Title: Ours
Author: A. Windsor
Fandom: Warehouse 13
Characters: Myka Bering, HG Wells, Pete Lattimer, Max Lattimer, with supporting roles from everyone else.
Pairings: Myka/HG, Claudia/Leena if you're inclined to see it.
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: All television shows, movies, books, and other copyrighted material referred to in this work, and the characters, settings, and events thereof, are the properties of their respective owners. My two years and a half of law school could allow me to legalese this a little more, but it also tells me it's pretty useless. So please don't sue; it's not mine, I'm just playing! And Max is mine, so please don't steal him!
Summary: Helena allows herself to want.
Author's Note: Sorry for the delay! This is a bit of a filler chapter, but it's important filler.
"Go fish," Claudia tells the boy across from her very seriously.
Max, settled in Myka's lap and struggling to hold all his cards, nods and takes the card she offers him and adds it to the mess in his hands.
"Okay, your turn, Aunt Claud," Myka prompts.
Claudia looks over her cards, then studies Max dramatically over the top of them. The boy giggles.
"Do you have any sevens, little boy?" she asks.
Max opens his mouth to answer, but Myka instead looks over all of his cards with him, searching for a seven. When they're done, Myka whispers the proper response in his ear.
"Aunt Claud, go fish!" Max faithfully repeats.
"Aw dang it," Claudia pouts dramatically, which makes both Max and Myka laugh as Claudia draws a card.
"Okay, Max, our turn," Myka says, tapping on his knees.
Trailer wanders over to their spot on the living room floor and lays down, head on his paws, watching the game with interest. Or more likely, waiting for them to be done so he'll entertain him.
"Hi, Trailer," Max greets, leaning out of Myka's lap to pat the dog's head.
"Come on, buddy, we have to decide on our cards," Myka reminds him.
Max refocuses, but he's clearly at a loss for quite how this game works.
The front door opens, and both Max and Trailer look up expectantly. No one boring ever walks through that door.
"Ah, look, my three favorite people; don't tell the others."
"Agey!"
HG enters the living room and drops her duffle bag by the door. Max is clambering to his feet, cards falling everywhere. HG greets his running hug gamely, lifting him into her arms and giving him a great squeeze.
"Hello, darlings," she says as she sinks down beside Trailer, pausing to kiss the top of Claudia's head in a way that always makes the young woman blush. She settles Max in her lap and leans over greet Myka with a kiss. "What are we doing?"
"We were playing Go Fish, but I think Max was getting bored," Myka tells her, grinning at the way the affectionate little boy has curled into HG.
"I was kicking their butts, and they're just looking for an excuse to quit," Claudia quips, collecting the messily strewn cards and idly shuffling them. "How was Regent Central?"
"Uneventful."
"Does uneventful mean nothing happened or nothing happened that you can tell us about?" Claudia asks.
"A little of both," HG laughs as Max plays gently with the locket hanging from her neck. "Did you miss me as terribly as I missed you, Macsen?"
"Yes," Max says resolutely.
"You two are so dramatic. It was forty-eight hours," Myka teases.
"Oh, she's talking tough, but she missed you, too. Still so moon-y," Claudia rolls her eyes.
HG grins, looking back down at the boy in her lap.
"And did you look after your Aunt Myka like I asked?"
"Yes."
"Thank you," HG says as she kisses his temple. "She needs much looking after."
Max laughs, just at the conspiratorial tone in her voice, and Myka shakes her head. HG leans over to kiss her again.
Before, Helena was not the type to share her bed, at least for sleeping, and certainly not for more than a night or two.
Now, though, she and Myka have shared their bed at the bed and breakfast for over two years, every night except those where they are separately hunting artifacts or running Regent errands. While hotel beds were once of no consequence to Helena, just another place to lay her head, now she finds that sleeping without Myka beside her is exceptionally difficult, especially when she is not in their bed, when she doesn't have Myka's pillow to pull close.
She is happy to be home.
Even if Myka's beautiful long limbs have a tendency to mean that Helena often wakes to an elbow or knee in her ribs.
Helena shakes her head and gently pushes Myka's elbow out of her gut. Myka mumbles in her sleep, and Helena wraps her in her arms, kissing her shoulder.
"I don't think she trusts that I am ready."
"Do you trust that you are ready?"
Her answer had been yes, to Dr. Zhang's stupid, searching, insightful question, because the more she thinks about it, the more ready she is. Still, she understands thoughtful, deliberate Myka's reluctance.
The more she comes to know and love Max in his own right, the less her mind feels the need to constantly draw connections to her Christina. Her bad nights are extremely rare and spaced closely to the anniversaries of Christina's birth and death. She's learned to handle and often cherish the nights that Max wakes them in the night, when he is sick or scared or simply not keen on sleeping. She still has a minor heart attack when he trips or falls or in any other way throws his fragile little body around like the active child he is, but it's a momentary fear, not a lingering, crippling terror.
But that took a very long time, a time that tore Myka apart as much as it tore at Helena. To start over with a newborn, with their child... She's not replacing the beloved child she lost, but it is certainly different, possibly even more fraught with pitfalls, than learning to love unexpected young Macsen.
She will be terrified, she knows, possible every moment of every day. She told Myka that the fear was normal, but maybe she hadn't been scared enough with Christina. Maybe she didn't take enough precautions while she spent hours in the lab or flitted across Europe tracking curiosities.
Maybe this all a terrible idea, and ever-prudent Myka will shoot her fancies down (gently of course), but these days Helena dreams of sharing a child with Myka nearly as often as she dreams of her darling Christina. Her guilt tamped down that desire for months, but now that she's voiced the though, she finds she grows more comfortable with it every day.
"Myka may say no."
"She very well may. She is nothing if not meticulously rational when she wishes to be."
"And what then?"
"Then she does, and we go on as we are, but at least we have discussed it."
"You won't be disappointed?"
"I trust her judgment. And I want this for us. If she doesn't want it, neither do I."
Dr. Zhang had eyed her warily, but simply nodded and reminded her to call if she needed her.
"Suck it, Donovan! Yoshi just schooled your stupid Toad ass!"
"You're a father!" Claudia reproaches through a laugh, even as she grimaces at Pete's Yoshi Kart doing the victory spin on the screen. "You shouldn't be talking like that. Speaking of, when do we get to teach Maxy how to play?"
"Myka says it isn't good for him," Pete says after he's finished his dance of glory. "She's not going to win that one forever; I'll overrule her when he's older, but for now, he's just three."
"Almost four," Claudia grins. "Four in a few months."
"Four-and-a-half! Four-and-a-half months! More than a few," Pete insists. "Let's not have him grow up any faster than he already is."
"Okay," Claudia says skeptically, thumb scrolling through their options for their next race.
"Mykes is smart about this stuff, anyway. I'll trust her on it for a while longer."
"What isn't Myka smart about?"
"True," Pete laughs. "She's extra good about this parent stuff, though. Ooh! This one!"
He nudges her shoulder, and she chooses the track for a rematch. She's gonna get Yoshi's dinosaur ass this time.
She's distracted, though, and after she dies for the second time, she pauses the game with an:
"Okay, dude."
"Hey! You can't pause the game just 'cause you suck!" Pete objects.
"Shut up for a second. I have to tell you something. But you can't talk to anyone else about it. Even Myka. Okay?"
"Jeez, everyone with the secrets," Pete mumbles under his breath, then louder: "Okay, yeah. I can do that. What's up?"
Claudia weights the decision to spill one more time, but she just has to get this off her chest.
"HG wants a baby," she announces, bracing herself for his shock.
Instead he just says seriously: "I know."
"You know?! How? Who- "
"Myka told me."
"She talked to Myka?!" Claudia squeals excitedly.
"Yep."
"And what did Myka say?" Claudia demands, tugging on his shirt sleeve. "Are we going to have another baby?!"
"We made a pro and con list," Pete chuckles.
Claudia rolls her eyes.
"But given the cute little Myka smile she gets right before all the logical Myka working starts when we talk about it, I think our chances are good."
Claudia squeals again.
"Once she realizes that," he adds, but Claudia is still alight with child-like excitement, and he laughs a little.
"Alright, Donovan. You ready to race for real?"
They discuss Helena's visit to Dr. Zhang briefly after her return. Helena ratifies her continued desire to have a child, which puts the ball very firmly in Myka's court.
And in Myka's court it stays for a few weeks. Their job keeps them busy, and what little down time they have is usually spent with Max, or discussing mundane things, or decidedly not talking about anything at all, except for heated whispers of encouragement.
They draw an assignment to Los Angeles, which as always leads to a gruff Artie reminder that this is for work, and there's no time to talk, then, either, since they spend nearly every moment tracking down Marie Antoinette's dessert plate.
That's how March begins to bleed into April, and the matter remains undecided.
tbc