Chapter 2 – Helena
HG Wells sits alone in the darkness, which is not an unusual occurrence these days. Feelings and thoughts was over her. She sits, silent, unmoving, for a moment believing she is still bronzed. That this is all a dream. She feels something she can't quite articulate. Something she has never felt before. This strikes her as odd, as her years in the bronze sector left her plenty of time to feel.
When she was bronzed, above all, she had felt restless.
That's the one word which springs to mind after all that time. Not angry, not sad, not frustrated.
Just Restless. Lifeless. Powerless. Helpless. Longing to be free, but not desperate for it.
Desperation, despair, depression, these were not feeling HG Wells allowed herself to fall prey to.
And certainly not hopelessness.
This feeling, that comes over her now, as she sits, alone, in the dark, this totally foreign feeling, the closest word she can find to describe it, is hopelessness.
She had always felt 'alive'. Even in the bronze sector. There was always a spark inside her, igniting her passion, her creativity, her very survival.
Tonight, that spark is gone.
It leaves her bewildered. And after the bewilderment subsides, she fees merely...lost.
She can not pin point the exact moment she lost her precious talisman. The object she carried with her at all times. She can not even pin point the last place she had it in her possession. It had become so routine to reach for it. It was always, always, there, within her grasp. HG Wells does not believe in superstition. Rather she believes in things she can see, in science, even in things she can imagine, things that made sense, that existed in the possibility of her mind, if in no one else's. But superstition? No. She believed in unexplainable things, artifacts, powers. But this object had no power. No rightful claim over her at all. It was superstitious, sentimental nonsense. And so she tries, in vain, to shake off the overwhelming sense of loss.
It was a habit she despised in herself, seeking comfort from a worthless object. Her weakness. It reminded her of a small child toting around some ragged old blanket, believing it would keep them safe. Not her child. Christina had never needed an object, a blanket, a teddy bear. Christina had a good head on her shoulders. And a mother to keep her safe. The words collapse inside her head the very moment she thinks them. What kind of mother was she? She could not even keep Christina safe. Christina deserved better.
And thus, the sentimental value of this object- Christina had given it to her. But not only that. As Christina had given her many things. There was something else about this object.
She recalls her daughters soft tiny hands, her hopeful joyful trusting eyes. The object meant something like that, HG decides. Something un describable, akin to the look in the little girls eyes, something, perhaps, unattainable, unreal.
Something which magnified the life force which always drove her, against her struggles, sexism, censorship, peoples negativity stifling her creativity, her constant life story of being told she cant do this...or that...or anything.
The object means, she realises only now, something like hope. Something like reason to keep on going. But now, it's gone.
Distantly she is aware of the rain falling on the roof.
It had rained that day too, the day she lost Christina. As it had rained many times before, and probably since. She can not claim to know for sure, dry and secured in the bronze sector. But the sound of this rainfall hits her instantly. In a way she had not been expecting. Pain was constant companion, and this sudden exacerbation, this vicious stab of agony, causes her to cry out in surprise, in discomfort. Despair. Horror.
It was a combination of these perhaps, the loss of her comfort item, the rain reminiscent of Christina's last day on earth, causing her this much pain out of the blue. She feels utterly isolated, alone. Not only in the physical sense. But the spiritual sense. Everything is foreign to her. She has here no friends, no family, no place to call home. No purpose. No hope.
Through it all , two things had always kept her going. Firstly Christina's precious face in her mind. Sweet, innocent, beautiful. The desire that she needed to be something, to make something of her life, to make Christina proud. To live for Christina.
And secondly, surprisingly, there was Myka Bering.
HG hadn't thought much of Myka as an adversary at their first meeting. However upon getting to know the other woman, the two had forged a rocky connection. She had come to see Myka as a woman not unlike herself in many ways. Stubborn, determined, resourceful, misunderstood. And yet in some ways so so vastly different. Or perhaps just in a vastly different place.
HG watched her, from afar of course, with Pete, Artie, Claudia. Undeniably a family, not a team of colleagues. A genuine family, nothing less. And nothing like her own apprentice days at Warehouse 12. And Myka, at the centre, so obviously and openly adored by them all. Yet Myka doesn't recognise it, HG realises. Instead Myka torments herself with insecurity, with loneliness, with guilt. Myka feels apart, feels different. HG would like to take her aside sometimes, slap her senseless. Make her realise that she has so much. Who is Myka to feel alone, to feel misunderstood or hard done by? She is loved, adored, revered, surrounded, protected, valued.
It makes HG squirm to think about it, and she doesn't know why. Perhaps because she wants a part of it, she made no secret of that. Told it to Myka very early on. She isn't certain she was believed. But she wants it. Badly. And if she can't have her piece, then she wants Myka out of it. She wants Myka with her, on the outside. It might be wrong, but the heart wants what the heart wants. And HG Wells heart wants Myka.
It does not occur to HG Wells to think she may be in love. Being "in love" is not something she did. And certainly not now. So she turns her thoughts from Myka, from love, to loneliness, and inevitable death.
People do die, eventually, some sooner than others, even when they are bronzed. HG knows it. She isn't sure how she knows it. But she knows it. The will to live is a powerful thing. It sustained her over a century. But some people lose it. And with no stimulation, no hope, no reason- they do die. Slowly the body begins to decay. It's difficult to determine the moment of physiological death, as under bronzing there are no traditional signs of life to begin with, no heart beat, no respirations. But it's the death of the person, the personality, inside. Longing to be free, and shutting down the brain, until there is nothing left.
And yet, longing for death to be free of bronzing is not something that had ever occurred to her. Bronzing only made her more determined to survive, to fight back, to win, to breath again. To move and walk and create and experience and live.
Bronzing? No. She can not claim that bronzing had driven her to the edge. Nor had being re-animated in this world, a world unimaginably more cruel and painful than the one she left behind.
She had been driven to the edge, once, a long time ago, after Christina died. HG Wells, fleetingly, had wanted to die. To be with her baby. Or to die in exchange for her baby. Or to numb the excruciating pain. It's that feeling which returns to her tonight, as it sometimes did. Sometimes it washed over her, in passing. But tonight, it takes hold, it sinks in. Tonight she can find no way out. Tonight she doesn't want a way out. She takes deep painful breaths as silent tears fall. And she reaches for her object of comfort. It is not there.
The madness of it almost makes her laugh. Look at what she has lost, what she has endured. She lost a child, a precious little girl. She survived. But losing a worthless object is going to push her over the edge to the depths of despair? Evidently so.
She finds herself consumed with agonising grief, loneliness, fear, anxiety. She can not breathe, and breathlessness is not foreign to her after her stint in the bronze sector. But this is different. This need for oxygen, it's painful, it left her gasping, collapsed in a heap, in the total darkness, metaphorically and physically.
She is aching for her precious little girl. All these years, it still doesn't hurt any less. Then there is the insidious guilt- What kind of a mother had she ever been? Why hadn't she protected Christina?
She is profoundly disturbed by image of Christina watching over her, from wherever she may be. She doesn't spend a lot of time dwelling on logistics of where Christina is. She has to believe in somewhere, yet it defies all her scientific knowledge. But to think of Christina watching this pathetic display of what her mother has been reduced to, her descent into madness, makes her sick to her stomach. But there is no escape. No escape from this.
Not true, she corrects herself, Helena, not true. There is one escape. The thought makes her dizzy with relief. Makes breath come a little easier, tears a little slower. One escape from all this forever. She declares, silently to herself, silent so that Christian wont hear her from heavenly spying post- that this is the last night she will spend on this earth. Over a century is more than most people, more than enough. Tonight, she vows, at last, she will join Christina in the realm of the dead.