Hello lovely readers :D. Here's the last chapter... It was supposed to be very short, but it soon became a 6 page monster.
I'd like to extend my support to those of you reading this from Taiwan (I know there are a couple). I do hope you and your loved ones are safe. Take care!
Thank y'all for reading and commenting and helping me cope with that B&W bitterness ;). Enjooooooy!
Leena couldn't say it wasn't weird to find H.G Wells in her kitchen that morning. Not that she didn't like the inventor, quite on the contrary, she could see from her aura that the woman was no real danger – anymore. But it certainly felt awry after all the twist and turns. That morning, seeing Helena so focused on the toaster brought a smile to the enigmatic woman's face. The engineer had discovered the modernity of that magical device here, at the B&B when she had first come to live with the team. When her first slice of bread had jumped for her, she had jumped with it like a child, shouting "Aces!" excitedly. She had stripped the poor appliance down twice and put the pieces back together each time with stars in her eyes, praising whoever had had the brilliant idea of inventing such a clever system.
It was awry, weird, but still very much appreciated to see her back home, busying herself with making tea and preparing her own breakfast with a side-smile that made Leena wonder if it was her first real meal since she had reintegrated her body.
"Good morning!"
Helena turned to face her and flashed one of her brightest smiles.
"Hello early birdie."
"Looks like someone is in a good mood!" Leena sing-sang, going straight for the coffee-maker.
The two slices of bread jumped from the toaster and H.G let out a contented sigh, taking a plate from a cupboard.
"I haven't slept that well in ages. And I mean it quite literally." She answered, trying to get her slices out of the toaster without burning her fingers.
Helena did look more peaceful than ever, and her aura had a lovely lilac and blueish color. Healing, sweetness, peace. There was no trace left of the revenge and hatred Leena had detected during her first stay. Myka Bering had put all the pieces of H.G Wells back together, just like the writer had done with the toaster. The young agent was good at tinkering with lost souls – which was good news for the survival of the whole planet, as Helena had no reason to wreak havoc now.
Leena settled to cut some oranges for her usual homemade juice, smiling enigmatically.
"I'm sorry about the sleeping arrangements. I don't want to rush things by moving Steve's belongings." She apologized.
Helena dismissed the apology, shaking her head.
"Nonsense. Claudia wouldn't let you. Besides, there's no one I'd rather share a bed with than Myka."
It sounded slightly more flirtatious than intended, but she trusted Leena to understand what she meant. After handing her body over to a new personality, that Emily Lake, it felt good to recover bits of her privacy. Having to share it with someone who loved her even after her betrayal, who accepted and understood her, broken as she was, and was like her in so many ways – Well, it was soothing. What was even more soothing was the way her body had reacted to waking up all tangled up in Myka.
Leena had to repress a light chuckle when Helena's aura went nearly fully pink, and she turned away to hide her knowing smile.
Before she could think of an answer, Pete came bursting into the kitchen, still in his pajama – a Denver Broncos T-shirt Myka had thought funny to gift him with and some absolutely ridiculous white boxer peppered with smiling hotdogs that Claudia had offered him for Christmas – his hair disheveled and his face still wearing the imprint of the pillow.
"Hey H.G. You know it's alright to come down for breakfast dressed in your best nightclothes, right? Nobody will judge you." He said cheerfully, stealing a cookie from the jar.
Helena poured him some coffee, and looked at him, raising an eyebrow, her head cocked to the side in that usual mocking way of hers, staring at his clothes.
"Well, I certainly do judge you." She teased.
Pete looked down at himself while munching his cookie and shrugged.
"A' leasht it proofsh I'm human." He said, sending crumbs flying.
The women exchanged an amused smile and Helena added a sugar to Pete's coffee, stirred it, and extended her arm towards the young man while taking a sip of her tea.
Pete swallowed his food, ran his tongue along his teeth to get the very last chocolate residues trapped between them and was about to take his mug from H.G's hand when it started to shake.
For a split second, Pete panicked, fearing some kind of crisis. But looking at Helena, he saw that she was absolutely still, except for that right arm shaking violently, and the woman's look. She was lost in contemplation of the ripples of coffee, seemingly unaware that the hot beverage was running wild, leaving burns on the back of her hand.
"Wow, HG? Are you alright?!"
He seized her wrist, which didn't stop the shaking but reduced it considerably, and searched her gaze. Her eyes were wide opened, her breathing shallow, her lips parted and it seemed like she would curl up on the floor and cry any moment now.
The commotion got Leena to turn to them, and gasp. Helena was bathed in the gray and red light of her changing aura. Leena was used to seeing changes in her friends' auras, yet, one simply didn't go from pink, blue and sweet purple – all signs of love, peacefulness and serenity – to fear, depression and intense sadness. That knowledge led her to understand what was happening. Helena was suffering from post-traumatic stress. She took the two mugs away from her, put them down on the kitchen counter and ran back to her friend. She didn't need to tell Pete what to do – Exchanging a silent worried look, they guided Helena to the closest chair and sat her down. The young man draped his arm around Helena's shoulder, trying to coax her to relax and speak.
It seemed to have some effect on the Englishwoman, as she took a deep breath which sounded like one coming from someone who had just been saved from drowning, and she took the hand that rested on her shoulder in her right one, still-shaking slightly. Pete returned the gesture, giving her shoulder a brotherly squeeze.
"Are you okay?" He asked, not even trying to hide the concern painted on his face.
She nodded, swallowing hard.
"I'm sorry."
"What the hell happened?"
She looked at the ceiling and focused on her breathing.
"My right hand seems to have a consciousness of its own" she explained, trying and failing to sound cheerful, her attempt resulting in a sound that was somewhere between a laugh and a sob.
Pete's eyebrow rose in a typical 'I-really-don't-understand-what-you're-saying' pose and Helena flashed him her best sorry and bitter smile.
"It still bears the memory of what happened in Yellowstone." She elaborated.
Obviously, Pete needed his morning coffee, now half going cold on the kitchen tiles, half going cold in his mug, for he couldn't understand a word of what H.G was trying to tell him.
"What happened in Yellowstone." He repeated.
"I didn't tell them, Helena."
Myka's voice, coming from the doorway, made them jump, and Helena's throat went dry. She turned to her friend and green met black. There was nothing but concern and love in Myka's eyes, and it melted Helena's heart.
"You didn't?" She asked. Suddenly, she was feeling stupid.
Of course she hadn't. It was their private business. Their meetings at gunpoint were their secret garden. No one needed to know. No one needed to know that they had woken up as one huge mass of limbs either.
While Leena had chosen to busy herself with the preparations of their breakfast, leaving the two women the space they needed, Pete was clearly not to be put off by their silent connection.
"Hey, you girls really should know that you're the only ones gifted with telepathic abilities there."
He wasn't blind. He knew they were talking behind his back. Literally. They were able to spending hours sitting on opposite sides of the living room, talking but not talking – That kind of conversation only two souls who are alike can have without uttering a single word out loud – while he played with Claudia. He could clearly catch the more obvious sentences- "I'll make some tea, want some?", "They never stop, do they?", "What are you reading?", or even subtle ones if he was looking closely- "I can't believe H.G Wells is reading, right here in my house, wrapped in my fleece blanket.".
Yet, what was going on there that morning in the kitchen was clearly something that was far above his level of his understanding of the Bering & Wells dialect. None of them turned to him, so he felt slightly surprised when Myka chose to clarify things for his sake, never tearing her gaze from Helena's face.
"I put my gun in her hand and told her that if she wanted to destroy the whole world, then I wanted her to look at me while I died."
Helena shuddered. She clearly didn't like being reminded of that painful moment.
Pete's mouth was agape. That sure explained it. Why was he so surprised? He knew how the emotional Myka could be. Still, that proved how much Helena could be trusted around her. He let go of Helena's shoulder and motioned to Leena to follow him to leave the kitchen for a while.
Helena barely noticed they were left alone, until Myka's body was hovering over hers, standing behind her chair, crossing the natural barrier of respectable distance to be kept between two friends. By the time Myka's hands were covering her own, and their cheeks were so close to touching that they could feel the warmth of the other, Helena was fully aware that Leena and Pete had chosen to withdraw.
The young woman had not witnessed the whole scene, but she had heard enough of the conversation to get a sense of what was going on. The look on Helena's face, so much like the one she remembered from Yellowstone, combined with the state the floor was in and the receding vibrations of her cold hand, were not lost on the agent who was perfectly able to put the pieces back together to get the whole puzzle.
"Do you think Emily Lake's hand had the same problem? Did she ever wonder why the piece of chalk in her hand would sometimes shake so much that her students would not be able to decipher her handwriting?"
The tremor in HG's voice was a clear indication that she very much wanted it to be the case. She couldn't imagine herself, albeit another self, not curious enough to get to the bottom of things. She was ashamed and awed to know that Emily had forgotten everything about how she had hold Myka at gunpoint.
"If she did, she probably attributed it to the pseudo-car accident." Myka reasoned.
Helena lowered her head. She was right. And it pained her. However, a smile covered her lips when she felt the agent's cheek lean on the side of her head, offering comfort.
"I'm sorry I couldn't think of anything else to stop you." Myka whispered, closing her arms around Helena's chest.
The Englishwoman's hands automatically covered her friend's arms, in an attempt to bring her closer, as a silent plea to never let her go.
"Don't. Myka, darling, I can only blame myself. You saved the world that day. The way you did it hardly matters." She retorted.
For the sake of the argument, Myka could have corrected her, saying that what had saved the world was Helena's love for her. But it was still too early in the morning to argue over something HG would never admit to.
"This shaking hand only serves as a reminder of who I am."
That self depreciating habit of hers was too much for Myka, who stepped back, freeing Helena from her embrace, leaving her cold and empty. Unexpectedly, the agent turned the chair her friend was sitting on rather forcefully, so as to face her, fed up with her new found self-pity.
Sad, bitter black met kind and soft green again, and Helena saw how determined Myka was. She was in for a morning lecture. She sighed.
Somehow, she predicted what Myka would say. She knew her inside and out. What those green eyes said was "Alright then. So it reminds you that you're a smart, sassy gender-equality defender who was well-ahead of her time? Does it remind you that you're as gorgeous as you're brilliant?" She could definitely see that kind of comment coming, forgetting how broken she was – or had been?
Yet, Myka surprised her.
"No. Helena. It's a reminder of how much I trust you."
Well, who's the smart one? Helena thought, eyes wide open, taking in Myka's silent beauty looming, there, over her.
Those green orbs sank so easily into her soul that Helena shuddered slightly. She didn't close her eyes though. She was fine with sharing the quintessence of her being; because she trusted Myka probably as much – no, more – as she did her.
"Now, we can't let you spill coffee every morning, can we?"
That earned a raised eyebrow from an half-surprised, half-amused HG. That Wellsian flirtatious tone suited Myka. Her stomach clenched with desire. Myka had stolen her flirtatious tone to flirt with her rather openly.
"How do you plan to remedy the problem?" She asked, trying hard not to smile.
Myka's composition went from flirty to tender as she took Helena's faulty hand, bringing it to her cheek ever so slowly.
"You say your hand has a consciousness of its own. Let's help it create new memories." She explained before kissing the tip of HG's fingers.
Helena was transfixed by the depth of emotions she perceived on Myka's face, and she was unable to do so much as blinking, not even when the young woman lips opened to take her index into her mouth, up to her first phalanx. Her black eyes widened as she tried very hard to remember it was all part of a therapy. Myka's tongue running along the skin of her index finger, as if to clean off the grease left by the trigger of the gun, that day in Yellowstone, was very distracting though.
There was a faint taste of coffee on that finger. Strong coffee with some sugar. That was the main taste, but there was also a familiar taste there, dancing on the tip of Myka's tongue. Shampoo. Her lips curled into a smile around Helena's finger. The Brit spent so much time running her hand through her silky black tress that her fingers were permeated with the flowery smell of her shampoo.
That was not a game. Myka was never one to play with fire. She was not trying to seduce Helena. How could you seduce someone who's already under your spell?
No it was simpler than that. She was making the overdue first move, knowing she wouldn't be rejected. She could see that in HG's dilated eyes, hear it in her heavy breathing.
"Kiss me."
Helena thought her heart was about to let her down. Only two letters and a smile separated that demand from the one Myka had made that day, the barrel of the gun right between her eyes.
"That is... Unless you want to take things slow."
Helena shook her head, and Myka smiled. The writer got up, suddenly invading Myka's vital space, never tearing her gaze from hers.
This was all part of a therapy – Their lips collided.
Helena's hand was filled with a new kind of insurance, shaking only because of her erratic heartbeat. Myka's jawbone moved slowly under her fingers, and when their tongues met, her hand ran down Myka's long neck, eliciting goosebumps. She played with the hem of her T-shirt before letting her fingers run through her curls. The young woman groaned into the kiss, making Helena laugh devilishly. She wouldn't get away with messing with Myka's unruly hair, she knew that much, and she really didn't care.
When they broke the kiss, Helena's hand was not shaking anymore. She didn't think it meant she was rid of PTSD, but something told her she would be okay, in the end.
"We've taken things at an excruciating slow pace until now, for good reasons too. I don't know about you darling, but I'm fed up with being patient." Helena declared, her hands on Myka's hips, keeping her as close as humanly possible.
Myka stifled a laugh. Helena was trying hard not to look eager, keeping her face straight while her hair was tousled and her lips slightly swollen from kissing. Yet her whole body was screaming to be touched.
"I'm so glad we agree on that." She answered, leaning in to kiss Helena again.
They were interrupted by a throat being cleared.
"Sorry to bother you ladies, but I'm starving." Pete said, barging into the kitchen.
Myka rolled her eyes and Helena shrugged, laughing silently.
"Well, I'm quite hungry too." Helena admitted, freeing Myka to go fetch the toasts she had abandoned earlier.
This time, Myka was fully awake, and the amused look she shot at her told Helena she knew she wasn't only hungry for food.
