myka's smile grew. "The charm. Can you even?" And it was strange, how the nerves still lingered yet she could simultaneously feel enough at ease to joke. But then Helena's smug smile returned and the shakiness from Myka's own was sliding south, making her legs jump and brush against the ones flanking them. A dark head dipped and teeth snared Myka's lower lip, firm pressure lifting her hips from the bed. The action tore a moan-heavy gasp from her throat as Helena pressed her thigh into the movement and suddenly there was friction and fire. Myka's eyes snapped closed as her lip was released and a tongue slipped past them to warm her from the inside out.

"Would you really want me to?" Was breathed into her open mouth. Myka's response of a heavy pant seemed to be all the other woman required, the lips now traversing the slope of her neck the punctuation marks to end her non-existent sentence. Teeth scraped gently across sensitive skin and Myka's hips gave another involuntary jerk. Helena's laughter came as a purr against the shell of her ear. "All in good time. I've waited far too long to rush this now." And blinking open heavy lids, Myka could see the thin veil of amusement standing just behind the sincerity that shone in coal-black eyes like diamonds.

She brought her hands to rest against the curves of Helena's ribcage and let her mouth curl into a suggestive smile.

"Maybe I've waited too long to be patient." And even though her heart began to beat faster with some lingering sense of uncertainty that quite frankly should have had no place left to loiter at that point, Myka watched as the sly confidence on Helena's face flickered and dimmed. And felt herself emboldened by it.

Her fingers danced over the swell of Helena's hips, those of her right hand drifting downward with a feigned idleness until her palm came to rest against the back of the kneeling woman's thigh. She spent a moment caressing the skin, slipping in to tease sensitive flesh at the dip of her knee, before her hand grasped at the limb and tugged it forward. She let out a gasp at the rush of pleasure that swept through her at the prolonged touch, adrenaline spiking to trickle shivers along her spine.

Then, with shallow breaths flying swiftly from between parted lips, Myka's hips began to slowly shift. The sounds that left her were quiet but high, each gentle rock of her hips causing friction so good it felt sinful, and Helena's eyes never strayed from hers as the inventor stared down at her. Surprise and wonder heavily etched with desire. Glancing down, Myka watched herself move for a handful of heartbeats, saw the way she was painting pale skin with her actions and felt arousal once more slip into her gut like a knife blade. Building upon that which already lay there, driving her higher. Her grip tightened at the back of Helena's leg, holding her close as the pace of her hips began to quicken.

She had just enough time to wonder if Helena was feeling the same tightening in her gut, before a firm hand on her hip stopped her movements dead and something so close to a growl it made Myka's skin prickle was sifted from Helena's throat. Fire flashed in dark eyes.

"Much as I relish the idea..." And strong fingers slipped from her hip to close around Myka's wrist, prying her hand away with ease and allowing Helena to move her leg just out of her reach. "I have other ways in which to untether you in mind." And Myka felt her breathing shift and drop and deepen as Helena pressed her captured hand into the pillow and sought the pulse point at her neck with her mouth.

Myka's hips shifted again, though this time there was no friction to be found, and she bent the fingers of her captured hand just enough for the tips to brush over work-roughened knuckles. But Helena's hand slipped from Myka's grasp, moving to cup the reclining woman's cheek as her teeth and tongue lavished their attention upon sensitive skin. Myka writhed, bucking helplessly at the sensation and tugging at her lip until it was raw as the mark left at her neck.

"I would wish for this night to never end were I one who believed in such impossibilities, so that I might enact every one of my desires." The words grazed Myka's ear, sent her eyes rolling. "And there are many." She felt the tops of Helena's thighs brush at the insides of her own and the sensation tugged hard enough at the cords of desire twisting through her, the darkness behind her eyelids seemed to spin.

Then Helena was moving. The hardened peaks of her nipples dragging trails of tortuous pleasure across Myka's chest as she eased her body down. She peppered kisses over Myka's skin and along the undersides of her breasts before first drawing one nipple into her mouth, then the other. Myka pressed close, arching her body into the touch as her fingers tangled in dark hair. One of Helena's hands danced about her hip, tracing nonsense patterns and dipping into the juncture where it sloped towards the still rising ache between her legs. Her breath left and returned to her in a string of uneven gasps, waxing and waning at Helena's command, and it wasn't until the inventor paused long enough for the dizziness to clear that Myka heard the woman's airy laughter. She wanted to say something, voice some playful admonishment about teasing, but she couldn't. Blinking open heavy eyes, she saw Helena lying between her legs, head dipped and smiling mouth poised to place a kiss against her inner thigh, and all words and any meaning they held dropped away.

Helena's lips found their mark, feather-light against Myka's skin to match the pace of slender fingers as they stroked across the top of her leg, slow and gentle. Another kiss fell, then another, continuing until they had fallen upon every inch of reachable skin except where Myka needed it most. Her fingers, having been freed from silken locks as Helena moved away, sank into the bed covers and she held on as though slipping away were a very real threat. Her heart hammered and she watched as Helena shifted and caught her eye. Stared at Myka along the length of her lithe frame, and then lowered her head. Anticipation thrummed through her body, making her hips jump prematurely, and Helena's airy laugh rang out once more, cool air drifting over wet heat. And though Myka was nervous in the very best way, she remained nervous nonetheless and small tremors made the muscles in her legs twitch.

Then there came the first press of a sure tongue, firm and certain, and Myka could hold her eyes open no longer. Helena's visage disappeared from view, but every angle and line and curve that painted her face had been forever etched into her subconscious long ago. A desperate moan broke through the seam of her lips to fracture the quiet of the room, one that turned guttural as Helena licked a long, slow line along her folds. Her hips bucked and she felt the arm curled around her thigh tighten, as if in an attempt to hold her down. In some distant corner at the back of her mind Myka wanted to laugh at the idea, because Helena's tongue was probing and stroking and her hips kept leaving the bed regardless of how she was being clung to.

Muttered words that held little meaning at the surface spilled from her as she brought a hand up to tangle fingers in her hair, lower body rocking in time to the rhythm Helena was still setting. Maddening and slow, as though further build up were needed. As though Myka were not already at the very brink of unravelling.

"Helena." And the red colouring her cheeks could easily have been birthed from embarrassment over how breathless and needy the name sounded. How heavy her panting had become. But she didn't care. Couldn't care about anything other than the woman before her and the way her whole body seemed to vibrate with every caress of the inventor's tongue.

"Myka." Spoken with a sigh and with such reverence; she almost didn't recognise it as her own name. And hips rolling against warm air, the sound stirred something. Buried deep and so taut with yearning it was ready to break.

"Please." And so it did.

She cried out as Helena slipped a finger into wet heat and held it still throughout her quiet, playful reprimands. Rousing the other occupants of the house would not be ideal and Myka was warned by a voice that burned low over hot coals. She let her hand fall from her hair and flung it forward, searching for something, anything to hold onto. Steady herself. Slender fingers left her hip to twine with her own atop her rapidly rising and falling stomach and her grip turned painful as Helena began to ease out.

Her mouth returned as a second finger joined the first and Myka's body rocked down hard against the touch, seeking more. She felt Helena's lips graze her thigh as her hips jerked, felt the smile press into her skin and linger even after the touch had gone. Felt the rush of it along with everything else race through her veins and mist her vision. She clutched at the hand in hers and gasped as the tip of Helena's tongue slid over her clit.

And suddenly, everything was tangible.

And real.

And so much more than Myka could have ever dreamed.

She concentrated on the feel of it all. The press of slick warmth against her own and the way Helena's mouth followed her every move. She concentrated on Helena's hands, the increasing rhythm of one and reassuring stillness of the other. The ease and sureness with which fingers slipped in and out and curled inside of her, drawing forth whimpers and breathless moans. Words formed only to die before they had chance to leave her and later Myka would wonder if perhaps that was for the best, but in the moment they were left to fall. Not forgotten, but pushed aside, as Helena drove her higher.

Beads of sweat trickled along the side of her neck and her back arched as fingertips pressed upward before being slowly extracted. Again and again, until Myka's shaking became near constant. Full-body tremors that rocked her to her core and seemed to spill back out from the very same spot in a never ending loop. One that began to buckle and fracture as Helena's lips closed around that small cluster of nerves that could make Myka see stars.

And as control slipped away, there were galaxies behind her eyes.

Though there should have been ample time to prepare, to ready herself, but it swept over her with all the suddenness of the rapidly changing tide. The muscles in her forearm tensed as she clutched desperately at the bed sheets, her other hand gripping too tightly at the one she held, and the tightening that had been layering itself low in her stomach seemed to freeze and shatter and melt all at once.

Her climax came with a whimper, lip snared between her teeth and hips canting without thought. It burned out from Helena's hands and mouth and sent fissures of fire trickling to all ends of her body until she was enveloped by electric warmth that crackled and fizzled like flames. Took all the oxygen in the room and left her gasping, dying. But then Helena was there, breathing life back into her as she had done in different ways so many times before. Her kisses were soft and gentle, giving Myka the reprieve needed to catch her breath and it took a while, but eventually the haze around her mind cleared and she came down from the clouds.

She gasped and sank her nails into the flesh of Helena's hand as the woman withdrew her fingers. Myka could feel her smiling against her cheek and the almost-not-there brush of a nose, then her body was being half-blanketed by another's and the cool chill that had begun to settle in evaporated.

There was silence then, the easy weight of it permeated only by their breathing as each woman eased down from different highs. She felt Helena's hand settle beside her breast, felt the pressure of her resting her chin upon it, and Myka's eyes opened to the welcome sight of a dishevelled goddess.

Minutes passed and neither spoke, content instead to study the other under new light. One that proved infinitely more intimate and familiar. It was only when Helena removed her hand to trace patterns, letters – initials, perhaps, - against Myka's chest with a finger that words once more disturbed the hush.

"There was a time I no longer believed in love." And seized her heart. Helena's expression was thoughtful, contemplative, as she continued. "I thought it an emotion long removed from my grasp." And then she smiled, wide and blinding, and Myka's heart began to beat once more. "It's rare that I can enjoy being wrong." And it swelled fit to burst inside her chest. She drew the inventor close until smiling mouths could curve and bend in other ways, and Myka willed everything she couldn't find the words for into the kisses.

Slumber's persistent hands eventually caught them in its grasp and Myka gave herself over to it, knowing that sleep would be easy for once, blanketed by the woman she loved.

---

Daylight spilled in through the gap in the curtains, brightening the room, and Myka's eyes blinked heavily as they opened.

Her first thought was of Helena, of the night and early morning. Of how she felt lighter, weighted by such love.

But then there was panic, and an ache so profound it brought tears to her eyes.

Save for herself, the bed was empty. And for one heart-stopping eternity, Myka was forced to wonder if any of it had been real at all.

And then sunlight glinted off the locket where it lay draped over the bedside table, and Helena's words rushed back to her across time.

Then she saw the note. A single slip of paper that had been folded so that it would stand and catch her attention.

Neither man, nor Gods, nor Fate itself shall coerce farewells from my lips. Goodbyes are not for us, my love.

Helena Wells was a woman who had defied time and, reading the note again, Myka smiled.

Fate didn't stand a chance.