Please note the rating change, T-M. I'm being conservative by upping it here, I think, but I the rating change was going to need to happen for a later chapter anyway and there's content in this chapter that's borderline.

I actually speak French pretty well but my writing is rusty so forgive any spelling/grammar mistakes, s'il-vous-plaît.

Also, I did some poking around to try to learn about racism in 19th-century Parisian hospitals and wasn't able to find much info, so my portrayal here is completely fictitious. If anyone knows more than me and has any constructive feedback about what I've written, I'd love to hear it. I'm certainly not above going back and making changes.


Vincent accompanies Helena to Paris. Her brother Charles meets them on the platform, and his eyes are swollen, bloodshot. Helena strides up to him, the confidence in her movement belied by the disarray of her hair, spilling from its hastily-tied knot.

"Charles?" she says, voice tired but curling up in unspoken question, imbued, perhaps, with the hope that he might smile and say "Fooled you!" and produce Christina from up his sleeve, as in a magic trick.

He doesn't do that. He shakes his head and looks down.

Helena nods once and leans into him, and he puts his arm over her shoulders, and they begin to walk, together, toward the exit.

"Wait," Crowley says.

They stop and turn around in tandem to face him.

"What can I do?" Crowley asks.

Charles blinks at him for a moment, then looks at Helena. Helena blinks at him, too, then looks down and shakes her head.

"Go home, Vincent," she says. "Just… go home. I'll see you in London." She turns around, away from him, and resumes her walk to the exit.

Vincent turns to Charles, who is still standing there, looking at him. "Let me help," he says, turning his hat in his hands. "I would like to help."

Charles turns to look at Helena's retreating form, and then back to Crowley. "I don't think she…" he shrugs.

"She… yes. Very well." Vincent swallows, then reaches into his inside pocket and pulls out his fountain pen, and fumbles in a different pocket for a scrap of paper. "My address," he says, writing quickly. He hands the card to Charles. "If there's anything… if you could keep me abreast of…." He shrugs and sighs. "I will gladly refund you the cost of the occasional telegram."

"Oh, nonsense," Charles says. He eyes the card, then tucks it into his own pocket. "I'll do my best," he says. "Now—" he tilts his head toward the exit through which Helena has disappeared.

"Yes," Vincent nods.

Charles turns on his heel and begins to stride out of the station.

"Mr. Wells," Vincent calls.

Charles turns back, eyebrows raised in question.

"I… I'm so terribly sorry for your loss," Vincent says.

Charles tips his head in acquiescence, and turns, wordlessly, toward the exit again.

/

Charles suggests that they go to the hospital where Sophie has been admitted.

"Absolutely not," Helena says. "I want to go to the house."

"There's nothing at—"

"I want to go to the house," she says again, louder.

So Charles sighs, and shrugs, and gives the cab driver the address.

In perhaps the greatest and most tragic irony of the whole ordeal is that virtually nothing was stolen. A few candlesticks from the dining room, some drawers left upended in the drawing room.

The fireplace poker. Not stolen. Taken by the police from where it had been dropped beside Christina's body.

Helena flies through the house like the wind itself, opening all the doors and looking into all the rooms while Charles waits in the foyer. Once she has thoroughly upended everything not already upside-down she thunders down the stairs to him.

"Where is she?"

"Helena—"

"Where is my daughter?"

Her eyes are wide, so wide that he can see the whites all the way around her irises, and in his distant memory he hears the sounds of stiff leather restraints rattling against the metal frame of a hospital bed; the sound of her voice, Helena's voice, wailing overtop of it.

"At the mortuary," he says, softly.

"At the mortuary!" she exclaims, her hands threading into her hair, breath coming in faster gasps, "you would send her to the mortuary before I could—before she—"

"HELENA." He grasps her by both shoulders and holds them firmly, his voice loud but, he hopes, not threatening, because he has never quite seen her like this but he has seen her in lighter shades of this and she's hard enough then to reason with.

She jolts in surprise but then stills and stares back at him, eyes like a deer's.

"Helena," he says, softer. "It's summer. It's hot. The mortuary couldn't wait. You know that. The service will be tomorrow."

Helena stares at him wide-eyed, and her lips shake as she breathes through them. "Sophie," she says, eventually. "We must go and see Sophie."

Charles nods. "Yes."

/

Nothing.

Then, light. Bright light, and movement.

Throbbing pain, in the back of the skull.

Nothing again.

Light, noise.

Nothing.

Then, more light, noise, and: "Tu te réveilles, en fin, quoi?"

Sophie doesn't understand those words, those sounds. She opens her mouth and it's dry as sand. Her eyelids feel thick, her ears stuffed with cotton wool. She shifts her head and it hurts, and her neck is sore and stiff.

Her eyelids, crusted, part. The ceiling is far away. Below the ceiling is a face, an unfamiliar face, with expressionless eyes, looking down at her.

A finger pulls at her eyelids, one after the other, and then the face disappears.

A voice: "La nègre se réveille. Où est Amélie?"

Sophie doesn't know those words but one is familiar, sounds like... She closes her eyes.

Movement, her blanket shifts. Sophie lifts her lids slowly, again.

"'ello, madame," says a voice, different, young, female, heavily accented. Her face smiles. "I am Amélie. You are in the Hopital Sacré Coeur de Paris. I am a, euh, a nurse. You have been hit in the head."

Hospital. Sophie doesn't like hospitals. Sophie's lips part, her tongue moves. "No," she says.

The girl's smile fades. She rolls her eyes, a little. "Your friend said he would come back soon."

Then, more people near her feet. Movement. Amélie looks away, Sophie can't… she can't quite… "No," she says again, louder.

"C'est son époux," says another voice.

And then: "Oui, s'il vous plaît, éxpliquez-moi ce qui est arrivé a ma femme."

That voice is familiar. Familiar, but strange, a different language.

She lets her eyes slip closed again while voices near her feet slide into, over, around one another. Then, on her hand, pressure, warm, dry. She rolls her head over—through the echoes of pain in her skull—and pries her lid open.

"Sophie," Caturanga says, with a small smile.

Sophie's mouth parts slowly. "Rajinder. I don't want—"

Caturanga curls his fingers into her palm. "Don't speak," he says. "Just rest." He leans closer.

"Stay?" Sophie asks. "I don't like… hospitals."

Caturanga's mouth twitches. "I'll stay," he says. "Just rest."

/

Charles is relieved to see that, when they arrive in the hospital ward, Sophie is not alone: Mr. Caturanga, whom Charles had telegrammed in London when he also telegrammed Mr. Crowley in Marseilles, sits beside her bed, facing her, his hat in his lap.

This, however, is not what Helena comments upon. What she says, far too loudly for Charles's taste, is "What in God's name is she doing in a ward? Charles, didn't you offer to pay them for a private room?"

Charles swallows and grits his teeth because yes, he offered to pay them for a private room. He offered to pay them double the cost of a private room, but at the end of the day it was all he could do to convince them to admit her at all and not to refer her to one of the charity hospitals several miles away, across the river.

But Charles is spared the need to explain when Mr. Caturanga stands up and reaches for Helena's hand. "Miss Wells," he says, placating, "My wife has no need for a private room."

Helena blinks at him. "Your wife?"

And Caturanga replies with forced joviality that does not quite reach his tired, reddened eyes: "Of course, my wife. They wouldn't have let me in to see her if she weren't my wife, Miss Wells!"

If Charles had needed more evidence that Helena was exhausted, spent beyond belief, it comes with the sight of her struggling to process Mr. Caturanga's words, and then finally having the pieces click, the hidden meaning uncovered.

"Of—of course," Helena says. "How is your wife, Mr. Caturanga?"

Mr. Caturanga sighs. "Awake, and then not, and then awake again, and then not."

"Awake," says a voice, quiet and groggy, from beneath them, and all three of their heads wheel around to where Sophie blinks slowly at them.

"Hush," Caturanga says, sitting back down in his chair and pressing his hand to her bandaged forehead. "Stay quiet."

"I don't want to be here," Sophie rasps. "Take me home."

"Sophie," Caturanga says, voice strained. "You can't. You've been hurt."

"I don't like hospitals," Sophie says. "They aren't… helping me. Here. I want to go home."

Charles opens his mouth to intervene but before any sound comes out, a tall, thin man bustles between him and the bed. He fits a monocle to his eye and Charles can feel Helena tense beside him as the man bends over Sophie, pulls at one eyelid then the other. Wordlessly, he pulls on her shoulder until she rolls onto her side. He slides the bandage on her head up (Charles recognizes a few of the words he mutters to himself, like "cheveux" (hair) and "espèce" (kind, or type, or… species?)) and prods at the base of her skull.

Sophie hisses, and Mr. Caturanga jumps to his feet. "Qu'est-ce que vous faites, monsieur?" (Charles understands that much: "What are you doing, sir?")

"Je vérifie la condition de son crâne," the doctor says, without looking up. "Ça va guérir. L'inflammation est déjà réduite."

(Far too much, far too fast, for Charles to catch more than a few words – skull, heal, inflammation already reduced.)

The doctor stands and steps back, unceremoniously releasing Sophie's shoulder so she drops back against the mattress – but this time she cries out.

"Sophie," Helena murmurs, dropping to her knees beside the bed and bringing her hands to Sophie's hand. Sophie's head shifts slowly, her eyes travel to Helena's face.

"I can't be here, Helena," she says, quiet and pained. "They won't help me. They may hurt me."

Charles swivels his head to glance around the ward; sees nurses fluffing pillows, smiling at patients, bringing them broth and water, sees a doctor smiling as he prods a woman's abdomen.

He looks back at this stern-faced doctor and his rough hands, and remembers the exasperated tone of the nurse who had helped them earlier.

He looks at Mr. Caturanga, who, for the only time in their acquaintanceship, looks fully adrift.

"All right," Helena says, and Sophie's shoulders sink into the mattress, relieved.

Mr. Caturanga looks at the doctor. "Elle veut retourner à la maison pour completer sa guérisson." (Charles understands "return" and "house" and "healing.")

The doctor nods, and shrugs, says something about documents, and walks away.

In his aftermath Charles finds himself, and it seems the other find themselves, strangely rooted, unable to move away, but with nothing to do here. He should go to the priest, he thinks, he should take Helena to the priest now she's here, and perhaps Mr. Caturanga as well, because apparently he speaks French better than either Helena or himself, though it seems best that they leave Mr. Caturanga here with Sophie. He is pondering this, trying to decide what to do next, when he hears the slight squeak of Sophie's bedframe moving, and he looks down and Helena's hands are wrapped tighter around Sophie's and Helena says, "Please, Sophie, you must tell me what happened."

"Miss Wells," Mr. Caturanga says sternly, a reprimanding father. "This is hardly the time—"

"My daughter, Caturanga," Helena says louder, "I need to know what happened to my daughter!"

On the bed, Sophie's eyes fly open. "Something's happened to Christina?" she asks. "What's happened?"

"You must know!" Helena says, louder now. "Only you were there! You must know! You must!"

"Helena," Sophie says, strained. "Helena. You're hurting me."

"Tell me what happened!" Helena is almost shouting now. Charles steps forward to put a hand on her shoulder: "Helena…"

"Don't you 'Helena' me, Charles, she's the one who knows what happened! The only one!"

"Helena," Sophie says, more pained, and Charles sees now that Helena's grip on Sophie's hand is white-knuckled.

"Miss Wells!" Mr. Caturanga says, louder. "Let go of her!"

It's a bizarre echo-chamber of versions of Helena's name and Helena herself saying, "You must know! Tell me!" over and over again, and there are two nurses approaching them determinedly, to tell them to quiet down, no doubt, so Charles leans down and puts his hands over Helena's, over Sophie's, and begins to work her fingers loose.

Helena is resistant, first, to his touch, but then she is not resistant anymore; she drops Sophie's hand (he sees Sophie flex her fingers a few times) and silences her miserable litany and grips, instead, the edge of the sheets, her forehead tipping down until it rests against the mattress between them.

"Helena?" Sophie says. But Helena does not respond.

Charles looks over at Mr. Caturanga to find Mr. Caturanga already looking at him. Charles nods, once, and Mr. Caturanga nods back, and Charles bends down and puts his hands on Helena's shoulders and says, "We've an appointment to attend, Helena."

Helena sits up faster than he expects. He expects reddened, swollen eyes from crying quietly against the sheets, but is unsettled to find, instead, perhaps the most vacant expression he has ever seen from her.

"Yes," she says, shrugging out from under his hands like an irritated cat and rising to her feet.

"Will somebody please explain to me what's happening?" Sophie asks quietly.

"I will," Mr. Caturanga says, "Once we see Mr. and Miss Wells on their way."

"Come, Charles," Helena says, her diction preternaturally crisp. "Appointments, yes?"

"Yes," Charles says, and they both turn to walk away when Mr. Caturanga says, suddenly, "Helena!"

She stops, turns, and looks at him archly. "Yes?"

"I've brought this for you, from London. It is a… curiosity, as it were? But a useful one."

Mr. Caturanga holds out an envelope with a small bulge in its centre. Helena touches it, presses to feel its contours, then nods and tucks it inside her vest.

/

Caturanga stands and watches the Wellses make their way out of the ward, and then looks down at Sophie.

"The colours, Rajinder," Sophie rasps, dry-throated. "What did you give her?"

"Just a babel fish," he says. "She speaks some French, but not enough. I'm using one, too."

"But the migraines, in her state—"

"I've given her written instructions not to remove the device until she returns to London where she can recuperate."

"Why is she—for goodness' sake, what's happened?"

"Sophie." He leans forward and rests his fingertips on the edge of the mattress, and then, with some presumption, takes her hand between his. She does not remove it. "What do you remember?"

Sophie blinks several times and swallows. "I was… I was sitting in the drawing room, writing a letter to Irene," she says. "And then…" she winces. "Here."

"Mr. Wells found you unconscious at the top of the stairs," Caturanga says. "Near Christina's room. Two days ago."

Caturanga tells the story, as he heard it from young Mr. Wells, and by the end, Sophie—so unflappable, so stiff-upper-lipped, is quietly crying.

"I can't remember," she says quietly. "I failed her and I can't even remember what happened."

"You were unconscious, Sophie," Caturanga says firmly. "You were trying to reach her when you were hit. I'm sure you did everything you could have done."

Sophie shakes her head once then winces, her hand tightening around Caturanga's and the other coming up to press at her forehead.

"Rest, now," Caturanga says. "The doctor will be back soon with your release papers."

"I can't rest. I can't rest. When is her service?"

"Tomorrow."

"I must go."

Caturanga sighs. "Yes," he says. "Yes. We shall go."

/

Helena leads Charles halfway down the corridor to the exit before she breaks, suddenly, between one stride and the next. Charles catches her just before she crumbles, and he steers them to a metal bench along the wall, and there, under the scrutinizing glances of the nurses and the doctors, he holds his sister while she sobs, and then—blast it all—finds himself sniffling, then crying, and then sobbing uncontrollably into her hair.

/

Sophie leans into Caturanga in the cab from the hospital, the bumping and swaying of the two-wheeled carriage over the cobblestones clearly painful to her. They are nestled back in the bench, and Caturanga hadn't been intending to do this until they returned to the hospital, but it pains him to see her wincing and occasionally groaning like this. He reaches into his coat pocket and begins to retrieve—

"Don't you dare, Rajinder," Sophie says through gritted teeth.

He sighs. "But you're suffering."

"Hippocrates' splints?" She shifts a little. "I'll sleep through the next three days, and miss the funeral. And I'll have to explain to Charles how I come to be completely healed when I wake."

"We should really explain the Warehouse to that poor lad."

"We should," Sophie agrees.

"Perhaps when we return to London."

The concierge at the hotel desk glances displeasedly at Sophie when Caturanga asks for the key to his room, and Caturanga feels bile rise in his throat, his spine stiffening.

"You will have to share a room with Miss Wells tonight," Caturanga says apologetically, when his hotel room has closed behind them. "I would have liked a fourth room for you but I knew the hotel wouldn't—"

"It's all right, Rajinder," Sophie interrupts, as she goes to lean carefully on the bedpost. "I've lived in this body my entire life. The way white people respond to it is not new to me."

Caturanga nods awkwardly. He's had similar experiences, of course, but of a lesser scale, and of less frequency.

Sophie steps behind the screen in the corner of the room and Caturanga obligingly turns his back. He hears the swish and sigh of fabric moving, slowly, and then footsteps, shoeless and soft, making their way to the bed.

When he turns around, Sophie has the blanket pulled up to her chin and her eyes are closed, her breathing already evening into sleep. Caturanga had purchased a newspaper purchased for the trip; he draws it from his case in the closet and sits at the table by the window to read.

/

Sophie awakens, slightly, later, when there is movement in the room and the sound of hushed voices. Doors open, close, open again, things shuffle around; Sophie opens her eyes to slits, fighting out most of the light, just enough to be aware of the movement, and closes them again. They will wake her soon, she thinks, to move to the room she will share with Helena.

But nobody wakes her. Things settle again to silence and stillness and darkness.

Something feels wrong, though, it feels not-quite-right. This day has been wrong, but something feels worse. She shifts a little, winces against the pain of the movement and in that process accidentally opens her eyes—

And startles, violently, to see a shape, tall and looming over her, its aura a red so dark it verges on blackness.

Sophie swallows. "Helena."

But Helena, standing in her nightdress, says nothing. She stares for a moment longer, as though possessed. Then firmly, decisively, and silently, she pulls back the blanket, places herself on the other side of the mattress, first sitting, then laying down. She lays the blanket over herself and closes her eyes, but that darkness, the red darker than blood or rust, shows Sophie that she is not sleeping, she is not even resting.

And Sophie is still tired but she lies awake, too, now. She thinks of that dark hair, that freckled face, that she will never see again.

She does sleep eventually, though. When she wakes in the morning the sun is high and Rajinder is sitting by the window seat again, with his paper. Her head, still sore, is aching less.

"I'm still in your room," she says quietly.

He turns to her from his paper and smiles. "No," he says. "I traded rooms with Miss Wells so that you could stay here. She was… amenable."

Sophie closes her eyes. "She was suffering last night."

"She was," Caturanga says with a small nod. Sophie hears him shift in his chair, and when she opens her eyes again he has turned to face her. "How about you?"

"My head feels somewhat better."

"I'm glad to hear that, but that's not what I was asking about," he says.

Sophie blinks.

"You were all but a mother to that child, Sophie." His head is tilted toward her, and the light from the window reflects from his scalp and his shoes.

The light doesn't make her squint today, like it did yesterday.

Slowly and carefully, Sophie sits up in the bed. She removed her dress last night but was too tired, too sore, too sad to change into her night-dress; she sits up, now, in the long chemise she had been wearing under her dress the previous day, whens he left the hospital. Caturanga immediately turns in his head, averting his eyes.

She doesn't expect it—it just comes over her, not like a wave but like a volcano erupting from somewhere deep inside her: she leans forward until her elbows are on her knees and she begins, almost silently, to cry.

Seconds pass. Then she hears footsteps, and the bed shifts beside her. A warm hand touches her shoulder.

"I should have sent Irene, or Marie, instead of coming myself," Rajinder says, apologetically, and Sophie wants to lean into him, wants to let him put his arms around her, wants to let herself be warmed by him, but she's in her undergarments and it's barely appropriate that they're in the same room, never mind that he is touching her, even like this, in comfort.

"My sister has a business and my daughter has an infant," she says, as her breathing calms. She also thinks: neither of them would have been given a hotel room. She pushes away her tears with the tips of her fingers. "I failed that child, Rajinder," Sophie says. "I failed her and I can't even remember how I did it."

"You can't remember," he says quietly. "You don't know that you failed her."

She looks over at him, now, her gaze still blurry, her eyes feeling hot and dry. "I'm happy that you're here."

His colour, which has been pale green, warms into mauve.

"I feel selfish for it," he says, "but I'm very happy to be here, too."

/

The priest for the service is accompanied by a deacon who translates most of the process into English.

Charles cries. He can't help himself, doesn't want to help himself, but Helena, beside him, is still and tall and straight as an obelisk.

The service is small. Tiny. Charles, Helena. The owner of the bookshop near the house, and his wife. Two police constables who have been investigating the murder. Eight people standing in a tight circle around a too-small casket.

A few minutes into the service, the chapel door opens. Charles turns to look and smiles because it's Sophie, in a bath chair, pushed by Mr. Caturanga. The deacon stutters a little in his translation but Charles raises his arm in invitation. The chair stops a few steps away and Mr. Caturanga leans down, offering Sophie his arm. She takes it and stands slowly, carefully, and they move into the circle.

Charles smiles tightly at them, nodding once, looking just long enough to see Sophie smile back and then, upon looking at Helena, drop the smile completely. Charles glances over at Helena to find she is looking at Sophie, her face firm, tight, unsmiling.

He can't, doesn't want to deal with this today. He turns his attention back to the priest.

When the service ends, Charles steps forward to take one of the handles on the casket; so do the bookshop owner and both of the policemen. But Helena steps forward too, she grasps the handle nearest her before the policeman can reach it.

"Madame," the officer says, "S'il-vous-plaît, ne vous épuisez pas." Charles understands: Ma'am, please, do not tire yourself.

Helena wheels on him, her eyes narrowed to slits, and growls, "Monsieur, me refuserez-vous cette dernière opportunité pour porter ma fille dans mes bras?"

Charles does not know, never knew before the conversation with the priest yesterday, that Helena spoke such marvelous French. He hadn't had the opportunity to hear her use it for more than occasional words and phrases at shops and restaurants, before. But he understands well enough that she's telling the policeman that he will not deny her the chance to carry her daughter one last time.

The policeman glances at his partner, who tips his head and shrugs. Helena takes the handle by Christina's right shoulder and the four carry the casket out to the mausoleum.

When the ceremony is complete, the cemetery workers left to seal off the tomb, Helena turns quickly on her heel and begins to stride away. She brushes past Sophie, who sits in the bath chair.

"Helena," Sophie says, raising a hand toward her, but Helena marches past, willfully ignorant, toward the gate.

Charles pauses beside Sophie. "I can barely think," he says, "I can't imagine what she's—how she's—"

"She needs time," Mr. Caturanga says. "She'll come back around, given time."

Sophie swallows. "I know," she says, and there is a softness, a warble to her voice that Charles has never heard before. He looks down and Sophie's eyes are following Helena, glistening. Charles looks up at Helena again, just in time to see her stumble once, twice, catch herself on the corner of a tomb and crumple to her knees on the stone floor, sobbing.

Charles excuses himself and jogs over to her, his hands reaching out for her shoulders, but—

"Don't touch me!" she growls, jerking her body away. "Don't bloody touch me," she says, her voice cracking. She wraps her arms around herself and she rocks, back and forth, back and forth, her head bowed, mouth open wide in a strange, near-soundless parody of a scream, breaths occasionally bursting forth in hiccups, her face wet with tears and mucus and a string of saliva hanging from her lip.

Charles remembers her, drugged and grey in a Bethlem hospital chair, and thinks this might be worse, even, than that.


Myka has not frozen in the field since Sam and she will not freeze now, even though she wants to, standing as she is between a psychopath who needs to be incapacitated and her boss who's bleeding from the shoulder.

Myka lays the trident down with care, beyond Helena's reach, because after all this there's no way she's going to accidentally trip and drive it into the ground for the third time. Helena is still on her knees, shaking, and Myka is looking at her but thinking of Leo, thinking of Sam, thinking of Claudia shaking in a bathtub full of ice, thinking of Pete waking up from unconsciousness and electrocution to ask Myka if she's okay.

All in a flash, she thinks of everything she has lost and everything she has almost lost. And she thinks of Helena's mouth against hers and Helena's hands on her and how, in that moment, Myka had come so close to letting herself forget everything.

She wants to go to Artie first but she knows that the first priority is always to neutralize the threat to prevent more injuries, so she tucks the gun into her holster (unsnapped, safety off) as she tugs Helena to her feet and pats her down, pulling her wallet, keys, and disposable cell phone out of her jacket and tucking them into her own pockets. Helena is pliant, floppy as a rag doll when Myka pulls her jacket off and says "Take off that damn vest." Helena does. She stands in her camisole and hands the vest to Myka without lifting her eyes from the ground, and Myka balls it and stuffs it into a neutralizer bag. It sparks wildly but when it settles, Helena is still unharmed and Artie is still bleeding.

"Dammit," Myka groans. She pulls a zip-cuff out of her pocket—she never carried zip cuffs before she started chasing H.G. Wells, pickpocket and lock-pick extraordinaire—and tightens the loops around Helena's wrists, behind her back.

"Get down," Myka orders, and Helena drops to her knees, as if before a firing squad.

Myka steps around to Helena's front and bends down to her with one hand on the butt of her gun. Bends, doesn't crouch, and she doesn't bend all the way, because she knows a thing or two about the difference between leveling with somebody and intimidating them.

"Don't you dare move," Myka says, and Helena flinches, turning her head away as though Myka had raised her hand and threatened to strike. From this angle, and this close up, she can see the wetness on Helena's cheeks, the redness of her eyes, the completely undignified snot running from her nose, and to her complete and utter revulsion she finds herself wanting to push those tears away with her fingertips, to pull that quivering body into her own. In her chest she feels a tension, a push and pull that wants to burst out of her as a cry that might be frustration, might be grief, might be rage.

She swallows that and goes to Artie, shrugging out of her jacket and wadding it up to press hard into his shoulder. With one hand she fumbles in Artie's jacket for the Farnsworth and uses it to tell Claudia to order a medevac for Artie ("Yes, he's hurt. Yes, he's going to be okay. Yes, we got her—just get us the helicopter, please, Claudia!")

It arrives in under ten minutes and Myka's jacket is completely ruined but the paramedics say he looks good, she did well, it's not as bad as it could have been, and then they're gone, leaving behind Myka and H.G. and the trident, surrounded by dirt and pebbles and dead leaves blown away by the wind of the whirling blades. Helena is still kneeling in the dirt with her wrists bound and Myka wonders whether she's moved at all, lifted her head at all.

She pulls the band from her hair and shakes loose what's left of her braid, and then twists it into a knot on the back of her head and re-fastens it. She goes and picks up Helena's jacket where she had dropped it earlier, and stands beside Helena.

"Are the cuffs too tight?"

Helena doesn't acknowledge her.

"Helena. I asked you if the cuffs are too tight."

"Does it matter?" Helena asks, with surprising clarity.

Myka fights not to roll her eyes. "Not if you don't want it to. Come on. We've got a long walk back to the car." She turns to pick up the trident. She looks at it closely, sees how the cross-piece is screwed into the spear.

"A little," Helena says down, to the dirt, and clears her throat.

"A little what?" Myka doesn't look up.

"A little tight."

Myka finishes disassembling the trident and then steps back to Helena. "Stand up." Helena does. She checks and, yes, the cuffs are tight enough to chafe, especially given that Helena's wrists are gritty with dirt from the ground where she'd fallen. Myka fishes her pocket knife and another pair of cuffs out of her pocket, slips the new pair on and makes sure she can fit two fingers between the plastic and Helena's skin at both wrists."This feel better?"

Helena nods, and Myka uses her knife to cut the tighter cuffs away.

Myka shakes the dirt out of Helena's jacket and, for a moment, thinks about putting it on, because it's cold to be standing out here in a t-shirt, and her own jacket is with Artie on a helicopter that's probably about to touch down in Idaho by now. Helena is cold too, of course, covered in gooseflesh in her thin-strapped camisole.

Myka wants not to care that Helena is cold. She wishes for a moment that she had a bad-cop in her; that she could look at someone who had caused suffering and death and feel okay with making that person suffer.

She needs anger, she thinks. She needs more anger. And it's a hell of a realization to notice that anger isn't the predominant emotion she feels right now.

She calls up the image of those three students who died, desiccated in the bazaar, on Helena's orders. Calls up the image of the boy's family, his younger sister. Calls up the memory of waking up in the ancient Warehouse to find herself and Pete left to drown in sand—

And that's a dangerous thought because the first thing she thought at the time, after What the hell happened? was What have I done? and Oh God, she kissed me. Just a few hours ago, she kissed me.

For everything that had been wrong about that kiss—the time, the place, Helena's state at the time—Myka, in the moment, had felt such promise in it, promise for what it might have held, for them, had they shut down Warehouse 2 and emerged, together, into the desert sand, had they returned to that hotel room together that night.

There was only one moment before this, in this whole mess, where Myka had thought she might cry, and that was when she had overheard Pete on the phone with Kelly, telling her that he loved her. It wasn't until later that she realized they were words she wanted to hear, words she wanted to speak, in a completely different context and with a completely different person. But she won't cry. She won't. She stands still, behind Helena and a little off to the side, and tries to regulate her breathing, carefully, without sighing or panting, so that Helena can't hear. Then she steps forward and drapes the jacket over Helena's shoulders. Its hem comes down to Helena's palms, and were she to lace her fingers together, an inattentive passerby might simply assume that she had draped her jacket that way for fashion.

"Myka." The name comes out somewhere between a question and an admonishment. "Take it. You're cold."

Myka blinks at her, incredulous, then shakes her head and points to the place where the trail bends near the clearing. "I don't need tourists staring at you and asking questions. Start walking."

It's a little over two miles back to the parking lot. It's Myka, not Helena, who gets the most uncomfortable attention from hikers, since she's carrying the trident pieces and no longer has a jacket to cover her holstered sidearm. After the first round of nervous looks, Myka opens her badge and hooks it to her belt, and after that, gets a lot of tight smiles and people otherwise avoiding her eyes.

It's not unlike being back in her more traditional Secret Service work, that way.

She follows Helena and they don't say a word to each other besides "turn left" or "go straight." The sun had been approaching the horizon by the time they began the walk, and by the time they get to the parking lot, it's dark. Myka uses the key fob to unlock the SUV, which makes its presence known with a bright flash of lights.

"What, no paramilitary?" Helena says dryly. "Are the Americans more civilized than the Russians, after all?"

Myka doesn't indulge her humor. "You're no longer a severe-enough threat to justify the risk of that visibility."

"Please. You summoned a helicopter for Artie."

"Hikers get medevaced out of parks sometimes. That's way less questionable than an armed arrest with a SWAT team in a major tourist zone." Myka gestures vaguely to the still-busy lot, with dozens or more people returning to their cars as the park closes, and she can't help but think, all of these people would have died almost instantly. They wouldn't even have lasted to take their chances in the fallout.

Myka opens the SUV trunk and lays the trident pieces inside; then she goes to the side door pulls two water bottles from the box under the passenger seat. It's been a lot of hiking, a lot of rushing today and these past few days, and now that it's almost over it feels as though all the stress and exhaustion have dropped on her in the form of intense, cotton-mouthed thirst (she refuses to think of deserts, to think of sand). She opens bottle and chugs most of it, standing there by the open door, and then caps it, leans forward and drops it into the cup holder in the center console. Then she tips the other bottle toward H.G. "Thirsty?"

Helena licks her lips and nods.

Myka opens the back door of the SUV and gestures Helena inside, closing the door when they're both seated on the bench. Then she unscrews the cap and puts one hand on the back of Helena's neck. "Sorry, no straws," she says, and she brings the bottle to Helena's lips and tips it carefully up. Not carefully enough: the water pours out faster than expected and splashes Helena in the face. Helena jerks back, sputtering, and then twists her head to try to dry her cheeks and chin against the shoulder of her jacket. Myka resists the urge to apologize. Their second try works better.

When the bottle is capped again, Myka belts Helena into her seat and is opening the door to climb out when Helena suddenly says, "I don't suppose…?"

Myka turns back to look, and Helena shifts her arms, pinned between her body and the seat back.

Myka huffs an incredulous chuckle. "No."

"You said I'm not a severe risk," Helena says. "Couldn't I be cuffed in front for such a long drive?"

"Do you think I'm an idiot?" Myka snarls, louder than is strictly necessary, and her fist has pounded against the window of the open door before she could stop herself.

Helena drops her head and sags against the bench. "I wouldn't try to hurt you. I couldn't. Surely you know that now."

There is a knife in Myka's gut that's been twisting, twisting tighter ever since she woke from that Tesla blast in Egypt, and now it feels like something finally wants to break, it wants to crack and let loose a ranting monologue of anger and hurt and incredulity, she wants to turn into a dragon and breathe fire into the air.

"I don't know that at all," Myka says finally, her eyes boring into Helena's. "What I know is that I'm over this self-pitying martyr shtick that you've been pulling since you decided not to end the entire world in that caldera. This?" Myka points back and forth between Helena and herself, "You did this, Helena. So don't ask me for any sympathy, and don't you dare ask me for any trust. Because I neverwanted to be where we are right now."

Helena's gaze hardens. She nods once.

Myka sighs. "If you have anything else to say, say it right now. Because when I get behind the wheel, I'm turning the radio on and I don't want to hear another word from you unless it's to ask for water or the bathroom."

Helena stares back evenly for a long moment, and then turns to face forward, hands wedged between her back and the bench.

Myka pinches the bridge of her nose. "We'll stop often so you can move around, okay? If it gets really uncomfortable I can cuff you to the door handle, but I've only got one zip-cuff left so if I do that you can't get out again until we get to the Warehouse."

Helena remains impassive, staring forward, her jaw hardening.

"Fine," Myka says, and shuts the door.

Behind the wheel, Myka delays just long enough to call Claudia, and then Pete, on the Farnsworth. Claudia says that Dr. Calder is on her way to Idaho for Artie. And Pete… Pete is a mess.

"My God, are you okay?" Myka asks him. Even through the grainy Farnsworth screen, she can see that he's been crying.

"You got her, right?" Pete replies.

Myka nods. "Yeah."

"Then I'm better than I was," Pete says. He shakes his head and swallows. "Kelly left me."

"Oh no, Pete. No." Myka glances up at her rearview and sees Helena's eyes fixed forward at the back of the empty passenger seat. "What happened?"

"I don't really want to talk about it. I just… I may not be able to be there when you bring H.G. in, Mykes. I'll want to hurt her. And I wouldn't, I would never do that, but I'm a little worried I might hurt myself instead. If I'm there."

Myka nods. "Okay. It's okay. You—you do what you need to do, okay?"

"Yeah. Thanks."

"Pete?"

"Yeah?"

"Let's order pizza when this is all done. And, I don't know, watch Porky's or something."

"You're the best, Mykes."

"You deserve the best, Pete."

When they hang up, she glances at Helena again, in the mirror, whose eyes are still fixed forward, unmoving.

For the full six-hour drive, Helena is all but silent. She asks for water twice and the bathroom once, and asks once for the opportunity to stand and stretch her arms and shoulders. When she climbs back into the car, after that, she lies down on the bench, facing the back, and seems, apparently, to sleep.

Myka is exhausted. She knows they should probably stop because before she even started this drive she'd already driven six hours, hiked four miles, and defused one apocalyptic psycho since the last time she slept. But if they stop for sleep, she's got to figure out what the hell to do with H.G. for the night and she'd rather just push through.

When Myka turns off the road onto the bumpy Warehouse driveway, Helena shifts, behind her, and begins to awkwardly work her way up into a sitting position. By the time Myka pulls into park Helena is upright, her hair shaken into place, and the doors are opening on the two large, unmarked SUVs and the towncar that Myka recognizes as belonging to Mrs. Frederic.

She switches off the ignition and as she turns to unbuckle her seatbelt Helena suddenly speaks: "Surely you know—you must know—that there is at least one thing you can trust about me."

Myka pauses for a minute, then clicks open her seatbelt and reaches for the door handle. "You've been waiting this whole drive to deliver that parting line, haven't you?"

She opens the door and steps out before Helena can respond.

By the time she's made her way around the car, Helena is standing and flanked by two very large, uniformed guards, whom she eyes, one after the other, from beneath an arched brow.

"Gentlemen!" she says, her rakish grin firmly in place, "To what do I owe this honor?"

"Agent Wells."

The grin falls from Helena's face at the sound of Mrs. Frederic's voice, low and firm, and Myka marvels at Mrs. Frederic's power to bring to Helena's face first air of true chastisement that Myka has seen today.

Mrs. Frederic turns to Myka. "Do you have the trident?"

Myka nods. "Yeah, it's—hang on." She goes to the trunk and retrieves the pieces, and places them in Mrs. Frederic's outstretched hands.

Mrs. Frederic smiles. "That will be all, Agent Bering. Go get some rest. Thank you."

/

Irene stands with the butt of the trident staff resting near her foot, like a medieval knight with a spear, as she watches Agent Bering's vehicle drive away. Then turns to one of the guards.

"Remove her cuffs, please."

Helena rolls her eyes. "Better leave them on. Do you truly believe these brutes could keep me from hurting you?"

The guard beside her freezes, his pocket knife half-withdrawn. Irene can see his pulse thumping angrily in his neck.

"You won't hurt me, Agent Wells," she says.

Helena cocks an eyebrow at her. "And why is that?"

There are things that Helena doesn't know about herself. For example: the arching of her eyebrow is an expression she learned from Sophie, who learned it from her mother, who was also Irene's mother.

Irene gestures for the guard to cut the ties, and then arches an eyebrow richly at Helena and says, "Sophie."

"Sophie is dead." Helena says it matter-of-factly, rubbing her wrists and rolling her shoulders to release the cramping.

"Oh, don't I know it," Irene says. "A fact for which you have never forgiven yourself, and I am her closest living substitute. You would not hurt me." She turns to lead Helena into the Warehouse.

"Leena," Helena says, "is closer to her than you are."

Irene pauses, and then turns. "Before I let you anywhere near Leena, Agent Wells, I would kill you myself."

Helena swallows and looks down.

Irene leads Helena into Artie's office. On the desk is a thermos mug and a foil-covered plate, and beside that, a folded shirt.

Irene lays the trident pieces on the ground, and directs Helena to the desk chair. "Eat," she says. "Tea, and Leena's lasagna." She retrieves one of young Claudia's neutralizer spray-cans from where it's mounted on the wall and thoroughly douses the trident. She leaves it there, on the ground, to dry, and goes and positions herself carefully on the sofa.

Helena has buttoned the clean shirt over her camisole, leaving the dirty jacket over the back of the chair. She peels back the foil on the plate, now and picks up the silverware beside it, cutting off and chewing a bite with all the resentment of an adolescent obeying a parent. Then another bite, and another, and Irene can see Helena's face change as she recognizes how hungry she is, how long it's been since she's eaten. Irene watches as she clears her plate, and then takes a sip from the thermos mug.

"Come," Irene says, rising to her feet again. "You can bring that with you, but they're waiting."

Helena clutches the thermos between two hands as she rises to follow Irene through the stacks. The two guards flank her closely, like pallbearers.

They reach a door, and Irene stops and turns. She opens her mouth but is interrupted before she can make a sound.

"Will they bronze me again?"

Irene sighs. "I have pled your case as best I could, Helena," she says. "If you want an alternative to the bronze, they may be amenable. But you should know that the alternatives may not be any more humane."

Helena lets out a shaky breath, then squares her shoulders and stands tall. "Let's get on with it, then, shall we?"

Irene sits at the back corner while the regents question Helena. Kosan seems inclined toward some kind of clemency. Lattimer, as usual, is highly pragmatic. Some of the others are more vindictive. But Helena—Irene wavers between wanting to wrap her in a hug, and wanting to slap the arrogant smirk from her face.

"Tell us what you did, Agent Wells," Lattimer asks.

Helena smirks. "I tried to bring about an apocalypse."

Kosan tips his head to the side. "If your goal is to engender our sympathy, that's not the way to do it."

"The task of the Warehouse is too important to meddle in questions like sympathy, is it not, Mr. Kosan?" Helena leans forward against the table before her. "I was asked what I did, and I answered."

They talk for hours, assessing the details of Helena's timeline, the complexity of the case she had been building. Helena answers the questions as directly and succinctly as she can. Only once does she falter, and that's when she's asked about Agent Bering's report.

"I had cultivated her friendship," Helena says, eventually. "I knew I'd need help to work my way in, but she…" She swallows. "My teacher, Caturanga, always believed that the best Warehouse agents are those who can look at something, anything, not for what it is, but or what it could be."

Irene can sense the passage of time through the Warehouse itself, despite the lack of windows in the room. She knows they are well into morning. She knows, too, that Artie will arrive within the hour, having travelled to Featherhead in a medical plane and now being driven back to the Warehouse from the airport in a hired car.

"Any final words before we deliberate, Agent Wells?" Kosan asks, finally.

Helena sits silent for a long time—so long that Irene begins to think she will not speak. But then she does. She says: "If you are at all inclined toward mercy: I would sooner die than go back into the bronze."

Kosan smiles a small, sad half-smile. "We will take that into account."

/

The sun is coming up when Myka finally stumbles into the B&B, just in time to almost bump into Leena coming downstairs to start making breakfast.

"Hey, Myka," Leena says, "You're back."

Myka tries to smile. "Yeah." A dry chuckle. "I don't think I'll be down for breakfast."

For a second they just stand there looking at one another, Leena still standing on the bottom step so she's just the tiniest bit taller than Myka. Her head tilts to the side and then she reaches out, touching Myka's forearm just below the elbow. Myka feels, as she sometimes does with Leena, that she's being dissected, her skin peeled back to reveal… something, as Leena's eyes widen, and then relax into something that looks like recognition, or understanding.

"Oh, Myka. I'm—I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

Myka drops her head. "Could you see it in her?"

"Sometimes," Leena says. "Sometimes not. But you—I should have paid more attention to you, shouldn't I? Because you've been feeling this for awhile, haven't you?"

Myka's eyes narrow. "Feeling what?"

"Feeling—" Leena cocks her head. "Oh. Crap. Look, I haven't had my coffee yet, and you're exhausted, and I—I shouldn't have said…" She steps back.

Myka presses he heels of her hands to her eyes. "Is this 'say obscure and random things to Myka day' or something? First H.G., now you?"

Leena steps down to the floor and moves closer to Myka. "I'm sorry." She brings her hands to Myka's shoulders. "There are things that aren't mine to say. Even if it's to you, about you."

Myka pulls away and turns on her heel, starting her trudge up the stairs. "God, Leena, I don't need this from you, too, right now. I really don't."

Myka doesn't even bother with pyjamas, she's so tired. It's all she can do to make herself brush her teeth before she undresses and collapses into the mattress. But as she lies there, exhausted, she can't sleep. When she closes her eyes she feels something cold and hard pressed to her forehead, and her lids fly open as if to make sure that nobody is, here, now, holding her at gunpoint.

But it's not the feeling of the gun that upsets her now. It's the face she sees beyond the gun, the eyes looking back in fear and loathing and… and… and then those eyes fade into different eyes, tearful eyes clutching a torch in a godforsaken underground cavern in Egypt, and then those eyes fade into frantic, wide eyes in a Cairo hotel room, and those eyes are getting closer, closer, and then Myka can't see them, can't see them because they are too close, can't see them because her own eyes are closed and her mouth is opening, it's opening to another mouth with lips that are fuller and softer than any lips she's ever kissed before.

Myka's eyes snap open. No. No. She can't be thinking this.

But she is thinking this, she is too tired to stop herself. Too tired to stop herself when her hand moves over and down her own body and slips between her legs. This isn't something she does very often, it's not something she needs very often, but apparently now, right now, is when her body has decided to make demands.

Okay, Myka thinks. If she's going to do this now then she's going to think about Sam, about how strong and firm and caring he was with her, but whens he imagines his mouth on her skin it doesn't have stubble—so no, no. She'll think about Kurt, then, an old high school standby, but when she imagines bringing her fingers to his head she imagines long, black hair, not the crew cut he'd had when she'd last seen him. She cycles through past boyfriends, movie star crushes, but her mind keeps tugging her back, back, to the scratching sounds of a pen against paper in a darkened hotel room, the soft hush of fingers moving against one another, to a pair of near-black eyes looking at her, not past a gun, but over a glass of wine, open and twinkling. She doesn't mean to let her mind go there, but it goes anyway, and once it's there, she can't pull away. A half-day ago she arrested Helena for trying to end the world, an hour ago she handed her over to the authorities who will probably bronze her again, but now all Myka can think about is how Helena's precise, confident fingers would feel against her skin, what her breath would sound like in her ear, what her touch would feel like if it were buried—pressing—

She feels Helena's fingers inside her, feels Helena's breasts pressing against her own, Helena's grip in her hair, Helena's teeth at her earlobe when she comes against her own hand.

The endorphin-induced haze would make her sleep, she'd hoped, and it does, but one release can bring about another and it isn't until she sniffs that she realizes she's crying into her pillow. And now, exhausted and torpid under her blanket, she knows what she feels.

She won't give it words. Even when she's this exhausted, she won't even let herself think the words.

But she knows what she feels.

She manages a few hours of restless, shallow sleep. She gets up and showers and dresses in her crispest dress shirt and vest, and then pulls her hair into the most severe, professional twist she can manage.

Then she sits at her desk and writes a letter.

At the Warehouse, Pete looks surprisingly put-together for what he's been through, and Artie—well, he's in a bathrobe with his arm in a sling, and he's got a week's worth of pain pills in his pocket, but he's upright. The wound had been clean, perhaps because there was no actual bullet involved. It stitched closed easily.

Myka stands beside Pete in the early afternoon sun and tries to watch as Helena is marched off between two guards, head up, looking haughty as ever.

"D'you know where they're taking her?" Pete whispers, head tilted toward her. Myka can only shrug. She is staring down at the ground and, despite her best efforts, can't bring herself to do more than glance at Helena, who keeps her eyes averted as she's loaded into the SUV.

It's all such a complete mess, Myka thinks, because even now she fights the urge to run to that back door, to pull Helena out, to wrap her in her arms, even as she fantasizes just as vividly about holding her down and screaming at her until she gets answers, until she can develop some kind of understanding.

When Myka drives away later that day, she regrets only that she didn't apologize to Leena for snapping at her the previous night, and that she promised Pete a pizza night that she won't be there to deliver.


Pretty sure the whole epiphany-by-masturbation thing is one of those literary tropes that we can only really get away with in fanfiction, but I kind of love it. As always, I'm grateful for any feedback about what you like and what you don't.