The thing about guilt is that it doesn't ever stop. It colours your every waking action. In some extreme cases, it even fills your dreams.
So, when Dawn smiled at Artie, she felt guilty because it was her fault he had been stabbed. She felt guilty because she hadn't figured out how to teleport yet. She felt guilty that she couldn't help find MacPherson.
The only time when Dawn didn't feel guilty was when she was having a schizophrenic episode. That was because Dawn was, usually, filled with such crippling fear that the Abomination would get her that Dawn simply couldn't feel anything else.
Of course, in reality, Dawn had nothing to feel guilty about. She knew that. But having delusions of grandeur was symptomatic of schizophrenia, and as someone who believed that she was a ball of energy that had acted as a focal point for centuries upon centuries of religious rituals, Dawn certainly had that symptom.
The thing about guilt is that it only stops when you realise that there isn't actually anything to be guilty about. And Dawn, spending almost all of her time trying to create the formulae for teleportation, didn't have anything to take her mind off her guilty conscience. She had plenty of time to dwell on things that were (supposedly) her fault.
Fortunately, Dawn worked at the Warehouse. Sooner or later, something was bound to happen to take Dawn out of her wallowing.
~*~
It started when a grumpy Artie, probably made worse by pain killers, made everyone take inventory in the Warehouse.
Pete, however, wasn't a filing clerk. He was a field agent, which meant that he should be out in the field. Not stuck in the Warehouse, day after day, cataloguing absolutely everything.
Unlike Myka, who would conscientiously do anything her superiors ordered (although she would protest), Pete, after a while, decided that he just couldn't be bothered with all of this.
He was, after all, in a Warehouse full of interesting things. If Artie wasn't going to allow him into the field, then Pete was just going to have to make his own fun.
So, Pete found a mirror (Lewis Carroll's Looking Glass, no less) and started playing table tennis with his reflection.
Pete wasn't clumsy. Not really. Anyone who was allowed to carry a firearm in the name of the US government couldn't be clumsy.
But accidents did happen.
It totally wasn't Pete's fault that a great big disco ball fell from a shelf and filled the Warehouse with light and disco music. He didn't even like disco music! Artie couldn't possibly blame him for that... well, he could, but it was really Artie's fault, not his. Artie shouldn't put a field agent on clerk duty.
Not that Pete actually said any of that to Artie. Artie, contrary to his usual manner, let it go and instead gave him and Myka the details of a couple small time crooks in Vegas (Vegas!) who were apparently ridiculously lucky. The kind of luck that might be artefact-y.
Pete guessed that the lack of snark about the disco ball had something to do with Leena looming over Artie's shoulder.
But never mind that. It looked as though Pete was back in action!
So preoccupied was Pete that he didn't notice that Myka was unusually subdued. And seeing as how Pete didn't notice, and Leena was invested in making sure that Artie didn't brood about MacPherson, and no one else was sensitive enough to pick up on it, no one else noticed either.
~*~
Myka generally didn't look at the floor. There was rarely anything of interest on it. There better things to look at than the floor.
On the other hand, when the floor is all you can see, you don't really have a choice but to examine it in the minutest detail possible.
Myka wasn't sure what had happened. The last thing she remembered was Pete playing table tennis with his reflection, the disco ball falling, rushing to catch a falling mirror...
And now Myka was here. Except that there was nothing here. Nothing but her, the darkness and the cold. It was pretty unnerving.
Because the floor was a lot less scary than the endless darkness that surrounded her, Myka stared at it until her eyes hurt. It was, she knew, the Warehouse floor. She'd walked on it dozens of times. Which meant that she was in the Warehouse.
Except that the Warehouse wasn't just some dark, cold abyss. It had things in it. Things besides her.
On the other hand, Myka couldn't actually touch the floor. There was something blocking it, something that felt like glass.
So, perhaps Myka wasn't in the Warehouse after all. If Rheticus' compass could transport someone between dimensions, then surely other artefacts could do the same. Myka must've accidentally activated one.
She struggled not to panic when she remembered that it had taken twelve years for Joshua to be freed. Myka couldn't survive this darkness anywhere close to that long. She would go crazy.
However, Myka at least had a window to the Warehouse, even if it was currently showing the floor.
Hang on...
Windows were made out of glass. So, incidentally, were mirrors. And Myka had been holding a mirror before she'd been sucked into this place.
Which meant that Myka had been sucked into the mirror, which had then fallen over. That explained why she could only see the floor.
Sooner or later, someone would be bound to notice that she was missing, and then figure out how to get her out.
Myka, feeling slightly comforted, settled down to another round of floor watching.
~*~
Artie, Claudia decided, was a control freak. He had to have everything just so, or else he'd flip his lid and go on a rant.
Claudia knew this, because after protesting that they didn't really need to trek into the bowels of the Warehouse to check on the disco ball Pete had accidentally activated, Artie ranted at her.
Which really wasn't fair. She'd only made a comment. Okay, so Artie did have a point - if one artefact had been disturbed, others might have been too - but he really didn't have to shout at her about it.
Claudia envied Dawn. At least no one ranted at her.
~*~
Claudia realised that Artie might actually have good reason to be a control freak. Because, if they hadn't gone to check on the artefacts, they wouldn't have seen the mirror, and if they hadn't seen the mirror, they wouldn't have seen Myka in the mirror.
Unfortunately, Artie quickly came to the conclusion that Myka was in fact not Myka but some evil thing wanting to get out of the mirror.
Claudia didn't agree with that. She'd seen Myka's face when they'd lifted the mirror from the floor. She'd seen that expression before, and it wasn't evil.
It was the same expression that Joshua had worn, when he'd first appeared to her. It was an expression of utter, utter relief. Relief that someone could see her, someone that she could trust to help her.
But Claudia didn't say any of that to Artie. Artie was probably right (after all, if an evil thing did want to escape, wouldn't it also wear an expression like that?).
Still, Claudia couldn't help but think that Artie had gotten the wrong end of the stick here. So she contacted Leena via the Farnsworth, hoping that she would side with her.
Because, if the person in the mirror was Myka, who was walking around in Myka's body?
~*~
Strangely, Leena didn't come alone.
She brought Dawn with her. Which didn't make sense, because Leena had been the one to suggest that Dawn stay well away from the artefacts, because she might make them act weirdly.
Artie, of course, picked up on that and said "What's she doing here?"
Leena didn't reply, she just looked at Dawn uncomfortably.
"People." Dawn said, quietly. "There are people, here. And I really need to be around people right now."
Claudia quietly got up to stand next to her friend. Not so close as to invade her personal space, but close enough that Dawn would know that she was there to support her.
Dawn shifted her feet slightly so that she stood closer to Claudia.
"So, um, what's going on? Leena said something about a mirror, but I - kind of didn't listen." Dawn said, looking at her feet. She didn't really feel the need to say why she hadn't listened to what Leena had said.
Artie explained briefly about Myka and the mirror.
"Have you tried talking to her?" Dawn asked.
Artie shook his head. "We've seen her speak, but we can't hear her. Claudia was going to rig something to read vibrations in the glass so we can understand her."
Dawn tilted her head to one side. "Can't you lip read?"
"No. Can you?" Artie replied.
"Sure." Dawn said. She began feeling better, not just because she was no longer dwelling on the schizophrenic episode she had just had, but because she was doing something to help. This was something she could do.
It was the first step towards atoning for the guilt she felt.
"Uh, Artie? Maybe we should wait for Claudia to make... whatever you said she was going to make first? I don't think it's a good idea to let Dawn near the mirror if we don't have to." Leena said with an apologetic look at Dawn.
Claudia saw Dawn sag. "It'll take me a few hours to make it." Claudia lied - it wasn't actually that hard for someone of her talents to make, not with artefacts to help - "And if it really is Myka in there, I'd rather not leave her there longer than necessary."
"I agree." Artie said "If that is Myka, then something evil is out with Pete hunting for an artefact. Which is something I'd rather curtail, before we've got another villain out there with their hands on artefacts."
"Alright." Leena said dubiously.
They went into Artie's office, where he and Claudia had laboriously moved the mirror from its usual place in storage.
Leena looked at the auras of Dawn and the mirror. As she had suspected, Dawn's green, ragged aura was mingling with the mirror's thick, dark red one. Unfortunately, Leena hadn't the faintest of ideas about what that meant. As far as she could tell, nothing was different from what Artie had described - Myka was standing in the mirror, and nothing in the room was reflected in it.
Dawn, on the other hand, did see something different. She saw Myka, and standing next to Myka was herself.
Then, in a moment of stomach-wrenching vertigo, Dawn saw everything from the other side. She was in the mirror, and she could see herself outside it, her and Claudia and Leena and Artie.
But inside the mirror, right next to her, was Myka.
And, unlike everyone outside the mirror, Myka could see her.
"Hey, Myka." Dawn said, waving a hand shyly. "How's it going?"
Myka blinked. "Oh, okay. Just stuck in a mirror. You know, everyday stuff."
Dawn could dimly hear, as though through a thick pane of glass, Artie say "What did she say?"
"Are you really Myka? 'cause Artie says you might be some creepy evil thing that just looks like Myka." Dawn said, ignoring Artie.
"Do I look like something evil? Come on Dawn, you know it's me!" Myka protested.
"Yeah, but that's exactly what not-Myka would say too..." Dawn said suspiciously. "Tell me something only Myka would know."
Myka didn't say anything. She just took Dawn's hands and put one over Dawn's heart, and the other over her own. The same way she had when she had broken into Dawn's room whilst Dawn was having a schizophrenic episode.
Dawn nodded slowly. "Okay. Let's try and get you out of here, then."
Dawn continued holding Myka's hand, and walked steadfastly towards the Warehouse.
Suddenly, in another sickening moment of vertigo, she was back outside the mirror. But Myka wasn't, and Dawn's reflection was no longer showing in the mirror.
"What happened?" Leena asked, worried. She'd just seen the mirror's aura snap back, moving as far away from Dawn as it could get. Leena had never seen anything like that.
Dawn didn't answer. The mirror was beginning to annoy her now. It had let her in, and then it had pushed her out. Why wouldn't it let Myka go, too?
So Dawn walked up to the mirror, and much to Artie's consternation, thwacked it's frame as one might tap a puppy's nose if it had just peed on the carpet, and said in a disapproving tone "Bad artefact! Let Myka go!"
~*~
It was, Pete decided, the strangest thing he'd ever seen. And given that he'd spent the last few months working around artefacts, which was saying something.
He and Myka had been watching the couple that Artie suspected of having an artefact to see if they were doing anything strange (they weren't).
Then a hand reached out of an abandoned bottle of beer. It was recognizably Myka's hand, although how it could fit into the beer bottle was beyond Pete. Especially seeing as how both of Myka's hands were currently attached to Myka, and Myka was right next to him.
The hand groped around blindly as Pete watched in mute amazement, before it touched Myka, whereupon it promptly vanished. Myka tensed, looked around herself, and then relaxed when she saw Pete. "Hey Pete, do you have the Farnsworth? I want to call Artie."
Pete found his voice. "Sure, but why? What's going on?"
Myka smiled and then stretched luxuriously (which, given the tight black dress she was wearing, was incredibly distracting) then said "It's a long story. I'll tell you when we get home."
Pete handed her the Farnsworth.
~*~
Dawn looked around. She was back inside the mirror, only it seemed colder this time. Myka wasn't around, either. Hopefully the mirror had put her back in her body.
Dawn walked towards the Warehouse again.
Only, this time, she didn't end up back in her body. She just walked into a pane of glass.
Dawn banged her fists against it, yelling, as she watched something walk her body away. Something that wasn't her.
No one took any notice. No one even batted an eye, save for Leena who stared at the mirror as though it was a puzzle. Then she shrugged and followed the others.
Dawn shouted after her, but her voice dried up when she heard a childish, high-pitched giggle coming from behind her.
Apparently Dawn wasn't alone in there after all.