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 eventually.
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 law degree (holy crap) 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: LOL! When I published Chapter 15, I apologized for the 3 month wait. It's been almost *exactly* 2 years since then. Sorry about that. I don't have any excuse, except that my muse got distracted by Nyssara. Hopefully this story will be done before Baby Bering-Wells is due in September 2017. :P

Late July 2017

Myka has taken to cleaning out, reorganizing, and rearranging every room in the B&B.

It's a problem.

"She's nesting," Claudia laughs, because Claudia has been reading.

"Okay, but it's my nest," Leena huffs.

"Max, tell Aunt Leena to take a chill pill," Claudia chuckles.

"Take a chill pill, Aunt Leena. Please," Max says dutifully, looking up briefly from his little Lego set.

"Stop that," Leena scolds lightly, swatting Claudia with a dish towel. "He is not a parrot or a megaphone."

Claudia shrugs. "Anyway, just let her do her thing. You can put it all back when she's in her newborn haze. She'll never notice."

"And for the next two months?"

Claudia shrugs.

"Aunt Claud," Max speaks up. "I can't make it click."

"Ah-ha. I'll help," Claudia says, coming to his aid.

"I have a system, Claudia!"

"I know, but Myka is incredibly pregnant in the summer. I know it's South Dakota, but still! She gets to organize whatever she wants. I'll help you put it all back together later, okay?"

Leena sighs and sits down beside Claudia and Max at the kitchen table.

"Fine."

"See? Doesn't it feel better to chill?"

Leena's glare says otherwise.

When she was little, her father read HG Wells to her. Reading was one of the very few activities he'd do with her, and the only one that didn't involve yelling, so they're the memories she consciously holds onto.

Now, HG Wells reads to her. (Sometimes, HG Wells reads HG Wells to her, and that has its charms still.)

Tonight, HG Wells reads Peter Pan to her (and their unborn son) with her back to the sturdy headboard of their very comfortable bed. The bed had been waiting upon their return from Greece, and Helena had merely smiled a self-satisfied smile and called it a wedding present.

Myka lays with her head in Helena's lap, sometimes glancing up at her beautiful wife, but more often closing her eyes to better enjoy the sound of her voice. In addition to her clear accent, Helena reads with perfect animation, each character having their own voice without diving into the ridiculous.

"Are you still awake, love?" Helena asks softly, cutting off Wendy, John, and Michael's adventures.

"Mhmm," Myka promises, but it sounds sleepier than she feels. Her mind is awake, but her body is betraying her.

"Very convincing," Helena teases.

Myka opens her eyes and stares up into Helena's warm brown gaze, radiating down to her. Helena's eyes are soft and peaceful now, so different from the anguished, guarded as her eyes flash in the moonlight when she wakes from frequent, horrible nightmares. And neither of them uses that word lightly.

"We can go to sleep, darling."

"Can we?" Myka asks pointedly.

Helena gives her a look.

"Talk to me, Helena. It's helped before."

"Not now," Helena repeats once again. "I don't want to trouble you, or you," she gestures to her rounded stomach, "Before bed."

"What if I insist? What if he insists?"

"Well, if the young master insists," Helena teases, but her face still says drop it, so Myka does. Tonight.

"Oh, as if any son of ours is going to be the young master," Myka teases. "With you as a mother, he'll grow up thinking men are an inferior gender."

"Well they are, but we'll try our best not to hold it against him."

Grinning, Myka decides to give in to the sleepiness, shifting on the bed so that she's on her pillow and reaching for Helena.

"We still need a name," she murmurs into her wife's silky hair.

"Aristotle," Helena chuckles.

"That's just cruel, George."

She feels Helena's laugh as much as she hears it, and she drifts contentedly off to sleep.

The next thing she knows, she is waking to Helena's strained voice and jerking movements.

She starts with a few soothing words as she reaches for her wife. Sometimes she can cut off the nightmares that way. Tonight it is to no avail, and she must shake Helena awake.

"It's just a dream," she promises, gathering her in her arms. "It's only a dream."

But whatever Helena sees in those terrors, they're real enough to open old wounds in her psyche. Hell, they probably are old wounds in her psyche.

Helena wakes up with a gasp and a strangled "No!". Myka is pretty much fed up with not knowing what haunts her. They have delved, together, into the deepest scars and greatest shames of Helena's past. Although she knows that Helena is entitled to the secrecy, Myka can't help but wonder why this is what Helena keeps under lock and key.

She goes through the motions of calming her wife down with an aching heart. She gets Helena's breathing back under control, feels her muscles begin to relax again, and when she knows she's finally come back to her, knows she's really Helena again, she says:

"Helena, please, what are you seeing?"

Myka knows it is selfish, so selfish, to ask, but she has to. She's been brushed off enough.

Helena blows out a sigh. She sits up, draws her knees to her chest, and presses her back to the headboard, this time more for protection than support.

"Christina," she admits. That's unsurprising. "But not. As if a monster has taken over my girl."

Myka reaches out and rests a hand on Helena's ankle. The moonlight only allows a limited view of her face, but Myka can see (or at least imagine) the anguish written upon it.

"Helena."

"The things she says. I cannot get them out of my head."

Helena tells her then. Tells her of a demon in her daughter's body, speaking with her daughter's sweet voice, with her daughter's gentle manner. Tells her of threats and accusations, in a soft tone. Accusations of forgetting her, replacing her, betraying her. Threats to take the baby, just as she was taken, wrapped in dulcet tones. Helena recounts it all, and Myka can hear the guilt and the horror palpable in her voice.

And it's been going on for months.

"Tonight, though. Tonight it wasn't a threat. She held him in her arms, and she walked away with him. And I knew, somehow I knew, I'd never see him again."

Myka can see it, can feel it. Every last image, every last emotion. Her wife is a storyteller, and a talented one at that.

She squeezes Helena's ankle, and she realizes after a few minutes that it must be in a way that is painful. She pulls her hand away, but Helena grabs it and holds tight.

"It's not real," Myka says, as much to persuade herself as to persuade her wife.

"No, but… Parts of it could be. There is no guarantee that our child won't be taken from us just like she was, or in an equally horrific way."

"No," Myka admits, swallowing her own fear. "There are no guarantees. But we decided not to let the fear paralyze us. He will have a big village to help guard and protect him. And that is not Christina. She would never do that to you or to him. That's just your fear."

Helena blows out a breath. "You are right, of course."

"Of course."

Helena cracks a smile then, the horror at least beginning to retreat, the cloud lifting from her.

"I suppose it is a little late to be doing so much worrying. He'll be here soon enough."

"You are allowed to worry, Helena. I'll just make sure you don't worry too much."

"That sounds reasonable."

Myka smiles gently at her and leans forward to press a chaste kiss to Helena's lips.

"Let's read a little more," she suggests, leaning over (clumsily, the "bump" is getting annoyingly cumbersome) and flipping on the light. "Reset some."

Helena uncurls, stretches her legs out in front of her and nods, rubbing away the last of her tears.

"You're insatiable," Helena faux-complains as she accepts the book from her. Her smile is now mostly bravado, but Myka loves it all the same, happy her wife can muster even that. The smile turns a little lascivious as she says,

"In more ways than one these days."

Myka grabs the book back and swats her playfully with it before giving it back and settling in beside her.

Before she starts, Helena presses a kiss to the top of Myka's head and whispers:

"I do love you, darling."

The three of them have been meaning to sit down with him to start these conversations for weeks, but they haven't all been around at the same time for long enough. They're exhausted and overworked; even Myka on desk-duty is incredibly busy with paperwork. The summer, as usual, is full of pings and wacky artifact adventures. Mrs. Frederic's promised new recruit can't come fast enough.

They do finally sit down him, though, at Univille's only diner, over a plate of onion rings, a rare delicacy.

"So, Max, you know Aunt Myka's gonna have a baby, right?" Pete broaches the subject.

"Mhmm," Max nods, slurping on an apple juice before adding: "And Agey."

"Right," Pete says.

"After my birthday," Max insists.

"That's the plan," Myka smiles at him. "Babies are a lot of work, you know. So all of us are going to be a lot busier."

"Okay…"

"What I think your aunt is trying to say is that they might not have as much time, especially when the baby is super new, to do some of the stuff they usually do with you. And same with me, and Aunt Claud and Aunt Leena, 'cause boy, if this baby is anything like you, he is gonna be so much work."

Max doesn't look thrilled, so Pete shoves another onion ring at him. Because Max is his kid, it has the desired effect: a smile rather than more questions and demands.

"We shall of course still have time for you, Macsen. Just a little less."

"But you're starting kindergarten soon, before the baby even gets here, so you'll probably be too cool to even hang out with us," Myka adds.

"Oh yeah," Pete agrees. "Way too cool." He tries not to think too hard about the fact that his baby is starting kindergarten in a month.

Nope. Definitely not thinking about that.

He needs to call his mom.

"'Kay. Can we get milkshakes?" Max asks.

"Sure," Pete laughs.

"Agey, when we get home, can we test out our hot air balloon?"

"You built a hot air balloon?" Myka asks, eyes narrowing.

"A model one," HG says quickly. "Remotely controlled. Not large enough for anyone to ride in."

"Except Pooh!" Max interjects.

"Yes, except for Captain Bear, our test pilot. And a camera, of course."

"But it could still blow up," Myka notes, wryly.

"We shall of course be wearing proper protective gear and observing at a safe distance, but yes. There is a very slim chance of explosion."

"Of course," Myka grins fondly.

"Uh… If it could blow up, should Silly Old Bear really be our test pilot?" Pete asks.

Max and HG laugh, but no one answers his question.

Pete continues:

"Can I watch?"

Myka scrunches her nose every time a stray raindrop invades the sanctity of the porch. The humidity is wreaking havoc on her hair, and really, she's never been rain's biggest fan, especially the endless three-day downpour type that has unexpectedly fallen on Univille.

Unfazed and armed with galoshes and yellow raincoats, however, are her companions.

Max finds a particularly deep puddle and launches himself into it, earning lavish applause from Helena, who responds to his sodden appearance by kicking more water on him, a favor he gladly returns.

Helena proposed this outing under the pretenses of an earthworm search ("for science!"). Myka suspected those pretenses were false (and has largely been proven correct) but there are several worms wriggling on the porch rail that give those pretenses some credence. They were presented as prizes to a shuddering Aunt Mykes.

"You should get inside, darling. We can't have you catch a cold."

Helena is beside her, not quite touching, since she is still dripping with rainwater. She set Max to the task of preparing several mudballs for his father's imminent return, thinking, incorrectly, that Myka hadn't heard her do so.

"It's not that cold. It's almost August."

"Mm, I believe we established that I am allowed to worry too much."

"I'm pretty sure I agreed to keep you from worrying too much."

"Fine," Helena sighs dramatically, almost Pete-like. "What are you thinking?"

Myka smiles.

"That you'll have another little duckling following you everywhere you go soon."

"Perhaps he'll follow after you instead," Helena posits.

Myka looks to Max, arming himself.

"Oh, I doubt it."

She doesn't mind, though. The way Helena is with Max, will be with their son, it's everything. It's, whether she knows it or now, the exact healing balm Helena needs.

"Agey! I think I hear a car!"

"Duty calls," Helena grins, kissing her quickly before heading off the porch.

"Of course. Hey, Helena?"

"Yes, darling?" she pauses on the steps.

Arms crossed protectively over her, Myka asks: "When you're done, make the worms go away?"

Helena gives her a dorky salute and disappears.

"Are you still afraid?"

Myka looks up from her book, which is propped rather adorably on her bump, glasses perched on her nose. Her face softens with an adoration that still takes Helena's breath away.

"Of him?" Myka asks gently, nodding towards the ultrasound print out leaning against the lamp on the nightstand.

"Yes."

Myka drops her book, setting her glasses aside, and rests her hand on her stomach. It's a gesture she's been adopting more and more in the last few months.

"All the time." She pauses, a grin spreading across her face. "But less and less. Come here. Hurry."

She slips into bed quickly, and Myka grabs her hand and drags it to her stomach.

Their son kicks against her hand and she feels warmth spread across her chest, mirrored on her face.

"I don't think I'm afraid," Helena says, surprising even herself with the truth of that statement. "Nervous and worried, yes. But not afraid."

The nightmares are gone, though they can always return. Anticipation, however, has replaced the fear. Their child will be here by the end of September. Given that Max woke them up at six this morning with an exuberant announcement that it was August and therefore his birthday month so they better get ready, that means their child will be here next month.

Helena is not ready.

But she is also not afraid.

tbc