Chapter Twenty Five: A Sheep in Wolves Clothing

How had so much gone so wrong so fast? Hadn't she just convinced herself the best night of her life had been occurring? Didn't she just have the woman she loved in her hands? Hadn't she just thought herself happy?

The blood on her hands made her feel sick.

XXXXX

"Stop. Stop talking," Myka shook her head back and forth, her eyes wide as she took a step back from her, looking frightened.

"I'm trying to be honest, Myka," Helena's heart was fissuring slightly, was Myka really afraid of her? Did she regret what they had done because of who she was? Surely she knew that Helena wasn't the bad guy rumor made her out to be. She had to get a chance to explain.

"Like you wanted," Helena reminded her, stepping forward once more, slowly, trying not to frighten Myka further, "Like I should have. There's so much you don't know, I need to explain why-,"

"Helena, please," Myka was begging, her hands up in front of her as if to physically stop Helena. The other woman mumbled something unintelligibly that Helena couldn't catch, leaving the woman to wish she would just talk to her.

She needed to know that her position in the Brotherhood wouldn't effect what they had, didn't even really effect who she was.

"It doesn't have to change anything, Myka." She assured her, "Who I am, this part of my life is a very small part of it, if you just give me a moment to explain-,"

"MARLE force system shut down!" Myka souden;y shouted, causing Helena to flinch slightly, but not enough not to notice the effect these words seemed to have on their ouwn speaker.

It reminded Helena of a darker time in her life, cowering on the cold floor, a menacing presence standing over her. But she refused to give in. she had survived too much to die begging for mercy, to flinch, to look away. So she stared him in the eye. Had she not, she would have missed the look on his face when the back of his head was introduced to a two by four.

"Myka!" Helena lurched forward, catching the other woman as she crumpled, her face pale, eyes unseeing as her mouth grimaced. Helena ran her hands over Myka, trying to sooth her, figure out what happened, what was going on, wanting to help but having no idea how.

"I'm alright." Her voice was weak, but she was able to pull away, to rise on shaky legs, to step back from Helena, and HG tried not to let that hurt.

"What is going on, Myka?" Helena followed Myka to her feet, eyes looking over her, wishing the other woman would sit down, she didn't look so well and that worried her.

"Helena, you have to listen to me," Myka's voice was grave as she suddenly leaned forward and grabbed Helena's arms as if for support. "You, Wolly, Clair, you have to get out of town, now."

"What?" HG shook her head, unsure of where this was going and concerned that whatever it was was taking its toll on her, "Myka, what are you talking about?"

"I-I know that this is… I didn't know…" Myka swallowed, shaking her head, her voice breaking over the words "You have to believe me I didn't know who you were, and I didn't tell them-,"

"Who?" poison curled in HG's stomach, suddenly it was she who wanted Myka to stop talking, not wanting to hear what it was she was trying to say. "What did you do, Myka?"

"It's not what I did, I would never…" there were tears in Myka's eyes now, "It's who I am, and what my bosses are planning to do."

"Who are you?" HG spat out between clenched teeth, anger and easier emotion than the darkness curling in around her heart and pulling it apart, "Who the bloody hell are you, Myka?" she shoved her backwards without thinking, and Myka stumbled, hands grasping for something to steady herself.

"I- I'm Myka Bering, I'm an agent with the Warehouse." She rushed out.

Betrayal, anger, and devastation washed through her. Helena's hand wrapped around her throat, holding her up against a wall and squeezing, a gun from the end table in her hand, pressed into the agents side.

"I hope for both our sakes that this is some sort of cruel joke." But she could see even as she said the words, the look of hopelessness in Myka's eyes, the sorrow, that said she wasn't lying.

"Please, Helena," Myka's voice was strained under the increasing pressure, "Please, you have to-," she was turning red now, eye lids fluttering, but Helena couldn't seem to process what this meant.

"I have to what Myka? What do I have to do?" she clenched her teeth as angry tears threatened to spill over, "You have been lying to me this entire time! Spying on me! And you expect me to, what, let you go? Let you run back to the Warehouse and tell them how you fucked the infamous HG Wells and learned all her secrets?"

"No!" Myka shouted, or tried to as best she could will what force she could muster, "No," it was softer this time, though there was a fire still lit in her eyes.

Helena's hand loosened ever so slightly, allowing room for a breath, room for Myka to speak, internally yelling at herself for being swayed by a single utterance.

"Kill me if you have to, I understand, I don't care," Myka's voice was weak, sounding as if she had gargled a gallon of salt water, "I hope you don't, please, I don't want to be wrong about you, Helena. All I want is to protect you."

"How am I supposed to believe you?" Helena demanded, sounding more confused and sad than angry, "How can I believe anything you say now?"

"Because I love you." She said the words as if they were simple, as if it was a long known unspoken truth between them and the universe.

"Don't. Don't say that now. Now it's … it's tainted." Helena choked out, "Don't tell me you love me now."

Myka didn't press it, "Helena." She spoke instead, an undercurrent of urgency in her tone "Helena please, you have to listen to me. This town will be swimming in agents soon. And they will do whatever it takes to take control of the city. You and Wolly and Clair, you need to get out of the city while you still can. Please, they don't know about you, they don't even believe you exist."

There was a warmth on Helena's hand, sticky and wet and she realized the hand still pressed on Myka's throat was slowly being coated in a stream of crimson.

"You're bleeding." She released Myka suddenly, the other woman crumpled to the floor, coughing as blood trickled out of her ears, "What's wrong with you?"

"I had some nanobots in my brain that I shut down," Myka blinked slowly, staring down at her hands as they shook slightly.

"You… what?" Helena shook her head, but Myka didn't seem to be answering, just tangled her hands in her own hair, sitting on the floor with her elbows on her knees.

Helena watched her for a long moment, trying to process everything, "Who are you?" she had asked to before, getting a name and rank in response, but she needed to match up the Myka she had known with the woman before her now.

"I'm a cop," She let out a humorless chuckle, "Or I was. Before all this. I was good at my job. I was damn good at my job. It was what I always wanted to do. Then I get swooped up a few months ago and here I am."

"You were a cop." Helena shut her eyes, so many small nuances about Myka suddenly making sense.

"Homicide detective, until my partner and best friend was murdered." Myka looked up at HG once more, as if double checking that she remembered the story that had been shared, "I just wanted to help people. I don't want to hurt anyone, and I don't want to hurt you. So please, Helena, please go before it's too late."

Myka struggled to her feet.

"Where are you going?" Helena sounded lost.

"If I don't return to them, they'll come looking for me." Myka huffed, leaning heavily on the wall as she walked, stumbled, her way towards the door, "Which is counterproductive if I want to keep you safe."

Helena wanted to reach out, to stop Myka. To keep her from going back to those people. To keep her safe. But if what Myka was saying was true.

A sob caught in Helena's throat, a small sound escaping before she could choke it back completely. Myka had seen the crack in the armor, stopped in her movements to reach out for her, but Helena couldn't have that. She snapped the walls back down, they were unsure, but they would have to last only a moment.

"Leave." Her voice was hard, and it startled Myka.

"Helena-," her voice plead and GH nearly broke at the sound of it.

"Myka, leave!" Ice filled her once warm eyes as she leveled them at the other woman, "You've done quite enough damage. And I hope, for your sake, what you have told me never comes to pass."

Helena turned her face and waited, listening to the soft shuffling sounds of Myka's feet, waiting until the door closed with a soft snick before she broke down. She fell to her knees, the gun clanging to the ground.

Her arms shook as she looked at her crimson stained palms, trying to scrub them together to get the blood off, but it wasn't working, and she gave up with a cry of frustration that devolved into just crying.

She wrapped her arms tightly around herself, trying to stay in the present, trying to keep her pieces from scattering once more.

It all felt so surreal. Surely this had to be a nightmare. The twisted result of her tragedy tainted, over active imagination. There was no way the woman she had fallen in love with was a Warehouse agent. No deity in the universe was so cruel as to spin that fate for her.

It simply wasn't possible for the Myka Bering she knew to be a part of the corporation that aided in the total destruction of her life. Myka, with her values and need to help everyone, who was so smart and intuitive, couldn't be a part of that.

She held tighter to herself, but it wasn't enough, she felt herself slipping away as she surrendered to the fact that the Warehouse had taken from her, yet again, the thing she loved.

Objectively, she knew this wasn't as bad as the last time. Not as bad, but still so damn painful. She knew from past experience the pain had to run its course, she needed to let it break her so she could build herself back up stronger.

"The only child of a Hive elite…"

"No." HG clapped her hands over her ears, trying to stop the words from trickling back in like poison. But it was useless.

"We can't destroy them completely," the man's voice echoed all around her, and she buried her head in her knees, letting the memory have its moment, letting it take over…

XXXXX

The silence in the hospital that hung around them was deafening. Helena's ears ached for a cry she knew she wouldn't hear but kept listening for anyway.

"Where's my daughter?" she demanded, her voice weak from exhaustion and dehydration. Twenty seven hours of labor followed by ten hours of trying to sooth her colicky newborn. An internal alarm had gone off when her body decided it had been quiet too long. Only, she had woken to a man she didn't recognize sitting in her visiting chair and an empty hospital cradle.

"Mrs. Stephon, my name is Adwin Kosan." He leant forward, elbows on knees, "I'm a Regent with the Warehouse, do you know who we are?"

"You're some federal agency," Helena blinked, "Why are you here, where is my daughter?" her voice grew in strength as she let her eyes wander, noticing the two suited men standing guard at her door.

"The Warehouse has taken the baby into protective custody."

"What? Why? Where's Christina?" the heart monitor beside her noted the her panic, though no one paid the frantic beeping any mind.

"She's the only child of a Hive elite," he rose to his feet, moving to stand at the window overlooking the hospital parking lot, "We can't destroy them, not completely. Not while they are keeping another threat in check for us. But we can't let them have free reign either. We leave Senator Stephon in charge of Wisconsin, let him have his little play ground out here, but use his daughter to keep him in line."

"What?" the blood drained from Helena's face, and all feeling left her limbs as his words began to process.

"She will be delivered safely back to you once he is in our custody." HE assured her with a slight tilt of his head, "And you could help us with that, make it all go a bit faster, a bit more smoothly, Mrs. Stephon."

"Wells," Helena snapped, a rage the likes of which she had never known filled her, "I never agreed to marry that pig, much like I never agreed to let you use my daughter as leverage over a sociopathic mobster!" she gripped the railing of her bed, pulling herself up, "You will give my daughter back to me this instant."

"I'm so sorry you're refusing to help us, Mrs. Stephon." Kosan moved for the door, turning her back on the cursing woman, "But the child will remain a ward of the Warehouse until further notice. Perhaps you'd like to reconsider?" he turned his head to look at her over his shoulder, "We couldn't let you see her of course, but we could give you updates on her condition as long as you cooperate-,"

"Go fuck yourself!" she spat, "Give me my daughter back damnit!"

Helena couldn't lose her, not after all she had been through. Little Christina, her baby, she was the light, she was the one good thing Helena would have, the only thing that would make everything worth it. If she lost her daughter, she herself would also be lost.

The agents were holding her down now as she struggled.

"I really am sorry you couldn't see this our way, Mrs. Stephon," Kosan shook his head, "Take her until she calms." And with that, he was gone.

Helena screamed and fought against their hold, but she was weak from a troublesome pregnancy and a lengthy labor and she couldn't fight quite hard enough to be free of their ever tightening grip.

Eventually, a nurse was called in to sedate her, and she fought the darkness tooth an nail.

But as she was learning, the darkness always won.