Artie stared at Myka, silent, for a long moment. Long enough that Myka began to question whether or not he'd heard her, despite knowing that he had. She shifted on the spot, uncomfortable with the quiet and his unfaltering gaze, and when she could finally take it no longer she spoke again.
"Artie." Just loud enough to bring him back from wherever he'd gone. He blinked at her a few times in rapid succession and his mouth opened and closed twice before he could push any words out.
"I know that..." He turned away from her slightly, shuffling a stack of papers that lay on the desk beside the monitor into a tidy pile before picking them up. "I know that you want to help Myka, but-"
"She needs to know about this, Artie." And the determination in her voice pulled his attention back to her. Her face was set, expression shadowed and resolute. "This isn't about helping. This is about doing what's right. If she knew what Paracelsus was able to accomplish-"
"Then what?" She bristled at the barked interruption, folding her arms across her chest but standing her ground. "We let her go gallivanting off back to the eighteen hundreds to alter the course of history?"
"It's the right thing to do." Truth be told, he'd always admired her stubbornness. Right from the moment she'd set foot in South Dakota. He'd admired the way she'd climbed a mountain of manure and how she'd made an impulsive wish using a kettle even before she'd believed that such things were possible. He had admired the things she had done to escape the Warehouse and the things she'd done to stay. And really, he should have expected this. Not that it would have made it any easier.
"It's not as simple as right and wrong." He gestured helplessly with one hand before running the palm over his hair again and she frowned at him. A gentle creasing of her brow that pulled at him.
"What would you do?" She asked, tone low and close to broken. "If you could save someone you love?" He felt his heart seize, something like a mix of dread and sorrow being pulled through it like razor wire. He looked at her through the eyes of a father then and saw a daughter in pain. Unable to stop herself from wanting something that went against everything she'd learned and he knew how difficult that was. To want something so desperately you didn't care about anything else.
And it wouldn't be an easy decision. There were a lot of things to consider. But just like everything else, they'd figure it out together.
Myka was the first one down to the dining room the next morning, another night of fitful sleep making an early riser out of her. She had showered and dressed almost in time to meet the sun as it rose over the back garden of the bed and breakfast, and by the time she made it downstairs Leena hadn't even begun to get things ready for breakfast. The woman glanced over her shoulder at the sound of approaching footsteps and she met hazel eyes with a small measure of surprise.
"You're up early." She commented with a smile and Myka returned it with a tentative one of her own, too caught up in the thoughts that had smothered both her sleeping and waking hours for anything more than that. "Trouble sleeping?" Myka twisted her head to the side with a nod, stretching out a kink in her neck and not paying attention as Leena gave her a quick once over. There was a pause of silence as Myka sat down at the small circular kitchen table. "You're thinking about H.G." She said, rather abruptly and entirely out of left field in Myka's opinion, and the agent stared at her wide eyed for a heartbeat.
"How did you know?" Leena's smile was gentle as she turned back to the boiling kettle and opened up the cupboard above it, pulling down two mugs and gesturing towards Myka with one of them. She nodded and Leena set them on the counter.
"Your aura." She said simply, dropping a teabag into each cup. "The colour changes whenever you think about her." The knowledge unsettled Myka a little, that she could be so transparent to someone. "I don't mean to pry." Leena's tone was apologetic and Myka realised that her silence was likely being taken the wrong way.
"No, I know." She assured the other woman, and she did. It wasn't something Leena could turn off. No more than Steve could shut down his internal lie detector or Pete could stop his vibes. She just read you without looking. "What colour is it usually?" She asked. Leena seemed to ponder over the question as she poured water into the cups.
"It's kind of difficult to put into words." She said after a moment, reaching into one of the draws and retrieving a spoon. "There's usually a mix that's dependant on the person and it makes a colour that isn't really..." she made a face, "named." Myka smiled at the explanation. "But if I had to give one to yours, usually it's turquoise. Mostly." She took out the teabags and dropped them into the garbage can before lifting a mug in each hand and turning to the table. She set one down in front of Myka and took the seat across from her with her own.
"Thanks." Myka said, cradling the cup and rubbing her thumb back and forth over the smooth porcelain of the handle. Leena waited. "How does it change?" She asked after a moment of quiet and Leena sipped her tea thoughtfully before speaking.
"It becomes..." she paused, searching for the right word to describe what she saw, "streaked. With purples and gold. The foundation of the colour changes almost completely." Myka wasn't sure what that meant exactly, but a question rose unbidden. One that she knew would nag at her until she gave it voice.
"What colour was H.G.'s? When she was here?" Leena's eyes met hers, unflinching if not a tad apologetic. As though she wished Myka hadn't asked.
"Mostly purple." And for a second, it was as if all the air had been sucked out of the room. "Sometimes there would be heavy spots of red and black. Unless she was with you. Then it was streaked with turquoise." And Myka couldn't breathe. Couldn't speak. Could hardly form thoughts. For that moment, she ceased to exist. And she still didn't know what it meant, but she had an idea. And beneath everything else, it hurt. "I'm sorry." Leena frowned at her and the regret in the expression jerked Myka back into existence. "Should I not have-"
"No." She interrupted, lifting a white-knuckled hand from her mug to wave it dismissively. "No, it's fine. I asked." Her smile shot for reassuring but fell short, something that did not go unnoticed, and Myka didn't know what else to say. So she reached across the table to give the other woman's hand a squeeze. And Leena's smile returned, though it was a little less bright.
They sat in contemplative silence for a few minutes after that, a host of questions being birthed only to find a swift and silent death in the quiet of the kitchen. Leena finished the last of her tea and stood.
"I guess breakfast isn't going to make itself." Myka smiled up at her, eyebrow cocked.
"Pretty sure Pete thinks it does." Leena gave a laugh as she turned away, placing the cup into the dishwasher and starting on the food. "I bet there's an artifact for that. Would save you a lot of trouble." Leena hummed thoughtfully.
"But it would probably make anyone who eats the food turn into Henry the Eighth. We'd end up trying to take each others heads off." Myka hiccuped a chuckle around a mouthful of liquid and then nodded her agreement.
She remained in the kitchen a little while longer, making small talk with Leena as she helped prepare breakfast, until she heard the main door to the bed and breakfast click open and closed. She made her apologies for not helping more as she edged towards the door and Leena shooed her away, surprisingly non-threatening even with a knife in her hand.
As she'd suspected, it was Artie. Myka approached him with a sort of slow apprehension, hanging back by the dining room table and waiting for him to notice her. She waited as he shrugged out of his jacket and hung it against the wall, then turned and entered the sitting room. When his eyes found hers an expression that she couldn't quite describe flashed across his face. But it only lasted an instant. His gaze dropped as he walked over, swinging his briefcase up and onto the table. Myka waited. She waited until she was sure he wasn't going to speak unless she asked him to.
"Artie?" He paused as he was popping the clips, then resumed before looking at her again. "Did you-"
"I talked to them." He said, his tone making Myka's stomach churn violently. Artie sighed, heavy and harsh, and turned to face her. "There's a lot to consider, Myka." Myka felt her hackles rise, as though the action were a tangible thing a person could touch.
"Like what?" She asked, an edge of ire to her voice that made Artie's eyes flutter closed as he readied himself for what was coming. "Like how we could help H.G. save the life of her daughter? How we could help her mend herself in the process?"
"And what about all she's done to help the Warehouse?" He asked, temper straining beneath his tenuous control. "She's helped saved thousands of lives, Myka. The Regents, they can't justify risking that to save the life of one person."
"A child, Artie. Her child." She argued, belligerent and certain, as though she'd thought through every possible argument he might throw at her. "There are things we can do to make sure we still save all of those people, I know it." She levelled her gaze at him then, jaw set and head high. "What if it was Claudia?" He glared at her.
"Myka-"
"Or Vanessa?" His jaw clamped closed with an audible click. "I know you, Artie." She said, voice more gentle now. "You'd do anything to save them." He let out a deep breath and reached into his briefcase. His fingers closed around an envelope and he lifted it out.
"I know." And he did, couldn't argue with her on that. "Which is why," he tossed the envelope onto the table and it slid until it hit the edge of the chair she was standing beside, "I brought you this." She lifted it from where it lay and thumbed open the lip, sliding out the contents.
"A plane ticket." She glanced up at him. "To Wisconsin." He nodded. They stared at one another for a handful of heartbeats, before she strode forward and enveloped the short man in a hug. "Thank you." He awkwardly patted her back and waited for her to pull away.
"You leave at four." She eased back and released him, clutching the ticket like a lifeline. Her lips trembled as she smiled and the glassy quality to her gaze made him uneasy, so he turned from her and busied himself with arranging the non-existent mess in his briefcase. He didn't look up again until he felt a hand on his forearm, stilling his pointless motions.
"Thank you." Myka repeated, and the sincerity in her voice almost undid him.
When she packed for a mission, Myka was always sure she was prepared. Even if it was intended to be a quick and simple snag and bag, she always packed as though it might potentially turn into an overnight excursion. Better safe than sorry; one of the lessons her father had instilled in her that still remained. She folded an extra shirt and set it atop the dress pants she'd placed in the suitcase just as there was a knock at the door.
"Come in." She turned to look over her shoulder as it opened and Pete stuck his head around the side of it.
"Ready to go?" He had offered to drive her to the airport so she wouldn't have to leave the vehicle they usually used parked at a lot until she returned and she glanced down at the contents of the suitcase before nodding and zipping it closed.
"I think I have everything." She could hear him shuffling behind her, heard the dull thud of his form hitting the wall as he dropped to lean against it.
"But are you ready?" She sighed and turned around, sitting beside the case on the edge of her bed and levelling him with a look. He flashed her a smile that let her know he wasn't going to just let this go.
"No." She said honestly, letting the vowel linger on the breath she blew out. Her hand went to her hair and she pushed it back out of her face. "I have... No idea what I'm going to say to her, Pete." He kicked the toe of his sneaker against the hardwood floor, looking a bit like an unsure schoolboy with his hands shoved into the pockets of his hoodie.
"Hey H.G., guess what? Physical time travel, not so impossible anymore." He offered with an attempt at a wry smile but he couldn't quite pull it off. He shrugged an apology. "Guess that's not really your style."
"Not so much." They lapsed into companionable silence for a little while then, Myka looking for her courage and Pete patiently waiting for her to find it. When it finally appeared as though she had and she stood, he moved forward and grabbed her case from the bed before she could. She frowned at him and he gave another shrug, muttering something about how she shouldn't be lifting things and she didn't have the energy to fight him on it.
The majority of the car ride to the airport was quiet, their silence broken only by foreign radio voices and the sound of Pete occasionally strumming his thumbs against the steering wheel in time to whatever song was playing.
"Am I being selfish?" She asked suddenly and he took his eyes off the road only long enough to glance over at her.
"What are you talking about?" She didn't look at him, remained staring out of the window as she spoke.
"Doing what I'm doing. Flying out there to drag her back into Warehouse business after she's tried so hard to escape it." He flicked his indicator and swiftly shifted lanes, following the signs for the airport without consciously paying attention.
"It's not like you're doing it just to bring her back into the fold, Mykes. She needs to know about this, you said it yourself." She absently chewed on her lower lip as she considered his words.
"I know." She said, but she didn't sound sure. "But she said she was happy. What if I tell her, get her hopes up, and then something happens that shatters everything?" He sighed.
"It's a risk, yeah." He admitted and saw her wince in his periphery. Not the answer she was looking for, but he'd always tried to be honest with her and she knew that. "But I think it's one that's worth taking. If she found out that the possibility had been there at one point and you hadn't said anything to her, it'd be like-"
"A betrayal." She finished for him, giving a single, slow nod of her head. "Yeah." And there had been enough betrayal in their relationship already. Myka didn't want to associate that word with H.G. Wells ever again, not after retiring it so long ago. She wouldn't dredge it up again, despite the risks.
Maybe it was natural to have doubts, but it wasn't something Myka was used to. She was always so sure of everything before she did it. It was fitting, she supposed.
H.G. had been throwing a wrench in her works since day one.
Even after his many, many years working in and around the Warehouse, Artie still didn't know exactly where everything was. He knew the general gist of it all, where things were supposed to be. The problem was that they didn't always stay there. There were a number of artifacts housed on the shelves that seemed to relish moving things from one place to another, a lot of them having been found during suspected poltergeist investigations, and they acted up without any kind of warning. And since nutralizer maintenance only went so far, there was no way to properly secure such artifacts and he was forced to let them get on with it, leaving the hunting down of it for later.
So it was not entirely out of the ordinary for Claudia to find the man prowling the aisles on his steampunk segway, muttering to himself about wayward artifacts and looking a bit like a homeless man. Only with a segway.
"What did you lose now?" She said, abruptly appearing around the corner of an aisle and forcing him to stop. He jerked to a halt and closed his eyes for a moment before glaring at her.
"Don't do that." He snapped. "You're going to give me a heart attack. One day you're going to kill me." She threw him a mock pout.
"Please, you're like a cockroach. The apocalypse could ravage the world and you'd still be here." He furrowed his wiry eyebrows at her.
"Thank you for that touching comparison." He swung a little on the segway, turning to face the aisle he'd stopped in front of and beginning to scour the shelves. "And I didn't lose anything. Things keep walking off." Claudia hummed and moved over to the shelf he was looking at. She spent a few seconds aimlessly searching and he eyed her in his periphery.
"So-"
"And there it is." He interrupted, a small, knowing smile turning his lips. She narrowed her eyes at him but continued on.
"Do you think H.G. will do it?" He blew out a breath and gave a half shrug of his shoulders.
"I don't know if the Regents will even allow it." Claudia's expression shifted, mild disbelief shadowing her features.
"Will that really make a difference?" It wasn't as though Artie had never defied them before. He turned the segway again so that he was facing her and she had to jerk her feet out of the way of his wheels. He didn't seem to notice.
"I've already gone against their wishes just by sending Myka to see her." He admitted, rubbing the palm of his hand against his cheek. "The ramifications could be extensive. For all of us." She didn't seem overly bothered by his warning even after the last bit that he'd tacked on with a blunt pointedness.
"We've all done things we shouldn't have to save people we love." She said. "It's like... The greater good or something."
"Yes, well, there's a lot more to consider here than the usual. We've saved thousands, maybe millions of peoples lives with H.G.'s help. If the time line is altered and she isn't here to help with those things..." He trailed off, not seeing a need to finish. Claudia fiddled with a badge of her jacket for a few moments, thinking.
"They'll figure it out." She glanced up to find his eyes on her, gaze questioning. "That's kind of what they do, right? They figure things out together."
She was right, of course. Even back before he'd trusted H.G. about as far as he could throw her he had seen it. The way she and Myka worked together. Like two pieces of a machine that had finally come together to work fluidly and flawlessly. He'd hated it of course, even more so when his gut instinct had been proven right, but it was there nonetheless. Irrefutably.
And so maybe Claudia was right. Maybe they would figure it out together.
He was only a little surprised to realise that he hoped they would.
Myka wasn't scared of flying, she had never been the kind of person to hold the armrests in a white-knuckled grip during take off, but it wasn't her idea of fun. When they flew together she always let Pete take the window seat, not just because he was an overgrown child and whined if he didn't get it, but because she didn't get any kind of enjoyment from looking down at the earth from thousands of feet above its surface. It unnerved her, being so far off solid ground, and she spent most flights counting down the minutes until touch down. During this particular flight she found herself wondering, not for the first time, if there was an artifact that allowed for teleportation over vast distances, but the numerous side effects that she conjured up inevitably talked her out of any hypothetical usage of such a thing. But she was impatient, despite the hours she could spend (and had spent) hidden away on a steak out, and the idea still appealed to that side of her.
As far as flights went though the one to Wisconsin didn't drag on as long as she'd felt others had in the past and there was no turbulence to speak of. So when she departed the plane and began to navigate her way down to baggage claim, the only lingering nerves she felt were down to what she was here to do and who she was here to see.
She joined the small throng of people at the carousel and waited for the conveyor belt to start moving, digging in her pocket for her phone and switching it back on. After a minute or so she was greeting with a number of notification sounds and she thumbed the touch screen, bringing the phone to life. They were all text messages; three from Pete, one from Claudia and another, surprisingly, from Artie. She hadn't known he even knew what texting was, let alone how to navigate a phone long enough to punch one out.
"stop panicking", "you're panicking, i can feel it", "it'll be fine mykes".
She smiled as Pete's messages and thumbed her way into the screen for Claudia's.
"Tell HG I say hi!"
They'd been close, once upon a time. When things were simultaneously more easy and somehow harder. Different. Artie's message almost made her laugh out loud, but she managed to hide it under the sound of the conveyor belt whirring to life.
"if she asks, my shoulder is fine."
Who knew he had a sense of humour?
She spotted her suitcase sliding down the shoot after about fifteen minutes of waiting and hauled it off the carousel when it made its way around to her, then she headed outside to hail a cab. One swung in to stop beside the curb at her first wave and she let the driver take her bag and haul it into the trunk as she climbed into the back. She gave him the address that she'd memorised during their first excursion and then they were off.
Wisconsin was pretty. Myka had decided that the first time she had visited, years before, and the area in which H.G. lived was especially so. The kind of picturesque suburbs that Hollywood movies about soccer moms had made popular. She could quite easily imagine a person wanting to settle down here, start a family, maybe have a dog or two. Nice gardens with meticulously kept flower beds, lawns that get mowed every Sunday and annual street-wide bake sales.
H.G. wasn't so easily slotted into the idyllic tranquillity of it all. At least, it wasn't easy for Myka to picture. Even now, after having months to adjust to the idea, it still didn't sit well. Still felt wrong.
But that wasn't why she was here and she'd promised herself that she wouldn't touch that particular subject after last time.
The cab made its last turn onto a familiar street and Myka felt her heart rate speed up. For all the thinking she had done over this, she hadn't considered what her initial plan of action would be. What she would say to H.G. when the woman opened the door, if she was even home.
A jolt of something like fear ran through her. Because what if she wasn't home? What if Nate was? What if they'd gone away for the weekend together and Myka was stuck waiting around in a hotel room she would have to rent until they got home? The list could have gone on forever and it might have, had the cab not pulled up next to the house that Myka still had trouble associating with H.G. and put the car into park.
"Well, here we are." He said, flashing a smile at her in the rear view mirror and getting out to grab her suitcase out of the trunk. She took a deep breath to settle her nerves and stepped out of the car. She reached into her back pocket and pulled out a wallet, liberating a few bills and handing him enough for the trip and a little extra for his trouble. He tipped the flat cap he was wearing and slid back into the driver's seat. She watched as he drove away and then turned to face the house.
"Here I am." She sighed to herself and then popped the extending handle on the suitcase, before making her way up along the driveway.