Myka was smiling when her eyes opened, once again, to the sound of bells. The smile disappeared in an instant, however, when she saw where she was. "Fucking Boone, Wisconsin," she spat. She had feared this would be a stop on their journey, but being here and seeing it again was a whole other thing. She didn't want to be here, didn't want to revisit this rejection. Especially not now, not when she knew that Helena had gone from here to Giselle, after telling her that she was craving this 'normal life' with Nate and Adelaide. She had felt betrayed by what Helena did at Yellowstone, sure, but it didn't feel personal. This was. Helena had, with her soft words and firm embrace, rejected everything that Myka was mutely offering when she asked her, almost begged her to come back to the Warehouse. And then she went on to another woman...so the rejection that day wasn't to do with her wish for a normal life. It was clearly to do with Myka. She tried not to cry, tried to keep a stiff upper lip, as HG would say. But of all the things that had happened in her life, the weird things that happened when you worked at the Warehouse, the incredible losses that she had suffered – this was the one that broke her. She turned away so that Helena couldn't see her break down.
Helena knew where she was from the noises of crickets and suburbia that she could hear once the bells faded. She was stunned, however, when she heard Myka swear loudly. She had never heard the agent say anything stronger than the word "pissed", which she gathered wasn't even a particularly strong word in this time. She turned to look at her, puzzled, and saw what looked to be a mix of blind rage and pure pain on her face before Myka turned her back on Helena.
"Myka, what...?" she began, but was interrupted by the agent hissing at her.
"Please," Myka said, the word pushed out reluctantly through gritted teeth. "I can't talk to you right now. Let's just get this over with..."
Myka refused to move and pulled her arm away when Helena tried to take it. Helena sighed, not understanding, but turned to face the scene in front of them. They were both there, talking in Nate's kitchen, and Myka was asking her why she was here, why she was chasing the ghost of Christina by moving in with a man who had a daughter. She remembered how much that accusation had hurt at the time, but she also knew that it hurt because it was true. She watched herself reply angrily to the agent, words stinging in response. Their vantage point moved to the outside of the house, and they both watched in silence as their former selves were saying goodbye to one another, and Myka so valiantly tried to tell her to be happy, sounding as if the words were being ripped out of her. She saw herself as she embraced the taller woman, and turned away to her 'normal' life. The scene changed again, suddenly. They were at the B&B, and Myka stepped wearily through the door, wearing the same clothes she had been wearing in Boone. She closed the door softly behind her and sat down on the floor beside the bed suddenly, as if her legs had been cut out from beneath her.
"Mykes?" Pete's voice came from outside the door. "Are you okay?"
The woman on the floor didn't answer, couldn't answer. She wasn't crying, but she looked as if her world had ended. Pete's voice came through the door again, insistently.
"Mykes, I'm coming in..."
He opened the door and saw her sitting there, bereft. He made a noise in his throat and practically threw himself onto the floor beside his partner, wrapping his arms around her tightly as she began to sob.
"I really thought she would come, Pete. I really thought..." She didn't finish, but Helena knew what the end of the sentence was. "I really thought she loved me."
Helena didn't think she could feel any worse than she had while watching herself wield the Trident, but it appeared she had underestimated the Warehouse's power to reveal the deepest wounds in both of them. She did not realise that by giving in to her fear and choosing this safe life with Nate and Adelaide, she had hurt the agent so deeply. Bells sang and summoned her and Myka into the dark once again.
Myka moved away from Helena as fast as she could, as far away as she could given the ropes surrounding them both. The swift movement made the ropes twitch and tighten a little, but when she stilled, so did they. Helena did not try to stop her this time. She tried to speak, and Myka cut her off, uncharacteristically abrupt.
"I don't want to hear it, Helena. I wish you hadn't seen that. But it's the past and I really, really don't want to revisit it. I wanted you to come back and I was hurt that you didn't. But it's ok, I get it, and I don't want to talk about it."
Helena looked at her and said, softly, "I understand, Myka. You don't wish to revisit that which has caused you pain. But I'm very much afraid that you don't have any choice. After all, that is the very reason we are here. Our friends, and apparently the Warehouse, wish us to be honest with one another. And I would very much like us to talk about what happened in Boone, and...and after, with Giselle. I am afraid that if we don't, we won't be leaving our cosy little prison any time soon."
Myka tried to be calm, tried to remind herself that she had dealt with her feelings about this day, and what had happened between Helena and herself. But she was so furious, the words burst out.
"Do you have any idea...do you know what you did to me when you turned me away? Told me you didn't want to come back to...to the Warehouse? I accepted it Helena, I let it be because you said you needed a 'normal' life, whatever the hell that is! But then I find out that you gave it up, your damn precious normal life, to go somewhere else and you're dating Giselle now! You hurt me with Yellowstone, Helena, but this...what you did here? You broke me, Helena. I was offering...I was...God damn it!" She practically screamed the last sentence, in pure frustration.
"You were offering what, Myka?" asked Helena gently.
Myka avoided Helena's eyes carefully, beginning to flush a little.
"I didn't mean I was offering anything, I just meant, you know, the Warehouse..." she mumbled.
Helena slowly lifted her hand to Myka's face, lifting her chin and gently forcing her to meet Helena's eyes.
"You were offering what, Myka? Why did it hurt you so deeply that I stayed with Nate? Why did it...I...break you?" she asked quietly, insistently. Her eyes were darker than Myka had ever seen before.
"You know what I mean, Helena. I don't want to talk about this anymore." Myka tried to pull away again but neither Helena nor the ropes would allow it.
"I believe I do know what you mean, Myka. But I think that I, and the Warehouse, need you to say it. For the avoidance of any further misunderstandings." Myka just looked at her, biting her lip.
"Very well then. It seems it falls to me to explain some matters to you, first, and perhaps then you might wish to be more forthcoming. You remember Emily Lake, I am sure?"
Myka nodded.
"I entirely deserved to be punished for what I tried to do at Yellowstone, for the people who died as a result of my madness. However, I do not think I can ever fully express how I felt when I had time to reflect on Emily Lake, of her time in my body. I understand what the Regents were trying to do, they were attempting to be kind, I know. But try to imagine, if you can, that someone else has been in control of your body for months, has been doing with it exactly what they wish, without reference to your own wants or desires. I do not know, other than in the sparest of detail, what Emily Lake did while she was...wearing me like a garment. But it could have been...anything. I couldn't help but think of her using my body to stroke that blasted animal she favoured, or worse, to make love to someone I would have found abhorrent... It probably sounds a little dramatic, but in some ways it felt like a rape. A violation. Once I had done the Regents' bidding with the Astrolabe, and matters had been resolved with Artie, I needed to get away. I needed to work out who I am in this time. I am no longer HG Wells the inventor and writer. I no longer live in Victorian England. So I took some time to acclimatise, to try to get to know myself after all of the pain and loss I had both experienced and caused. Can you understand that?"
Myka looked at her mutely, nodding.
"When I met Nate and Adelaide, I felt that I had found the thing I was lacking in my earlier life. Maybe the same thing you believed you had found in Pete?"
She arched one eyebrow quizzically at Myka, who huffed a little and chewed on the end of one of her stupidly adorable curls.
Helena continued, "Something to anchor me, a family and a traditional home with a child. A child who, as you rightly pointed out, acted as a surrogate for my lost daughter. Nate was a lovely man..."
She was interrupted by Myka making a rude sound in her throat, and muttering something that sounded like "...beige Neanderthal..."
"May I continue?" she asked, arching an eyebrow at Myka.
Myka looked up at her with pursed lips, eyebrows drawn together in a fierce frown. "Yes."
Helena began again. "Nate was...is a good man, but he was a little, as I believe someone recently said, beige." Her mouth quirked a little. "He was a good father, and at the time I suppose I needed to feel part of a family unit. But it became very clear, and in fact not long after that day when you left, that we were not a good fit, I suppose you would say. I said goodbye to them as painlessly as I could and I moved away, to New York. I've wanted to visit ever since Claudia made me watch that incessant situational comedy with the annoying group of friends in it. I found another job, and I met Giselle. Did you ever see a picture of her?"
Myka shook her head.
"She was about your height, very slim, with brown hair that curled, just like yours, and green eyes. Not quite as clear and bright as yours, darling, but green nonetheless. I can lie to myself as easily as you can, Myka, but it appears that our subconscious wishes still make themselves known." She looked Myka in the eye directly, intently. Myka still said nothing, but her eyes shone with unshed tears and she had her bottom lip between her teeth once again. Helena could have cursed as the light faded and the sound of bells drew them onward.
The bells rang softly, and Myka and Helena stood in the Warehouse, watching as the distant figures of Artie, Pete and Myka's slightly younger self argued about how to defuse the bomb in front of them. Next to the two women was the shapely figure of the Helena Wells from this timeline, urgently pulling at cables in what looked like some sort of electrical box on the wall. Helena pulled out two thick cables and held them together, initiating some type of force field around the other three agents. Myka shuddered as she realised what she was watching. This was the timeline in which the Warehouse had been destroyed, and Helena along with it. She couldn't take her eyes off Helena's face, the gentle smile on her lips as she took action to save her colleagues and friends at the expense of her own life. She watched as Helena gazed calmly into the other Myka's eyes, smiling, watched her mouth form the words "Thank you,"...watched as Helena Wells died, dissolving into motes of nothingness as the explosion took hold. She could smell the world burning around her, but could see nothing but the afterimage of brown eyes, brown eyes in the serene smiling face of the woman who had willingly sacrificed her own life for Myka's. Myka screamed. Softly pealing bells carried her away into the smoke.
Helena was holding her, arms gently surrounding Myka. She was stroking Myka's curly hair, smoothing it down behind her ears, and she whispered softly to the agent in her arms, looking into the distance as she did so.
"Since I was awoken from the bronze, I have spent a lot of time thinking of course, but even more of my time – the time when I have been corporeal, that is – has been spent in reading, and catching up with what I have missed in the last hundred years." Her smooth voice paused in its litany as she took a moment to choose her next words.
"Some of what I have discovered in my reading made me even more determined to go through with my madness. The World Wars, the Holocaust, the many and varied ways that men have found to perpetuate evils against one another all over this planet...they broke my heart, destroyed for a long time any hope that this world might be the kind of utopia about which I have always dreamed." Her rich voice drew Myka in, soothed her as the agent tried to dispel the images of death that plagued her.
"There is, however, one thing that has given me hope – other than you, of course – for the future of the human race. And that is literature, poetry, the power of words wielded with passion. I have read many books during my long life, and sometimes the power of a well-chosen phrase quite stops my heart. Have you read this poem, the one that begins," and she quoted softly 'I carry your heart in my heart?'
Myka nodded, head against Helena's shoulder.
"I think of those words each time I see you. I have never been so presumptuous as to assume that you might share my feelings, of course, but you should know that if you did, I would carry your heart gladly, eagerly. But whether you...love or hate me, you shall always carry my heart, Myka Bering." She very carefully did not meet Myka's eyes as she continued.
"The scene that we have just witnessed may have been a terrible one, but in seeing it I must confess that I feel more joy than I have probably ever felt before in my life. That I, Helena Wells, would have been so strong as to give up my life for you...that gives me a sense of belief in myself that I have never felt since I lost my daughter. No matter what happens from here, the Warehouse...Steve...Claudia...they have given me a precious gift. I am myself again." She smiled serenely. "I am so sorry that it has caused you so much pain to see this, Myka. I would not have wanted you to have to watch me die. But I am glad that, in one timeline, I did make that sacrifice, and I can tell you that I would do it in any lifetime, in any timeline, without hesitation. You are absolutely worth the sacrifice." She turned her eyes to Myka, to the red nose and red-rimmed eyes that she found so adorable, and the Warehouse worked its magic once again because Myka didn't feel the pain so badly any more, she just felt a sense of peace. Helena loved her.
"We must not allow the clock and the calendar to blind us to the fact that each moment of life is a miracle and mystery."
Helena felt Myka relax in her arms, her tears exhausted. The agent looked up hesitantly, and pulled herself closer still to HG, to bury her head in her soft hair that was like a waterfall of ink. They rested like that for a long time, saying nothing. Helena reluctantly shifted after what felt like a wonderful lifetime with Myka resting in her arms.
"I'm sorry to disturb you, my darling. But I believe there was something we have yet to clarify."
Myka grumbled a little, head still buried in Helena's hair. She looked up and met Helena's eyes.
"We were speaking of Nate, and Giselle, and how we parted in Wisconsin."
"I know," said Myka irritably. "Do we have to...go into this again?"
Helena sighed softly. "Yes Myka, we do. I think that otherwise we would have already been released from our bonds, from this bed – from each other. But apparently everything we have shared thus far is not enough for whatever purpose the Warehouse has in mind. It is best, I feel, if we get everything that is...between us...out into the open. And then we can move forward. In whatever...capacity you wish."
Myka looked at her a little strangely, repeating the word 'capacity' under her breath softly, quizzically.
"I have said all I can, Myka."
"I don't know what you mean, Helena." The agent was still avoiding Helena's gaze, and her body was drawn in upon itself.
"Are you still trying to avoid this, Myka? I believe I have been as clear as I can. You carry my heart."
Myka flushed again, adorably, in Helena's opinion. It was hard not to follow the flush to places she had sworn to herself she would not look without Myka's permission. She satisfied herself with looking at Myka's face, her heart in her eyes, with a soft smile on her face.
"Don't you have anything to say, Myka Ophelia Bering? Do people profess their love to you so often that you are bored with it?"
She softened what could have been sharp words with a raised eyebrow.
Myka flushed even more brightly at the word 'love'. She was unable to speak, mesmerised by the look in Helena's eyes. When she spoke, however, her tone was sharp, more cutting than Helena had ever heard her use before.
"Do you really mean that, Helena? Or should I be waiting for you to run off, to find another Giselle or Nate or whoever?"
Helena looked at her again, flushing a little.
"What else can I say, Myka? I made a mistake, I ran from you." She quoted softly, 'Very simple was my explanation, and plausible enough-as most wrong theories are!'
"I feared hurting you again, and I feared being hurt. I did not – I do not know that I could survive the loss of you. I have lost so much already, but I believe I would be utterly destroyed if I were to lose you. So I chose the coward's way. Can you really not understand that? After all, you have still not really explained to me what you were...'offering' when you came to Boone, have you? And why you ran to Pete."
She raised an eyebrow, and something in her tone forced Myka to look up again, to meet her eyes.
"I'm sorry Helena, I didn't mean that. Of course I can understand how you were feeling after Emily Lake, and everything else that happened. And you are not a coward. Not any more than I am, anyhow. But I'm afraid it's too late. I can't stay on this merry-go-round any more. I need to move on. Not with Pete, obviously, because that was just wrong, but I can't hold you back any more. You deserve a good life, a happy one. And the Warehouse...it's been a source of too much pain for you. And...you have been a source of pain for me. Boone, then Giselle...I can't deal with that again. I trust you with my life, but I don't trust you with my heart. "
Helena looked at Myka, heart in her eyes, for one more moment. Myka would not meet her gaze. She had used all of her skill with words to try to convince this woman of her feelings, and she had failed. Regret filled her.
Claudia and Steve were listening to the last part of Myka's speech. They put the handset down, and Claudia breathed in slowly.
"Time to bring in the big guns, Jinkmeister..." She flicked a switch on the, if she did say so herself, awesomely punky bronze bracelet she wore on her wrist. On the floor of the room with no door, near the lasso and the dreamcatcher, a pair of bookends began to hum softly.
